ALT Events

Come along to our Unconference where you set the agenda!

This is your chance to bring along the topics - big or small - that you would like to discuss with the group. This will be an informal event but will be roughly along these lines:

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee and add your topics

11:00 -11:30 Welcome and scheduling

11:30 - 12:30 2 Attendee lead/chosen sessions

12:30 - 1:30 Lunch

1:30 - 2:30 2 Attendee lead/chosen sessions

2:30 - 3:00 Summary

3:00 - Drinks and/or shopping!

We are excited to announce an upcoming interactive workshop that will delve into two critical lenses of reflection from the Digital Accessibility Maturity Model, developed by AbilityNet and McNaught Consultancy. This workshop is designed specifically for HE and FE institutions looking to enhance their digital accessibility strategies and practices.

The workshop will be facilitated by Amy Low from AbilityNet, Julian Tenney from University of Nottingham and Ben Watson from UCL. Julian will bring his experience of using the maturity model to develop and mature practices at Nottingham and Ben will provide insights on the robust procurement guidance developed by himself and George Rhodes from University of Westminster who is also Ben’s business partner at AllAble.

During the workshop, we will focus on the Strategy and Structure lens, where we will explore evidence points that support the development and implementation of effective digital accessibility strategies that align with your institution's goals and objectives. We will also discuss the importance of having a well-defined and resourced structure to support these strategies and ensure their successful execution.

In addition, we will examine the Governance and Accessibility Toolkit lens. This session will review initiatives and evidence points that signal robust governance frameworks are in place and practical tools being provided to manage and monitor your institution's digital accessibility efforts including implementing a robust procurement policy. By leveraging these resources, you can ensure compliance with accessibility standards and create an inclusive digital environment for all users.

The workshop will be highly interactive, with opportunities for participants to engage in discussions, share experiences, and collaborate on best practices. Whether you are just starting your digital accessibility journey or looking to refine your existing approaches, this workshop will offer valuable insights and actionable takeaways.

Hear from Leeds Beckett University’s Digital Learning Service about a project to upgrade the University’s virtual learning environment (MyBeckett) to Blackboard Ultra by the end of summer 2026.

Schools, Subject Areas and Course Teams were invited to register for their preferred upgrade window following an ‘early adoption’ scheme, which enabled the team to gather experiences on supporting the transition and learn how best to facilitate the process at scale. This has enabled us to tailor our support and staff development, building a bank of reusable resources.

With partnership at the heart of this project, this webinar will celebrate and share the collaborative approach taken to balance the need to upgrade against colleagues’ capacity to engage positively with change. We will consider project management, communications, risk, teamwork and lessons learned.

The Digital Learning Service is part of Library and Learning Services at Leeds Beckett University. The team provides phone and email support, colleague development and in-curriculum student sessions, and maintains / enhances digital learning platforms.

CPD Webinar Host: 

   Rianne MacArthur, Digital Learning Service Manager, Leeds Beckett University

Our 2025 Annual General Meeting will be held online at 11:00 AM on Wednesday, 19 November 2025. 

To enable more members to attend from across the UK and beyond, we are moving the AGM online this year. All Members are encouraged to attend, and the AGM is also open to guests and observers.  Please register in advance to confirm your attendance. Registrations will remain open until 19 November 2025 for observers.

The AGM will run in Zoom. If you have not used Zoom before, it may be helpful to consult our webinar FAQs. 

In accordance with the ALT Constitution adopted in 2019, the business of the Annual General Meeting will include approval of accounts and annual report, appointment of Trustees and decisions on any resolutions. 

The Agenda for the AGM will be issued at least two weeks prior to the meeting. All papers for the AGM and related information will be published online. We are delighted to announce that there will be a guest speaker joining us. 

The quorum for the AGM is twenty-five members of at least 12 months’ standing. Individual and Certified members and the representatives of organisational, partner or sponsoring members have one vote each (Associate Members are not eligible to vote).

Any resolutions for consideration at the AGM, should be marked “AGM” and arrive by 5:00 PM on Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Items may be submitted to Susan Martin, Chief Executive, via ceo@alt.ac.uk.

