Today marked the third annual Learning Technology Symposium—a chance for our team to come together and explore emerging technologies in the age of AI. This year we took a slightly different approach, with three teams of three people working collaboratively to build a content, utilizing NILE’s built-in AI design assistant (AIDA) and Copilot.
Course Building
As most of the team were involved in the university-wide Copilot pilot programme, we have access to Copilot embedded throughout the Microsoft Office suite of tools, and at time of writing, the AIDA tools are as follows:
- Course structure suggestions
- Discussion generation
- Journal generation
- Rubric generation
- Assignment prompt generation
- Test question generation
- Question Bank generation
- Insert or generate images
- AI Conversations
- Generate Document layouts
At UON, all instructors can access these and benefit from the time saved as they build their NILE courses.
Attendees of the symposium worked on building a fictitious training package, which can later be populated and potentially used as a self-serve training in line with the University’s 5-year strategy.
Gamification
As well as the role of the trainer designing a course, we had the opportunity to experience the role of the trainee by engaging in a fully gamified session.
In three groups of three people, the element of competition was introduced. One of the learning packages will be chosen as the winner, and teams reviewed and voted on each other’s. This helps encourage certain personality types to strive for excellence and stay engaged.
Game Mechanics & Progression were implemented via a game board and activity cards. Each team had one dice, one counter and two sets of cards with activities on. Participants used the dice and counter to advance along the path on the board, if they landed on a blue square they drew a blue card, a pink square a pink card, and purple square was a wildcard. This provides a structured and visual way to track progress. Creates randomisation and chance, and —if cards were face-down— the element of surprise. It also meant that people had some freedom to decide how long to spend on activities. And although cards were identical, different teams were likely to be working on different things at any given time.
For autonomy & personalization the wildcard element empowers participants by giving them freedom in choosing their own task. The wildcard tasks carried their own competitivity, with the chance to win, by showing creativity and skill with AI tools. The idea was for teams to choose a task using an AI with one person in the team of three showing the others something new. A winning entry would have viewers questioning, “How did you make that?”
Individuals also had the chance to play a Hidden Objects game, looking for certain items in an image. These were placed into Microsoft Whiteboard and we all had fun pointing out the hidden items with the laser pointer. The images had been created with AI and could be used as an icebreaker at the start of a session. For instant feedback (another important key in gamification) H5P’s multiple hotspot feature can make the image interactive.
Variety of Technology
The event was also a great opportunity to use and experience a selection of the different technologies we have available to us at the University of Northampton. In the running of the session, we used MS Loop; for instructions and help guides, MS Whiteboard for collaborative activities, anonymous voting and affinity diagram. PowerPoint for the running order, and MS Forms for the feedback survey.
For the activities we used NILE tools including Padlet, Copilot, and a couple of other AI tools, which people had log-ins for or didn’t require a log in.
Data and Digital
Time was also spent as a team reviewing the University of Northampton’s Digital and Data Strategy 2025–2029, which outlines a vision for transforming how we work, teach, and support students. It was a chance to reflect on the important and strategic role the Learning Technology team plays in helping achieve these goals by 2030. From embedding digital literacy and promoting continuous learning, to supporting automation, data governance, and personalised learning experiences, our work is directly aligned with the strategy’s focus areas. It was encouraging to see how the tools and approaches we explored during the symposium neatly contribute to building a digitally empowered, inclusive, and forward thinking university that we can be proud to work for.
Conclusion
The AI Symposium 2025 was a brilliant mix of creativity, collaboration, and curiosity. It gave us the chance to explore new tools, test out ideas, and experience learning from both the trainer and trainee perspective. Whether it was building courses with AIDA, experimenting with Copilot, rolling dice on a game board, or enjoying Kelly’s delicious home-baked brownies, the day was full of energy and innovation.
If any of this has sparked your interest please do reach out to your Learning Technologist. We’re always happy to chat, share resources, or help you get started.

This January, UON hosted the Winter Game Jam, a four-day games development event where students battled it out with a brand new challenge: the Rexy Wheel, a digital controller designed for training video camera professionals.
In this short film, Games lecturer Vikaas Mistry discusses how Game Jam is about giving UON students experiences that will prepare them for new developments in the game industry, and to think outside of the box.
Rob Portus, the Rexy Wheel’s inventor, shares how it was really exciting to see what they’ve done ‘in just four days, they all created games that with a few tweaks have the potential to be marketed commercially.’
Using gamification technology to enhance interprofessional collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution and leadership.
Alison Power (Registered Midwife) SFHEA, MProfPrac, MSc, PGCTHE, PGCPE, Associate Professor (Learning and Teaching), Faculty Lead for Interprofessional Education, Academic Integrity Officer was successful in a bid for the University of Northampton ‘Learning Enhancement and Innovation fund 2021-2022’.

