Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Category: Student experience (Page 1 of 4)

Guest Blogger: Rugaiya Ally with Tom Langston – Student Experience at the University

Introduction

This is the final part of a series of four blog posts conceived by Tom Langston and Rugaiya Ally as part of Rugaiya’s work placement within DCQE’s Academic Development and Technology Enhanced Learning teams. 

Tom and Rugaiya wanted to explore students’ feelings about higher education and their expectations about life at university, and therefore devised a set of questions to ask students about their experiences. Rugaiya then interviewed 14 fellow students from across the university faculties (with a predominant number studying in the Science and Business faculties) with most studying at Level 5. This series of posts constitutes a condensed summary of the thoughts and opinions of those 14 students.

In part one we investigated what areas of their course students found to be a strength and where they struggled with the progression through their course. In part two we explored student expectations prior to coming to university. In part three we examined students’ attitudes toward their future careers. Finally, here in part 4, we focus on the student’s university experience and how proud they are to be University of Portsmouth students.

Pride in being a student at UoP

The first question I asked was: What makes you proud to be affiliated with your university? 

The students said that many areas of the university offer them the chance to feel part of Portsmouth; they referred to “its diversity and inclusivity”.

Diversity (0.43)

“The history of the university; it feels good to know I am part of a long chain of people who passed through the same buildings.”

The university provides a space where being part of something bigger than the individual is important: “Recently, the university was in the top 40 for student satisfaction. I agree with that and it makes me proud to be part of this university that’s willing to help the students.

It is not just the name of Portsmouth that is recognised, but also the people who work here and who offer a sense of community – there is a sense in which they are the true heart of Portsmouth.

Clubs (2.00)

“The dedication that some of the lecturers have with the students and how willing they are to interact with them during lessons.”

“I am proud to be affiliated with this university since it made me develop a lot of skills from studying different courses to how they are applied in real life cases thus being confident to what is coming on careers and all programs concerning careers.”

“It’s a great University, top 100 and the architecture course is very well known around the world.” 

Ultimately, the support that many students receive through personal tutoring, ASK, their tutors and fellow students is a key point of pride to many: “The help I get from the university is beyond imagination!” 

What could be changed?

I then asked: What is something you would change about your university if you had the opportunity? 

Current students have a very similar and shared opinions concerning COVID and the pandemic.

Uni Experience (1.21)

Uni Experience COVID (0.23)

One student pointed out how important it is for new students and even current students to be introduced to the Student Support Services – Wellbeing, ASDAC and many others – as these are extremely useful: life at university is not easy! So instead of promoting all those discos and clubs, a major topic during inductions and orientations should be an introduction to Student Support Services.

“I think especially to first years (freshers), the university should make a great effort to introduce them to the different clubs and student support services that are held at the university. This would not only help them with their social skills but it’s a great addition to their CV for placements”. 

Another student commented on the feedback system after assignments. Sometimes the feedback is not really helpful, which is why some students do not even turn in their formative assignments for feedback. (This example highlights that the feedback for a group assignment can vary depending on the student.) 

If had to change anything it would be their feedback system, it is not quite efficient for me and also stops giving students different feedback for the same projects” 

Would you recommend your course to a friend?

The final question I asked was: Considering your complete experience with our curriculum being taught, how likely would you be to recommend your course to a friend or colleague? 

Overall feelings were positive: most students replied with “yes, very likely” and there were some great responses about their university experience.

Each student will have a range of experiences, however. The complete picture they build is a key conclusion to the time spent at university.

Overall (1.04)

“Yes, I would recommend it because, during my two full years at the University of Portsmouth, I have come to appreciate and enjoy modules like finance that I never expected to enjoy.”

While COVID was a major part of the university life of many students, there was a general understanding and appreciation of the work put in by academics. Although one student ranked the overall experience as 5/10 they were clear that the support provided by the university and their tutors was important.

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One of the students would recommend the course to others due to the tactics used by the teaching staff at the university, which were helpful in making harder modules and disciplines easier to understand: “I would highly recommend biomedical science to others, pathological science is the main part of biomedical science and the teaching team here at the University of Portsmouth are amazing with incredible teaching tactics which makes it enjoyable and easy to understand, especially haematology and microbiology.”

“I would totally recommend international business and management to my friends and colleagues”. 

Another student pointed out how helpful the Psychology department is and that is why the student will recommend others to join psychology at UoP: “I would recommend it and I’d recommend the university because the psychology department is very helpful”.

These comments demonstrate how supportive the University of Portsmouth can be for the students, giving them a sense of pride to be part of something bigger than themselves. 

Conclusion

Throughout this series of blogs, Rugaiya interviewed students from a variety of faculties but found that they all had a shared sense of what being part of Portsmouth means. There are of course areas that should be continuously worked on and developed or enhanced but overall the experience that Portsmouth offers is one that elevates the individual and helps them to achieve a sense of personal success and pride.

