About Us

What is the BLE?

The Bloomsbury Learning Exchange (BLE) is a digital education service, which exists to share effective practice between its partners and enable collaboration on technology enhanced learning projects. We are an unincorporated association working as a partnership of six co-located HE institutions in Bloomsbury, central London: Birkbeck, LSHTM, RVC, SOAS, UCL and the University of London. 
The BLE:
  • designs and creates courses, resources and materials to develop the use of technology for learning and teaching
  • offers staff development through training and awareness raising events
  • provides special interest groups for its partners to foster supportive networks
  • engages in research into best practices and openly publishes the findings
  • negotiates shared software licences, which support learning, teaching and research across the consortium
  • secures external funding from organisations such as Jisc and UCISA​
The BLE’s work is conducted through a fixed term, project-based approach, steered by an Advisory Board and defined by an enhancement theme. Recent themes include Enhancing Assessment and Feedback and Digital Capabilities.

Working together as a consortium enables the BLE partner institutions to share expertise and support that they might be unable to offer individually and allows them to benefit from cost efficiencies.

The BLE was established in 2004 and has grown steadily. As learning technology has changed, the BLE has adapted and changed with it. (More about the BLE's history.)
​Mission Statement​

The Bloomsbury Learning Exchange
  • is committed to supporting innovation through sharing good practice in Technology Enhanced Learning.
  • works collaboratively, developing new and exciting ways of improving learning and teaching that would be difficult for the partners to achieve alone.
  • supports its partners with cost efficiencies from software negotiations and economies of scale.
  • is an inclusive centre, committed to equality and diversity.
BLE Manifesto 2021
BLE Manifesto 2021
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We have found the BLE invaluable to maintain positive supplier relations; keep in touch with sector best practice; and to combine efforts with other institutions for platform enhancements. The BLE allows its constituent partners to deliver an excellent service, well above what could be achieved working in isolation.
Dave Cobb, Director of Enterprise Applications, SOAS

​Awards
​
The BLE and its Service Manager have been recipients of a number of exciting and prestigious awards:
  • The BLE Service Manager was re awarded the Blackboard Catalyst Award for Community Engagement in 2019, ten years after she first received it in 2009
  • The BLE’s ‘Get in MOOC’ team were joint winners of the 2018 Roger Mills Award for Innovation in Learning and Teaching
  • The same team had been shortlisted for the 2017 ALT Learning Technology Team of the Year
  • The BLE TEL Support Team were highly recommended by ALT in 2010
BLE is such a vital and impressive initiative that I can’t imagine having worked at the University of London for so long without its support. The opportunity to meet, engage with, and share experiences with other learning technologists and staff across Bloomsbury is so essential. The events that BLE has put on to showcase new tools, methodologies, and issues have been fantastic! The coaching has been superb and eye-opening. It would be much harder and much less rewarding to have done my job without that greater network of colleagues. The silo of the institution would have ruled, and the results would have been poorer for it. 
Matt Phillpott, School of Advanced Studies