EdTechLab

Sky · An EdTechLab product

For UK higher education

The active-education baseline operating system for UK higher education.

Sky turns Jisc Beyond Blended, Laurillard's ABC Learning Design, OfS B1/B2 expectations, and local AI and accessibility policy into a working, auditable system at module level. It installs into your existing VLE via LTI 1.3. No rip-and-replace.

Try Sky in the Lecturer Sandbox Talk to us about institutional access
  • LTI 1.3 Advantage Complete
  • Cyber Essentials Plus
  • WCAG 2.2 AA + EN 301 549
  • UK GDPR + DPA 2018
  • EU AI Act · high-risk ready
  • ISO 27001 · SOA

A single connected system of three stacked horizontal planes. Layer 1 Design feeds into Layer 2 Engagement, which feeds into Layer 3 Assurance, shown linked by flowing connectors to convey one integrated product rather than three separate tools.

One locked system · three layers

Integrated

Layer 1

Design

Module Canvas ABC palette Live Preview

Layer 2

Engagement

Disengagement model Staff-approved nudges

Layer 3

Assurance

Compliance Scoreboard Audit Ledger

One installable system · not three separate tools

Why Sky is different

The HE technology stack is fragmented by layer. Sky integrates it.

Universities buy an authoring tool, an analytics dashboard, a compliance suite, and a VLE. Each is good at one thing and blind to the others. Sky is the first product that closes the loop around one canonical schema and one signed audit ledger.

Single-layer products are fragmented: an authoring tool covers only Design, an analytics dashboard only Engagement, a compliance suite only Assurance, and a VLE only hosting, with no evidence flowing between them. Sky unifies Design, Engagement and Assurance over one canonical schema and feeds one signed evidence trail.

Today: point tools

No evidence flow

Authoring tool

Covers Design only

D E A

Analytics dashboard

Covers Engagement only

D E A

Compliance suite

Covers Assurance only

D E A

VLE

Hosts content only

D E A

Four products, four silos. Evidence is reconstructed by hand across the gaps.

Sky: one baseline

Connected

Design

Authoring, built in

Engagement

Analytics, live

Assurance

Compliance, continuous

One signed evidence trail

OfS · GDPR · AI Act · WCAG · Cyber Essentials Plus

Single-layer products each cover one of Design, Engagement or Assurance. Sky integrates all three into one signed evidence trail.

The problem

Evidence is reconstructed at year-end by humans from screenshots, spreadsheets and emails.

The shift

Evidence is emitted continuously as a by-product of teaching, signed at source.

The result

Audits, TEF submissions, GDPR SARs and AI Act records all draw from one ledger.

Three integrated layers

One system that closes the loop: Design to Engagement to Assurance.

Most products solve one layer. Sky is the only system that connects all three around the institution's own baseline, sharing one canonical schema and one signed audit ledger.

One continuous loop

Signed

Audit Ledger

Design

Build the module

Engagement

Act on signals

Assurance

Emit evidence

Sky's three layers arranged around a central signed audit ledger with directional arrows showing the continuous flow from Design through Engagement to Assurance, whose evidence feeds back into Design to close the loop.
Layer 1

Design

The baseline as a default scaffold, not a checklist.

  • Module Canvas with drag-sequenced activities and six-colour ABC palette.
  • Live preview pane: edit and view together, no save round-trips.
  • Inline AI co-pilot drafting welcome scripts, induction tasks, formative items.
  • Accessibility-checked shell pre-wired with Ally, Panopto, MS Forms, OneNote.
Layer 2

Engagement

Act on analytics inside the week, not at end of term.

  • Real-time analytics ingest via LTI Advantage NRPS + AGS.
  • Disengagement model + staff-approved personalised nudges.
  • Student AI tutor with per-assessment policy guardrails.
  • Hybrid participation: in-class polling, captioned recordings, breakout matching.
Layer 3

Assurance

Evidence as a by-product, not a project.

  • Live Compliance Scoreboard per module, avoiding the end-of-term scramble.
  • Signed Audit Ledger covering every state change, AI interaction and nudge.
  • OfS B1/B2 Evidence Pack exports (PDF, DOCX, structured JSON).
  • Institutional Heat-Map for QA Directors at portfolio scale.

The Module Canvas

One screen replaces every settings page, configuration form, and content modal.

Drag activities from a six-coloured palette. Each colour maps to a Laurillard ABC learning type. The compliance scoreboard ticks up as the canvas changes. There is no save button; saves are optimistic and silent.