Credit Image: Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash 

Guest Blogger: Rugaiya Ally with Tom Langston – Employability: Perceptions of the university in supporting student careers

Introduction

This is part three in a series of four blog posts conceived by Tom Langston and Rugaiya Ally as part of Rugaiya’s work placement within DCQE’s Academic Development and Technology Enhanced Learning teams. 

Tom and Rugaiya wanted to explore students’ feelings about higher education and their expectations about life at university, and therefore devised a set of questions to ask students about their experiences. Rugaiya then interviewed 14 fellow students from across the university faculties (with a predominant number studying in the Science and Business faculties) with most studying at Level 5. This series of posts constitutes a condensed summary of the thoughts and opinions of those 14 students.

In part one we investigated what areas of their course students found to be a strength and where they struggled with the progression through their course. In part two we explored student expectations of their courses and modules and what could be changed and what should continue. Here in part three, we examine students’ attitudes to their future careers, and how their taught modules helped them develop the life and employability skills needed to achieve their goals. Finally, in part 4, we will look at attitudes to university life in general. 

Employability 

The first question I asked was: How do you feel what you have learned on your course has helped you develop your career?

Career (0.31)

Career Confidence (0.25)

One student focused on how learning on their course helped in finding passion, even if they are still uncertain of which careers to go into:   

It has helped a lot, even though I’m not yet sure what I want to do. I know that I like psychology and I like being able to link it to different parts, e.g. art/design/business.”

Another student found that their continued desire for the course has shaped how they approach the career that they want, and it helped develop useful relevant skills:

The fact that it has been a course I have always wanted to study and practice, and so it improved my physical and mental skills in the field.”

Some students developed extra skills and knowledge of their future careers:                    

What I have learned has helped me develop my career in a significant way, most especially in business management and when it comes to decision making.”

Similarly, a Pharmacy student explained how their course helped them to interpret data and practical applications for the components that make up medicine: 

“The information about drugs has helped me understand and interpret the excipients in it a lot.” 

Many students develop their passion over the duration of their course, and what they expect for their career can evolve and change over time:

“The different modules I have undertaken exposed me to different kinds of knowledge and career paths. In my Sixth Form, I wouldn’t have considered taxation as a career path but after my second year I realised that I do have a passion for the module and, luckily, I do understand it well.”

The next question I posed was: How has your university experience in general helped you to progress into a career?

Career Group (0.29)

One student commented on how helpful the Careers and Employability team are in guiding students with extra information about the job market: “The placement team significantly helped me progress my career because of the guidance they were always ready to offer. They not only helped me with constructing a CV but the different techniques required to progress.

However, while some found their placement to be a success, others had a slightly more challenging experience.

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Another student mentioned how good and unique the University’s learning environment is in providing learning and teaching services with cutting-edge resources: “The University of Portsmouth provides hands-on simulation sessions, lab classes, dispensing sessions, and placement, which has helped me gain practical skills. As an international student, I appreciate that a lot, since in my country, there’s a lack of that.

One student is now sure of what career path to follow, and this is possible due to the help of personal tutors and course lecturers: “During the first year, I was quite unsure what to do but now I have a bit of a clearer idea on what I want to do once I graduate. Talking with my tutor and lecturers when I was in my second year has helped me decide as well.” 

Another student commented on the University’s alumni body, which is very helpful as you get support and guidance from people who are already in relevant careers or who have much relevant experience:

“The university has an alumni body that is accessible to all graduates for career advice, where I am given guidance on how to embark on my career.”

“It has opened a lot of opportunities I didn’t think I had.”

The third question I asked was: Did this course help you develop professional skills (e.g. written or oral communication, computer literacy, teamwork)?

Professional Skills (1.13)

Professional Learning (0.27)

Some students found the learning in their courses helped them develop important life skills, such as writing and communication skills: 

Yes, the course helped my writing skills, because it is part of the course itself, to be able to express legal concerns and other different actions.”

“DLLP, particularly presentations, have helped me improve my communication and problem-solving skills, and therefore, I’m looking forward to improving more as I progress into the course. Meetings with personal tutors is also a factor which has improved my communication as well as writing lab reports, which have improved my writing skills.” 

One student pointed out how course group work helped them gain useful employability skills, such as team-working skills: “3 out of 6 of the total modules we did in the second year required us, the students, to carry out a presentation as a group. This helped me with my team-working skills and intellectual skills. This is because some of the presentations required us to present them to the class face-to-face while others required a lot of research in order to come up with a well-detailed business plan”.

Group Support (0.41)

The goal of a university is to provide a student with opportunities to progress both educationally and personally. These experiences will be the building blocks for their careers and it is often not just the taught content but the wide variety of skills that are developed over their entire university life that help provide a strong foundation for employability after graduation. As demonstrated through the feedback of the students interviewed, employability should not just be something undertaken in the final year, but a culmination of all the time spent at university.

Credit Image: Photo by Luis Melendez on Unsplash 

Guest Blogger: Rugaiya Ally with Tom Langston – Student Expectations

Introduction

This is part two in a series of four blog posts conceived by Tom Langston and Rugaiya Ally as part of Rugaiya’s work placement within DCQE’s Academic Development and Technology Enhanced Learning teams. 

