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Digital Skills Learning Opportunities in Term 2
By Katy O Foster, on 9 December 2025
Each term the Digital Skills Development and wider Digital Education team offer a range of learning opportunities for staff and students to develop their digital skills.
See below for some of the opportunities available this term.
Discover your Digital
Identify gaps in your digital skills with Discover your Digital – a 15 minute self-assessment quiz.
Workshops for staff and students on how to get the most out of the tool will also be running this term. The staff workshop will also cover how you can use the tool with your students or with colleagues.
Digital Skills SharePoint
The new Digital Skills SharePoint contains all the learning opportunities on offer, including live sessions, self-paced materials that have been developed by the team and useful LinkedIn Learning courses.
Live sessions – the Training Calendar
Alongside self-paced options, there is a training calendar of live sessions, both online and in person. Topics include:
Platforms and tools for Teaching and Assessment
The Digital Education team is here to support colleagues in using technology to enhance teaching and assessment.
Read this blog post for key support available from the team. See below for workshops that are running this term:
Teaching and engaging learners
Assessment
Support
There is a variety of support available from the Digital Skills Development and Digital Education teams:
- MyServices: dedicated support for all centrally supported tools and services
- Excel Clinics: in person drop-in support for those who may be working through self-paced learning materials on Excel
- R and Rstudio Clinics: in person drop-in support for those who would like individual support with R and Rstudio.
- Digital Skills Office Hours: 30 minute appointments with a Digital Skills Trainer to answer specific queries about how to use a digital tool or piece of software, or guidance on the best too to use for a particular task.
Join the mailing list
To receive updates on digital skills training, join our mailing list.
Contact us
For any questions on Digital Skills Development at UCL, email isd-digiskills@ucl.ac.uk
Moodle automated extensions
By Kerry, on 8 December 2025
Christmas has come early for course administrators and academics looking to reduce their administrative workloads: the DLE team has now released automated extensions in Moodle for students with approved Delayed Assessment Permits, Extenuating Circumstances and Reasonable Academic Adjustments! This is available now for use on postgraduate and undergraduate Moodle courses (2025-2026).
Following the recent changes to the process for Reasonable Academic Adjustments, the DLE Team has been working with the SITS Integration Team to complete updates to their code and final testing with end users.
Approved extension data can now be pulled into Moodle from SITS to automatically create user or group overrides for Moodle Assignment or Moodle Quiz which can be used to adjust individual deadlines in Moodle.
Turnitin assignments are not supported. However, it will be possible to use this with the forthcoming Coursework double marking tool. Reassessments are not yet supported.
The benefit of automated extensions is that they will save a huge amount of administrative time but it is still important to check extension details are correct in Portico beforehand!
Further guidance
For user guidance on how to import extensions into Moodle, see the automated extensions guide and for help with marks transfer, see the SITS Marks Transfer guide.
Merry Christmas!
24/25 Moodle courses becoming Read-Only
By Tom Walters, on 1 December 2025
Please note that the Read-Only date for many Moodle courses from the 24/25 academic year will be activated in the next couple of weeks. Once the Read-Only date is reached a course becomes uneditable, and you will also only have Viewer access for that course’s Panopto recordings. If you will need any 24/25 courses to remain editable afterwards, please adjust the course’s Read-Only date in the Lifecycle block by clicking “Edit automatic Read-Only”.
If your course has already become Read-Only and you need to restore editing rights, you can unfreeze the course by clicking “Enable editing” in the Lifecycle block. A confirmation pop-up message will appear for you to proceed:
If you need any additional assistance, please contact us via MyServices.
Kind regards,
Digital Education Support team
How students read online and what that means for your Moodle course.
By Antonella Veccia, on 24 November 2025
Section 1 of the UCL Digital Education Baseline focuses on Moodle Structure and Navigation, highlighting the importance of clear course layout, consistent structure, and well-organised content. While these recommendations may initially appear to focus on visual tidiness, their value becomes clearer when we consider how students read, navigate, and make sense of text on screen.