Sky Module Canvas with week navigation, ABC-coloured activity cards, an inline AI co-pilot drafting a quiz, and the compliance scoreboard in the top right.
sky.edtechlab.app/module/EDU-201/canvas

EDU 201

Inclusive Pedagogy

Compliance scoreboard

31% baseline coverage

Week 2 · Activities

Acquisition

Pre-reading: equity frameworks

Discussion

Seminar: barriers to access

Practice

AI drafting

Formative quiz: 6 items

Drafting question 4 of 6

Drop next activity here

Aligned learning design

Activities are mapped to ABC types and Jisc Beyond Blended pillars automatically as you build.

Inline AI co-pilot

AI drafts welcome scripts, briefs and formative items in place. Tab to accept, Esc to dismiss.

Live preview, no round-trips

The student-facing view renders within 200ms of any edit. Desktop, mobile and screen-reader modes built-in.

Compliance updates live

A single number plus a segmented bar shows baseline coverage in real time. No popups. Just movement.

VLE integration

Sky lives inside your VLE, not next to it.

Module leaders launch Sky from the same Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle or Brightspace tile they already use. Students never leave their VLE. Roster, deep linking and grade passback are handled by LTI 1.3 Advantage Complete.

One standard, every VLE

LTI 1.3 Advantage Complete

Sky

Inside your VLE

via LTI 1.3

VLE

Blackboard Ultra

VLE

Canvas

VLE

Moodle

VLE

Brightspace

Deep linking NRPS roster AGS grade passback OIDC single sign-on
Sky sits at the centre of the diagram and connects through the single LTI 1.3 Advantage Complete standard out to four virtual learning environments, Blackboard Ultra, Canvas, Moodle and Brightspace, carrying deep linking, NRPS roster, AGS grade passback and OIDC single sign-on.

Install time

< 10 min

From LTI registration to a working Sky tile inside your VLE sandbox.

Student onboarding

0 clicks

SSO via your institutional IdP. Students never see a Sky login screen.

Data residency

eu-west-2

UK-region cloud, with a signed DPA and 30-day SAR workflow per tenant.

Speed and scale

Engineered for institutional pace, not pilot pace.

Sky is fast where it counts — under the cursor, behind the canvas, and at procurement.

Preview latency

<200 ms

Student-facing render after any canvas edit. No save round-trip.

VLE install

<10 min

From LTI registration to a working Sky tile inside your sandbox.

Student onboarding

0 clicks

SSO via your IdP. Students never see a Sky login screen.

Evidence pack export

<30 sec

From canvas to a signed PDF/DOCX/JSON pack for OfS or TEF.

Heat-map scale

280 modules / tenant

QA-director view, all rendered in < 1.2s.

Ledger durability

7-year retention

Immutable, signed, non-repudiable events.

Data residency

eu-west-2

UK region, signed DPA per tenant.

Compliance choreography

One canvas edit. Six frameworks ticked.

Sky is not retro-fitted compliance. Every state change in the Module Canvas emits to the audit ledger and fans out to every regulator simultaneously. Evidence becomes a side-effect of teaching, not a year-end reconstruction project.

Evidence as a by-product

Canvas event

Activity added

UDL reading

Audit Ledger

Signed, append-only entry

OfS B1 + B2 Pack

Evidence pack assembled

Compliance Scoreboard

Live framework ticks

Heat-Map

Coverage at a glance

One canvas event emits to the ledger and fans out into every evidence artefact in parallel.

A single Sky canvas event radiates outward, producing evidence artefacts as a by-product of teaching: a signed audit ledger entry, an OfS B1 and B2 evidence pack, a live compliance scoreboard, and a coverage heat-map.

UK higher-education readiness

Designed to clear every UK regulatory bar and arrive with a procurement pack that is ready to review.

Sky stacks the certifications and frameworks UK institutions actually evaluate against. Not minimum compliance, with a procurement pack that arrives ready to sign.

Sky's regulatory readiness arranged as a crest: a central protective shield ringed by the sector, data, AI, accessibility, security and procurement standards it satisfies.

One shield · every UK bar cleared

Sky compliance shield

Sector

OfS B1/B2

Data

UK GDPR

AI

EU AI Act

Access

WCAG 2.2 AA

Security

CE+ · ISO 27001

Procure

HECVAT

The standards this shield clears

  • OfS B1 + B2
  • UK GDPR · DPA 2018
  • EU AI Act
  • WCAG 2.2 AA
  • Cyber Essentials Plus
  • ISO 27001
  • HECVAT · procurement pack ready to review

Sector + data

OfS · UK GDPR · DUAA 2025

B1/B2 indicators mapped to every activity. Pseudonymised IDs, per-tenant DPIA, 30-day SAR, 72-hour breach notification, region-locked in eu-west-2.