Tom and Rugaiya wanted to explore students’ feelings about higher education and their expectations about life at university, and therefore devised a set of questions to ask students about their experiences. Rugaiya then interviewed 14 fellow students from across the university faculties (with a predominant number studying in the Science and Business faculties) with most studying at Level 5. This series of posts constitutes a condensed summary of the thoughts and opinions of those 14 students.

In part one we investigated what areas of their course students found to be a strength and where they struggled with the progression through their course. Here in part two, we explore the student expectations of their modules and courses. It will look at what made the module interesting, what should academics continue to do for their students and what areas should be changed or stopped. (Note that some quotes have been slightly edited to anonymise the academics who are referred to.) In part three we examine the students attitudes towards their employability skills. Finally, in part four, we look at university life in general. 

What makes a module/course interesting 

The first question I asked was:

What do you think the instructor/lecturer did the best and made the module/course interesting and enjoyable? 

One response highlighted the positive aspects when the lecturers use their own reflection and life experience to highlight the content and teaching material:  

“Some did well in making us have a clear understanding of their modules by always providing enough examples and scenarios to understand firmly; however, with other lecturers, the reverse was the case”

Another student appreciated the group discussions organised by the lecturers: 

Group discussions and talks through forums made the course enjoyable” 

Groupwork (0.47)

Working in the Field (0.44)

When lecturers put in what the students considered to be “extra work and enthusiasm” learning was easier and study became a positive experience both inside and outside of the classroom.

Within the Faculty of Science and Health, the students reflected that:

Lecturers within Pathological Science 2 made haematology interesting for me and the way they delivered their lectures online and in-person with interactive sessions with quizzes and case studies. Meanwhile, others made learning microbiology much easier with small quizzes they would put at the end of the video. It helped me with retaining what they taught during the lectures much faster”.

“The lectures of some lecturers … were really interesting since they explained well and answered our questions accordingly. Also, the presence of dispensing and lab sessions, as well as a practical simulation session enabled us to gain hands-on practical skills and knowledge and was very enjoyable”.

Within the Faculty of Business and Law, students had an equally positive experience when scenarios and interactive demonstrations were used to provide context for the theoretical teaching:

“The second term of my second year, we did a module called Critical Issues. The module coordinator that taught us managed to make the lessons interesting by letting the students discuss the notes in class in a creative and memorable way. For example, in order to learn more about inflation, she printed out fake money whereby we the students got to understand that having more money doesn’t solve the problem”

My next question expanded on the area of the enthusiasm of the lecturers that were teaching the course. Responses were about how the lecturers made the classes more engaging as we all know how hard learning can be sometimes. 

“Instructors were completely immersed in this course and made sure every student understood everything that was taught and were quite enthusiastic about the course, which gave it a lively feeling.

“Yes. Some of them were really keen to deliver the lectures and were always willing to answer the questions whenever I emailed them”. 

“Yes, some of my lecturers were good at explaining, ‘lecturer 1 for instance’ who does so in a way that everyone can understand.” 

One student felt there was a split between how the lecturers delivered their materials:

“The lecturers mentioned in the previous question above were enthusiastic while others… made it seem like they weren’t. They couldn’t explain or answer our questions well and it seemed like all they were doing was just reading off the PowerPoints.” 

Online Enthusiasm (2.10)

Good Module (0.15)

What lecturers should continue to do 

It is important to consider the good practice of academics within the University so I asked:

What do you think lecturers should continue doing? 

One student found the revision sessions conducted by lecturers really helpful:

They should continue to have more revision time. For example, I managed to uplift my grade in taxation during the speculated revision time we were given by the lecture. Since the lecturer wouldn’t be teaching, they will have enough to explain concepts in the pace more acceptable to the student”.

Quiz Positive (0.34)

Another student liked the drop-in sessions and found them to be helpful since the lecturers mainly supported students with the specific academic problems they are facing:

“Helping students’ drop-in sessions on face-to-face classes should definitely continue”.

Another student felt that providing context to their learning really beneficial:

They should continue explanations with real-life scenarios.

One student found the material uploaded on Moodle useful as it provided guidance and supported preparation ahead of the lectures:

They should continue to give more help and guidance to everyone through platforms like Moodle, continuing to record their lectures and giving relevant materials for extra reading lists”

Moodle can be seen as a positive force for many students, although having a variety of external tools can also be overwhelming. Where academics feel they are providing choices or alternatives for engagement, they may be increasing a barrier to the learning experience.

Moodle Positive (0.51)

What lecturers should stop doing

Finally, what students found to be less positive is an important part of the reflective process. I asked:

What do you think the lecturers should stop doing?”

Stop Lectures (0.36)

Lecturers should stop simply reading the words on a slide. Instead, they need to provide context to their content and offer explanations of the information being presented:

Some lecturers should stop merely browsing through the topical notes and then head straight to the questions but instead they should explain to the students what exactly is being required and the deeper meaning to the notes given”.

