ALT

The draft programme for the OER25 Conference is now available. Join us this summer on 23 and 24 June 2025 in London. Explore the sessions, discover key speakers, and start planning your experience - view the programme here. 

Join us on Tuesday, 15 July 2025, for a half-day workshop designed specifically for education professionals with an interest in learning technology.

The ALT Awards 2025 are officially open for entries from Tuesday, 20 May 2025. Since their inception in 2007, these prestigious awards have celebrated excellence in Learning Technology. Now in their 19th year, the awards continue to set a national benchmark, attracting competitive entries from across the UK and beyond. 

Many universities implemented blended and hybrid delivery for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as such, the use of terms that relate to various manifestations and implementations of blended learning has increased significantly by all higher education stakeholders. However, the meaning ascribed to these terms is often inconsistent and can lead to confusion, making it difficult to set expectations clearly for both staff and students. This study aimed to investigate how higher education staff understand and use these terms and to identify sources of confusion and barriers to adopting standardised definitions. We surveyed 152 higher education staff and asked them to provide definitions of each term as well as completing a categorisation task. An applied thematic analysis identified two factors that were present across definitions: choice (no choice, student choice and choice not specified) and modality (mixed but separate, dual delivery and mixed not otherwise specified). Our findings reveal significant discrepancies in understanding, particularly regarding hybrid learning, which was often conflated with other modalities and involved definitions where neither choice nor modality was clearly specified. Blended learning was most consistently defined and identified as involving separate online and in-person components with no student choice as to the modality in which they could engage with each component. Hyflex learning, despite being less familiar to many participants, was accurately associated with dual delivery and the maximum student choice. Our results underscore the need for clearer terminology and for all stakeholders to provide maximally descriptive definitions. The use of any broad category term should be accompanied by a specific definition that at minimum describes choice and modality, but where best practice would be to encompass additional information based on existing frameworks.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing teachers’ intentions to integrate Virtual Reality (VR) technology into their educational practices, utilising the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT-2) framework. The research involved adapting and validating the ‘Acceptance of Mobile Immersive Virtual Reality in Secondary Education Teachers’ scale to the Turkish context, ensuring cultural relevance and psychometric reliability. Data were collected from 213 in-service teachers with prior experience in using VR in education. The results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirmed the validity of the adapted scale. The findings indicate that effort expectancy, social influence, personal innovativeness and hedonic motivation significantly predict teachers’ behavioural intentions to adopt VR technology. However, contrary to expectations, performance expectancy and facilitating conditions did not show a significant impact. These results underscore the importance of focusing on the ease of use and social support mechanisms, as well as fostering a culture of innovation amongst educators, to successfully integrate VR into educational settings.

Join Constance Henry, a technology enhanced learning enthusiast, for a friendly and practical introduction to HeyZine flipbooks – a simple but effective way to bring your resources to life. This session will explore how flipbooks can be used across all ages and stages of education, from showcasing student work to creating interactive guides, handbooks, and learning materials. You'll see how easy it is to add videos, audio, links, and images, making your content more engaging and accessible. Whether you're supporting learners in the classroom, online, or in community settings, HeyZine offers a creative, user-friendly platform to enhance what you already do.

 

 

We are seeking case studies and example policies of using digital technology for learning, teaching and assessment that address or have implications for ethical considerations. Examples are invited from all sectors and nations.

Case studies and policies could, for example, address the ethical implications of AI, lecture capture, online assessment, blended/hybrid learning, use of student data etc.  

We are refreshing the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) East regional group, with a renewed focus is on building stronger regional connections. We are also collaborating with the East Midlands group to widen the opportunities for sharing and collaboration.

Our aim is to set up a regular series of collaborative online sessions. These sessions will provide a forum to discuss key issues, challenges, opportunities, and shared ambitions in technology-enhanced learning within our regional community.

This initial session is a crucial opportunity to gather interested individuals. We will discuss the direction and focus of the revitalised group, identify the most pressing needs and opportunities for our community, and begin building a supportive regional network. If you work (or live) in the East Midlands or East England we would be delighted if you would be involved. Please be prepared to bring any ideas for what you might like to see discussed in sessions, or how we might support each other going forward.