We invite you to the “Training staff to use Digital Assessment Tools”  webinar from The Digital Assessment Special Interest Group on 18th November 14:00 - 15:30. 3 speakers will share the conversations that are taking place at their institutions around the challenges and opportunities of Training staff to use Digital Assessment Tools”, under such themes as:

• Examples of when you have trained individual or groups of staff members to use digital assessment tools
• Commentaries on training and development in digital assessment technologies
• Approaches to institutional/ departmental training for digital assessment/ digital assessment tools
• Approaches to training and development for the scaling of digital assessment tools from a trial to an institutional level of use.
• Case studies of digital assessment tool implementation and change
• Research on staff training for the use of digital assessment tools.

Following the presentations you are invited to stay to take part in an open discussion on this topic where you can share your thoughts, concerns and progress in the area of digital assessment creation.

This webinar is the second in a series that will explore the different parts of the assessment process including:

• Marking and feedback of digital assessments
• Digital exams
• Student voice and digital assessments

Calls for speakers for this session are still open, if you are interested in speaking at this event, please complete the Google form by 17 October 2025. 

Speakers will be announced shortly via the Digital Assessment SIG mailing list.

Join the mailing list to be kept updated on this and other SIG events.

The pedagogically and ethically sound uses of AI within education are not straightforward. AI can save time and effort, and can find, manipulate and share content but these are both problematic, focussing learning on content rather than other ways of learning and failing to respond to the diversity, culture and agency of learners. This session will equip colleagues to appreciate these issues and argue for alternatives.

CPD Webinar Host: 

  John Traxler

Join Farzana Latif and Stuart Robinson of the University of Leeds as they unveil the secrets behind a transformative shift in how students engage in class. 

In this must-see live webinar, we will dive into:

• Why Leeds wanted to find a new polling solution

• How they selected a replacement

• How the new platform was implemented across the university

• The significant effects on levels of engagement

Experience the magic live... Vevox (now the campus wide solution at Leeds) will be in action for real-time polls and interactive Q&A during the webinar so you can easily ask questions at any point. 

In this webinar, Jane and Chris we will be joined by Erica Wine from Coventry University who will discuss how her university are approaching the development and use of open educational resources using Sylla. This is an innovative platform empowering libraries to advance open & affordable educational resources at scale. Coventry University and Sylla are working together to enable academics and module leads to easily discover and adopt high quality Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support their teaching and benefit all students, ensuring they have free access to essential learning content.

ARLT SIG presents 'In Conversation' with Matthew Johnson.
Date: Tuesday 8th April 2025
Time: 4pm-5:30pm GMT (to be inclusive of our overseas members)
Format: Online Event
 
This online event is hosted by the antiracism and learning technology special interest group (ARLT SIG) as part of a series on ‘Tackling racism in the Education and EdTech sector’. Matthew Johnson, the CEO of Race on the Agenda, one of Britain's leading anti-racist change drivers, joins us to explore how we can tackle systemic racism in the Education and EdTech sector. We explore little changes and big changes required to ensure racially equitable and just technology-enabled education. Subsequently, questions and comments will be welcomed from the audience.

About the Speaker
Matthew Johnson is an experienced policy and research professional who has worked at both the grassroots (community and third sector) and structural levels (governmental and multilateral). He has gained extensive experience working with NGOs, government and academic institutions both in the UK and internationally. This includes supporting capacity development in parastatal organisations in areas of monitoring and evaluation; while advising on innovative programmes in partnership with multilateral institutions such as UNICEF.

Reflection is widely used for professional recognition and also seen as valuable for professional development. Being able to reflect deeply requires skill to step back from what is occurring to consider beyond ‘what’ happened to why it happened and in Senge’s (2006) view develop the skills of a learning organisation. In this session we will share our experiences of Co-generative dialogues. In these structured conversations each participant has equal voice. Alternating between speaking, listening attentively to one another, and valuing diverse perspectives (Hsu, 2021). This type of reflection values the principles of equity, respect, and inclusion as foundational to sense making. We explore how these deeply reflective accounts come together in a democratic space softening the traditional hierarchies (Tobin, 2008). Working in groups, dyads or triads can foster collective responsibility for improvements (Martin, 2006). In this session, we will provide the opportunity to experience a co-generative dialogue to foster reflection that moves beyond what to why, and more importantly shape learning for the future.

