Jilly MacKay

International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law | The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies | The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies A fully flexible postgraduate programme designed to address the demand for online animal welfare education suitable for working professionals and others with an interest in studying a range of animal ...

Hello Bluesky! We're the official Bsky account for the online part-time MSc International Animal Welfare Ethics and Law at the University of Edinburgh. We're just getting our account up and running, but you can find out more about us here: vet.ed.ac.uk/education/po...

While I DO think dplyr 'across' makes a lot more sense, I am FOREVER having to look up how to mutate a bunch of data into factors and I don't know why I can't get this in my thick skull #tidyverse #rstats

Choose educational images that are more representative of the actual humans around you.

When I first tried to generate images of health professionals they all came out male, white, in lab coats with stethoscopes around their necks. 😬 || theeddesigner.com/2024/12/19/t...

Did I miss the design memo that said all websites need to happen within frames now? Why can't I right click to open a link? Learn, and now OSF, two sites I use daily, who have now both decided I'll never need to open a new tab. Genuinely who is benefiting from this?

My laptop took pity on me and started an unskippable hour long update.

Back at work! Frantically googling things like "git commands?", "email signature?" and "what is a job?"

library(dplyr) library(gm) golden <- tribble( ~pitches, ~duration, ~lyric, "E4", "q", "I’m", "G4", "q", "done", "C5", "q", "hid-", "B4", "q", "-ing", "D4", "q", "now", "G4", "q", "I’m", "E5", "q", "shin-", "D5", "q", "-ing", "G4", "q", "like", "B4", "q", "I’m", "A5", "q", "born", "F#5", "q/3*(q/8)", "to", "G5", "q/3", "be._", "G5", "h", "" ) music <- Music() + Key(1) + Tempo(125) + Meter(2, 4) + Line(pitches = golden$pitches, durations = golden$duration) + Tie(13) + Lyric(golden$lyric[1], 1) + Lyric(golden$lyric[2], 2) + Lyric(golden$lyric[3], 3) + Lyric(golden$lyric[4], 4) + Lyric(golden$lyric[5], 5) + Lyric(golden$lyric[6], 6) + Lyric(golden$lyric[7], 7) + Lyric(golden$lyric[8], 8) + Lyric(golden$lyric[9], 9) + Lyric(golden$lyric[10], 10) + Lyric(golden$lyric[11], 11) + Lyric(golden$lyric[12], 12) + Lyric(golden$lyric[13], 13) show(music)

The first part of the bridge from "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters

Just discovered the {gm} package, which lets you programmatically create sheet music (and audio!) with #rstats (with MuseScore as the backend) flujoo.github.io/gm/index.html

Counter-opinion: it’s a f***ing tragedy that corporate greed has broken the medium which facilitated Tahrir Square etc and is now doing its best to break the rest of the Internet.

Expect your mobile to go off 3pm Sunday! Be prepared for a test of the Govt's emergency alert system. Full info... www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/09...

LIVING WITH DOMESTIC ABUSE? If you've a hidden mobile, you the link above has details of how to opt out of the alert.

Pls share

To be clear: this is yet another reason why many of these laws are so problematic. If people want to run fediverse instances of any size, the fact that costly age verification requirements could put them in legal jeopardy, is very bad.

Regulators make laws as if every website is Facebook.

So my academic friends who run quant surveys… did we know that qualtrics included a section about using data to train genAI in their privacy statement? Are u including this in ur IRB? Cuz ppl I’m asking say they didn’t know and this is not my neck of the woods (I am a qual researcher lol)

How do higher education staff understand the terms hybrid, hyflex and blended learning? Choice, modality and uncertainty Emily Nordmanna*, Barbora Hronskaa and Jill R.D. MacKayb aSchool of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland; bRoyal (Dick) Veterinary School, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland Received: 19 September 2024; Revised: 13 February 2025; Accepted: 31 March 2025; Published: 15 May 2025 Many universities implemented blended and hybrid delivery for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as such, the use of terms that relate to various manifestations and implementations of blended learning has increased significantly by all higher education stakeholders. However, the meaning ascribed to these terms is often inconsistent and can lead to confusion, making it difficult to set expectations clearly for both staff and students. This study aimed to investigate how higher education staff understand and use these terms and to identify sources of confusion and barriers to adopting standardised definitions. We surveyed 152 higher education staff and asked them to provide definitions of each term as well as completing a categorisation task. An applied thematic analysis identified two factors that were present across definitions: choice (no choice, student choice and choice not specified) and modality (mixed but separate, dual delivery and mixed not otherwise specified). Our findings reveal significant discrepancies in understanding, particularly regarding hybrid learning, which was often conflated with other modalities and involved definitions where neither choice nor modality was clearly specified. Blended learning was most consistently defined and identified as involving separate online and in-person components with no student choice as to the modality in which they could engage with each component. Hyflex learning, despite being less familiar to many participants, was accurately associated with dual delivery and …

Bar chart showing that you might as well be guessing when it comes to what people will say is hybrid

Very pleased to have this out in the wild now, @jillymackay.bsky.social, Hronska and I looked at how HE staff understand the terms blended, hybrid, and hyflex learning and whilst there is relative consensus regarding blended and hyflex (when known), the use of hybrid is a bit of a mess #AcademicSky

What the absolute fuck

A related issue:

Make your higher ed system reliant on international students and the extortionate fees you charge them (how very colonial, Ireland)

Now your entire strategy, despite any window dressing, must be to maximize your university "ranking" to supposedly attract said students...

