Student Story: David Mackay

I’ve been in ScotRail for nearly ten years. I worked on the trains and then very quickly moved into training. I’m quite used to training, building courses, etc. But then I moved into the digital learning world and it’s all kind of new. 

I was given the title of Digital Learning Specialist. The role itself is to work with the business to transform what they do currently into eLearning if we can, and just open up new learning spaces for people that weren’t there before.

I think it’s definitely a feeling of validation that we came away with, as people feel more comfortable maybe working with us or they know that we know what we’re talking about and we know how we can scope things and then create new content that’s going to benefit everybody. I think there’s definitely a massive benefit to the company. 

It certainly made things more guided for me, so I definitely know now the process of starting from scratch can I make the learning content and training courses. At the end of it, you have this finished product and it’s working with everybody between point A and point B and getting it done.

It was more of a case of trying to find a course that suited us as a team and what we needed, and certainly the Digital Institute was one that stood out.

For myself, it was the lessons on a wireframe. I really like how this helps segregate things, keeps it simple initially and then you build from that. Starting from very basic, on a page, to then making it come alive almost.  The benefits of not only the wireframe but writing down each scene, the triggers, and the other things that you may be doing, definitely helped me a lot.

Certainly. I think that if it was just one of us who was then feeding back, saying look this is what you do, etc. then it wouldn’t work. You all need to be in there because you all take something different from it, which benefits the team. There may be something that I took that my colleagues didn’t, or there may be something they’ve taken that I have not. It helps because it all joins up at the end. It’s definitely a benefit for everybody getting involved not just one person, I would say. 

Very much so. I would recommend the Digital Learning Institute because it certainly made me feel more confident, and that’s something I would like all of my team to feel as well.