In fantastic news we are proud to see Dr Melissa Highton, Director of Learning Teaching and Web Services and Assistant Principal Online Learning, receive the 2021 OEGlobal Awards for Excellence Open Leadership Award!

The Open Leadership Award is:

presented to an individual who has demonstrated significant leadership and longstanding involvement with Open Education. A person who has made significant and clear contributions to the furtherance of the Open Education movement, whose contributions to Open Education have spanned regions and/or had a global impact. – OEAwards for Excellence

The Open Education Resource Service wouldn’t exist without her. On joining the University in 2014, she embraced the call from the Edinburgh University Student Association (EUSA) for greater institutional engagement with open education. Her priority was to create a service to support the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs), helping colleagues to develop the skills required to share and reuse openly licensed teaching materials. Which is why we are here today!

Additionally, under Melissa, the University was the first university in the UK to appoint a university-wide Wikimedian in Residence as part of its institutional strategy to develop information and digital literacy skills for staff and students, and contribute to the creation and dissemination of open knowledge. She has also pioneered the employment of student interns working in the open knowledge domain and in 2021 the University of Edinburgh was pleased to offer 5 paid internship roles to students covering open content curation and Wikimedia.