Skip to content

Author: Maxine Armstrong

Digital Learning and Teaching Consultant, Digital Learning and Teaching (DLaT), Centre for Academic Innovation and Teaching Excellence (CAITE)

Web Content Guidelines 2.2 launched yesterday

Posted in Accessibility

Yesterday the Web Content Guidelines 2.2 was launched as the official W3C recommendation web standard and therefore replaces the previous WCAG2.1. As there are some significant changes it is worth noting them. 4.1.1 Parsing is now obsolete and so has been removed from WCAG2.2. Parsing was introduced to ensure browsers and assistive technologies (AT) could accurately parse markup and content in WCAG2.0. However, HTML specifications and browsers can now handle parsing errors and ATs no longer need to as they now rely on the browser. As 4.1.1. is no longer needed for accessibility it has been removed from the guidance.…

FHEA and CMALT

Posted in CMALT portfolio

Although I was awarded Associate Fellow of AdvanceHE (AFHEA) in 2018, I felt it did not properly reflect my role. So last year I reviewed my core knowledge, my areas of activity and my professional values against the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in Higher Education (UKPSF) to see if I should apply for fellowship. Having submitted a written application, I was pleased to be awarded Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA) in August 2023. Now that I have my fellowship, I realised that I had been procrastinating too long on my CMALT portfolio, so I have…

CMALT Portfolio

Posted in CMALT portfolio

To enhance my professional recognition, I am currently applying for Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technologies (CMALT). To demonstrate my competence I will submit a portfolio that describes my practice with supporting evidence and critical reflection in four core areas. I will use this public domain site to publish my portfolio, in the meantime, these pages are still under development. Therefore they should be viewed as a work in progress.

ALT Winter Conference Programme

Posted in Uncategorised

Review of online conference, Wednesday 15-16 December 2021 The ALT Winter conference was online for the seventh year in a row and was two full days of presentations, discussions, awards and general merriment. ALT’s Chief Executive, Maren Deepwell, opened the conference and the next day it closed with the Learning Technologist of the Year awards. Many of the presentations this year focused on how institutions and individuals had coped so far with the ongoing pandemic. There was a general feeling of déjà vu and uncertainty about where we all go from here as no one expected the pandemic to last…

UK Student Wellbeing

Posted in Uncategorised

Review of online panel discussion, Thursday 19 August 2021 Prof Judyth Sachs chaired this panel discussion on student wellbeing in the UK. Four senior leaders from the HE sector completed the panel; Jon Baldwin from Jisc, Prof Christina Hughes who founded Women-Space, Alison Golden from the University of Bristol and Kerry Kellaway, head of the library at Plymouth Marjon University. During the pandemic many students described their wellbeing as poor/very poor. The panel discussed how students and staff could first be supported and then encouraged to thrive over the upcoming academic year. Most of the panel had first-hand experience of…