Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Tag: distance learning (Page 1 of 2)

RIDE 2023 – Sustaining Innovation: Research and Practice

The Centre for Online and Distance Education (CODE) is a University of London initiative focusing on research, training, capacity building, and strategy and policy development to support innovation in online and distance education. On 28 and 29 March 2023, CODE held its 17th annual conference – a hybrid in-person and online event – on Research in Distance Education (RIDE). The theme of RIDE 2023 was sustaining innovation and sustainable practices.

Here are a half-dozen of my personal highlights and takeaways from the conference:

Photo of the outside of Senate House in London. A grey imposing Art Deco building.

Senate House London

  1. In-person conferences are better than virtual conferences. Last week I met someone from my undergraduate days, a person I hadn’t seen in four decades. And I caught up with a colleague from the early days of the TEL team, who is now working in London. (It’s remarkable how many Portsmouth EdTech people seem to have ended up in London!) It was great to reminisce and to hear what is new. These interactions I guess might have happened online, but I doubt it.
  2. Hybrid conferences are hard to get right. The Senate House was constructed in the 1930s, and it is simply not set up to handle a hybrid conference. The organisers did their best to ensure that in-person and online participants enjoyed an equivalent experience, but the limitations of the technology and the physical spaces in the building made it difficult. I can understand why conference organisers want to run hybrid events (and why teachers want to run hybrid lectures) but these are hard things to get right. I have attended many excellent online conferences, and many excellent in-person conferences, but I cannot recall a hybrid event that has ever worked seamlessly.
  3. The sector is continuing to debate and think-through the opportunities and threats posed by generative AI. Professor Mike Sharples, from the OU, delivered an excellent keynote address. He noted that he had given the talk several times recently, and each time he had to update it: developments in this field are currently happening on a weekly basis. (It was also interesting to learn that Mike began research into AI and education during his PhD – about 40 years ago!)
  4. The concentration on sustainability provided an interesting lens through which to view our practice. One session looked at the move from in-person, paper-based exams to online exams. The claim was that this was a much more environmentally friendly approach to distance education. That might be so – but a full accounting was not given of the environmental costs of online. A lot more research is needed.
  5. The University of London Worldwide is experimenting with AI tutors. The intention is not to replace human tutors with AI tutors but to see whether this technology can help provide some elements of a personalised education at scale. They are just at the start of this project – it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Credit Image: Photo by Open Journey

TEL in 2020

Well … 2020 has been quite a year. The most extraordinary 12 months any of us have experienced. Although 2020 has had its stresses (to put it mildly) I’m proud at how the TEL team has helped the University maintain its mission. Our existing students were able to progress and new students have been able to start their University career. Without technology, that would have been impossible.   

Like many people, we understood the disruptive potential of Covid-19 in late February. By early March we started thinking about the support we could offer if the University had to deliver teaching remotely. We thus had the elearning Tools website ready to publish when the VC sent his email about home working.  

That move to home working affected the TEL team less than many other teams in the University – partly because many of us already had some experience of home working and partly because we work with technology on a daily basis. All we need to do the basics of our job is a fast, stable internet connection. (One team member, stuck abroad when airlines began to remove scheduled flights, spent several days working from Australia. For a while we truly were providing around-the-clock service!) It helped the team enormously that we used SLACK: the platform held a record of our thinking and enabled people to catch up on discussions they might otherwise have missed.  

That’s not to say working at home (or living at work?) was without challenges – especially for those of us who were homeschooling children or who had other caring responsibilities. One lesson I think we learned far too late was this: when we’re working at home we don’t need to be available all the time. Too many of us jumped to respond to a SLACK message immediately or to answer an email the moment it reached our inbox. It’s nice to know our team members are conscientious – but that “always-there” mentality is ultimately self-defeating. And although SLACK enabled us to work efficiently while we were remote, it’s undeniable that face-to-face communication is quicker and less prone to misunderstanding than text-based communication. All that raises an interesting question: when we get back to some sort of normality, will we all rush back into the office? Not many people miss their commute, but some do miss the office environment – so will we work more flexibly, with one or two days spent in the office and the rest working at home? Or will some of us become full-time home-workers?  

Returning from speculation on future events to events that happened back in the spring of 2020: the University started to develop its “Blended and Connected” approach to the new academic year. To support that initiative, the TEL team created the website Preparing for teaching in a blended learning context, with content coming from across the whole of DCQE. We also worked closely with our colleagues in Academic Development to put on the TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival (and more recently a Blended Learning Mini-Fest).

