Online teaching and learning with digitised collections in Higher Education contexts

This project, submitted to the urgency call for the AHRC Towards a National Collection (TANC) programme, will track and evaluate digital teaching with university museum and cultural heritage collections in the 2020-21 academic year. It will synthesise existing good practice and develop new case studies, investigate the pivot to online delivery of collections-based teaching and learning in universities, and identify gaps in skills, tools and infrastructure, as well as in the availability and interoperability of digital and digitised collections and of collections systems. The project will support university museums and other related collections custodians at a crucial turning point in their rapidly-developing collections work and teaching practice, and create guidance and case studies that will be of wider applicability in the sector. Through the close partnership with a strong and collaborative existing regional network, the University Museums in Scotland (UMIS) group, the project can also take advantage of methodologies and case studies across museums of different sizes, scales, and in the context of universities which employ different teaching modes, cover different topics, and have different strategic priorities. It supports TANC by gathering time-sensitive data on how digitised collections are and could be used for university teaching and learning online, and by assessing areas for potential future investment or collaborations.