Another student replied:

“[Stop] holding revision classes very close to exam time and teaching contents 2 weeks before the exams”.

This answer provides insight into the notion of tight deadlines and issues of workload. 

One student commented on how repeating exams (or past papers) is just testing their memories rather than their understanding of the concepts:

Some exams were a complete copy of the past papers. I believe this forces students to just memorise answers from past mock papers instead of understanding more from textbooks. Exams should have past questions I agree; however, the paper should not be a complete copy of a past paper and rather should have different questions from different papers/books”. 

With the university acutely aware of issues with awarding gaps, this area was important to students too. 

Research suggests that lecturers are impacted by implicit bias and this can impact all areas of teaching, learning, interaction and marking. One student highlighted what they felt was evidence of an implicit racial bias, suggesting that all black students in their class were given the same mark in the assessment of 50/100.

Conclusion

Every student experiences university life differently, with some seeing a wider range of problems than others. As this blog highlights, there are areas that students feel academics can improve on but other areas that demonstrate a strong and positive experience in learning.

Credit Image: Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash 

Guest Blogger: Rugaiya Ally with Tom Langston – Student Opinion of the University

Introduction:

This is part one in a series of four blog posts conceived by Tom Langston and Rugaiya Ally as part of Rugaiya’s work placement within DCQE’s Academic Development and Technology Enhanced Learning teams. 

Tom and Rugaiya wanted to explore students’ feelings about higher education and their expectations about life at university, and therefore devised a set of questions to ask students about their experiences. Rugaiya then interviewed 14 fellow students from across the university faculties (with a predominant number studying in the Science and Business faculties) with most studying at Level 5. This series of posts constitutes a condensed summary of the thoughts and opinions of those 14 students.

Here, in part one, we investigate what areas of their course students find to be a strength and where they struggle with the progression through their course. In part two we explore student expectations prior to coming to university. In part three we examine students’ attitudes toward their future careers. Finally, in part 4, we look at university life in general. 

Strengths and weaknesses of the course

Strengths

I asked: “What are the major strengths of this course”.

The general feeling from most students was extremely positive. One response was: “Being in the second year made me realise how much this course was not only theoretical based. This is because of the placement team that is always there to offer its help. Even though I did not manage to land a placement, the placement team helped me learn more about my future career.”

Another student mentioned that providing a safe space to learn is key: “To be able to practice in a simulated environment and the availability of many placement opportunities for gaining practical knowledge and skills.” 

A couple of students found positives in the content but also found that the course developed their wider skill sets: “The major strength of this course will be that it covers a lot of areas regarding management and business. It also investigates different perspectives of decision making.”

In the next 30-second clip of audio, a student mentioned that developing their skills, both subject-specific, as well as more general, transferable skills, was important to the course.   Strengths (0:29)

For some students, their subject interest was enhanced when they could see instant real-world implications: “Being able to learn about the patterns people have and apply that to real life immediately … I like how psychology allows me to explore different fields and learn about different ways of associating those fields, for example, perfumery and psychology: psychology helps us understand the emotions perfumes trigger and the moods each perfume may create on different people.”

For other students, the opportunity to engage with the subject was a key advantage: “It gives you the ability to relate to all global political and diplomatic affairs.”

An obvious strength is the role the lecturer plays in engaging the students: “The lecturers are really good and some of them make the lectures more enjoyable to listen to and pay attention to.”

Weaknesses

The next question related to the potential negatives of their experiences. Asking “What were the major weaknesses with your course?”

Several students noted that they identified the weaker areas of their course to be when they struggled with specific skills or places where they might need help and support. For example: The weakest aspect of this course will be the financial area, mostly because the calculations are quite different.

The idea that students are required to have a certain level of self-efficacy is important, but not to the detriment of well-being: “… it is the student’s responsibility to keep track of their studies, but the university needs to also follow up on students’ performance – especially those that wouldn’t normally do well.”

It should also not be taken as a given that a lecture or seminar space provides complete clarity of the subject: “Having a lecturer who lacks the ability to explain his module explicitly in lectures.

A common problem raised by students (as heard in the next 45-second audio clip) relates to the structure of not just one module, but multiple modules, and how their assessments are often grouped together. This can increase the pressure of a student’s workload. Weaknesses (0:45)

Some students found that Covid led to difficulties (as everyone expected). The transition to online working, however, raised problems not only with the loss of face-to-face interactions but, more importantly for the future of the blended and connected experience, how online activities were structured into the learning process. The following 27-second clip highlights the issue that students faced.  Weakness (0:27)

Conclusion

As demonstrated above, there were many positives to a student’s experience at the University. In particular, students liked to see that they were learning more than just content but how the overall experience of university life was developing them personally. Despite the positives, however, the students identified areas for improvement, particularly in how courses and modules are designed and structured to create a manageable and achievable workload. Students wanted to achieve good grades and have a great social experience at university; inevitably, Covid impacted this.