The “Blended and Connected” approach allowed us to address a long-standing complaint from students. In response to our yearly Digital Experience Tracker, students regularly criticised the lack of consistency across their Moodle modules. We now had the chance to develop and implement a templated approach to Moodle. The TEL team also improved the Moodle theme, in light of co-creation work with a group of University computing students studying UX/UI design.

Of course, all those other tasks involved in running a large Moodle installation did not go away because of the pandemic. Integrations with other systems (more of which below) had to be managed, the upgrade to Moodle version 3.9 had to take place, and all of this took place as the University moved from Quercus to SITS. (Can anything be more stressful for a university than changing Student Record systems in the middle of a pandemic?) The SITS project touched most aspects of University life; for us, it required the development of new feeds into Moodle. 

Moodle itself has performed robustly since the start of the academic year, despite routinely serving numbers of students that in previous years would have been considered extraordinary. By the start of December our new Moodle had clocked up 1,264,306 logins and students had engaged in 14,088,187 activities (read/writes). Phew… 

Throughout 2019, discussions and consultations around content capture had taken place (and a new policy on content capture was eventually agreed). We entered 2020, however, in a difficult place. We were concerned about the technologies we had available to support content capture: our existing platforms had reached end-of-life. The team facilitated a number of supplier demonstrations early in the year, with the last demonstration taking place just before the work-from-home directive took hold, and UoP chose Panopto – the most widely adopted video platform within universities. The implementation and roll-out of such a platform would normally take place over the course of a full year, but we made Panopto available (complete with Moodle integration and a support website) within six weeks. Quite an achievement! And the platform is being heavily used: by November, we had 29,793 videos created; 10,464 hours of video created; 736,081 views and downloads; and 97,759 hours of video delivered. Again, phew…    

To support synchronous delivery for the new “Blended and Connected” approach, the University purchased Zoom. And, of course, we were quick to integrate this with Moodle. One useful feature in Zoom, which at that point could not easily be replicated by existing options such as Meet and WebEx, was the easy creation of breakout rooms. (Offering a plethora of technologies that do similar things – Zoom, WebEx, Meet – has the potential to lead to confusion for staff and an inconsistent experience for students. It can be difficult to take options away from people; in some cases, it might be technically impossible to remove options. But – in the interests of a consistent student experience – perhaps we need to be firmer in our recommendations of what tools to use?)

We invested in other tools, too: Padlet to facilitate collaboration; Vevox as an audience response system; and we continued to push Nearpod for interactive lessons. For all of these, we continued to provide our usual training support for staff, and offered face-to-face and small-group sessions – mediated by Zoom, WebEx, and Meet! 

Throughout the pandemic, the TEL team has been active on social media – and the stream of positive, uplifting, motivational messages from TEL accounts were well received during the lockdown. More than one member of staff said the posts cheered them up!

We worked with staff across DCQE to help them create support sites (for example the Wellbeing and ASK sites) and with staff across the University in workstrands, workstreams, and elsewhere. We supported departments in adapting to an online alternative to their usual ‘go-to method’ of face to face presenting such as the Staff Induction Welcome Event for new staff members held by HR. I hope that cross-institution working carries on when we return to some form of normality because everyone agrees it has been beneficial.

What else? Well, we have kept abreast of accessibility issues and our responsibilities under PSBAR. This is a difficult issue for all universities: the legislation was written, I believe, with static content in mind. But a VLE contains rapidly changing content from thousands of users. The sector as a whole is grappling with the implications of this.

We hope to develop our (externally hosted) CPD Moodle. As more people become aware of the platform, more courses are going on there. And we are working closely with CEG Digital, the University’s partners for expanding our DL offering

Questions around analytics and data have been of interest and, when we’ve had any spare time (hah!), we’ve tried to make progress in this area. We have liaised with a Business Analyst on the creation of a Student Engagement and Monitoring dashboard; locally, we have started to look at how to surface useful statistics on the Moodle dashboard. Watch for developments over the coming months! 

I could write much, much more about the team’s attainments – but I’ll leave it there.

We have encountered many setbacks and challenges – inevitably so, given the amount of change that has been implemented over such a short period of time – but the team, as part of the wider University, has achieved so much this year. We can leave the plague year behind us and enter 2021 knowing we have a bright future.

