M25 Winter meeting
The M25 winter meeting took place on Tuesday 11 November 2025 at London School of Economics (LSE). The meeting organisers Evan Dickerson (Guildhall School of Music & Drama) and Johnny Lee (Queen Mary University of London) welcomed everyone in person and online. They gave a brief introduction to the theme Laying the groundwork for next level learning and explained that they were using the ALT Conference theme to extend the conference for those who could and couldn’t attend.
First up for the presentations was Steve Rowett (UCL) on Beyond the chat bot: exploring AI tools by building them. Steve discussed the importance of teaching students about the process underneath the chat bot, including security and sustainability impacts to help them understand ethical and responsible use. Steve found that often a big barrier to developing AI tools is the ability to code. UCL have been experimenting with Airia ‘an ‘AI orchestration platform’ that allows users to access most Gen AI models and use lo/no code options to create AI tools. Steve gave a demo of some of the ideas that have been tested using the platform and test data. The license is for a limited time, but it has allowed experimentation and testing out of ideas. The plan is to run a workshop with students in December. Going forward there are a range of opensource alternatives that could be used. Attendees mentioned similar projects they are doing at their own institutions using Aria or alternatives. It was noted that advanced use of LLM’s requires understanding of how information is chunked up and how data is processed and how to apply guard rails.
Next up was a collaboration across three different institutions. Amy Aisha Brow (University of Portsmouth London), Cecilia Lo (Brunel), James Marsh (UCL) on Levelling up accessibility a gamified challenge. The three ex-colleagues met up and came up with the idea of taking an alternative approach to accessibility training. They wanted to provide hands on practice in a safe space to learn. They created a game that uses Power Automate to send users real examples. Questions are randomly selected and sent via email with links to documents and different types of files. Teams of 1-3 people select the accessibility issues and points are deducted for incorrect answers. Everyone then had an opportunity to try out the game and teams got very into the challenge, competing to answer questions on accessibility issues with real content. The leaderboard was shown at the end and the top online and in person team were announced. The game seemed to work well, and it is hoped that it can be used for training at various institutions.
Janina Dewitz (UCL) then presented on Towards Digital Independence: learning from our neighbours. Janina made the case for moving to open-source software, pointing out UK HE reliance on one or two US tech giants leaves institutions open to a single point of failure and huge price increases. Once instance of this was the end of support for Window’s 10 which has led to many working devices being scrapped with huge financial impacts for staff and students. However, the opensource operating system Linux works on older devices and could have saved them from landfill. The French economic research organisation Astere estimates EU countries spend around €265 billion every year on US based technology companies. Raising the question whether we should be funding companies that have been involved in various unethical practices including enabling far right political agendas and fascist military actions.
In Europe many institutions including Universities have been steadily shifting to open-source alternatives. For example, in Germany all state administration has now moved to Open Exchange and Libre Office. This involved 30-40,000 accounts and was supported by a government owned company ZenDis which has the remit of moving to opensource. Germany Universities commonly provide support and training for open-source alternatives and host Linux machines. At UCL the Open Source Programme Office is working to promote the use of open source software through training, workshops and outreach and tracking UCL contributions to open source projects. The Linux user group has also been set up for all staff and students; hosting install parties and offering a peer support network for Linex users. She finished by encouraging discussion among attendees on open-source options at their own institution and to look at what they could do to encourage a more resilient tech future.
More details can be found on the presentation slides and Accessible version of the slides with links.
The final presentation of the day was from Giselle Tadman (LSE) on Using Gradescope to build next level learning environment. She discussed the work that has been done on a pilot/proof of concept on using Gradescope to provide feedback at LSE. It can be used with a range of assessment types and can also allow students to upload handwritten assessments via mobile devices. The aim is to make feedback available faster and to provide more accessible feedback with rubrics and annotated comments. It has been used to mark weekly problem sheets and can give prompts to markers to grade by question. So far it has been received positive student feedback although it has highlighted the wide range of marker practice and brings out issues and practices that were previously hidden. They are currently evaluating the project and hope to share case studies across departments.
The next meeting will be in the Spring 2026, keep an eye on the M25 mailing list for more details.