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Month: July 2021

LMS / VLE Market Share in 2021

Published 16th July 2021

VLE Market Share - US HE 2021
Canvas: Total Domination

It’s been a long time since I published something about VLE market share, I guess because we’re all happy with Canvas at Sunderland and aren’t looking for a replacement. Nevertheless, it came up in conversation a few days ago and I had a quick DuckDuckGo out of curiosity. Looks like lots of people are pretty happy with Canvas looking at that growth curve! Alas, poor Blackboard, we knew ye well.

The data in EduTechnica’s report pertains to US HE, but from my knowledge of the UK HE community, I wouldn’t expect a UK graph to look much different.

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Cyber Resilience Training for Small Charities

Published 15th July 2021

A Nefarious Looking Gentleman
This chap is definitely up to no good. Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash

Largely with my charity hat on, I went along to this online event about cyber security for small charities run by the NCC Group.

Very worthwhile session, covering everything from password recommendations to phishing attack methodology to the importance of backup processes. There was nothing particularly revelatory, but it was all packaged up very nicely, and has given me the basis for a structure that I’ll be able to apply to a session I’ll run for our volunteers.

All of the information and recommendations were derived from the National Cyber Security Centre which offers a wealth of resources.

This post is also giving me the opportunity to plug have i been pwned? again, a link I share as widely and often as possible because it is excellent. Pop your email address in here and the site will tell you if it has shown up in any known hacks or data breaches. And if it has, change your damn password for that service, and use a different password for everything! The golden rule.

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Student Sex Work Awareness

Published 2nd July 2021

Sex Work Support Resources for Students
Screenshot of some support resources from the presentation (in text below)

Attended this awareness-raising session from the University’s EDI network on student sex work. The session covered the four main legal models of sex work, and I was surprised to learn that the UK employs the ‘best’ model, full decriminalisation. Alas, we criminalise literally everything around sex work making it all but impossible, and dangerous. Why students engage in sex work, and this one only depressed rather than surprised me, with half the responses being on the theme of avoiding debt, paying student fees, etc. Neoliberalism strikes again! And finally, most usefully, what universities can do to help students involved in sex work, and signposts to further sources of support. I took a screenshot of those, but to make it easier (and accessible), here they are:

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