TEL Training Workshops and Bespoke Sessions

For the next few weeks, the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Training Team have put together a schedule of workshops, incorporating some of your old favourites, sprinkled with some online interaction, a dollop of digital technology and stirred in with a jugful of pedagogy resulting in some great revamped, updated and brand new workshops. During the last few months of virtual workshops, we’ve taken on board your comments and suggestions, which we’ve received through the feedback you’ve given us. The topics you really want sessions on and recommendations on breaking some workshops down further into bite-sized chunks. In addition, we’ve collaborated with the Academic Development (AcDev) section of the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) to develop a new familiarisation programme to help colleagues find out more about using digital technologies to complement and enhance their teaching and interactions with students.

How do I book on a session and find more information on TEL Training Workshops?

You’ll find our calendar with all our new times and description on the sessions by going to the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) website and clicking on the TEL Training Calendar.  For alerts on up and coming training sessions from ourselves and the Academic Development (AcDev) workshops, follow us on our social media platforms:

Who are your training sessions for?

Primarily, the workshops are for lecturers and PHD Students, but they can be adapted for professional service members of staff too. 

Bespoke sessions

If you’re not available at the times of our training events, or if the programme does not cover a specific area you’re interested in, we can offer a 1-2-1 session tailored to your needs or a group session for you and your colleagues. Topics for bespoke sessions can be based around our programme, or we can tailor the session to answer any specific questions or needs that you have. Please complete a Bespoke Training Request form and simply tick the box next to the session you would like training on. If you tick ‘Other’ please give a brief explanation of the topic you wished to be covered in the session. Complete with the date on which you would like your virtual training session to take place, along with your preferred time then click ‘SUBMIT’.

Please click on the link below for the Bespoke Training Request form:

Bespoke Training Request Form

We look forward to welcoming you at a TEL Training Session in the near future.

 

Credit Image: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Guest Blogger: Emma Cripps – Digital Resources for Research Students

Hi! My name is Emma Cripps and I am the eLearning Coordinator in the Graduate School. When asking a colleague what I should write my first TEL Tales blog post about, the response was “something you are interested in”. There are a lot of aspects of my job that interest me, but at the moment there is one topic that I am particularly focussed on – the way in which online learning resources are created. 

Having worked with undergraduate, and some postgraduate taught courses for over 8 years, my move to the Graduate School in 2019 required me to approach online learning from a completely different viewpoint. Having previously worked with academics to develop online resources that mostly supplemented face-to-face courses, I am now presented with the challenge of creating fully online, standalone, self-paced learning modules. The Graduate School, through the Graduate School Development Programme (GSDP), usually delivers over 150 face-to-face workshops a year that support postgraduate research (PGR) students at key doctoral milestones, helping them to become independent researchers and employable graduates. Part of my role is to develop some of these face-to-face workshops into online learning modules, that any PGR student can complete at any given time. Whilst to some, this type of online content may be seen as more suitable for distance learners, the content I create is intended for all research degree students. The most popular workshops we run as part of the GSDP can be repeated up to five times in any given academic year, but for students who are busy undertaking research, working on their personal and professional development, teaching, and trying to maintain their wellbeing, along with any of the other daily tasks required of them, it can be difficult for them to commit to attending one of these workshops. And, given the current situation, the online versions of our workshops are now crucially important to our PGR students.

Online resources, now more than ever, play such a huge role in research students’ development. The ability to log on at any time, from anywhere (with an internet connection) and choose what it is they want to learn, allows research students the flexibility to fit their development around their other commitments. With this idea underpinning the work I do, I have not only continued to develop our online workshops, but have worked with colleagues in the Graduate School to curate resources from many different sources, such as LinkedIn Learning, Future Learn, SAGE Research Methods and many more, to ensure that every topic we cover in our face-to-face workshops has at a minimum, one good quality online resource. However, online resources may not always be full workshops or additional resources from other providers. Within the Graduate, we have been able to record aspects of some of our workshops, which we have been doing for over 4 years now, and provide these, along with additional resources from the face-to-face workshops via our Moodle sites. This results in our online provision being quite varied, engaging, and interesting for PGR students.