B1 + B2 UK GDPR eu-west-2

AI + accessibility

AI Act · WCAG 2.2 AA · UDL

High-risk obligations from Article 6 / Annex III built in. axe-core blocking in CI, weekly manual audits, UDL as a first-class tag on every activity (exceeding PSBAR scope).

EU AI Act WCAG 2.2 AA UDL

Security + procurement

CE+ · ISO 27001 · HECVAT

Cyber Essentials Plus v3.3 (all SaaS in scope, MFA mandated). ISO 27001:2022 SOA. CREST pen tests. Pre-filled HECVAT 4.1.5, UCISA IST + NCSC CSP alignment. Listed on CCS, N/SUPC.

CE+ v3.3 ISO 27001 HECVAT 4.1.5

Built once, evidenced everywhere

One signed audit ledger. Every state change. Seven-year retention.

Every framework Sky meets is satisfied by the same underlying ledger, so an OfS audit, a TEF submission, an annual programme monitoring report and a GDPR SAR all draw from one source of truth.

  • · Per-assessment GenAI policy enforced as code
  • · Three-layer AI guardrail enforcement
  • · Immutable, signed, non-repudiable events
  • · Evidence Pack exports in < 30 seconds
  • · Heat-Map at 280-module institutional scale

Lecturer Sandbox

Try Sky in your browser for free, with no institutional contract.

Any academic with a UK .ac.uk address can sign in to the Sandbox. Synthetic data only. No real student PII, no institutional connection, just the product.

Four sequential steps connected by flowing arrows showing how an academic gets value from the Lecturer Sandbox.

The Sandbox journey

1

Request access

Sign in with a UK academic email.

name@institution.ac.uk
2

Synthetic module

Open a safe module. Synthetic data only.

No real student PII
3

Explore the Design Layer

Build a module with the full toolkit.

  • Module Canvas
  • ABC palette
  • Welcome Generator
  • Inline AI co-pilot
4

Compliance Scoreboard

Watch your score climb against a UK HE baseline.

87 / 100

What you'll see in the first ten minutes

  • Build a complete sample module unaided in under 30 minutes.
  • Watch the compliance scoreboard tick up against a representative UK HE baseline.
  • Try the inline AI co-pilot drafting a welcome script, brief, or formative quiz.
  • Switch to the student view and feel what your learners experience.
  • Refer colleagues to climb the priority list. Top referrers get named credit.

For institutions evaluating Sky

Each institution signs a Letter of Intent then runs a structured six-week Acquisition Testing Phase against its own VLE, with three nominated module leaders, a student preview, a red-team test against the institution's own GenAI policy, and a sample Evidence Pack export reviewed by QA.

Talk to us about institutional access

Request access

Tell us where you teach and we'll send you a Sandbox magic link. No spam, only what you need to get going.

.ac.uk required. Institutional addresses outside the UK can email us directly.

We will only contact you about Sky access. Sky uses your details under the EdTechLab privacy policy. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Frequently asked

How can I try Sky?

Any UK academic with a .ac.uk address can request Sandbox access from the form above. You'll get a magic link to a synthetic module with no real student data, no institutional connection, and the full Design Layer.

Which VLEs does Sky support?

Blackboard Ultra and Canvas via LTI 1.3 with LTI Advantage Complete certification (covers ~70% of UK HE). Moodle and Brightspace integrations follow.

How does Sky handle GenAI in assessments?

Every assessment carries a reference to the institution's GenAI ethics policy. The student AI tutor and staff co-pilot enforce that policy as code with three layers of guardrails. Every interaction is logged to a signed, non-repudiable audit ledger.

How can institutions evaluate Sky?

Each institution signs a Letter of Intent then runs a six-week Acquisition Testing Phase against its own VLE sandbox, with three module leaders, a student preview, an AI tutor red-team against the institution's own GenAI policy, and a sample Evidence Pack export reviewed by QA. The trial concludes with a written remediation list and a commercial proposal.

What regulations does Sky meet?

OfS Conditions B1/B2 (plus surfacing of Indicators of Concern), UK GDPR with Data Protection Act 2018, the EU AI Act high-risk obligations, WCAG 2.2 AA per PSBAR 2018, Cyber Essentials Plus v3.3, and ISO 27001 Statement of Applicability. Sky pre-fills HECVAT 4.1.5 and aligns with the UCISA Information Security Toolkit.