Credit Image: Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

Guest Blogger: Co-Creating Expectations with Vevox

Introduction by Tom:

I was asked by Vevox (a company we work closely with that facilitates audience response) to run the first session in their autumn webinar series. I was happy to do this and you can watch the recording of the session on Youtube.

After the session, Joe from Vevox was asked if I would mind someone writing a blog relating to the session. I was flattered and said of course. Dr Rachel Chan from St Mary’s University in Twickenham wrote her blog and shared it with me and I asked her if we could re-publish it here on TelTales. She was happy to let us use the blog…so this blog is a short reflection from Rachel after attending my webinar on “Co-Creating Expectations with Vevox”.

Co-creation Blog

St Mar's logoMy name is Rachel Chan, I am a Senior Lecturer – Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist teaching on the BSc in Physiotherapy at St Mary’s University in Twickenham. Throughout my academic career, I have always been hugely committed to Teaching and Learning. I recently listened to a talk by Tom Langston from the University of Portsmouth about co-creation and thought it might be valuable to write a short blog to share some of his key messages.

Tom began by asking us a question ‘What is co-creation?’ We were all on the right track, people suggested things like ‘student partnership,’ ‘collaboration’ and ‘support.’ Bovill and colleagues(2016) define it as ‘…when staff and students work collaboratively with one another to create components of curricula and /or pedagogical approaches.’ Great, so, Where does it work? Tom showed us that co-creation can work in many areas of pedagogy including setting expectations, assessment criteria, curriculum content and assessment design. I was already sold by this point but there are many, less obvious benefits, to adopting co-creation in your pedagogical practice.

  1.  It enables you to better meet expectations (the students’ expectations of you, your expectations of the student and more subtly but equally important, the students’ expectations of each other). An important tip Tom shared was setting these expectations as early as possible so that everyone knows the playing field from day 1.
  2. It facilitates a dynamic approach to your teaching practice, encouraging you to reflect on what you do and allowing you to evolve as an educator. CPD in action!
  3. It gives the students’ a voice – of course, it is impossible to accommodate all of their suggestions, no one is suggesting that you do. Phew! But listening to students, and showing them that you will try to accommodate some of them, opens the channels of communication – they know that you care and that you have heard them. This is SO important.

The idea of co-creation may make some educators feel anxious and, in some areas, it will be easier to implement than others (assessment design may be more challenging for example) but you can and should start small. Bovill and Bulley have created a ladder that models co-creation, it shows dictated curriculum at the bottom and an anarchic level of students in control at the top (ttps://eprints.gla.ac.uk/57709/1/57709.pdf). Tom wasn’t suggesting you aim too high but believes adopting some co-creation in your practice will have huge benefits for all.

How to adopt this principle of co-creation? There are many ways in which you can successfully include co-creation in your teaching such as using an EVS to make quizzes or simply creating a collaboration space to stimulate discussions with students.

My take-home message…Step 1. always try to engage your students in your teaching, and perhaps more importantly…Step 2. respond to that engagement. Thanks, Tom, I am inspired!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about co-creation, please contact Tom at:  tom.langston@port.ac.uk

Using video (Panopto) feedback to encourage student engagement with assessment

This blog is written by Tom Langston, Digital Learning and Teaching specialist and Dr Jo Brindley who is the Course Leader for the Academic Professional Apprenticeship (APA). The APA is a course for new career academics within the University and provides them with ideas, support and guidance on developing their teaching skills. The course is constantly evolving in how it is delivered as it was designed to highlight best practices and current ideas within Higher Education. The course, as you will see, decided to innovate and deliver feedback using Panopto. Providing the opportunity for academics (as students) to experience a range of feedback types and engage with non-traditional forms of feedback on assessment. 

Tom: 

While the University has always had the option of recording videos, it wasn’t until Panopto, and the integration within Moodle, that I had considered using video as a tool for feedback. That’s not to say others hadn’t done it. I know people like Philip Brabazon have been doing audio feedback (not video I know) which has received positive feedback.

So with that being said, I recently graduated the first cohort for the Academic Professional Apprenticeship and have since started working closely with the course team. I was asked to help mark a few assignments and before I undertook this I asked if I could do the feedback as a video. Jo was keen to see how this would go and decided to do her feedback in the same way (I think she just needed an excuse and possibly a safety net to do it).  

We planned how we would approach the feedback and decided that Panopto would give us the easiest way to implement it. It allowed us to have our face on a screen, allowing us to demonstrate that we might have some points that need investigation but in a non-confrontational and open way. The ability to record a screen with the assignment and the marking criteria displayed at the same time helped us show how we mapped our thoughts and marking to the submission. 

This was my first experience as a marker which might mean this is a little unrepresentative. Having never marked scripts in the traditional way (either pen and paper or on-screen) giving video feedback felt a more comfortable way to mark as I knew what I was saying would not be misinterpreted. Now the argument here might be that it is a “quick” option, however, being new to marking I actually did both. Firstly, I worked through the submissions and wrote my feedback about each section down, and then secondly marked it again but on camera, and read back what I had noted the first time I read it. 