Alison Power was supported by Anne Misselbrook E-Learning/Multimedia Resources Developer to develop the Xerte resource.
Development timeframe was June to September 2021. The learning and teaching resource for up to 300 final year students to engage with in interprofessional groups, was required for a synchronous online session on 6 October 2021.
Anne identified needs, completed a Checklist and provided Alison with examples of Xerte learning resources. Alison was introduced to the Xerte interactive page types and learnt in the 1-2-1 training provided by Anne, that the ability for learners to collaborate with OneDrive documents in Xerte, use a drag and drop activity, link to resources and watch videos were possible.
The Xerte function called ‘Shared Settings’ enabled Alison and Anne to co-edit the Xerte in the Editor.
Alison invited colleagues Robin Sturman-Coombs and Devon Rossetti to contribute and join virtual meetings.
In August 2021 Anne and her colleague Richard Byles, a Learning Technologist, provided Alison and her colleagues with training in basic video production. They attended the ‘Record and edit video using tools available’ virtual workshop session on 25 August 2021. Alison could then understand the fundamentals of filmmaking and the importance of having scripts for the actors and get signed Performance Release forms by all those featuring in the film.
On 30 September the Xerte was uploaded to NILE ready for the live synchronous session with students on 6 October 2021.

Students feedback on the technology:
“Each page explained each task clearly”.
“The Xerte was very well laid out and simple to navigate”.
“Everything followed nicely and logically from one another”.
“I really enjoyed the videos, so to see the characters acting as opposed to just reading about the different types of characters made it much more relatable and understandable to me”.
Conferences in 2022

Look out for Alison who will present at Conferences later in the year. Confirmed dates so far are:
Using a games based approach to motivate students to engage with synchronous online interprofessional education (IPE): A case study.
TUFH Conference (Vancouver)
17/18 or 19 August 2022
Analysing perceptions of online games based learning: Case study of the University of Northampton.
International research conference, ICQHE London
e-Conference
28/29 July 2022
Further information:
Link to Alison’s blog https://mypad.northampton.ac.uk/gaming/2021/10/21/intro-to-gaming/
Read the full blog text provided below.
Presentation at: Teaching and supporting a digital future: UoN Showcase 4th February 2022
Simon Wragg Senior Lecturer in Marketing, FBL. – “It’s just a bit of fun! Really…?” Observations on online games in supporting student learning and student experience: Insights from module evaluations.
The recording of the event is available to view
Rob Lambert, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for BA Games Design, FAST.
Presentation at: Teaching and supporting a digital future: UoN Showcase 4th February 2022
A dive into the experience of producing a commercial learning product:
3D Gamified training simulation tool for the National Fire Chiefs Council which will educate UK business owners around the laws, protocols and proper conduct relating to fire safety within their premises.
⦁ Getting the project going.
⦁ How we hope to measure the impact of the learning tool.
⦁ How we first intended to gamify learning, how we now intend to gamify learning.
⦁ Production management: Challenges, Milestones and progress, Working with a team of Graduates (925 Studios).
⦁ What may be next?
The recording of the event is available to view
“It is a cold Autumn day at Waterside and you are sitting in a room within the Learning Hub. You recognise other people in the room and there is a facilitator at the front. Do you:
a) Talk to other people on your desk?
b) Talk to the facilitator and engage in the workshop?
c) Log onto your laptop and check emails?
d) Exit the room and go elsewhere?”
Fortunately, all participants on the first meeting to explore the nature of gamification and the value for the University decided to remain in the room and fully engage with Tim Hinchliffe, Senior Adviser from Advance HE.
‘Games can be used as a general tool to look at our teaching processes more generally. The lessons are broadly applicable to whatever we do. You can take any subject and any content and use gamified mechanisms and dynamics to achieve what you’re looking for.’
Tim Hinchliffe, Senior Adviser from Advance HE.
Over the day we were treated to an exploration of the differences between defining gamification in education, serious games and game based learning. We then went on to discuss the Octalysis Framework and apply this to a range of both physical and virtual games.
Tim used a slide deck to keep us all on track but the flexible nature of the workshop gave us plenty of time to explore how the concepts could apply to our own areas.
Tim Hinchliffe , Kate Coulson, Jim Harris and Simon Chapman provided some insightful reflections into the day.
‘The approach of gamification would be really useful because it’s helping students to develop a lot of transferable skills: critical thinking, teamwork, collaboration, problem solving.’
Simon Chapman, Senior Lecturer in Education.
Discussions are now ongoing on the possibility of launching a inter disciplinary group to further explore gamification.
If you are interested in further conversations around gamification then please email Rob.Howe@northampton.ac.uk
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