When thinking about the content I create, manage and recommend to PGR students, I have always used the following considerations as my starting point. In the current situation, and knowing that I will need to develop even more online resources in the future, I believe these are still some of the best questions to ask at the outset when developing online content: 

  1. Is the content actually needed?
    What is it that I am looking to develop, and is it suitable to be created in an online format? Is there an alternative option that already exists, and if there is, does it meet the learning outcomes, the students’ needs, and is it a high-quality resource? There are some workshops that we would not develop into an online format, such as our “Mini Motivation Boost” workshop. This workshop aims to give PGR students some space and time to reflect on their journey so far, and with the support of the workshop tutor, and other PGR students, consider strategies to get back on track with their research. This workshop works so well because of the interaction between research students, their ability to share their challenges, and discuss ways in which they can overcome them. Unfortunately, this would be particularly difficult to capture as an online learning course, and would not give students the same, supportive experience. Going forward, we would look to deliver this type of session as a live, or synchronous, session, but with additional resources to support it, such as a toolkit of resources, Apps, activities and ways to keep in touch that participants can access alongside the synchronous session.

  2. Is the content accessible?
    The next thing I have to consider is the accessibility of the content I am creating or recommending. I recently participated in a webinar hosted by a large North American company who provide software that’s used to create digital artefacts. The title of the webinar was something along the lines of “creative ways to turn PowerPoints into online courses”. Great! A lot of the content I work with starts off as a PowerPoint, so this would give me some really creative ideas for content development. How disappointed I was when the first 20 minutes of the webinar was spent demonstrating how a PowerPoint can be saved as individual image files and uploaded as an image gallery! Not only does this create a completely inaccessible item for those using screen readers and other assistive technology, but it is also not very interesting for learners to engage with! What I am trying to say here is, I think we still have some work to do in how we develop online content that is both interesting to engage with and accessible, but it is possible to do both, it might just take a little more imagination and creativity! 

  3. Is the content usable?
    The term usability describes the “ease of use” (Church, 2015) of a product, and is an aspect of user experience, as is accessibility. When thinking about the usability of online resources, it is important for me to remember that PGR students are going to have to navigate and find this content, with little or no help. Whilst we provide guidance, videos, quick links and more, there will be times when PGR students don’t know exactly what it is they are looking for, or even if it exists at all! Because of this, everything related to the Graduate School’s online learning content must be easily found, easy to navigate, easy to interact with, and work across all devices and systems that students may be using. Not only that, but the actual content needs to be useful (see point 1!), interactive and engaging. There is certainly more I can be doing in this area, but for now, I am working to reduce the amount of searching PGR students have to do to find what they are looking for, and ensuring that there is a consistent experience with all of the online content that we create.

  4. Do I have the knowledge and skills to develop or evaluate the content?
    This final consideration is actually a really important one. I have been working in online learning for almost 10 years now, and the online environments and content that I create have changed so much in that time, as have my skills and knowledge! What hasn’t changed though is the supportive community of online course developers, educational technologists, enthusiastic academics, and engaging professional service staff. One thing I have had to do a lot more in the last year though is network with subject matter experts (SMEs). SMEs have knowledge or skills in a specific topic (“What’s a”, n.d.), and can be a really helpful source of information, feedback and experience. The relationship with SMEs in the Graduate School makes up the foundation of our development programme, and we are always so grateful to the staff who give up their time to support us. I certainly would not be able to create content for the Graduate School without the input and feedback from staff who have a greater knowledge in complex areas of researcher development, and in aspects of online content creation that I am less familiar with.

Whilst this blog post has been written in the context of postgraduate researcher development, and the work that the Graduate School undertakes, I believe that the considerations I have outlined above, and the approach I take to online content creation can be applied across all levels and courses at the University. One additional thing I would like to add is that with the provision of online resources, the number of PGR students attending Graduate School workshops has not decreased, and we were able to support over 2,600 students in our workshops in the 2018/19 academic year. That being said, with over half the PGR students at the University of Portsmouth undertaking their research degree part-time, our online provision is an important support mechanism for any and all research degree students. Given the uncertain future we are currently facing, the provision of online resources will continue to be of massive importance, and you will find me hard at work reviewing, collating, creating and checking all the online content we provide to our PGR students to ensure that it continues to support them in their research, academic, professional and personal development.

References

Church, S. (2015). Usability and user experience. Retrieved from https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/usability-and-user-experience

What’s a Subject Matter Expert (SME)? (n.d.). Retrieved from Articulate website: https://community.articulate.com/series/everything-you-need-to-know-about-working-with-smes/articles/what-is-a-subject-matter-expert-in-e-learning  

The Graduate School supports a community of over 1,000 research degree students from across the University, including MRes, Professional Doctorate and PhD students. We offer bespoke training and professional development workshops that allow our research degree students to grow their personal, professional and research skills and career aspirations. We are also the first port of call for Research Supervisors, offering guidance, support, and development events. Find out more on the Graduate School webpages.