CPD Webinar Host: 

Lynn Gribble

This is the third in a series of four sessions throughout the 2025/26 academic year. These are designed as open forums for colleagues to share and get feedback in the East England and East Midlands region. The sessions are very informal and everyone is welcome, if you live and/or work in the regions. Further details to follow: The exact topic and discussion format has been determined in the 21 January 2026 session. We'll conclude the sharing 4:50 (at the latest). Following that, we'll dedicate 5-10 minutes to setting the agenda for our July meeting. 

The topic is: What’s the top priority for you right now? This is an informal opportunity to share what you're currently working on, get feedback, seek collaborators, discuss any challenging issues, or report on anything you wish. Minimal preparation is required, as we aren't expecting any slides (unless you want to). Just think about what you want to talk about beforehand and any questions you want to ask others. We'll go around the room, and if multiple people are attending from the same institution, we'll address it on an institutional basis. The time allocated for sharing will be flexible, depending on the number of attendees and where the discussion is going. Any contributions who we aren't able to get to in the October session will be carried over to the following session in January. We'll conclude the sharing 4:50 (at the latest). Following that, we'll dedicate 5-10 minutes to setting the agenda for our January meeting. This agenda might focus on delving deeper into topics that arose during the October session, or it could introduce entirely new subjects for discussion.

Have you ever wondered how data science students approach learning analytics? In this session, we’ll explore the unique perspectives of postgraduate students who analysed the Open University Learning Analytics Dataset (OULAD) as part of a four-week innovation project.

What makes this work especially interesting is the combination of methods used to capture the students perspectives. Alongside human-led content analysis, we used AI tools like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Large Language Models (LLMs). This blend provided a richer, more nuanced understanding of how data science students interpret and engage with learning analytics.

Join us as we share what we learned from these students—about their analytical approaches, the themes they explored, and what all of this means for designing better learning analytics in higher education. It’s a conversation about how students see the role of data in their own learning journey and how their insights can shape the future of education.

CPD Webinar Host: 

Raghda Marai Zahran, Newcastle University 

This online conference picks up where OER25 left off, offering a chance to revisit key themes and continue the conversations that shaped this year’s event. Taking place on 16 September, the programme brings together practitioners, researchers and policy-makers from across sectors to explore what’s next for open education.

Themes from OER25, including equity and social justice, open practice during times of change, and the politics of openness in the age of AI, remain at the heart of this event. Whether you joined us at OER25 or are new to the community, this is an opportunity to reflect, share your work and connect with others working in open education.

The conference will be held entirely online, with a mix of live sessions, discussions and opportunities to engage with presenters and participants throughout the day. All sessions will be recorded and made available to registered attendees.

Tickets are available now. We look forward to welcoming you.

Webinar leader: Karishma Punwani

Many maths learners find it difficult to connect with abstract course content, and as a result, not only do they struggle to learn the material, but they can also become demotivated, anxious, and disengaged. Fortunately, learning technologies for maths make lessons much more "touchable", visual, and relevant, offering an effective means of engaging and motivating students, deepening their understanding of fundamental concepts, and reinforcing learning through practice.

In this session, we’ll explore some of the ways interactive maths technology can be used effectively in the classroom, from illuminating visualisations to interactive, learner-led activities that naturally foster investigation, collaboration, and discussion. Demonstrations will be done using Maple Learn, the online maths tool from Maplesoft, with examples taken from the A-Level and GCSE content collections, which conform to the AQA and Pearson exam specifications. These collections make it easy for educators to deliver engaging, interactive maths experiences to their learners through the use of customisable content created to meet the specific needs of their class.

Details to be announced shortly