As we launch our website and start our institutional conversations around learning and teaching in this new space, Rosemarie McIlwhan introduces the new LTA Blog and invites you to contribute.
The LTA blog, Inspiring Learning: Voices from across the LTA Community is a space to share ideas and practice on anything relating to learning and teaching. We hope that you will find that the posts here are creative, innovative, thought-provoking, and useful. Some might inspire you; others might challenge you, but we hope that all will give you pause for thought in some way and equally will give you something that might be useful for practice too.
So, whether you want to extend existing conversations or start new discussions on emerging themes in learning and teaching, the Blog offers a platform to engage with our University community and colleagues across the sector.
The blog is for everyone engaged in teaching and learning at Heriot-Watt. On the blog you’ll find ideas, debate, discussion and reflection about learning and teaching. It is also a space to share good practice and celebrate inspiring teaching. The LTA team will post regularly to share the latest news, events and scholarship of learning and teaching, alongside guest posts from a wide range of people involved in learning and teaching.
Watch this space for creative and innovative ideas on developing practice, evidence-based enhancement, leadership, pedagogy, collaboration, and much more.
Get involved: We welcome contributions about learning and teaching from people across the University (whatever your role). Whether you want to share an idea, an event, some news or if you’ve got an idea for a post or would like to make a regular contribution then please get in touch at LTAcademy@hw.ac.uk
Guidance on blogging for the LTA
Tone: The blog is a professional space so please respect this. We see the tone as being the same as any other conversation about learning and teaching at HW. Whether you want to ‘talk’ directly to our audience, to narrate or reflect is up to you.
Structure: Structure your writing so it’s easy to follow. Headings, images, tables, graphs, bullet points etc. are all acceptable if they help to get your point across in a clear and accessible manner. Keep things simple and easy to scan.
Language: Write in English, avoiding jargon and spelling out any abbreviations or acronyms. If concepts are specific to the subject you are writing about, then a brief explanation would be useful.
Media: We encourage the use of appropriate images, video and audio or other media, provided that they are suitably captioned, described or transcribed for accessibility purposes.
Accessibility: Any images, tables, graphs etc. need to have alt-text descriptions provided with them. Any video or audio requires captions and / or transcript. We can provide support in creating and embedding these.
Links: Feel free to provide links to other relevant information or documents. We can provide support to embed these.
Tags: Feel free to suggest any keywords that your post should be tagged with. We can also suggest some for you.
