Our services

Consultative support involves helping you to define the most appropriate and relevant digital learning resource for your learners. This could range from short online courses, designed for independent learning, through to full academic degrees. We can produce a full project plan, high level milestones and recommend the most suitable platform for delivery. Based on your requirements, we can provide a fully specified recommendation and quotation (where appropriate) for the design, development, delivery and evaluation of your digital learning experience.

We have a team of experienced course design managers who design coherent learning journeys based on the specified syllabus and defined learning outcomes provided by the academic or subject matter expert. The resulting course outline serves as a blue print for the development, whether a short course or a full programme of study. When designing learning, the design managers adhere to defined methodology ensuring that the learning is varied and involves opportunity for interaction, collaboration and reflection.

Development of a course is dependent on the production or supply of appropriate subject content. This is reviewed and adapted by the Digital Education Service to ensure suitability for online delivery. The design and development team assesses the content and provides advice on alternative ways to present the learning through text articles, video, interactive exercises or quizzes and tests. Time is allocated for research, reflection and discussion. Once a format has been agreed, a range of learning assets are developed usually involving the subject matter experts scripting and filming video content. The learning assets are then built into a coherent learning journey. Finally the course is tested on the chosen online learning platform.

During the delivery of a course, we can provide support with administration, including optimised content for the sign up pages, in-course messaging to increase learner engagement and the setup and delivery of real-time discussions and webinars. We can also provide support for quality assurance, admissions, student support and assessment through our student education service team where suitable.

Where required, we can provide a marketing and promotion service. This includes anything from production of visual assets and promotional trailers to full social media campaigns and paid for activity. Marketing support also includes production of optimised copy for online channels, provision of bespoke promotional assets such as flyers, brochures or plasma screen visuals and a marketing evaluation report.

For those colleagues developing their own online courses, we can provide advice on how online courses can be integrated with University systems e.g. Banner, module catalogue, and online shop and also a bank of videos and images that can be confidently embedded within digital learning. All content is developed by the Digital Education Service and copyright cleared for use within the University or beyond.

We are responsible for managing relationships with external learning platform providers, resource providers and other partners. The University is a founding partner of FutureLearn and has a new partnership with Coursera, the major US online learning provider.