University College Birmingham’s library services has won a national award for adapting to virtual learning to support Specialist Hair and Media Make-up undergraduates and teaching staff. 

The University has won the Library Teaching and Learning Award from education provider Talis, which supports around 90 per cent of UK universities with online resources and teaching and learning software in a rapidly evolving environment. 

In what would be a serendipitous move, the University had just started trialling the Talis Elevate digital tool as a new way of building engagement with its Specialist Hair and Make-up students and lecturers when the pandemic struck. 

Laura Unwin, Services Manager at Talis, said the award was for a university library that had shown dedication to supporting teaching and learning across the board and working closely with other departments to make it happen. 

“University College Birmingham recognised the need for a move to online collaboration before the pandemic struck and saw that Talis Elevate was a way to help solve this,” she said. “The Specialist Hair and Media Make-up department, in particular, used a lot of images and video to support their teaching, which posed problems when measuring student engagement.  

“By using Talis Elevate, they have seen some great success and a high level of student engagement, very much thanks to hard work and a real partnership between the library and the Specialist Hair and Media Make-up department.” 

The Talis software is accessed through the University’s online portal, Canvas.  

Find out more about the University’s learning support.