Research from the Nielsen Norman Group (Moran, 2020), based on decades of usability testing, shows that people scan and skim web content rather than read every word. Similar patterns appear in higher education, where Naomi Baron (2017) observes that students multitask and read selectively on screen, while Y.–C. Jian’s (2022) eye-tracking research shows that students rarely re-read, moving quickly through text rather than reading line by line.
These behaviours mean that course design cannot assume careful, linear reading. Instead, it must guide students’ attention to what matters most for learning.
In Moodle, students typically encounter two types of onscreen reading:
- Navigating through the course structure: headings, sections, activities.
- Longer-form content: journal articles, instructional text, task descriptions, feedback.
In the first case, scanning is a natural and helpful behaviour as it can help students orient themselves and find information quickly. In the second case, when deeper comprehension is needed, scanning becomes problematic and can create the “illusion of learning”. As Baron (2017) notes, students often feel they are learning effectively on screen while actually engaging with the text more superficially.
This blog explores how intentional design can turn the challenges of onscreen reading into opportunities that help students stay focused, avoid distraction, and engage more deeply with what they read.
Let’s explore each of the four recommendations in Section 1 of the UCL Digital Education Baseline, with examples of how they can be applied in practice.
1.1 Use a consistent template with headings and grouped resources and activities.
A template provides the high-level organisation of the course, setting out where key elements like the overview, weekly content, and assessments are located. When each section of a Moodle course follows a predictable layout, students don’t have to re-learn how to navigate each time. This reduces unnecessary mental effort caused by how information is structured and presented (known as extraneous cognitive load in cognitive load theory), which draws working-memory resources away from the material to be learned. As a result, students can focus on the task rather than searching for it. (Chen, Kalyuga, & Sweller, 2016).
A recurring heading such as “Seminar preparation”, provides a consistent cue, helping students locate information quickly and set expectations. Similarly, grouping related items (for example, a reading, its video, and a discussion forum) helps students see how resources and tasks connect, supporting a clearer sense of purpose. People rarely read sequentially online; they scan the screen looking for information that meets their purpose. The Nielsen Norman Group (Moran, 2020) describe this as goal-driven reading: users move quickly through digital content, trying to find what matters most. For students, the goal might be as simple as “How will I be assessed?” or “What do I need to read this week?”. When this information is buried in long pages or hidden behind several clicks, poor design choices can turn the advantage of scanning into searching, increasing extraneous cognitive load.
Templates, headings, and logical grouping do more than organise content. When thoughtfully applied as learning design cues, they take advantage of how students naturally read on screen, focusing attention and reducing cognitive strain.
1.2 Organise content with descriptive and short titles and overviews to convey purpose and relevance.
Descriptive titles and short overviews are powerful learning design cues because they support how students scan for relevance and decide where to focus their attention. As Nielsen’s research shows (Moran, 2020), the depth of attention readers give online depends on several factors, and a sense of relevance plays a key role in whether they slow down and engage. That’s exactly why purposeful titles and concise overviews matter: they signal relevance immediately, helping direct attention and encouraging students to shift from scanning to meaningful engagement.
Compare these two examples:
Example 1: Slides: Week 3 – Read the slides and complete the exercise
Example 2: Week 3 Slides: Tort Law – Negligence and Liability
- Review the slides to consolidate your understanding of duty of care, breach, causation, and damage.
- For each of the three cases in the slides, identify the facts that relate to each element. Use the template provided and bring your notes to the seminar.
Example 1 gives students no sense of what the slides actually cover or how the exercise connects to the week’s learning. The instructional text gives no context and fails to signal relevance. By contrast, Example 2 makes scanning effortless: the purposeful title and short overview act as cues that guide attention and reduce the mental effort needed to work out what students are expected to do – a simple but powerful form of cognitive support.
Using a standard naming convention across all activities and resources helps students recognise patterns and orient themselves more quickly. Imagine a Moodle page where one resource is called “Week 2 Quiz,” another is “Answer the questions,” and a third is just “Understanding this week’s readings.” All three might be quizzes, but how is the student supposed to know that at a glance?
