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Online Exams in Moodle

April 5, 2019 / Mike Wilson / 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.

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

Image credits: Photo by Lip on Unsplash

Digifest 2019

March 29, 2019 / Andy Taggart / 1 Comment

Jisc’s Digifest is my favourite educational technology conference. Spread over two days at Birmingham’s International Conference Centre it’s an ideal opportunity to meet practitioners from other institutions and this can be nearly as useful as the set programme of talks and presentations themselves. This year the focus was on practical ideas that can be taken back to the classroom or lecture theatre. To this end, I attended sessions on the use of video.

The first session, “How digital video innovates pedagogical methods”, was run by learning technologists from Havant and Southdowns College and looked at how staff and students have used video for both formative and summative assessment. Together, the technologists have worked on around 200 videos, some produced by the students themselves. It was clear that the use of video has had a significant impact on teaching and learning at the College. While claims about improved student attainment and retention lacked supporting data, feedback from both staff and students did indicate improvement in student engagement and achievement.

The importance of video in teaching and learning was also the theme of a presentation by Dominik Lukes’ (Learning Technologist, University of Oxford). In his presentation, titled “How YouTube started a revolution in learning and nobody noticed”, Dominik argued that the role of video in teaching and learning can only expand and provided this example of the power of video as a learning tool. Whilst I’m not entirely convinced by the claim that ‘video is the future’, both Dominik’s and the Havant College presentations did illustrate the usefulness and power of video if used properly. Both presentations also highlighted the ease of using YouTube as the delivery platform especially given the automatic subtitles function. It would be interesting to find out more about what students think of video as a learning tool and the extent to which benefits outweigh costs (in terms of time primarily) but from personal experience, I think a lot more use could be made of YouTube in teaching and learning.

Of the panel discussions I sat in on, the most interesting was “Listening to teachers: implications for education and digital“ The discussion was based on a piece of research by anthropologist Donna Lanclos and others the findings of which can be downloaded here. The research consisted of interviewing teachers in both the HE and FE sector with the aim “to uncover what next generation digital learning environments might look like”. Their report also came up with a series of recommendations which are well worth reading.

I was particularly interested in how terminology was being used. Many years ago when I was a student we went to lectures delivered by lecturers, in this discussion it was about “teachers” facilitating and delivering learning. This change in emphasis – teaching rather than lecturing – is something, I assume, that will become more ubiquitous given the introduction of the TEF in 2017. A number of thought provoking issues came out of the discussion not necessarily related directly to technology. For example, to provide effective holistic support to students takes time, which is one resource most staff are short of. This issue links nicely to a presentation I saw by Bolton College on the use of chatbots. But more on that in my next blog along with a look at Snatchbot!

A diagram showing the four stages of Industrial Revolution

Education 4.0

March 18, 2019 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

On 5 February a group of us met with representatives from Jisc. The main focus of the meeting was to discuss the Jisc Digital Insights service (which allows institutions to better understand the digital experience of staff and students) and the Jisc Discoverer service (which allows staff and students to reflect on their digital capability and, where necessary, access relevant support material). Future blog posts will talk more about how to access these services. In this post, I’d like to reflect briefly on a comment made during the meeting by Stuart Masters, Jisc’s Chief Technology Officer. Steve mentioned that one important focus for him, and for Jisc as an organisation, is to understand what “Education 4.0” might look like.

You will probably have heard of the phrase “Industry 4.0” – or the closely related phrase “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. This idea refers to a gathering of emerging technologies – AI, biotechnology, cloud computing, internet of things, nanotechnology, quantum computing, robotics, 3D printing, 5G wireless – that blur the distinction between the physical, digital and biological. (For reference, the First Industrial Revolution occurred in the 18th/19th centuries and involved the development of the iron and textile industries, plus steam power; society began to shift from rural to urban, agrarian to industrial. The Second Industrial Revolution is often dated 1870–1914, and saw the creation of new industries – oil, steel, electricity – and the rise of mass production. The Third Industrial Revolution – the change from analog to digital devices – began in the 1980s and we are still living through its consequences.) Some of you, no doubt, will feel there is an element of hype to the phrase “Industry 4.0”; after all, how many times has “the next big thing” turned out to be an unusable piece of kit that people use briefly then throw away once the novelty has worn off? This time, though, there really are indications that this fusion of new technological developments – the Fourth Industrial Revolution – will alter society and the world of work.

