Research undertaken in 2022 on the impact of the global pandemic on approaches to curriculum design across the UK higher education (HE) sector (Beetham & MacNeill, 2022) identified a range of factors requiring greater attention in curriculum and learning design practice. These reflected changing student needs and expectations, alongside an increasingly complex and evolving HE landscape across the UK and internationally.

The research highlighted the need to consolidate both perceptions of, and practical understanding around, the benefits and challenges of online learning, alongside the continuing value of place‑based learning, where learners and educators are physically present in the same space. It also emphasised the importance of aligning these perspectives with established research and practice on the effective integration of digital technologies into curriculum design, content creation, and teaching methodologies.

Building on this work, a period of stakeholder and community engagement was undertaken to develop a set of resources that responded to these shifts. This resulted in the creation of an online curriculum and learning design toolkit. Centred on the six pillars ‘beyond blended learning’ model (place, pace, platform, support, flex, and blend), the toolkit comprises a range of open‑licensed resources designed to support both strategic and practice‑based curriculum development.

From October 2024 to July 2026, Jisc is working with 17 higher education providers (17 in phase 1 and 15 in phase 2, from the UK,Ireland, and Australia) in a research pilot programme exploring how these resources can support curriculum and learning design. Pilot teams have been encouraged to use the materials as a starting point for dialogue, enabling shared understanding and clarity around terminology aligned to local contexts. Some institutions have adopted the resources directly, while others have adapted them to develop locally relevant approaches, particularly in relation to curriculum frameworks and wider strategic conversations involving diverse stakeholders.

This presentation provides an overview of the initial research, introduces the toolkit, and shares emerging findings from the pilot projects, (MGill et al, 2025) highlighting implications for future curriculum and learning design in higher education.

References

Beetham, H; MacNeill,S; (2022) Approaches to curriculum and learning design across UK higher education. Jisc

Beetham, H; MacNeill,S, (2023) Beyond Blended. Jisc

McGill, L; MacNeill, S; Beetham, H; Knigh, S; Newall, E, Birkett, S; (2025 )Beyond Blended in Action transforming curriculum and learning design in changing landscape. Jisc.

Behind every successful digital learning resource is a process that brings together pedagogy, design, and technology to support students in reaching their learning objectives.

This presentation showcases a range of digital learning resources developed by the Digital Learning Development team for blended courses at Trinity College Dublin, and offers insight into the collaborative processes behind their design and production.

The team develop fully online courses, MOOCs, CPDs, staff training, and blended resources for the university. This presentation focusses specifically on blended resources created for undergraduate, postgraduate and micro-credential courses, with the aim of sparking discussion about designing innovative digital learning experiences using industry-standard tools. This presentation is structured around people, processes and products, highlighting the roles, workflows and outputs involved in developing blended learning solutions.

People

Central to the development work are Instructional Designers, Multimedia Designers, Learning Technologists and a Video/audio Specialist. While they specialise in specific skills and bring particular strengths as part of their role, many of their skills overlap, resulting in enhanced teamwork and knowledge sharing. The team partner with academic staff to lead the development of multimedia resources and VLE tasks to provide enhanced teaching and learning opportunities. This collaborative model combines pedagogical expertise with high-level technical and creative production skills.

Processes

When developing resources for blended courses, we collaborate with academic staff to discuss delivery modes, structure, and course content to identify opportunities for digital teaching and learning enhancements. Through this collaborative process we design purposeful blended learning activities, to increase variety of learning types, for example, acquisition, investigation or practice, while addressing specific teaching and learning challenges. Defined roles, iterative development phases, structured workflows, reusable templates, embedded accessibility and QA processes streamline development. Keeping the student experience at the centre of the design is core to decision-making, which is underpinned by constructive alignment, cognitive multimedia learning theory, user experience best practice, and accessibility.

Products

Projects span multiple disciplines across the university including Business, Nursing and Midwifery, Engineering, Classics and the Careers Office. Examples of blended elements developed for modules include the following.

- Flipped learning:

• Multimedia presentations
• Instructional videos

- Experiential learning:

• Interactive Interview preparation scenarios
• Interactive Perinatal training scenarios
• Software training simulations

- Reflective learning:

• Interactive skills audit tool

- Gamified learning:

• Climate leadership game

- Knowledge Consolidation:

• Summary infographics
• Interactive quizzes

- Bespoke solutions:

• Ancient-Greek alphabet tool

Insights include that the blended learning resources are effective for learners engaging with UDL principles. Student engagement and feedback from academics are positive. Blended learning provides a valuable opportunity to create bespoke and innovative learning resources and interventions that respond to specific teaching challenges and learner needs.