As Moort (2025) notes, online readers must interpret multiple layers of text, links, and multimodal information to locate what is relevant and meaningful. When the structure or signals that guide this process are unclear, cognitive load increases because readers must work harder to orient themselves and interpret how information connects.
To support learning, titles and overviews must do more than label content; they must make its purpose clear, so students instantly understand why it matters.
1.3 Help students track their progress independently by enabling completion tracking.
One challenge of online learning is the absence of natural progress cues such as physical page counts or classroom reminders (Baron, 2017; Nichols, 2016). Without these markers, it becomes harder for students to plan their study time or judge how much remains.
Completion tracking in Moodle turns progress into visible information rather than something students must remember or reconstruct, freeing them to focus on planning and learning.
As Sweller (2005) notes, instructional design can act as an external organiser that reduces the need for learners to hold or reconstruct structure in working memory. Instead of thinking, “Did I do that reading?” or “Have I completed the Week 3 quiz?”, students can see their progress immediately, freeing up mental capacity to focus on the learning itself.
Over time, these visual cues can support the development of self-regulated learning, especially when students use them to reflect on their progress, plan next steps, and manage their workload (Zimmerman, 2002).
1.4 Avoid overloading the course homepage or including excessive text-based content.
When a course is crowded with dense text, too many options, or visual clutter, students must spend extra mental energy just figuring out where to begin. This can lead to two different challenges:
1.When too much information is presented at once, students may struggle to absorb it.
Cognitive Load Theory reminds us that working memory can hold only a small amount of information at a time when dealing with new material; therefore, reducing extraneous load is a key strategy to support understanding.
Chunking can help with managing information load. However, chunking isn’t about splitting long text or formatting alone; it’s about organising information around key concepts or stages in the learning process.
When students are told simply “Read this article”, they must decide for themselves what the key ideas are, why it matters, and how it connects to the week’s learning. That ambiguity increases extraneous cognitive load before learning has even begun. A short scaffold, such as a two-sentence overview or guiding questions, directs attention and and helps students process the material more efficiently.
Turning a continuous wall of text into “chunks” controls the pace of reading, counterbalances scanning, and reduces unnecessary processing, creating better conditions for students to connect ideas (Sweller, 1988).
2.On-screen environments naturally invite multitasking, and divided attention can disrupt the sustained focus needed for comprehension.
Building on Sweller’s (2005) work showing how digital and multimedia formats can increase cognitive load, Nichols (2016) highlights how scrolling, navigation, hyperlinks, and other distractions can trigger multitasking, making it harder for students to process and retain information.
Keeping essential links close to the relevant idea where their purpose is immediately clear and moving optional ones to the end of the section, helps maintain attention and reduce the mental effort spent navigating rather than learning (Sweller, 2005).
Final thoughts
When courses are cluttered, inconsistent, or hard to navigate, even high-quality materials lose their impact. Providing structure isn’t about tidiness, it’s about recognising that the digital medium shapes how students read, search, and make sense of information. When we design with that in mind (accounting for scanning, filtering, and the limits of attention and working memory) we can use structure, clarity, and cues to create conditions that support focus and understanding.
Reference:
- Baron, N. S. (2017). Reading in a digital age. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(2), 15-20. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0031721717734184 (Original work published 2017), (Accessed: 29 October 2025).
- Chen, O., Kalyuga, S. and Sweller, J. (2016) ‘When Instructional Guidance is Needed’, Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 33(2), pp. 149–162. Available at: doi: 10.1017/edp.2016.16. (Accessed: 10 October 2025).
- Jian, YC. Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive strategies: evidence from eye movements during science-text reading. Read Writ 35, 1549–1568 (2022). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10246-2 (Accessed: 20/10/2025).
- Moran, K. (2020) How people read online: New and old findings. Nielsen Norman Group. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-people-read-online/ (Accessed: 20/10/2025).