ALT is seeking to appoint new editors to join the existing editorial team for the Research in Learning Technology (RLT) journal.  RLT is a peer reviewed, Open Access journal published by ALT that aims to raise the profile of research in learning technology, encouraging research that informs good practice and contributes to the

To mark the relaunch of ALT Cymru we will be having a virtual 'coffee and chat'. Our first order of business is to get to know our members and what it is you would like to get from this group. Please come along and say hello and have a virtual coffee. We hope to make these a regular event with a different theme for discussion. FOr this first one as well as a hello we thought it would be great to talk about AI and the Welsh Language! So any concerns, issues or ideas you've got about how AI is working (or not) in Welsh please come and share.

The countdown to ALTC25 has begun, with Glasgow set to host this highly anticipated event on 23 and 24 October. As preparations get underway, there is an exciting opportunity for members to play a key role in shaping the conference by joining the Conference Committee.

The next meeting of the ALT-ELESIG Scotland group is an excellent opportunity to share practice, evaluation and research into learners' experiences of technology enhanced learning and assessment. We have a great afternoon planned with a variety of presentations across the theme of 'Sustainability in Tertiary Education'.

Read the full programme and presenter biographies here.

Register Here,

Delivered by ALT CoOL SIG Chairs, Chris Morrison and Jane Secker, it is aimed at learning technologists and related staff in education.  No knowledge of copyright is assumed prior to the course. This half-day workshop uses Copyright the Card Game to establish a baseline level of knowledge and to give practical examples and scenarios about how copyright relates to the work of learning technologists and those in the field of digital education.
 
Learning outcomes

By the end of the afternoon, delegates will have:

 

• The ability to apply the basics of UK copyright law to the primary activities of learning technology
• An awareness and understanding of the main licences and copyright exceptions that are relevant to those working in this field
• An understanding of issues related to copyright and digital education / online learning including: digitising content for online, using born digital resources, using digital media and lecture recording and copyright in the connected environment.
   

Building on the momentum of CMALT Week, which shines a light on professional development in learning technology, we turn our attention to ALT’s upcoming event on open education: the OER25 Conference.

ALT’s new online course for Certified Membership of ALT accreditation scheme candidates, ‘Your guide to Certified Membership of ALT (CMALT)’, launched during CMALT week 2025. The course is designed to provide all CMALT candidates with guidance that enables them to create, and confidently submit, their CMALT portfolio for assessment.

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MONTHLY ALT NEWS - ISSUE 45, MAY 2025

 

WELCOME TO YOUR MONTHLY NEWS UPDATE FROM THE LEADING PROFESSIONAL BODY FOR
LEARNING TECHNOLOGY IN THE UK.
We support a collaborative community for individuals and organisations from
all sectors, and provide professional recognition and development. Each
month, we will update you on latest news and publications, events,
jobs, and calls for proposals from across the learning technology
community.   [...]

Are you keen to engage in research but barriers prevent progress? Professional service staff possess unique perspectives that could transform educational practices, yet face significant hurdles when attempting to formalize, conduct, and share this valuable knowledge as research—even when its potential impact is substantial. ALT-ELESIG + the Heads of ELearning Forum are running this session to share the experience of barriers and enablers to doing research. email:j.c.turner@ljmu.ac.uk to attend.

Three academic years have passed since the release of the ChatGPT. In this workshop I share the lessons learnt over nearly 2 academic years of implementing a set of general guiding principles designed for life science students on the responsible use of generative AI. The guidance is modelled on existing approaches to research integrity and plagiarism, framed in a way to demonstrate how to generative AI can support learning without undermining it. The focus is on encouraging healthy, sustainable behaviours through practical advice tailored to different course components. The workshop includes an interactive session where attendees will discuss particular types of learning activities and consider what sort of student interactions with generative AI might be considered as good practice, poor practice or misconduct. 

ALT is currently inviting expressions of interest for Co-Chairs for the ALT Annual Conference 2025.

To make it easier to keep to date with the latest news from ALT, from Thursday, 1 May 2025, we will communicate in the following ways: