Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Month: April 2019

coloured labels with different areas covered in our workshops

TEL Training Sessions – Update

April 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Can’t spare 2 hours (let alone 3 hours) to attend TEL Training sessions, but would like to . . . . . well you can now!  

We’ve reviewed our sessions and have been able to reduce the running times of our longest sessions to make them easier to fit into the already busy working day. We’d like as many of you as possible to be able to attend our sessions, so in reducing the running times (in some cases by 50%) by keeping content relevant but concise, we hope more of you will be able to join our sessions in the future.

How do I find more information on TEL Training Sessions?

You’ll find our calendar with all our new times and full description on the sessions we run by going to the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) website and clicking on the TEL Training Calendar.

Where else can I book onto the sessions?

The calendar on our blog pages also indicates the training sessions with a dot underneath the date, just click on the dot and the session information will appear. You can also book yourself onto a session here; just click the button at the bottom. Feel free to switch through the months to see what training sessions are coming up.

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. 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. In addition, if there’s a group of people in your department who would like a session to update their knowledge in a certain area, we can also arrange that.  We have a meeting room here in Mercantile House, but we can always come to you. To arrange these bespoke sessions, firstly complete the Bespoke Training Request form, click here give us a brief outline into which areas you’d like the training to cover and for how many people, someone will then contact you to discuss your requirements.

So if you’ll looking to embark on a project involving technology, or if you would simply like some support or advice on how to use the various elearning tools available at the University, the TEL team are here to help.

We look forward to welcoming you at one of our training events in the near future.

 

Happy 2 years to us!

April 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

It’s Tel Tales birthday today and we’re celebrating 2 years of blogging. 2 years – that’s a big achievement for us, in the past blogging was never our forte as a team – but this time, with Tel Tales, we’ve stuck to it – so what have we learnt in the last 2 years as a group of novice bloggers and how has this time been different from our previous attempt?

Raising our profile

In early 2016, we were thinking of ways to raise our profile within the University. We are a long standing central service, but we offer much more than Moodle support, as a bunch of talented individuals with an array of experience and expertise, we felt this was often unknown and we also weren’t too good at voicing our achievements.

Building a blog site seemed like the perfect platform where as a team, we could all contribute and write posts journalling our adventures in technology and education.

Reservations

As a team we had reservations, we had quite a few failed blog attempts in the past and this had knocked our confidence, which I talked about in my first blog post Why Blog? For some members of the team, blogging came naturally and were able to write posts with ease. For others writing a post for all to read was quite a scary concept and putting pen to paper was difficult. As this was a team blog and we wanted everyone to feel comfortable and happy to post, we knew that the project would need planning, organisation, ongoing management and time to be a success.

Tips for setting up a team blog

Here are some of our tips for starting a team blog:

  • Communicate the goals and focus of the team blog – from the offset, as a team, we discussed what we would like to include in our blog site, things such as events we’d attended, projects that we were working on, useful information about the technologies people in the University were using, and topical news that had interested us.
  • Develop a team blog style guide and author guidelines – we put together some guidelines as to the style of the posts i.e. sizing of headers, images, copyright, referencing etc so that the posts were consistent although written by multiple people.
  • Choose an appropriate team blog tool – we choose WordPress as our blogging tool and created each member of the team their own user account so they had ownership of their own posts.
  • Have team editors/proofreaders – we delegated the proofreading and editing of the posts to 3 members of the team – so all posts after written in draft were checked by them before going live.
  • Create an editorial/blog post calendar – we created a calendar so that we could organise and schedule when posts were going live and keep an ongoing spreadsheet of all posts to keep track of what stage they were at.
  • Offer collaboration and communication tools to contributors – all members of the team have access to Slack where we can discuss the blog posts and Google Drive where we structure and manage all the posts. Everything is clearly structured in folders and everyone has access to everything.
  • Provide feedback to contributors – feedback regarding the blog site as a whole and feedback regarding posts are either discussed on Slack or directly to the contributor.
  • Recruit guest bloggers – we have had several members of staff from other departments contribute to the site which has been great in networking with other departments.
  • Repurpose content without losing quality – when times have been a little quiet we have been able to repurpose content that is topical – so we are never short of finding content for our site.
  • Remain flexible – I think flexibility is key to running a team blog site, nothing is set in stone, so we are able to accommodate for any obstacles that we’ve come up against over the last 2 years.