Credit Image: The feature image is from the Marketing Portal, and is “Free for use” and “Available for Third Party”. It shows ‘imaging phantoms’ which have been created and used by one of our PhD students, and were showcased at our 2019 Doctoral Festival of Research.

Staying Healthy

Lockdown has been in place for around 5 weeks now and in our own way we’re trying to cope and work from home. How are you doing? Remember, don’t be too hard on yourself, you’re doing the best you can in unusual circumstances.  

Right at the beginning of the pandemic the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team put together some tips on working from home.  Marie’s blog post ‘Are you ready to work from home? – Tips from TEL’ was published on the 23rd March. If you haven’t read it yet, grab a drink and have a read -there could be some advice here which might just help you! Also in this blog are the links to the eLearning Tools Site which features useful resources and information on working from home, particularly teaching remotely for staff at the University of Portsmouth. 

Whether you’re a student or a member of staff, staying inside and staying healthy is everyones’ main priority at the moment. Many students are probably used to shutting themselves off for hours while they work on their latest assignment or revise for an exam. However, for a lot of people this is the first time they’ve had to work from home, life as they know it has certainly changed. Being able to log onto a device and access work or study materials is only one part of remote working. Having a routine, some physical activity and making sure you take regular screen breaks are just as important for your wellbeing.

Get Dressed

How many of you thought it’d be great just to lay around all day chilling out in your pjs and laying on the settee, whilst working on your laptop? By keeping to your normal morning routine of getting dressed, making breakfast etc, these activities all help your mind to adjust from sleep-mode to work-mode. I’ll be honest I’m not wearing the same clothes I’d wear for work, but what I am wearing are the clothes I exercise in. This is so that when I have a break, I can jump on my exercise bike, no excuses. 

Move 

For those of you with a smartwatch you’ll be familiar with a buzz on your wrist 10 minutes before the hour if you haven’t got around to walking 250 steps.  Don’t ignore the buzz, it serves two purposes. The first, is you need a screen break, but don’t go from your screen to another kind of screen, like your mobile. The second reason is for some activity: get up and move around, pop along to the kitchen and grab yourself a drink (water is good to keep you hydrated) or check on the rest of your family. If you don’t have a smartwatch, set the alarm on your mobile.  

Lunch Break

Whilst working at home it’s easy to forget about your lunch break, don’t!!  More than anything it’s especially important at the moment, it’s time for you to step away from the computer/laptop. Now’s the opportunity to take a walk around the block, get some fresh air or log onto Facebook and follow one of the UoP Sports live sessions. Try to do some kind of activity. Maybe spend time with your family or if you have a garden and it’s dry, take your lunch outside and have a picnic!

Log OffChild playing on the living room floor whilst a lady's faded in the background looking at a laptop

It’s important to maintain a good work-life balance, so after working on and off for eight hours (remember to take short breaks often, and long breaks, less often) or so, log off.  When working from home it’s easy to ignore the separation between professional and personal time, don’t! If you’re lucky and you have a separate room as an office, log off and close the door behind you.  If, like me you’re sitting at your dining room table, log off and put your laptop away. Remember, your home “office” is also your personal space, a place for relaxing and recharging your batteries.

21 Day Self-Care Challenge

The challenge may have started already, but you can start your 21 days at any time.The aim is to help to increase our own self-care with simple tools, strategies and personal challenges to get us through this difficult time. Small changes can have such a huge impact, to your wellbeing. Read more about the challenge in the Isolation Motivation – are you up for the challenge? blog post. Then let us know in the comments box which two things you’re going to drop and the two you’re going to take up.

Positive Pictures from TEL

If you have a minute or two go to our Instagram account #telportsmouth and here you’ll find that we’ve been sharing with our audience some great positive photos taken by members of the TEL Team whilst they’ve been out and about on their daily exercise. Enjoy!

For a more concise interpretation of working from home please refer to Marie Kendall-Waters blog post: Are you ready to work from home? Tips from TEL.