When we were devising this marking process, we made the conscious decision to not worry about being “perfect” and going back to rerecord mistakes. We wanted it to be as conversational as possible so it felt natural and genuine. Not everyone is going to want to be on camera, but the same can be achieved from the audio feedback I mentioned earlier. 

The other nice feature of Panopto is the tracking ability of views. It is possible to see how much of a video someone has watched and how long they spent reviewing the material. For me, the eye-opening part was that many of the submissions I marked, the student watched the first few minutes of the introduction and then skipped through the bulk of the video until they got to the feedback for the final higher weighted part of the submission, which was a literature review, similar to that written in a journal article. They skipped much of the feedback surrounding the reflective elements from the portfolio they had created as part of the submission, which I found interesting as these were the areas that I felt most people needed more work on, compared to the final section which was more similar to research work they may have previously undertaken.

With this in mind, I would still provide the detailed feedback that I did as I only marked a few submissions and not every student will approach their feedback in the same way. It is something though that I will review each time as it would be an element that I would discuss at the start of the assessment process with the students to find what they might value. If they just want a grade for certain sections or if they want a detailed breakdown across the whole assignment. These conversations would be a key part in helping students to engage as if they are asking for a certain level of feedback they will hopefully then investigate each area accordingly. 

Jo:

The impact of the pandemic has been a catalyst to try out new ways of working and I was excited by the suggestion from Tom that we try out using a screencast as a way of providing more personalised feedback as part of the assessment process. 

I have, historically, used audio feedback and I know that this was always positively received by learners, so the opportunity to use Panopto was one I was keen to experiment with. For me, one of the benefits was that the screencast enabled four views; the assessment artefact itself, the marking criteria, the marker and the associated captions. This felt like a really robust way of delivering feedback as it was easy to link the marking criteria with the submitted assessment on screen, which assisted the learners to join the dots up regarding the award of marks. 

As Tom has said, we took a conversational approach to the feedback, but this didn’t make the feedback provision a swift process as planning/note-taking was also required. I think this was useful to Tom as it was his first time marking, when we met for calibration following marking the same submissions at the start of the process, these notes assisted with our conversation.  As I progressed through the bulk of the marking I started to utilise the pause facility, which I think made the process quicker (fewer notes to capture) and this didn’t seem to affect the overall quality of engagement with the feedback. 

I was pleased with the approach and quality of feedback provided. There was definitely more scope to work on feed-forward and we will be providing feedback in this way during the next assessment diet.  Comments from the External Examiner around this approach were very positive. 

Credit Image: Photo by Przemyslaw Marczynski on Unsplash 

Explore – A guide for academic staff

Considering ways to enhance a blended and connected learning experience? Looking for a resource that can provide the basic information on digital tools at UoP? Need help and support with content capture but not sure which tool is fit for purpose? Maybe Explore can help!

What’s Explore?

In collaboration with Professor Ale Armellini, the TEL Team have designed and developed a resource called Explore – A guide for academic staff. We hope it will help provide answers to questions surrounding tool selection in blended and connected learning and teaching.

In the ever-changing world of technology, it can be difficult to stay up to date with the digital tools being used within the University, and the range of tools can often appear overwhelming. For any given teaching situation, knowing which tool will provide the best solution for you and your students is a challenge. For support staff, understanding the purpose behind a given technology is key in aiding learning and teaching. Explore can help you choose the right tool for the job; if you need training on the tool, Explore points to development opportunities.  

Pedagogy and technology go hand-in-hand and when a mutual understanding is achieved great things happen.

 

‘Pedagogy is the driver. Technology is the accelerator’ Michael Fullan

Learning types

Explore uses Diana Laurilliard’s 6 learning types and Assessment to categorise the various tools and technologies supported by UoP. Most tools can support activities within any learning type. What determines the choice of tool is pedagogic purpose in each context. Explore is a framework to guide decision making and help innovation within learning and teaching.

  • AcquisitionLearning through acquisition is what learners do when they listen to a lecture or podcast, read from books or websites, and watch demos or videos.
  • Collaboration – Learning through collaboration embraces mainly discussion, practice, and production. Learners take part in the process of knowledge building itself through participation.
  • Discussion – Learning through discussion requires learners to articulate their ideas and questions, and to challenge and respond to the ideas and questions from teachers, and/or from peers.
  • Investigation – Learning through investigation guides learners to explore, compare and critique the texts, documents and resources that reflect the concepts and ideas being taught.
  • Practice – Learning through practice enables learners to adapt their actions to the task goal, and use the feedback to improve their next action. Feedback may come from self-reflection, from peers, from teachers, or from the activity itself.
  • Production – Learning through production involves motivating learners to consolidate what they have learned by articulating their current conceptual understanding in the form of an artefact, product, display or another deliverable.
  • Assessment – Learning through assessment is the way the teacher can gauge the knowledge of the learners, formatively or summatively, and give feedback designed to improve the learners’ performance.

