M25 LTG – Spring meeting
The Spring Meeting of the M25 Learning Technology Group took place on Thursday 26 March at the University of Roehampton. Lucy Bamwo (Imperial College) and Eliot Hoving (UCL) welcomed attendees in person, with additional participants joining online in a session facilitated by Geraldine Foley. The meeting centred on the theme of Digital Transformations and Change.
They introduced Matthew Vose, Head of Digital Education at the University of Roehampton, who provided an overview of the institution. Roehampton is London’s campus university, set within a 54-acre parkland campus, with roots in teacher education dating back to the 19th century. The university has one of the most diverse student populations in London, with around 80% of students having at least one widening participation characteristic. Matthew explained how it informs Roehampton’s digital education, including the in-house development of AI applications to support assessment, access and usability.
The presentations began with “Improving the Online Experience: Moodle Template Implementation in the Business School”, presented by Jose Neto (University of Roehampton). Jose explained how the development of standardised Moodle templates has improved accessibility and the learning experience across on campus and international partnership courses. The work followed an iterative process, with a clear focus on creating a user friendly, accessible, and mobile ready environment aligned with the student profile of the Roehampton Business School.
An initial review revealed that multiple templates and formats were in use, creating pressure on academic and support teams and leading to an inconsistent student experience. The project, supported by senior leadership and informed by helpdesk data and student feedback, resulted in six design principles focused on consistency, accessibility, intuitive navigation, mobile friendly- design, clear learning pathways, and pedagogical alignment.
Jose shared examples of practical changes, including collapsible sections to reduce cognitive load, clearer signposting of support and course information, and embedded guidance links for just in- -time support. Optional Moodle activities were also used to promote active learning. Overall, the approach has reduced support workload, improved issue resolution, enhanced the student experience, and provides a scalable model for future course development.
Next, Antonella Veccia (UCL) presented on “Making Minimum Expectations Actionable: Supporting Adoption of the UCL Digital Education Baseline”. Antonella introduced the UCL Education Baseline, a set of six principles intended to guide the design of online and blended courses in Moodle. Although not compulsory, the baseline is strongly recommended good practice to both academics, designers and technologists. The principles cover structure and navigation; orientation, communication, and student support; learning and teaching resources and activities; assessment, feedback, and academic integrity; accessibility, copyright, and data protection; and continuous module dialogue and quality assurance.
Antonella outlined how the project aims to make the baseline more engaging and accessible through a resource that illustrates each principle with examples and explains their rationale from a learner perspective. The design aims to encourage academics to contextualise the principles within their own practice rather than copy examples directly. Cognitive load theory and the reduction of student overload are central to the resource, helping to improve staff engagement and adoption. The resource also allows academics to view their courses from a student perspective, highlighting how their content design choices shape the learning experience.
After the break, Cecilia Lo (Brunel University) presentation titled “Choose Your Own Adventure: AI Provision Edition” gave an overview of the AI market in UK higher education, providing a rapid tour of the major provision models and provider types. Using a live poll, participants shared where their institutions are on their generative AI journey. The presentation introduced a helpful taxonomy of AI solutions, from Large-Language Models (LLM) based chatbots and AI study tools to emerging agentic AI applications for digital education.
This was followed by an interactive workshop in which participants worked in groups to select an AI solution and provider type for a fictional UK university. Criteria included deployment speed, ethical and environmental alignment, data privacy and intellectual property, internal IT capacity and financial constraints. The activity highlighted the complexity of the generative AI market and supported a shared exploration of its opportunities and commercial risks for UK higher education.
The final presentation was delivered by Dr Nick Riches (City St George’s, University of London), who shared insights on Single Source Publishing. Drawing on his background in Speech and Language Sciences and Digital education, Nick outlined how content could be created and published from a single source of truth across the VLE, course handbooks, assessment briefs and other documentation. He explained how the use of structured metadata in XML could significantly reduce duplication, formatting effort and the creation of teaching material or learning aids, supporting more sustainable content creation for teachers and the wider course teams.
The meeting concluded with a summary and a fun quiz led by Lucy Bamwo on the history of educational technologies and when they were first introduced. Are you sure you know when YouTube first launched, or can you remember a time before sharing tutorial videos or checking LinkedIn on your phone?
The recording is available on this page.