Areas covered in the blog post are:

  1. Create a dedicated work space
  2. Use to-do lists
  3. Learn to deal with distractions
  4. Take regular breaks
  5. Don’t lose touch with your colleagues
  6. Make sure to drink and eat
  7. Make working comfortable
  8. Deal with being disconnected
  9. Don’t be hard on yourself

For regular updates and tips for working at home following us on Instagram #telportsmouth and/or on our Twitter account @TelPortsmouth

Credit image: Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash and Photo by Emma Matthews Digital Content Production on Unsplash

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – LinkedIn Learning – Collection and Learning Paths

LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning contains over 40,000 courses on technical, business and creative skills and is free to all University of Portsmouth students and staff. Many of the courses will map directly to studies, others will be on tools such as Autocad, MatLab or SPSS which are essential for study. The courses on a wide range of business skills can be used by staff for CPD and students for employability skills.

Collections and Learning Paths

With that amount of courses in the library, searching for exactly what is relevant or required can sometimes seem daunting. LinkedIn Learning will offer recommendations based on the skills and interests you have setup as part of your profile. If you’ve connected a personal LinkedIn account to your University LinkedIn Learning, you will also get recommendations based on your professional network. One way to organise courses is to use personal collections and learning paths. Everyone can create these, collections work for a group of courses or videos related to one particular topic or skill, learning paths when you want to work through courses in a particular order, building skills and knowledge. If you create personal collections and learning paths you can share a link to them so others users can access them.

With Admin access however, it is possible to create ‘University of Portsmouth’ collections and learning paths centrally. You’ll see these in LinkedIn Learning in the main library, under the browse button. As well as being available here and shareable via a single sign on link they can be recommended directly to users.

Custom Content

Another advantage of Admin access is that you have the ability to upload custom content into the University of Portsmouth LinkedIn Learning platform. These can be videos, PDFs, PowerPoints, links, pretty much any type of file. It means you can then create collections and learning paths with a mixture of LinkedIn Learning content with bespoke University content alongside it. Great if you want some specific explanation or demonstration alongside the expert industry standard content provided by LinkedIn Learning.

LinkedIn Learning Mapping Service

LinkedIn Learning provides a mapping service where they map their content against a list of competencies or skills in a particular area. We have done this for a number of areas: the CCI Placements team created a learning path based on competencies students need for finding a placement, a similar exercise was done for the student sports club committees. LinkedIn also provide mapping against frameworks used in Higher Education, such as the Jisc Digital Capability Framework and the framework for Researcher Development and Doctoral Skills. As well as this LinkedIn have developed course mapping against the range of activities for a typical university, things like teaching skills, skills for student success, professional development, project management and many other areas.

Next Steps

Have a go at creating your own collections or learning paths or using some of the ones set up by Linkedin Learning. If you think you could benefit from the Admin access and you want to create collections and learning for groups of students or staff contact ittraining@port.ac.uk for further help. Let us know also if you’d like to take advantage of the mapping service and get LinkedIn Learning content mapped to specific skills and competencies for your areas. Lastly check out the Linkedin Learning landing page and the collections and learning paths created by University colleagues.

For further reading on Linkedin Learning, then check out these previous posts:

LinkedIn Learning – Change

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – University of Portsmouth LinkedIn Seminar

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Goodbye Lynda, hello LinkedIn Learning

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Digital Capability Discovery Tool

Adrian Sharkey: @adrianjsharkey

Guest Blogger: Jonny Bell – Video content as learning objects – Capturing more than just the lecture

We often advise lecturers to use more interesting content on their Moodle sites, rather than just lecture slides, PDFs and so on, but what does that mean in practice and how can lecturers facilitate this and manage their busy schedules?

Videos are an easy way to make sites more visually appealing and are more likely to engage students. We can use videos in two ways: either

(i) source already-created videos, via sites such as Youtube or Box of Broadcasts.

(ii) can create our own. 

As an amateur videographer outside of work this is an area I am very interested in. During my time working in the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies I had the chance to interview some extraordinary characters, including government advisers on how to deal with terrorist attacks and ex-convicts who have been successfully rehabilitated into society. 

These short interviews provided much better value to students than watching a rerun of a longer lecture. In fact, studies show that the length of the video directly links to how much of the content the student will watch. Whilst this study looks at MOOCs, I strongly believe we can translate this to a Higher Education environment also.

With the introduction of H5P functionality within Moodle we can make these videos interactive and make sure students answer questions to solidify the knowledge they’ve gained by watching them.

The generation of students coming through now have grown up on Youtube and Netflix, and academics are keen to tap into that mindset to provide videos of educational value. There’s various different styles of video to choose from, and I have personally been involved in 7 different ones. 