Explore - A guide for academic staff

Under each learning type on Explore, we have included some examples of digital tools that are currently in use at UoP and that could be used to achieve certain learning outcomes. For instance, if you are thinking about acquisition-type activities in your teaching you could use Panopto to create videos for your students. By clicking on each tool in Explore, you will find information about the tool itself; how to access it; key features; top tips by current users; useful links to guidance and training; media such as videos; quotes about the tool from UoP and other staff; and examples of other learning types in which the tool could be used.

Feedback 

We asked a range of academics and Online Course Developers to ‘test drive’ Explore within their roles. The feedback we received has helped us to further develop the resource.

‘’Due to delivering a blended / mixed-delivery programme, this tool will spark ideas for development and innovation (it has done so already).’’

 

‘’Excellent. I've wanted a one stop place for this kind of thing since last Spring. I particularly like the way it is so condensed, but enables the user to drill down…’’

 

‘’It's something I will refer my academic colleagues to as I think it's an excellent demonstration of the number of the resources available to them so they can review and consider the resources that are most appropriate for them, their learning materials and their students.’’

To conclude

We hope both academic and academic support staff will find Explore beneficial in shaping their decisions regarding learning and teaching over the coming months. If you have any feedback then please contact us at:  ale.armellini@port.ac.uk  tom.langston@port.ac.uk or marie.kendall-waters@port.ac.uk

If you are using any of the tools from Explore in an innovative way, and would be willing to share your experience, then please let us know – we can include this as we continue to develop the resource.

Explore can be accessed directly via explore.port.ac.uk or within the Learning and Teaching Innovation site.

Thank you to everyone who has provided content and feedback – we hope you enjoy using Explore!

 

Similarity scoring is a secondary consideration for online assessment…

Similarity scoring should be a secondary consideration for online assessment. Much more important factors, from my point of view, are ease of marking for academics; access to quality feedback for students; and innovative authentic assessment workflows.

Turnitin are close to monopolising the market on similarity scoring of student papers but many assessment platforms already use Turnitin and Urkund as plugin services to provide similarity scoring.

Where should we be focusing our effort at UoP?

As an institution one of our strengths lies in quiz/question-based assessments. This is particularly the case in the Science and Technology faculties. We have a mature sophisticated platform in Moodle to deliver these types of assessments and a deep level of staff expertise across the organisation, which has developed further through-out the pandemic.

The risk factors for UoP include a need to increase capacity for online exams (or diversify some of our assessment types onto an external platform at peak periods) and the ability to be able to innovate in terms of essay/file-based assessments.

From what I can see, Turntin has stagnated in terms of assessment innovations in recent years and have not yet improved service reliability at key assessment periods by migrating their platforms to a service like AWS. This has been promised repeatedly but not delivered on as yet.

This is potentially a reason why we saw growth in Moodle assignment and quiz usage during the pandemic rather than a big increase in Turnitin usage (trust in the reliability of the service and flexibility of the functionality).

So where could we focus our effort to improve the assessment tools for educators and students to gain the most benefits?

Innovative assessment workflows

Posing a long-form question to a student and easily marking the finished product should be a simple process – and it is on platforms such as Turnitin. However, we are increasingly adapting our assessments to be more authentic: assessments that more closely match how students will operate in the workplace. This often requires more sophisticated workflows and mechanisms, which should still be straightforward for academics to engage with and make sense of if they are to be successful. 

Traditional paper-based exams (potentially bring your own device)

During the pandemic staff were forced to transition away from paper-based exams. Many exams were instead delivered as coursework or window assignments (e.g. a 2hr assignment within a 24hr window) or as question-based quiz exams. When exam halls are available again staff may revert back to previous paper-based solutions. After all, we know how these work and paper doesn’t need charging or a stable wifi connection. However, we can harness this forward momentum with a platform dedicated to supporting timed essay assignments on students’ own devices or University machines. Several platforms offer functionality for students to download assignments at the start of an exam with no need to have an internet connection until it’s time to submit at the end. This could represent a robust, safe exam experience that more closely matches how students study today. Who handwrites for three hours any more? I’d be willing to bet most students don’t.

There are challenges with BYOD (bring your own device) particularly around charging and ensuring student machines are reliable. Many of these challenges can be solved with a small stock of fully charged devices, which can be swapped out to students when needed. Chromebooks are ideal online exam devices for this very reason, due to their long battery life and simple configuration. 

Assessment feedback

Workflows such as “feedback before grades” can help students better engage with their feedback, but better access to feedback for students in a variety of places is also key.

Services that offer a holistic view of assessment feedback, or the ability to extract these comments via API so we can build our own views, are increasingly valuable. This functionality will enable key staff such as personal tutors or learning support tutors to view student feedback as a whole (rather than in silos) to spot key areas to help students improve their academic work.

To round out where I started with this post, providing similarity checking is an important part of modern assessment – but it is a problem that has already been solved, multiple times.