Build it and they will come

We did build it and they did come, but slowly. It’s easy to assume with blogging that once you’ve built the site then that’s it, ta-dah job done. We’ve learnt however that this isn’t the case and we’ve had to be patient and continue to be, building an audience doesn’t happen overnight.

What’s in store for the next 2 years

It’s uncertain where Tel Tales will reside in the future, we may become part of the University of Portsmouth website, however we still hope to have a presence in one shape or form. We continue to raise our profile in other forms of media, Tom L has created some Podcasts on Tel Tales, so if you haven’t listened to those yet then check them out. Tom is also looking at our YouTube channel and will be providing some new videos on there. Shaun is working on our Instagram account, so make sure to follow us if you’re a keen Instagrammer.

I’m immensely proud of the team and everyone that has contributed to the site, especially those that have found it difficult to write for an online environment but have still given it a go! Big thanks to Mandy who’s our team organiser and keeps us informed of who’s doing what and to Stephen, Alana and Tom C for being our team proofreaders, Tom L and Shaun our social media bods and for Will and Mike for all their help behind the scenes with the ‘techy stuff’ and thank you to everyone in the team that has contributed to Tel Tales. Thanks to all our followers too – we hope you enjoy reading our posts!! Cheers everyone!

Wishing you all a very ‘Happy Easter’ from the TEL team.

Happy Easter

If you would like to feature as a guest blogger on Tel Tales then please get in touch and we can discuss ideas with you 🙂

Image credits:
https://pixabay.com/images/id-72160/
http://www.quotesvalley.com/quotes/failure/page/443/
https://pixabay.com/images/id-2406452/

Lady wearing a blue top looking out of a virtual reality headset

Natalie_4.0

April 17, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Software developers and user interface designers often use storytelling techniques to help them make sense of different features of their system and to help them communicate and explain their work to others. Software developers, for example, write “user stories”: descriptions of system features written from the perspective of an end user of the system. User interface designers often develop “personas” – a written description of a fictional character who represents a particular type of end user.

Jisc, in trying to understand what Education 4.0 might mean, have adopted a similar approach. They have created a fictional character, called Natalie_4.0, who represents a student taking a university course in geography in October 2029. What might a typical study day look like for Natalie_4.0? What opportunities will technology open up for her? By writing a story – “A day in the life of Natalie_4.0” – we can try to get a feel for what the future of educational might be like. Our story would not say that is is how education will turn out; but it can say how education might turn out.    

The twist here is that Jisc have written Natalie’s story not in the form of a written story, as is usual in the software development and UI world, but in the form of a virtual reality experience. I checked out the Natalie_4.0 VR experience at the recent Digifest conference. So – what was it like?

Well, the first thing to say is that the VR technology itself is improving at a rapid rate. Increasing numbers of VR content developers are entering the market and the hardware is getting cheaper and better. The Natalie_4.0 VR experience itself builds on this foundation: it is immersive, and while you are sharing Natalie’s day it is easy to imagine how VR technology could have real educational benefits. (Personally, I don’t believe that those benefits extend to all subject areas. Indeed, in many cases I believe the introduction of VR would be detrimental – it would be a gimmick. Nevertheless, in some niche areas I can see how VR could deliver tremendous benefits.)   

But what about the story itself? Does Natalie_4.0 provide a reasonable guess as to what the student of 2029 might experience? Well, of course we won’t know definitively for another ten years. But for what it’s worth I believe that some guesses will likely prove accurate; others won’t.

The influence of AI on daily life is one aspect of Natalie_4.0 that will, I think, come to pass. The story suggests that Natalie will have access to a personal AI that will help her throughout her day – in her learning as well as in her everyday life. But other aspects of the story seemed to me less convincing. For example, Natalie’s AI organises a live feedback session with her (human) tutor. Well, it will be terrific if turns out that every student has access to a personal tutor; if every student can sit down with a teacher and have a one-on-one session to discuss a piece of work. But how is such a thing possible in a mass education system? Most universities can’t offer that luxury now – why should that change in the future? (It might be that Jisc have underestimated the rate of progress of artificial intelligence; perhaps Natalie’s personal AI will be able to play the role of tutor as well as general assistant?)  

