Month: January 2018

A hand with a mobile in it and part of a keyboard on a laptop

Guest Blogger: Ankur Shah – How to engage students with interactive presentations

January 29, 2018 / Ankur Shah / 0 Comments

Ankur Shah
Technical Manager – Faculty of Business and Law (BAL), UoP

Tech vs Powerpoint

Over the years within Higher Education we have seen many applications and tools introduced that have had an impact on how students engage in a seminar or a lecture session. For academics every year this is a new challenge, not only to keep the content of teaching fresh, but also to try to make it interactive in way that will engage more students.

Now, any academic could argue that the best way to deliver a session is just to have a set of Powerpoint slides projected in the lecture or seminar room, where the students would also have a copy of the same in the form of printed material to make any necessary notes. We could argue that in the 21st century and in an age where digital learning is a key to gauge a student’s understanding on the topic taught, it has kind of become necessary to make presentations more interactive using a range of tools to make that change easy for academics.

How can an academic go about this?

There are many tools that can enable an academic to make their presentations more interactive with minimal effort To list a few:

Prezi – this allows you to add motion, zoom and also gives an option to spatial relationships, for this you have to design a presentation within this tool
NearPod – this allows you to add quizzes, flashcards, videos, polls etc to your existing Powerpoint slides – the University has a license for this tool
Studio 360 within the Articulate suite – this is a tool that allows a user to design interactive presentations in a way where students cannot proceed to the next section without meeting the requirements set and also gives the user an option to c import into Moodle

With the changing technology, the above tools are not set in stone, but are what I would recommend to start with when using these advanced tools. But for this blog I will be looking at Nearpod, as that is something I worked on with an academic to get their presentation slides more interactive.

Why Nearpod?

I recently had an academic wanting to ‘up’ the way in which he delivers his presentations so that his students are more engaged in the session – as sometimes delivering a session on rather dry topics can be a bit boring, but just adding an interactive element can liven things up.

So, as the academic wanted to use a tool as simple as possible and in a short space of time, I suggested using Nearpod.The good part of Nearpod is you don’t have to work on multiple presentations, instead you can just upload your Powerpoint slides to Nearpod and then within an app or web version you can add different elements to your slides.

The other good part of Nearpod is that the instructor will have full control over their slides and students can only begin the session if they are given the access code. This also allows the instructor to add if needed, polls or quizzes in-between the sessions to test how students are engaging with it.

Nearpod also gives the option to instructors for making their Powerpoint presentations available with the interactivity with the student-paced option. With this option instructors can just give the code to the students for their slides and then students can go through these according to their requirements and also use it for revision purposes.

The session was conducted with around 160 students in a lecture theatre where there were no problems – all the students logged-in fine and also the session had more engagement compared to the previous week. Some students even asked to have more sessions like this as it was helping them understand the concept or topic very well.

Other options that Nearpod offers are:

Virtual Reality – you can have an image and the students can interact with the image in a Virtual mode, within the app
Simulation activity
Drawing questions – this allows students to draw using the tools available in Nearpod
Open Ended questions
Polls and many more

Finally, to wrap this post I am not suggesting that Nearpod is the only tool that can help with student engagement or make your slides interactive, but it is a tool which is easy to use compared to others already available in the University, and is certainly the one which works on all smart devices. Along with that it also offers various different things you can add to your existing Powerpoint slides and also it allows you to track your student progress. I would like to say anyone who is interested in knowing more about this tool, or any other tool, to please email pbs-tsu@port.ac.uk and we will be happy to help you with your request.

Image credits: Photo by Lilly Rum on Unsplash

Hands holding some paperwork whilst the other hand touches a mobile phone

BOS online research tool (available to all staff and students) | an overview

January 22, 2018 / Melita Sidiropoulou / 0 Comments

For its student and other surveys, the University of Portsmouth (UoP) uses a variety of tools and research platforms including Bristol Online Surveys (BOS). In addition to these, more options are being investigated for future use across the university, such as the Qualtrics research platform – currently already used by some departments, e.g., the Department of Psychology. This article will focus on BOS, since it is already used by the university and it gives open access to all UoP staff and students for the time being.

The UoP holds a licence which allows its users to create unlimited numbers of surveys for unlimited respondents. BOS is an online survey tool designed for academic research, education, and public sector organisations. It is an easy-to-use tool for creating online surveys. Run by JISC, BOS is used by over 300 different organisations in the UK and internationally. BOS has the ability for multiple organisations to run the same survey simultaneously and form ‘Benchmarking Groups’ to get answers to common questions or issues (and common surveys). The UoP runs the following national surveys using BOS: the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES); the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES); the JISC Digital Tracker; and the UK Engagement Survey.