In my current job in the Science and Health Faculty there has been a lot of scope to provide instructional or demonstration videos for specific pieces of equipment in laboratories, for example. Students can watch these videos outside of class, and it saves valuable lab time: students can get on with their work straight away rather than having to get to grips with the equipment. 

I think videos also provide a vital link on Distance Learning courses: it’s often a great way for students to connect with the course, especially if the lecturer is happy to do bits to camera. It can humanise the experience if they can see who is teaching them. 

Students want to feel they get value for money and just providing Powerpoints and PDFs isn’t enough these days. By creating our own in-house videos the students get an almost personalised learning experience. When I started in the Faculty there was some basic camera equipment, but I was able to purchase a higher-spec camera, lapel mics and some small studio lights via senior management. This means that I’m mobile and can go to the lecturer or a location they wish, rather than have everyone go to a dedicated filming space. 

Projects currently in the pipeline are a “TV” style video with student presenters introducing pieces about their specific course, including how to present their poster assessment in front of a panel on a Pharmacy course; this will be invaluable for first-year students.

Looking to the future there have already been requests for my services on field trips for geography-type courses. This means we can increase the accessibility of these courses for students who, for various reasons, might be unable to get onto these trips. Having a short video on how to conduct experiments on soil, for example, means these students will have a similar experience to those who go on the trips. Ultimately, as an institution, we should be striving for all of our students to have consistent learning experiences and by creating short videos we can go some way to achieving that. 

Credit Image: Photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash

Introduction for Tel Tales

Hello!

My name is Jo Fairwood and at the start of January 2020 I joined the Technology Enhanced Learning team as an Online Course Developer, on a one year secondment. I previously worked for the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies (ICJS) as a Student and Academic Administrator. I started there a long time ago, back in 2006, so I felt it was time for a change.

My role as Student and Academic Administrator was not a traditional one. As technology developed so did my role and so did my passion for technology. I was responsible for harnessing new technologies to engage and enthuse our undergraduate distance learning students. When I first started working in ICJS everything was paper-based and posted out to our students. Over the years I developed new ways of bringing the courses fully online so that the students receive the best experience possible, wherever they were located in the world. This included broadcasting a day’s worth of live and pre-recorded sessions to them in what we called Virtual Study Days. They’re a bit like ‘This Morning’ but with our own ‘Holly’. Sadly we didn’t have time for a fashion tips session!

As you can probably tell I’m into filming, film editing and all that goes with film production. I like being creative when it comes to multimedia and I relish the opportunity to try new technologies that help with this. I think communication is important so I really like using social media for engaging with students and the wider community, and I also enjoy sharing best practice with colleagues and collaborating with colleagues around the University.

In my spare time I play tenor saxophone in two function bands and I like keeping active, so I play a lot of sports including squash, football, golf and netball. I’m also a huge football fan, in particular, a Watford FC fan (I’m originally from Watford) but I’ll watch any football match over anything else if it’s an option. I’m currently listening to a hilarious podcast called That Peter Crouch Podcast. I recommend it to all football and non-football fans!

Anyway, enough about me. All that’s left to say is that I’m thoroughly looking forward to getting stuck in with the TEL team and working on new, exciting projects over the coming year.

Twitter @jofairwood

Jo is based in Mercantile House with the eLearning Support (TEL) team .

Welcome to the team, Jo!

Guest Blogger: James Brand – Erasmus+ Staff Training: Visiting the FernUniversität in Hagen (Part 4)

This is the final blog post about about an Erasmus+ Staff Training experience to the FernUniversität in Hagen which took place in June 2018. In this post I will summarise the keynote presentation that concluded the training week and reflect on my experience of attending an Erasmus+ Staff Training experience.

Keynote: The Future of Distance Education: Mind the Gaps – Professor Mark Brown

One of the highlights of the week was the inspiring keynote presentation from Professor Mark Brown, Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University. Professor Brown discussed the future of distance learning and the work being done at DCU.