Another AI-related thought struck me as I sat through Natalie_4.0. In the feedback session mentioned above, the tutor uses some gee-whiz technology to provide feedback on … a written essay. Well, technology has already reached the stage where an AI can generate reasonable text in a variety of styles; in ten years time I’m sure Natalie would be able to get an AI system to write an essay for her. (Who knows. Perhaps AI systems will be able to mark essays. Why not cut out the middle-man and have an AI write an essay and a different AI mark it! All untouched by human hands!) In such a world, authentic forms of assessment will become crucial: tutors will need to assess skills that are uniquely human – judgement, creativity, leadership, teamwork, communication. That is the main thing I took from the Natalie_4.0 experience.

Image credits: Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

5G - Are we ready?

5G – Are we ready?

April 10, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I watched a very interesting documentary from Panorama the other day, called ‘Can we trust Huawei?’, which explored 5G and the Chinese tech-giant Huawei. Our government are currently in talks with Huawei and will soon decide if the company will be allowed to build our next generation mobile network that will transform the way we live.

So what is 5G and what does it mean to us?

5G is the next generation of mobile technology. It is envisaged to bring a ‘Network Society’ which will provide an unlimited access to data and information at anytime, anywhere by anyone and anything. 5G is expected not only to interconnect people but to also interconnect and control machines and devices too, and in this way will take on a much larger role than previous generations of mobile technology.

5G is different to previous generations in the following ways . . .

  • 1G – was about the analogue phone which allowed us to make calls to one another.
  • 2G – allowed us to send sms messages and use voice recording.
  • 3G – the promise of a smartphone, allowed us to access video broadband services.
  • 4G – (since 2009) allowed us to do all of the first 3 things but much faster.
  • 5G – will not just change how we use our mobiles but how we connect our devices to the internet. The improved capacity and speed of the network will signal ‘Internet of Things’ (loT) trends, such as connected cars, smart cities and loT in the home and office.

In the Panorama documentary, Dr Stephanie Hare, Technology Consultant, describes 5G as ‘like going from Earth to Mars, it’s not a faster world, it’s a different world. It is going to be a world where we are connected, machines will be talking to each other and talking to you’.

At the moment we instruct and control our machines and devices, however 5G will mean the way we communicate with machines and how they communicate with us and each other will completely change. ‘We will be able to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human to computer interaction’ (https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/Internet-of-Things-IoT) – everything will have a unique identifier (UIDs)

How will this affect us in our everyday lives?

To achieve 5G, the idea is that more and more antennas will be attached to lamp posts, buildings and pretty much everywhere you can think of. This will help us and machines/devices to talk to each other and make our lives easier then we probably can’t quite imagine yet.

One of the examples in the documentary mentioned that your fridge would be able to tell you when you run out of groceries and then it could re-order them for you via a self-driving truck! It sounds good to me, as a busy working mum of two I’m always looking for easier, more convenient ways to do things around the house so 5G surely will make everyday chores a thing of the past, right? Or should we be concerned? Does this mean judgement day is upon us and machines will take over the world?

Moral panic and Huawei

Huawei claim to be 18 months ahead technologically of any other 5G manufacturer. Whoever supplies 5G to the UK will be everywhere, so is this a cause for concern especially if we do choose Huawei who are hugely controversial? The US calls Huawei the enemy and claim that China will use 5G for cyber spying and want the UK to ban using the company.

The other concern is when it comes to warfare, future warfare will more than likely be cyber, unlike traditional warfare when we think of armies in the past. With the idea of 5G highly embedded in our infrastructures, the fear is that the whole country’s systems could be taken down at one flick of the switch leading to a cyber attack.

Therefore should we embrace 5G or fear it?

To summarise, as with all new technologies there are fears, fears of the unknown and how life will be changed from what we are used to, to something we can’t quite understand or imagine yet. However, technology also brings development and opportunity, ways to better society and our everyday lives. All technologies bring with them their own risk and these will need to be managed, however the use of 5G could also lead to an exciting transformation of the world that we are all used to. I’m interested to see the role it will play within HE – how do you think 5G will have an impact on education?