The development of digital learning experiences within higher education increasingly requires learning technologists to operate across multiple domains, including instructional design, media production, user experience design, and digital learning infrastructure. This paper examines these practices through a case study on the development of a course on dignity and respect in the workplace, focusing on the workflows, tools, and constraints involved in moving from concept to delivery.

The project required translating policy-oriented content into an engaging digital learning experience for staff. Early stages involved requirements gathering and consultation with stakeholders to clarify scope, learning outcomes, and delivery requirements. Learning technologists needed to develop a strong understanding of the nuances of the topic while considering narrative flow, learner prompts, and the sequencing of interactions across the course. The design team used storyboarding techniques to prototype course structure, interactions, and narrative elements before technical implementation began. This approach enabled rapid iteration on learning flows and interaction design prior to development.

The course was authored using Articulate Rise and delivered through the Canvas learning management system. Supporting assets, including voice recordings, visual character imagery, and short video segments, were produced using a range of digital media production tools. This combination of platforms allowed multimedia elements to be integrated while maintaining a structured learning pathway for participants. Generative AI tools were also incorporated during the design and development process. These tools were used during early design stages to support rapid ideation, drafting of dialogue and learner prompts, and experimentation with interaction structures. AI tools were also used to assist with coding native pages within the LMS, but required careful oversight to ensure generated code aligned with accessibility requirements, tone, and institutional context.

The project also highlighted practical constraints associated with contemporary digital learning platforms. While authoring tools such as Articulate Rise enable rapid course development, they can limit interaction design and customisation. Integrating content within an LMS also raises broader considerations around interoperability, accurate reporting and e-learning standards.

By examining the full lifecycle of the project, from requirements gathering and storyboarding through to authoring, asset creation, accessibility considerations, and delivery, the paper highlights the often invisible work involved in designing digital learning experiences. It argues that effective course development increasingly depends on learning technologists navigating a complex ecosystem of platforms, creative production tools, and emerging AI technologies while balancing pedagogical, technical, and accessibility considerations.

In the landscape of Irish higher education, the “how” of technology-enhanced learning, including tools, platforms, dashboards, and analytics, is often foregrounded, while the “who”, namely the programme teams tasked with interpreting and acting on these systems, remains in the periphery. This abstract responds to the EdTech 2026 theme by asking who gets to define educational quality in an era of data-informed decision-making, and how TEL decision-support tools can be designed to sustain, rather than displace, professional judgement (Fawns, 2022).

The support for the collective sense-making required at programme level frequently concedes to current institutional systems that privilege compliance, optimisation, and individual-level analysis. As a result, complex decisions about delivery modality, assessment balance, learner pathways, and alignment with institutional intent are often made implicitly, or retrospectively justified through documentation rather than supported through design-time dialogue. We argue that an overemphasis on the mechanics of “how” educational initiatives are implemented risks narrowing educational judgement and obscuring the relational and contextual nature of programme-level decision-making.

In response, this paper presents a design-based account of an evidence-informed, interoperable ecosystem of programme-level TEL decision-support tools developed within an Irish higher education institute. The ecosystem includes tools for modality selection, assessment mapping, learner pathways mapping, and institutional alignment, all grounded in a shared design philosophy and data structure. The tools were built iteratively, evolving from early Power BI dashboard prototypes into lightweight web-based tools that ingest routinely available programme artefacts (for example, module catalogue exports, assessment plans, and programme structure spreadsheets) via a common schema, producing programme-level visualisations alongside short narrative prompts to support interpretation. Rather than prescribing solutions, the tools use transparent heuristics and visual representations to surface patterns, trade-offs, and tensions, supporting reflective dialogue among programme teams during programme design, review, and enhancement activities. The presentation will draw selectively on illustrative features from across the tool ecosystem to show how specific design choices, particularly in relation to modality selection and programme-level assessment mapping, make educational reasoning visible without automating decision-making (Boelens, De Wever, & Voet, 2017).

Institutional educational frameworks are positioned not as fixed research outcomes, but as design briefs that require interpretation by local academic experts, employing a variety of tools. This paper reflects on how programme teams engage with these tools in practice, the kinds of conversations they enable, and the design decisions taken to avoid compliance-driven or technocratic use. The contribution lies in offering a practice-oriented perspective on how TEL decision-support tools can be designed to centre programme-level judgement, coherence, and educational responsibility.

References
Boelens, R., De Wever, B., & Voet, M. (2017). Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review, 22, 1–18.
Fawns, T. (2022). An entangled pedagogy: Looking beyond the pedagogy–technology dichotomy. Postdigital Science and Education.