Professor Brown also highlighted the importance of having a philosophy for delivering distance learning and explained some of the key principles that constitute a DCU programme and a DCU student. At DCU distance learners are referred to as being part of DCU Connected or as “connected learners” and this is part of the student experience that they have envisioned for their learners. They also refer to their learning technologies as part of a suite known as “the loop”. The loop includes Moodle and various other learning technologies and personal tools that a student may use and that might connect learners in the course of their studies. However, DCU avoids referring to systems as Moodle or their students as distance or online students, as this is just the mode of delivery. This is also linked with the negative view of technical determinism, that we should not be rushing to follow technological innovations, instead, we should be considering what is best for education. The quote featured in the presentation, “The future is not something we enter, the future is something we create” is something that resonated in this session and something that we should consider as a University.

A number of different aspects on the future of digital learning were also discussed in this presentation including MOOCs and the global Higher Education market. Professor Brown’s presentation can be found on Slideshare.

Conclusion

The Erasmus+ staff training week I attended was a fantastic opportunity to visit a University which specialises in distance education. I was able to learn from the Fernuniversität through workshops and by visiting their resources. I was able to network with colleagues from the institution and also with attendees from across Europe. The training week provided an opportunity to gain knowledge of HE practices from other European institutions, discuss and share ideas with fellow participants and also take part in the of the cultural exchange of visiting another country.

I would highly recommend the Erasmus+ staff training weeks to staff as personal and career development opportunity. I have made new networks and now have an understanding of HE in a global market. If you would like to know more about Erasmus+ staff training activities please see the Erasmus intranet website.

Image credits: Photographs by James Brand

Guest Blogger: James Brand – Erasmus+ Staff Training: Visiting the FernUniversität in Hagen (Part 3)

This is the third of four related blog posts about about an Erasmus+ Staff Training experience to the FernUniversität in Hagen which took place in June 2018. In this post I will be discussing initiatives that the FernUniversität  has implemented to ensure the quality of distance learning being delivered at the University. I also mention the instructional design approach and educational theory that underpins e-learning at the University.

E-teaching Certificate

One of the benefits that the FernUniversität offers to staff is a recognised qualification in e-learning for practitioners at the University in the form of an E-Teaching Certificate. This is an internal training programme available to teaching staff at the University, the course takes on average 1.53 years to be completed. The course is made up of a number of fundamental workshops including Introduction to didactics, Overview of FernUni-Tools, E-Learning and Law, Evaluation, E-Assessment, Documentation, and reflexion (individual), Peer observation of teaching (kick-off workshop). There are also a number of electives which can be taken as part of the programme and concludes with an e-teaching project which involves the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a project with a peer overview observation element. This training is delivered as a mixture of online and blended learning. This programme has proved to be very popular and is in high-demand from staff. There were several requests as to whether the University offer the course externally but unfortunately they are not able to!

Instructional Design

Instructional design and didactics were topics that raised throughout the training week. Dr. Ada Pellert, President of the FernUniversität, in her welcome to attendees of the training week said that previously there had been an absence in the expertise of instructional design at the University. This is something that they are trying to improve by working with academic staff and the introduction of the E-Teaching Certificate.

A session from Dr. Theo Bastiaens, Vice-President for Digitalisation and International Affairs, on Instructional Design was informative and discussed many aspects of delivering education. This included discussion of the psychology of learning and major learning theories. The importance of having a learning philosophy was also emphasised during the session. Dr Bastiaens also explained the use of learning patterns, the framework for high-quality distance learning, that the University encourages staff to follow.  One important statement on the use of technological innovations in learning was that “Technology is not a solution – it is a tool to make education easier. This is why instructional design theory is important. It’s all about your approach to teaching and learning.”

Like the University of Portsmouth, the FernUniversität also uses Moodle as its Learning Management System (LMS). A number of presentations during the week highlighted how support staff at the FernUniversität had worked with academic staff to develop their courses on the LMS into high-quality template designs to improve the student experience. A number of courses had been relaunched with a face-lift and with new approaches to maximise learning. Presentations from a number of academic staff highlighted the course design of the online and blended elements. In the Faculty of Law, all courses featured an introductory video from a lecturer. I could see many elements of best practice in the work of colleagues at the University of Portsmouth. The University is also using H5P to develop learning materials on Moodle.

One of the things highlighted was the need to be aware of different academic cultures and allowing academic freedom is important when considering course design and the use of the LMS. For example, the Faculty of Mathematics had a very different approach to the Faculty of Law.  This is something that I’ve been aware of for a long time at the University of Portsmouth but it had not really resonated until hearing it at a different University.

In my final post post I will be reflecting on my experience of undertaking an Erasmus+ Staff Training week and I will also summarise the keynote presentation that concluded the training week.

Image credits: Photographs by James Brand

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