Learning online
How e-learning works, the active online community and the support that will be available to you.
Learning online offers a great opportunity to continue your studies alongside life and work commitments. Our programme is designed to be flexible learning and uses a mixture of lectures, tutorials, discussion boards, case studies and online learning materials. All of our sessions are recorded and are archived online and available to view 24 hours a day. Throughout your online studies you will be supported by a team of experts, interactive learning platforms and a global community of learners.
For our live sessions we use Blackboard Collaborate. Collaborate is an online classroom where students and tutors can interact with each other through a web browser. Collaborate classrooms allow tutors and students to discuss course topics, ask and answer questions in real time just like in an on-campus classroom. You can contribute to tutorials using either a webcam, microphone or by texting chat. Watch the video below of how Collaborate online classrooms work or view our tasters from some of our sessions.
Introduction to online learning at the University of Edinburgh
The Online Library
The Online Library provides access to a very wide range of resources to support your studies and professional development. As an online student you will have access to the universities extensive online library (ebooks and ejournals) including access to our extensive online journal collection. In addition to the access to the Online Library enrolled students will have the core text books Davidson’s Principles and Practice of Medicine, the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, and Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine available online, along with a wide range of other online resources such as UpToDate and BMJ Best Practice.
Technical and Digital Skills Support
Technical and digital skills support for the university is provided by Information Services (IS). You can find the IS Helpline telephone number, email address and opening hours on their Services website. There are also guides and information specifically for distance learners about the University’s portal (MyEd), secure access login page (EASE), the Virtual Learning Environment (LEARN), digital library access and Collaborate. In addition to technical support IS also support wider digital skills by offering online tutorials and also services like LinkedIn Learning (currently available free to all University of Edinburgh students)
Academic support
Our programme team is here to support you throughout your studies and we encourage you to contact the team if you have any questions. In addition to our programme team you will have a personal tutor assigned to you for academic guidance. We also have many specialist tutors running lectures throughout the programme; you will be able to chat with your tutors, and you will also be encouraged to get in touch with individual tutors if you are having difficulties or any specific questions relating to your modules.
Listen to some examples of our e-lectures from previous sessions given by one of our specialist tutors.
This is a short extract of a lecture on Acute Medicine and Clinical Decision Making given by Dr Graham Nimmo
This is a short extract of a lecture on case studies in Haematology given by Professor Angela Thomas OBE
University Of Edinburgh - Online learning
University of Edinburgh Online Library InfoHub
University of Edinburgh IS InfoHub