BOS has a very comprehensive knowledge base at: www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/help-support/. A brief summary of the main survey functions as described on the BOS website will be described later (below), with most of the text taken from the aforementioned website. The three main BOS functions are:

Distributing a survey
Analysing the survey data
Creating a new survey

Creating and designing a new survey

There are three ways to create a new survey:

Create a new survey from scratch.
Create a new survey by copying an existing survey.
Create a new survey by importing a survey structure.

Creating a new survey from scratch

To create your new survey:

Click + Create new at the top left of the Dashboard.
Enter a name for your new survey (you can change it later).
Click Create survey.

This will take you straight to the Survey Builder where you can start adding pages to your survey.

2. Creating a new survey by copying an existing survey

To copy a survey:

On your Dashboard , find the survey that you want to copy.
Click on the Copy survey icon. This is found at the far right of the Dashboard.
Enter a new survey name (you can change it later).
Click Copy survey.

The new draft survey will appear at the top of your survey list (make sure that you have selected the DRAFT tick box at the top right of the Dashboard ).

To share your survey with another user:

Check that the person that you want to share the survey with has an active BOS user account.
- You can only share a survey with another BOS user. If the person you want to share the survey with does not have a BOS user account, they will need to request one from the BOS account administrator at their institution.
On your Dashboard , find the survey that you want to share and click on the View/Edit survey permissions icon (or, from the Design tab of your survey, click on Survey permissions in the left-hand menu).
Any users who already have access to the survey are listed in the Survey permissions table, alongside their permission settings. To see your own permissions, click on + Show me at the top of the first column.

Enter a user’s email address in the search box at the top of the table, and click Add user. (Note that the user has to be registered with this email address in BOS.) The user will be added to the table.

Tick the relevant permission(s) and click Save.

Note: Survey access control settings and survey permissions are not copied along with the survey. You may need to set these up again, if required.

Designing a new survey

To add a new question:

Decide where you want to place your question. Adding a question into a blue area of the survey builder will add a new, independent question. Adding a question within another question (inside the brown box surrounding an existing question) will create a sub-question. Sub-questions are useful for following up a question to gather additional information and can be set up to be optional or mandatory depending on the respondent’s first answer.
Click Add item. This will bring up a list of items that you can add to your survey.
Select the type of question that you want to insert. The question editor will open.
Type in the question text and format it using the tool bar, if required.
Add links, images or embedded media to the question text, if required.
Depending on the question type, you will also be able to add answer options and advanced options below the question text.
Click Add question.

Your question will appear inside a box on the main survey builder page. Here you can:

Make changes to it by clicking on the Edit question icon.
Move, copy or delete it by using the Question actions icon.
Preview it by clicking on the Preview icon at the top of the page that the question appears on.

An example of a question options follows (multiple line free text question)

Furthermore, there is the option to convert a question into a different question type.

Distributing a survey

The Distribute tab gives you a variety of options regarding: piloting your survey; launching your survey; distributing your survey URL; and the Survey access control.

Piloting your survey

The best way to check a survey before its official launch is to pilot a full version of it. This ‘dry run’ of your survey allows you to test all of its features, including data capture and reporting. It also means reviewers can test your survey without needing access to a BOS account.

Launching your survey

Before you launch a survey, it’s important to make sure that it works properly.

The best way to check these things is to thoroughly pilot your survey. Simple surveys should at least be proofread and tested using the Survey preview.

Certain things cannot be edited once you have launched your survey. Please ensure that you have checked your survey thoroughly before launching it.

The survey preview allows you to see what your survey will look like, navigate through the survey like a respondent and answer questions without any data being saved. The survey preview also offers the option to print your survey or to save it as a PDF. You can access the survey preview at any point while creating or running your survey.

A variety of distribution options is available and the distribution settings offer flexibility.

Distributing your survey

Once your survey has been launched, you must distribute your survey URL to your respondents so that your respondents are aware that the survey is open and know how to access it. You can:

send out or publish the Public URL through your usual channels;
distribute personalised URLs using the inbuilt email invitation tool;
share the survey via social media; and/or
embed the survey into your website.

