The University has procured a Short Courses Platform (SCP), the learning platform component went live in April 2024. This platform offers education for learners on not-for-credit short courses, including online, blended, and face-to-face delivery to promote lifelong learning. The target group is learners who are not current University of Edinburgh (UoE) students or staff. 

This brief covers a subsection of the original ‘SCP: Early Adopter Project’, as the project has now been split into several smaller projects, which will fall consecutively, each with their own group of early adopters, as opposed to multiple phases of early adopters in the same project. As a result, this brief is based on the original and has been created as Early Adopters Phase 2 draws to a close. Some of the original objectives having been completed, and some are ongoing and have been carried across, which are detailed below [link to EA Phase 2 closure report] 

This brief will cover the third group of early adopters being onboarded onto the platform across academic Term 2 (24/25). The third group of early adopters will consist of both Centre for Open Learning (COL) courses and a small group of non-COL courses from across the rest of the university which urgently need transferred from Learn onto the SCP. This project will cover courses being delivered in term 2, and a Group 4 cohort and project will be run in a similar way for courses in term 3 (May-Aug ‘25). 

The aim of Early Adopters – Group 3 (EA3) project is to provide early access to transition Centre for Open Learning Term 2 courses onto the platform and other courses which have a critical need to use the learning platform. The project team will work with early adopter staff in the roles of teachers and course administrators to the Short Courses Platform to gain key insight into the design and creation of courses, modes of delivery, and guidance and training required for colleagues to provide the best possible learner experience. This knowledge will be used to produce one or more course templates, guidance resources and training materials for the wider institutional roll-out of the platform.