University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI)

Once upon a time, when you put the search term 'UHI' into google, you might have been left with a lot of results about urban heat islands. Now, searching for 'UHI' (from within the UK) will lead you towards the University of the Highlands and Islands website. It's been a long time coming but it only officially became a University in February 2011.

Why do I care, and why am I writing about this? Because I'm from the Highlands, I studied the structure and location of UHI during my MA dissertation research and - most importantly - there has never been a University in this area before. The Highland local authority area is not quite the same as the area covered by UHI, but even on its own it is bigger than Belgium (coincidentally, where I'm going today) - so it meant that young people often had to leave if they wanted to go to University. Now they have a choice.

The University is comprised of 13 different institutions, spread throughout the Highlands and Islands, from Shetland in the far north to Perth in the south. The range of courses is slightly different from other universities and it includes education in Gaelic too.

I'm very happy about this development, though in the history of higher education in Scotland and the UK it could have arrived at a better time!

Poll Everywhere - audience response for lectures

I've not blogged on e-learning stuff for a while so time for a new one. Today I'm speaking at the University of Sheffield's annual Learning and Teaching conference. My talk is all about integrating 'low-tech' technology into teaching - the slides are online too. One thing I'm doing is demonstrating Poll Everywhere for audience response in lectures (screenshot of home page below).


It can often be very useful to get feedback from students during or at the end of teaching sessions. Since the vast majority of students now have mobile phone deals with unlimited texts or can get online via their phones, Poll Everywhere is making a real impact in this area. It's very easy to use and it is free for classes of up to 32 students. An example below of how you can also embed the polls in web pages... If you click an option below you can see the results of this crucial poll!

Replace your audience response systems with Poll Everywhere

Many universities in the UK (e.g. Brighton, Greenwich) are now using Poll Everywhere, so it may be here to stay. I think it is a very effective tool for quick feedback from students.