How we made ‘Heart of Scotland’

Background

In 1124, King David I formed the Royal Burgh of Stirling, effectively founding the town that is today home to the University of Stirling. In celebration of this 900th anniversary, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, in partnership with Stirling Council, decided to produce a free 4-week online history course via the FutureLearn platform. I joined the University of Stirling in January 2024 with the remit of getting the University’s FutureLearn strategy started. Ultimately this course, the University’s first on this platform, was launched on the 24th of June, after a busy few months of development.

Key people

Prof Kirsty Blair, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, had previously enjoyed working on FutureLearn courses at another institution and recruited Prof Ali Cathcart, the head of the division of History and Politics, as well as Dr Tom Turpie, to jointly lead the project.

To cover 900 years of history in just 4 weeks a large team of expert academics from across the institution were brought in to cover their own specialisms, around 15 in total. Our partners at Stirling Council were able to lend us the support of Dr Murray Cook, as well as help with promotion and marketing through the wider Stirling900 celebrations. And from Learning and Teaching Enhancement our ‘team’ was effectively me, Sarah Docherty, as Learning Technologist for the Faculty and Andy Sim as Media Producer.

Design process

Over a series of online meetings with the many people involved, it was decided that each of the 4 weeks would cover roughly a 200-year span, so the relevant experts could be assigned to them. We then discussed the process, demonstrated the FutureLearn platform, established rough production timescales and explained the broad design concepts as follows:

• This is a short course aimed at a very broad readership/user base.
• Text-based web pages should not exceed 800–1000 words in length and will include illustrations and imagery which will be copyright-free/public domain.
• There is no formal assessment, although we could use online Polls, Simple quizzes, etc.
• Dialogue – using Comments and Discussion

We were also able to establish the learning objectives and name of the course so that we could begin the process of setting up the course homepage on FutureLearn.

The following video is a short promotional trailer that was produced by Andy using a script from Ali and Tom, and a lot of pre-existing or freely available footage.

Sarah ran a series of ABC workshops to develop the weekly plans using a Padlet storyboard.

• What stories should be included?
• Would text work or would video be better?
• Could pre-existing materials be used?
• How about activities for learners to engage with?

These workshops produced a shared course map and timeline – each contributor would therefore be able to find their appropriate ‘block’ on the map and submit content (text articles, video scripts, links, or relevant images) via a shared Word document. May 31st was set as the closing date for content submission.

The trailer was completed and signed off by March and new videos were captured in April and May along with re-editing of some existing video material.

Review

We were also lucky to have Dr Calum Cunningham assisting in the development process. Calum wrote the section on the Jacobite rising, but also acted as a general editor advising on historiography, correct and consistent use of numbering systems, general punctuation and so on – incredibly useful to have another set of eyes on the content. I briefed our lead academic Ali Cathcart on a regular basis to ensure she was happy with our decision making and to check on content production progress. Once everything was in place, we asked the rest of the Learning and Teaching Enhancement team to help out by going through the course to catch any rogue spelling mistakes or issues with the tasks.

Promotion & marketing

Outside of the course production, regular liaison with FutureLearn, University colleagues in Communications Marketing and Recruitment, as well as the marketing team at City Council ensured that the course had as much visibility as possible. In addition to being included in the events listings for Stirling900, physical posters were circulated, alongside social media advertising. This saw nearly 300 people sign up for the course in the 6 weeks prior to launch, a number which steadily increased over time.

Launch & run

The first run of the course began on the 24th of June, a special date for the history of the Stirling area as it also marks the anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn, and learner numbers gradually increased to nearly 400 by Week 4. A rotating cast of our academics and experts combined to make sure someone was available to answer questions where needed, even as holidays saw the University’s physical campus becoming very quiet.

Engagement and feedback were very good, and the intention is for the course to run again a number of times. It’s also proven to be a good way for the University to partner with other institutions, something which will be utilised in other upcoming courses. Working with such a large team was not without its challenges, but did hopefully mean that the knowledge and experience gained from making the course was spread more widely across the Faculty. And the success of this first course has also meant that we in Learning and Teaching Enhancement have received lots of enquiries about creating more new courses, so watch this space for what comes next!