Not In Our Name: Feminist Academics and Educators Speak Out Against Transphobia We call on all trans-inclusive feminist academics and educators to sign this statement: ‘Not In Our Name’ We are non-trans feminist academics and educators. We write in support of trans rights, tran...

If you are a feminist academic, you should sign this letter. forms.gle/oDYgnobrMiSc...

New Note Making System Part 01: Keep track of reading

A journaling system for managing significant amounts of reading.

The front of the Modern 1 Gallery in Edinburgh, a large sandstone building with columns and the words,"everything will be alright" in blue neon above. The grass outside is green in the sun

Overheard at the Mod:
"Don't touch that! It's art, it's thousands of pounds that mummy and daddy can't pay"
"How is it art? It's just a lump of metal!"

Young people SHOULD “have it easier” than you did. I’m sorry you got the strap up hill both ways and paid your debts with pounds of flesh, but the reason we work for progress is to make growing up and growing old gentler, easier, kinder, freer. Struggle isn’t necessary in a healthy society.

Two NYT headlines stating the WH wants to promote more childbearing and the EPA is ending testing for chemicals that hurt children.

Two headlines in the New York Times today.

Legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, UK supreme court rules Judges say Equality Act definition excludes transgender women, after gender-critical campaigners’ challenge

Gotta be honest, I feel much less safe now. A very poor show www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Autism phenotype versus registered diagnosis in Swedish children: prevalence trends over 10 years in general population samples Objective To compare the annual prevalence of the autism symptom phenotype and of registered diagnoses for autism spectrum disorder during a 10 year period in children. Design Population based study....

A large study in Sweden found levels of autism *symptoms* were constant over time, even as autism *diagnoses* increased (implying broadening diagnostic criteria rather than real underlying increase) www.bmj.com/content/350/...

Old mobile phones and keyboards. Overlaid text reads: FT Exclusive: EU issues US-bound staff with burner phones to avoid espionage

Breaking news: The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage — a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China www.ft.com/content/20d0...

It has been long argued that academic programmes represent a distorted, Euro-American-centric view of the world, commonly presented as objective. Leading academic institutions have started attempts to redress this. Decolonising education in practice; however, has been difficult to do; educators are unsure about how to actively facilitate this or are concerned about making mistakes. The present study uses the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at University of Glasgow as a case study. The School has been actively engaging with the decolonising curriculum process, using a variety of methods since 2021. However, the impact these efforts have had are unknown. The present qualitative study asked students from the global majority their views on their teaching content. Nine students were recruited in two focus groups to uncover how the psychology curriculum at UofG is experienced. Reflexive Thematic Analysis resulted in two core themes: students’ awareness of systemic issues that have historically prevented change and lowered expectations for meaningful change, and second, students’ acknowledgement of staff efforts (positive or otherwise) to decolonise. We discuss the results in the context of teaching and learning strategies in relation to psychology and wider teaching practice, with guidance for next steps.

New paper from Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed on student experiences of decolonised psychology curricula. They present data on how students view decolonisation efforts & present three key changes you can make to your teaching.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

#AcademicSky

Royal Society decides not to take disciplinary action against Elon Musk Exclusive: Fellows argue Musk has violated code of conduct but council believes investigation ‘could do more harm than good’

Elon Musk remains a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Not taking action is in itself a political act. And a bad one.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Its Monday, Again. 🥱

Do you teach in HE? Whether you use lots of humour or none at all, I want to hear from you in my final PhD study!! #EducationalResearch #HigherEd #Research #HigherEducation #AcademicSky #PhDSky #devpsy #devpsyc #socialpsyc @bpsdevsection.bsky.social
Link staffordshire.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.

Meta likely used my book and many of my papers to train its AI. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Why the push for GenAI might well lead to teachers doing *more* work (rather than less work) ... we need to remain mindful of Ruth Schwartz Cohen's work on household technologies and women's domestic labour. I think there might be parallels?! criticaledtech.com/2025/03/20/m...

AI tools are spotting errors in research papers: inside a growing movement Study that hyped the toxicity of black plastic utensils inspires projects that use large language models to check papers.

Is everyone huffing paint?

Crypto guy claims to have built an LLM-based tool to detect errors in research papers; funded using its own cryptocurrency; will let coin holders choose what papers to go after; it's unvetted and a total black box—and Nature reports it as if it's a new protein structure.