UCL Life Learning team expands to provide more support

The UCL Life Learning team has grown, meaning more help for departments seeking to increase their short course provision and successfully promote their offerings to external learners.

The aim is to help academics enhance their global reach and impact as well as increase their departmental income to support their local activities.

The team, led by Professor Andrew Eder, assists UCL departments with developing and promoting Life Learning - this covers professional development, executive education, personal learning and summer schools. In summary, an extensive portfolio of cutting edge short courses.

The course-finder website went live in late 2014 and provides a single platform for external learners to view the wide range of Life Learning courses available at UCL.

Dominic Black (Project Manager), Alison Pretlove (External Business Development Coordinator), and Victoria Banks (Internal Facilitation Coordinator) are joined by the following new staff.

Asimina (Mina) Sotiriou, Senior Teaching Fellow (Quality Assurance), works across CALT and Life Learning on quality assurance for all LL courses. Mina has been working with UCL academic teams for the last two years to develop short courses and programmes both in UCLeXtend, the online public platform, and UCL Moodle. She will be creating pedagogical guidance and academic procedures to develop Life Learning courses and activities to ensure that the quality of the courses meets the UCL standard. She is also developing toolkits and training to help academics set up and run courses.

Charlotte Harry, Website Coordinator, joins UCL from the Government Digital Service where she was a content designer on the award-winning GOV.UK website. Charlotte also has a background in Higher Education and will manage the content, editing, optimisation and user experience of the Life Learning website. She'll also be working on UCL's eXtend online learning platform.

Jenni Bozec, Marketing and Communications Coordinator, comes from a professional services background and is in place to help cement and strengthen the UCL Life Learning brand and to give guidance to those planning courses in terms of identifying their market and advising on channels for promotion.

How can the Life Learning team help you?

Contact any member of the team at lifelearning@ucl.ac.uk if you'd like help with any of the following:

Development

• pedagogical support and educational training for developing courses/activities
• ideas on delivery models and the technology available to support them
• options available for assessment and types of awards for 'life learners'
• costing and pricing
• delivery space

Marketing

• understanding if there is a market for your course idea - we work closely with UCLC to build opportunities with the business community
• promoting your course

Evaluation

We can advise on, and are developing ways to improve:

• measuring impact
• gathering and analysing feedback
• developing and utilizing case studies

…or if you just want to list your course on the Life Learning website, making it easier to find and exposing it to many more potential learners.

What next?

The team will be working hard to build the catalogue of courses available on the Life Learning website, streamlining internal processes to help do this effectively, and producing toolkits to help academics and education managers develop and promote Life Learning activity more easily.

Look out for the team at the CALT conference on 13 April 2015 and for further information about the Life Learning team, and how it can help you, throughout the year. 

There is also a Life Learning award as part of the UCL Awards for Enterprise 2015. Nominations are quick and easy (only 100 words) and submissions close tomorrow - 20 February. If you think you or a colleague are providing innovative and interesting training to external learners, make sure you're nominated! Find out more about nominations for a Life Learning award.