If we make assessment more authentic, more flexible and more collaborative there will be less need for plagiarism detection because students will be demonstrating more of the attributes we want them to leave University with. I accept this is perhaps an overly idealistic viewpoint, as there are a lot of students to assess each year, but this is more reason to explore flexible assessment solutions that can make the lives of academics and students a bit easier.

Guest Bloggers: Julian Ingles & Stuart Sims – RISE Online Student Journal

We’re pleased to announce the launch of RISE, a new online journal to showcase students’ work. RISE has been developed as a platform for publishing and sharing the exciting work of our students, from all disciplines, with a wider audience. 

Across the University, our students are engaged in exciting and innovative work, which ranges from disciplinary research as part of their course to their own artistic and creative endeavours. Our editorial team is keen to showcase these efforts (their work?). Particularly during the pandemic, when opportunities for students to feel as if they belong to a learning community might be few and far between, RISE provides a platform for sharing and engaging with others.

There are many benefits for students in getting their work published. Not least of which is to have your achievements celebrated in a public forum. RISE is designed to showcase what our students are doing so that it goes beyond the world of assessment and is appreciated by everyone at the University. 

While we’re open to a range of different media and formats for publication, in terms of research, there is an imperative to disseminate original work: 

“Every university graduate should understand that no idea is fully formed until it can be communicated and that the organisation required for writing and speaking is part of the thought process that enables one to understand material fully. Dissemination of results is an essential and integral part of the research process.” (Boyer Commission, 1998:24 in Walkington, 2015)

Most students’ research at the taught level ends in assessment; students are therefore missing out on a key aspect of developing as a researcher. This is an opportunity for students to experience disseminating their work, exposing them to the processes of academic publication as well as the wider attention and scrutiny that this brings. At the very least, it is an interesting line on the CV for anyone to say they were published in the University journal!

Four boxes setting out the ways taking part in the RISE Journal offers opportunities. The under them a paragraph showing how it meets the Portsmouth Hallmarks

Our website gives further guidance on how and what students can submit. If you teach undergraduate or taught postgraduate students, please share this with them. If you are aware of particular students who have done an interesting piece of original work, please recommend they publish with us or contact the RISE team to discuss – we’d love to hear about it. We are very open to creative, interactive and original pieces as well as written articles.

The current deadline for submissions is May 14th, 2021 at 5 pm. Please send any queries to risejournal@port.ac.uk.

A different way of welcoming students

For both staff and students, the start of a new academic year is, even in normal times, an exciting (and sometimes stressful) occasion. With this year being far from normal, departments are having to adapt to a more virtual environment and for some degree apprenticeship courses, this is going to mean welcoming new students online. On top of the barrage of information all new students have to deal with, our apprentices have additional requirements to meet such as creating an ePortfolio. Indeed, degree apprenticeship applicants to the School of Civil Engineering and Surveying had an online welcome to the department in mid-August while applicants to Business and Law Leadership and Management and Project Management were also welcomed online rather than face to face.

Welcoming and inducting new students is an essential part of starting out on a new educational adventure and moving online does not have to mean losing out completely on the experience of face to face sessions. Applicants to our surveying degree apprenticeship programme were able to ‘meet’ the staff long before they set a foot on campus through welcome videos hosted on a Google site.

Screenshot of the Google Site containing the Welcome page for the School of Civil Engineering & Surveying

Screenshot from the SCES pre-applicant site.

The SCES pre-applicant site provided a user-friendly platform allowing the department to offer prospective apprentices with a wealth of information, helping to create an early connection with the University. Through this site, the pre-applicants could be made aware not just of the demands of the surveying course but also the requirements of the apprenticeship aspects of the course such as the need to maintain a log of their off the job training.

In the words of Module Coordinator Tom Woodbury,
“Due to the restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 crisis, our Applicant Open Day moved to an online-only format. Working with TECH OCD, we developed the content for the session using a Google Plus site which meant that as well as having the content organised for the day, applicants that could not attend and those wanting to revisit the content were able to access at their convenience. In the end, this method worked out really well, and seemed very well-received by attendees.”

The sites helped prepare students for some of the skills that they will need to help complete their course successfully, for example, what IT skills will be required and offered early access to study support information and library facilities.

This model was also used by the faculty of Business and Law for their Chartered Manager DA, Project Management DA and their MBA DA course. The ease with which Google sites can be used to create web pages also meant the sites could be put together and published relatively quickly. However, the structure that Google sites forces on the user can be a little frustrating at times, but this can be overcome with some bespoke HTML.

Screen shot of one of the pages on the Google Site it's titled: IT Skills Required

For courses starting before the official October re-opening of the University, the sites were an important way to communicate with students. The sites were not made public and anyone accessing the site needed the actual link that was sent out to the prospective students. Google Analytics was used to monitor the level of access and early data indicated many applicants were using the sites. With Google sites already being used extensively by Business and Law degree apprentices for their ePortfolios, using them as a way of welcoming new apprentices in these unusual times seemed a logical and workable solution but it will be interesting to collect feedback from the students.

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

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