If you missed the documentary  ‘Can we trust Huawei?’ – I would recommend catching up with it on BBC iPlayer.

Image credits: https://pixabay.com/images/id-3443540/

Exam Analytics Dashboard

Online Exams in Moodle

April 5, 2019 / / 0 Comments

We’ll start to see a lot of online Moodle exams from Monday 29th April.

At this time of year a lot of time is dedicated to preparing for the formal exam weeks to begin. Academics and Online Course Developers are creating questions and testing exam quizzes. The TEL team are testing the Moodle infrastructure and exam reporting, and working with IS to ensure we have enough server resources at key times during the exam period. This year the formal examination weeks will run from Monday 13th May 2019 through to Friday 7th June 2019. It’s worth making a note in your diary about these dates but as I’ll highlight in this blog post, you’ll probably want to set these dates to start from Monday 29th April.

What constitutes an online Moodle exam?

We encourage staff to tag Moodle-based exams with the ‘exam-official’ tag and set appropriate dates. This information, along with data provided by Online Courses Developers, helps us build a picture of the when exams are happening. It means we can spot ‘pinch points’, times where we expect a lot of concurrent exam attempts, which could represent a need for more server resources to be made available. In short if you don’t tag your assessments we’ll find it difficult to guarantee a seamless exam experience for your students.

Tagging also means you can run your online exams in one of our supported secure exam browser environments (Safe Exam Browser, FAQs available here or Chromebooks in secure exam mode). This means students can’t easily access other websites during their exam and makes invigilation a lot easier.

How many online exam attempts were there last year?

During the official exam period last year (13.05.2018–07.06.2018) there were 5426 exams attempts that we all helped support. However, this figure isn’t the full picture. In the two week preceding the exam period 2737 official online exam attempts took place. That’s quite a staggering number of exam attempts happening outside of the time-frame that staff are focussed on supporting and something we should all be mindful of this year. Monday April 29th is the start date for your diaries.

Exams change freeze

IS and TEL enforce a number of Moodle change freezes throughout the academic year. These are periods when no updates can be made to Moodle. We have one in place during the exam period to ensure changes don’t inadvertently interrupt exams. The exam change freeze this year will run from Monday 29th April through to Friday 7th June (inclusive).

How do we monitor exams are going well?

The TEL team gather data from a number of sources to help monitor what’s happening through the exam period. We combine it into a real-time dashboard of where exams are happening and how Moodle is performing. You can see a picture below from last year.

Exam Analytics Dashboard

We rely on support from a number of sources to produce this dashboard. Lead Online Course Developers have their finger on the pulse of when exams will happen and any last minute amendments. In the very near future we’ll be asking again for your help to populate a spreadsheet with the exams you know about. We combine this information with data from student records, which is thorough but lacks local knowledge. We also use Google Analytics, Moodle database and server infrastructure reporting to keep an eye on how our systems our performing. This combined data is extremely useful at spotting pinch points and monitoring how things are running but it’s not as effective as people in faculties such as exam invigilators and online course developers ensuring all is running well and reporting to elearn@port.ac.uk any issues that are encountered.

A new exam theme for Moodle

It’s worth mentioning at this point that we’re close to final testing of an updated version of the Moodle exam theme. This is a stripped down version of our theme intended for use in exams. We’ll provide more information on this in the next few weeks. It will look very similar to the existing exam theme but will be a bit closer to our regular theme in terms of question layout and styles.

Thank You

We just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone involved in making sure the exam period goes well. It’s very much a big team effort and all the work we put in ensures students get as stress-free an experience as possible. I’m sure they appreciate it, I know that the team in TEL certainly do.

If you have any questions about online exams, please get in touch at elearn@port.ac.uk

 

Thank You Image

Image credits: Photo by Lip on Unsplash

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We are a talented bunch of individuals that specialise in providing support, development and design to staff around the University. We help to support staff in using technology to enhance their students' learning. Follow our blog to see what the TEL team are doing!

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