Analysing a survey

When it is time to analyse your survey you can to the following:

Accessing survey responses
Filtering survey responses / Browsing and excluding individual responses
Exporting response data

Final Remark

Any member of staff or student can ask to have access to the BOS online survey tool by sending an email to studentsurveys@port.ac.uk. More information about BOS can be found here https://www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/about/ and help articles are available here https://www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/help-support/ . BOS is not the only research tool the University of Portsmouth uses, and more research tools are being investigated for future use. Overall, BOS is a useful tool for qualitative and quantitative surveys.

Image credits: Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

A china figure of a smiling religious Buddha

Faculty vs Central: Perspectives of an Online Course Developer

January 15, 2018 / Will Maltby / 2 Comments

What’s this about?

I joined the University as an OCD about five years ago, and have worked since then in the central TEL section to provide first-line support for the University’s VLE. Having recently taken a 4-month secondment to the Faculty of Technology as a Senior Online Course Developer (OCD), I thought I’d take a moment to share the experience.

Background

An OCD’s job here in the TEL section is quite varied and ‘bitty’, with a little less focus on big projects (Educational Technologists fulfill that role here). Skill-wise I’ve been using a variety of languages and tools (PHP, Javascript, MySQL etc) and various Office/content creation apps (Flash/Captivate/Articulate and the like).

Reflections

Where are my units!?

The first thing that struck me was that I’d lost access to all units University wide. Whilst I had no mandate to work on units outside of the Technology faculty, I instantly missed being able to quickly find a given unit and check something out. I found myself having call TEL each and every time I ‘quickly’ needed to jump to a given unit to get something. This probably affected me in particular because I’ve worked on various non-standard Moodle sites across all faculties – but it does make me wonder whether all OCDs should have read access for all units? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if OCDs could see what their counterparts in other faculties are doing? It might help spread best practice (and perhaps even spur some friendly competition).

Hands tied

As a centrally based OCD I’m used to having various problems come my way, typically discover that a systemic problem is affecting other instances across whichever system, and then investigate and resolve. As a faculty OCD the process is simply to report it to central and then sit and wait. Most ironic was that it would have been myself picking these tasks to investigate in TEL. So I found myself being more cautious than I’d hoped with the suggestions and advice I gave to academics.

Missed opportunity

As the secondment was primarily out of necessity more than opportunity due to an expectedly reduced team, we didn’t really get the chance to work on anything major. We also had main exams on which had to take priority. I could see we were critically just one or two people short of a proper OCD team capable of looking after and running what is actually a surprisingly large department’s worth of units. Ultimately we had no real scope for proper project work and due to the focus on exams, we ended up as little more than curious extension to the CAM Office admin team! But this was more a product of the circumstances than the department itself.

Senior role differences

Whilst the actual increase of responsibility of the Senior role was relatively minor, it did entail a different way of thinking – I had always to try and think of the larger picture. It’s certainly a different style of working than writing code – and, with a small team under me, I found I was too frequently flipping between development and managerial work. As a result, this made me worse at both. Ideally, I’d have liked to delegate jobs and allow myself to better focus my time, but circumstances made this difficult.

Job perks

The Tech Admins apparently make the best cakes! I was fortunate enough to be able to not just witness, but both experience and actively participate in ‘Cake Day’:

Summary

Overall I appreciated my brief time as a faculty OCD, offering me a fresh perspective on things I’d seen differently from central. It certainly gave me a much better understanding of where Academics are coming from when they’re trying to build various activities in their units. Just because they’ve managed to put a given tool on a site, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily actually what they want!

It’s also made me question whether faculty OCDs should have read-only access across Moodle, so that everyone is aware of what’s going on around the University. To give just one example: our team was shocked when librarians came over and let us know that Technology was woefully, and exclusively, behind on managing our reading lists. This was news to us – no system had been set up to manage reading lists and so none of us had done it.

I’m grateful to have had this opportunity, as I’ve often pondered moving toward a more managerial role but never really wanted to commit to it. So a 4-month secondment was the perfect option. In the end I’ve found I prefer the nature of the OCD role in central, as it best lends me the variety and flexibility of work that personally I find most rewarding.

The four areas you cover in the digital experience

JISC Student Digital Experience Tracker for 2018

January 8, 2018 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

From January 2018, the JISC Student Digital Experience Tracker survey will once again be available for Level 4 students.

The survey is designed to help education providers understand more about their students’ experiences of the digital learning environment.