If that is the case, how should universities respond? Jisc’s suggestion is that, in order to prepare students for a world transformed by Industry 4.0, we need to be thinking about Education 4.0. That’s fine – but what should Education 4.0 look like?

In a recent blog post on this subject, Sarah Davies of Jisc looked at some tentative steps towards Education 4.0 being taken by institutions. Ensuring that students have strong digital capabilities will of course be important (and, as mentioned above, a future post will discuss work taking place here at Portsmouth in this area) but Sarah also mentioned the importance of:

rethinking staff and student roles;
reimagining learning environments;
giving students the opportunity to create and communicate knowledge; and
focusing on student wellbeing.

These are all topics that we might well want to consider in Education 4.0, but Sarah also posts a link to a presentation by Martin Hamilton (Jisc’s resident futurist) to the Education Select Committee Inquiry on Industry 4.0. In that presentation, Martin pointed out that 33% of Key Stage Two pupils fail to meet expected standards of literacy and numeracy; 66% of secondary schools have inadequate digital infrastructure. Delivering Education 4.0 will be made even harder if we can’t even get the basics right.

It’s an interesting question, though. What do you think Education 4.0 should look like?

Feature image title: Industry_4.0.png by Christoph Roser is licensed under CC BY2.0

Moodle Baseline Launch

March 8, 2019 / Tom Cripps / 0 Comments

Technology Enhanced Learning, Academic Development and DSAA are proud to announce the launch of the Moodle Baseline. The Moodle Baseline is a template and set of best practice advice for Moodle module pages. The release is the culmination of a six month feedback exercise with staff from all faculties along with a pilot with students on Nursing degree programmes.

The Moodle Baseline template features five tabs: welcome, module overview, learning outcomes, reading lists (to launch in the next few weeks) and assessments. Some of these tabs will be automatically populated with data after July 14th in time for the start of the new academic year. The Baseline template will be added automatically when modules are rolled-over or created.

The Moodle Baseline addresses repeated student feedback for more consistency in the layout and content of Moodle modules and makes it easier for students to find key information and assessments.

We hope students and staff find the Moodle Baseline to be a useful tool. Help and guidance information can be found on the following dedicated website. If you have any questions please contact your local Online Course Developers or elearn@port.ac.uk.

Students in a study room, one student looking a laptop laughing

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Digital Capability Discovery Tool

March 4, 2019 / Adrian Sharkey / 0 Comments

The Digital Capability Discovery Tool is an empowering first step for students and staff to self-assess their digital capabilities and to identify current strengths and areas of development.

What is Digital Capability?

DIgital capabilities are defined by Jisc as ‘those that fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society’. Digital capabilities are more important than ever: they are essential requirements for employability in a digital economy.

According to Jisc’s Digital experience insights survey 2018, only 41% of UK students felt that their course prepared them for the digital workplace. Everyone should be looking to continuously develop these skills and reflect on their own digital capability.

Using the Digital Capability Discovery Tool

Staff and students are encouraged to use the Discovery Tool to self-assess their digital capabilities. For staff, the tool could potentially be used to inform the PDR process. For students, there would be benefit to discussing the results in personal tutoring sessions.

When you log into the Discovery Tool for the first time you will be asked about your role at the University – there are different question sets for new students, current students, teaching staff, and library and learning support staff. It may be that the options don’t fit your role exactly – just choose the nearest match.

Upon completing the questionnaire you will receive a confidential, personalised report showing your results in each area of digital capability and with links to high-quality, tailored resources.

All responses are confidential, so tutors and managers do not have access to them. The University does, however, have access to aggregated, anonymised data – which will help us identify gaps in our digital learning support and improve our provision for both students and staff. This is yet another reason that everyone – staff and students – are encouraged to complete the survey!

Logging on and further support

IS and DCQE provide sessions for staff to find out about digital capabilities in general, and about the Discovery Tool and how to use it. In these sessions we also discuss how to use the Tool with students and colleagues.

For further information, and to access the Tool, go to digitalcapability.port.ac.uk

Guest Blogger: Julian Ingle – Writing Retreats Take Off

February 20, 2019 / Julian Ingle / 0 Comments

“What do you do, sit around writing poetry and novels?” When I say I’m running a writing retreat, most people assume it’s a kind of self-expression fest, paid for by the University. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m in my sixth month here as Deputy Head of ASK, enjoying the new role. In my previous job at Queen Mary, UoL, I’d run writing retreats for staff and PhD students on a regular basis. This was something I wanted to initiate here at Portsmouth. I’m pleased to say that I’ve just finished running my fourth writing retreat at the University. Hopefully this marks the beginning of regular retreats at Portsmouth and they’ll become part of the fabric.