- Nichols, M. (2016) “Reading and Studying on the Screen: An Overview of Literature Towards Good Learning Design Practice”, Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, 20(1), pp. 33–43. Available at: doi: https://jofdl.nz/index.php/JOFDL/article/view/263. (Accessed: 29 October 2025).
- Sweller, J. (2005) ‘Implications of Cognitive Load Theory for Multimedia Learning’, in R. Mayer (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology), pp. 19–30. Available at: Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning – Sweller – 1988 – Cognitive Science – Wiley Online Library (Accessed: 29 October 2025).
- van Moort, M.L., de Bruïne, A. and van den Broek, P. (2025) ‘Reading comprehension in an online world: Challenges, opportunities, and implications for education’, Teaching and Learning in Action. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.70006 (Accessed: 29 October 2025).
- Zimmerman, B. J. (2002) ‘Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: An Overview’, Theory Into Practice, 41(2), pp. 64–70. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 (Accessed: 20/10/2025).
Podcast Episode: Humanising online learning through podcasting
By Antonella Veccia, on 21 November 2025
Podcast series: Behind the scenes of curriculum design
Listen to the episode: Humanising online learning through podcasting
“Presence” is one of the most powerful yet overlooked elements of online teaching. In many digital courses, significant attention is given to content, structure, and assessments, while less attention is paid to how students experience the teacher’s human presence.
In this episode, I talk with Caitlin Mullin, former producer of UCL’s flagship climate podcast Generation One. We explore how podcasting can support presence in online learning and what transforms a simple audio file into a podcast, highlighting the intentional choices that help audio feel personal, engaging, and meaningful for learners.
As you’ll hear in our conversation, podcasting is a simple, flexible way for educators to reach students and create a more human learning experience. This episode is an invitation to academic staff developing online courses to experiment; even small, imperfect beginnings can add value to students’ sense of connection.
This is my first attempt at podcasting and far from perfect, but that’s exactly the point: creating something small, learning from it, and improving with the help of expert advice.
How I made this episode
- I used MS Teams to record the conversation, both of us used a UCL standard headset with microphone.
- I converted the MP4 file into an MP3 using a free software called CloudConvert
- I edited the file using a free software called Audacity
Want to try podcasting?
- If you want to get started with podcasting, there is a session available in February as part of the DigiEd digital skills development . Alternatively, you can book a one to one session with Rebecca Wilson.
- You can also browse UCL Linkedin Learning for courses on Audacity and Podcasting.
- If you want to book the free podcasting studio, please contact the Educational Media team at video@ucl.ac.uk
Thank you to Caitlin Mullin, Rebecca Wilson, Matt Aucott and Ahmad Athar for their feedback and encouragement.
Upcoming workshop on the Ethics of AI – exploring the issues with games-based learning
By Geraldine Foley, on 19 November 2025
As part of the GenAI and education event series, Digital Education are running a workshop on Exploring the ethics of AI with games-based learning. It will be held in person at the IOE, on Wednesday 26th November 12-2pm. Register online via the event page.
Participants will get the opportunity to find out about two games that are currently being developed in collaboration with staff and students. Originating as a UCL Changemakers project, the games tackle different ethical issues of Generative AI and uses cards and tabletop mechanics to encourage discussion and critical reflection. Taking a games-based learning approach allows the ethics of Generative AI to be embedded into teaching in a fun and accessible way, allowing players to experiment and experience conflict and different kinds of failure in low stakes environments.
Come and try out:
AI Empire
A card game, in which players make decisions on how to host and run your own generative AI model. As you develop your model you will draw on global resources. Will you work with or against other players to collect, store and manage data? Can you be the first to develop your model without running out of energy or water?
TP Traveller
Advances in quantum mechanics have led to breakthroughs allowing teleportation. As companies rapidly roll out services for individuals and businesses to use, things are moving very quickly with unintended impacts for you and the rest of society. How will you respond to the hype for this new disruptive technology?
The session will include a brief introduction to the games, a chance to experience a short playthrough/couple of rounds with each one, and the opportunity to give feedback and find out more about using the games in your teaching. Reserve a place via the event page.