It aims to allow institutions to:

Gather evidence from learners about their digital experience, and track changes over time.
Make better informed decisions about the digital environment.
Target resources for improving digital provision.
Plan other research, data gathering and student engagement around digital issues.
Demonstrate quality enhancement and student engagement to external bodies and to students themselves.

This will be the third time Portsmouth has implemented the survey, and the Tracker has grown since it was first introduced in 2016. Portsmouth was one of only 12 HE institutions chosen to deliver the first iteration of the survey. In 2017, 74 UK colleges and universities ran the Tracker and some international institutions were involved as well. This year, 160 institutions have confirmed that they intend to run the Tracker. There is now a thriving community of people who are committed to understanding the digital experience of learners – and empowering them to work for change.

The results of the Portsmouth surveys are available elsewhere, but here it might be worth looking briefly at some of the overall findings of the 2017 Tracker. These findings represent the voice of over 22,000 UK learners.

Students are generally positive about the use of digital technology in their learning.
Some education providers have problems with the basics – such as ensuring decent on-campus wifi provision. (One of the great things about the Tracker is that it allows institutions to track changes over time. In 2016, UoP students were highly critical about wifi access on campus. In 2017, following significant investment in infrastructure, students were much more satisfied with wifi.)
Students are likely to own portable digital devices (laptops, smartphones etc) but also to use institutional devices (typically desktops). This highlights the need for content to work on all sizes of screen.
Technology is more commonly used for convenience than to support more effective pedagogy. (What can we do to improve the situation? Thoughts welcome!)
80% of HE students feel that digital skills will be important in their chosen career – but only 50% agree that their course prepares them well for the digital workplace. (Again, this finding raises the question: what can we be doing to improve matters?)

The more students complete the survey, the more confidence we can have that the results are robust. So if you have dealings with Level 4 students – please do encourage them to complete the Tracker!

A view of two rocks, one has 2017 the other rock has 2018 on it. There is a man leaping from the 2017 rock to the 2018 rock

A new year, a fresh start and infinite possibilities!

January 2, 2018 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again when we get chance to have some time out, recharge our batteries, reflect on all the things we’ve done in the previous year and start thinking about what we hope to achieve in the coming year.

Looking back on 2017

2017 was a busy year for the TEL Team, not only did our team grow in size but we also took the scary plunge into the blogging world by starting an online team blog; Teltales (something that I hope to revisit and reflect on later in the new year).

In the first part of the year, we attended MoodleMoot 2017 where some of us took part in presenting. Online assessment has remained at the forefront of our focus as a team and finding ways we can best support and provide an accessible environment for our students and academics. As part of this effort we have created the eAssessment information site which we hope becomes established in 2018 as the place to go for information on eAssessments for academic staff.

We took part in the JISC Digital Student Experience Tracker and welcomed Degree Apprenticeships, along with two new members of our team Becky and Andy. Lynda.com was launched for staff and students, this also meant we welcomed another team member, Adrian – our Lynda.com guru!

A few of us had our first ever MOOC experience and loved it, MOOCs have now become addictive within the team. We looked at open source repositories, copyrighting particularly in terms of blogging and the psychology behind colour use. We looked at the effectiveness of Podcasts – something we hope to develop in 2018.

We’ve developed a selection of new resources such as Skills4Study@Portsmouth, Learning at Portsmouth and the new Personal Tutoring platform. We also introduced Moodle 3.3., Turnitin, Lecture capture and Safe Exam Browser remained part of our support and guidance.

Through the year we looked at lots of new tools such as Slack, UbiCast, Relay, DigiExam and TestReach. Our regular ‘Did you know?’ posts have provided our audience with helpful information and guidance. We’ve had lots of interesting and thought-provoking pedagogy and instructional design posts, not forgetting our guest bloggers who have kindly contributed by writing for our blog site too. We ended the year with our 12 apps of Christmas!

What’s on the horizon for the TEL Team in 2018

This year, will be another busy year for the team. We are already planning an exciting new theme for Moodle in Summer 2018, which many of you are already helping us plan and develop by being part of our academic and OCD working groups.

Degree Apprenticeships courses will be launching and we hope to take part in JISC Digital Student Experience Tracker 2018. As always we will continue to update you on any new tools we are using, conferences we have attended and information that we think will be useful to you on Teltales.

As part of Teltales we plan to introduce a set of podcast posts, so please keep an eye out (or ear out!) for them in the coming months.

So from myself and all the team we hope you all have a very happy 2018!

Image credits: https://pixabay.com/images/id-2711676/