Last month we hosted Times Higher Education’s Digital Universities UK event (DUUK) on our Streatham campus. The three day event was a huge success, receiving lots of positive feedback following and during the “excellent”, “inspiring” and “very well organised” event. The DUUK agenda was packed with content delivered from colleagues across the University, as well as a showcasing of digital innovation across UoE and sharing of the University’s 2030 Digital Strategy. Learn more about the event in this blog post!
A packed agenda
The University was very well represented, with the main agenda filled with 32 colleagues and some students from UoE. For example, Lisa Harris, Director of Digital Learning, sat on a panel of edtech investors, accelerators, and UK HE leaders to judge the DUUK start-up competition, as well as speaking in multiple other sessions across the three days. We also hosted a session with six colleagues from UoE, speaking about how we are creating a fairer, greener, healthier future through education innovation. The full agenda is still available to view on the DUUK24 website to see all of the amazing content that UoE were involved with delivering.
Digital Strategy Festival
We saw approximately 250 delegates attend our Digital Strategy Festival. This was hosted on the evening of day two, inviting delegates to gather in the Forum Street to view main stage acts speaking about key, unique elements of delivering the University’s 2030 Digital Strategy, while exploring stands throughout Forum Street which represented key products, services, and ways of working relating to our digital strategy.
The event aimed to immerse delegates in the University’s digital strategy, exciting and inspiring them to continue with their own digital transformation journeys. We had four main stage speakers:
Our ‘supporting acts’ were stands spread throughout Forum Street, each representing different products/services/teams/ways of working in Digital, including:
- Digital Hub
- Strategy and engagement
- User Experience Research
- MyExeter app & Check-In
- Data-led
- Digital upskilling
- Digital services platform
- Digital Advisory Network
- Agile ways of working
Feedback from the event was incredibly positive from both delegates and members of the Digital team, with comments of it being “valuable, inspirational and extremely motivational”. We all engaged in valuable discussions with delegates throughout the evening, sharing what we do and how we do it, learning from others and creating lots of opportunities for future collaboration with others! We’ll be sure to share more information on these amazing opportunities as they happen.
Showcases
When hosting DUUK, we wanted to make sure that the amazing work of the wider University was celebrated and showcased to the delegates, giving them the chance to learn about the great work that the University are doing in the space of digital innovation.
We organised a showcase event throughout all three days of DUUK where we celebrated and shared achievements of digital related projects ran by various University of Exeter departments and students. Throughout the three day event we had a mixture of showcases on display, allowing delegates to explore the showcases and speak to colleagues and students about what they do.
24 teams from across UoE showcased their work, research, products, and services across the three days, through a mixture of demonstrations and information sharing – including virtual reality! The Showcases included the following, and many more:
- Digital Humanities at the University of Exeter
- Immersive educational design with the video game Fortnite
- The use of VR in educating nursing and radiography students
- Responsible Futures- empowering students and staff to transform
- VR in healthcare and training
- Animal behaviour observation in the Psychology Department
- Immersive sound stories: when creative storytelling meets science and organisational strategy
- Using virtual reality in mental health and wellbeing research
- The Metaverse; are we, or is it ready?
- Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Research Software Engineering at Exeter
- ThinkLabsAI – Navigating Careers with GenAI
The Showcases also attracted some staff and student visitors, and resulted in some collaboration opportunities which we will share more on as they happen.
We are planning to host this Showcasing event again in the Summer, combining it with our Digital Strategy Festival to showcase digital innovation from all across the University specifically for our University colleagues! We’ll share more about this event soon.
As always, get in touch with the team if you have any questions.
– Written by Scarlett Yeo, Communications Advisor for Digital