These retreats are urban rather than residential – in other words we don’t head off and stay in a boutique hotel in the South Downs, but work in a large room on campus and then go home. The plan is to run off-campus one- and two-day retreats for staff and PhD students once I’ve found a good venue. (Being elsewhere does make a difference. As does having a decent lunch that you don’t have to prepare.)

The format of the retreats draws on Rowena Murray’s work, which over the years I’ve developed and refined. Highly structured, intense and very productive, we sit around a large boardroom-style table; we then set a goal or task for the first hour-long writing session, discuss it briefly with a colleague and then begin writing. When the hour is up we talk to our colleague about how it went, set another goal and carry on. To help re-focus, we also do short generative writing activities, such as freewriting. After lunch we spend half an hour peer reviewing someone else’s work, and then carry on writing in one-hour blocks. Sometimes the format varies, depending on time and location. Typically, there are between 12–15 participants from across the faculties – although the boundaries between staff and PhD students are sometimes blurred.

Having run retreats for the last eight years, I know they work. There are lots of reasons why, but key is that they get writing done. Staff workloads, multiple demands, and the general culture in many universities, mean that despite increasing pressure to publish, there is little time allocated or energy left to make time to write. So staff write in their holidays or at weekends. Providing a dedicated time and place, away from everyday demands, email or internet distractions, creates a shared ethos and valued space to do something that is in theory an essential dimension of who we are as teachers, practitioners, researchers, academics…

Building research writing cultures takes time. Writing retreats provide a powerful way to connect staff and PhD students with each other, their research, their thinking and practices, and help build a community of writers. The conversations that take place throughout the day are full of insights (there’s no such thing as a finished writer), so sharing the frustrations, trying something new or learning from others can give direction, confidence and motivation.

Or at least that’s what participants say about writing retreats. Above all they are productive: a frequent comment is that they’ve written more in the day than they’ve written in the last two months. On occasions, the freewriting activities can result in light bulb moments and help move thinking on. At the end of the day we’re tired but most people would like more.

I’m determined that writing retreats will continue at the University and, if we get a good location and good food, they will get better.

If you’d like to take part in a writing retreat, be added to the mailing list, or would like to discuss how they could be tailored to your faculty or students, then please get in touch: Julian Ingle, Deputy Head of ASK, (julian.ingle@port.ac.uk).

Here’s a photo of us hard at work at the first retreat.

Image credits: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Bird in flight creating a shape of an arrow

Remaking Marking Conference

February 6, 2019 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

Along with colleagues from about 30 different UK universities I attended the Remaking Marking: Electronic Management of Assessment conference held on 4 September 2018 at the University of Reading. I came back feeling confident that, here at Portsmouth, we are developing the electronic management of assessment (EMA) in a reasonable way. Our use of Moodle gives us an element of flexibility that some institutions, using other VLEs, are lacking. Furthermore, the drivers for implementing EMA and people’s hopes for this approach appear to be the same here as everywhere else in the sector. On the other hand, academics have some legitimate concerns – DSE worries; offline marking; having to scroll through documents; the functionality and usability of marking tools; the need to take account of disciplinary differences – and these are shared across the sector, Portsmouth included.

One worrying aspect of the conference was the number of institutions that had tried to implement a marks integration project – and failed. It seems strange that data held in one electronic system (the VLE) cannot readily be transferred to another electronic system (the Student Record System (SRS)), but this seems to be the case. It is particularly strange given that the data we want to transfer – student marks – is so important; surely we shouldn’t have to rely on an intermediate stage in which humans can introduce error? We thought we’d cracked the problem here, several years ago, but the proposed solution was not guaranteed to be sustainable at the SRS end. Perhaps the new SRS will open up new possibilities for us.

Some interesting discussions centred around:

the use of rubrics, and whether (and how) they should be used more widely;
the use of shared QuickMarks – should a central department or section provide a library of generic QuickMarks, containing links to high-quality support resources, for use across a faculty or institution?
the increased use of audio feedback – research suggests that students appreciate audio feedback, but only in certain cases.

One suggestion I found particularly interesting came from Dr Rachel Maxwell, University of Northampton. They thought it important to manage student expectations regarding EMA. In particular, they found that students didn’t have a clear idea of what the assessment process entails at university level.

Header image taken from the Remaking Marking: Electronic Management of Assessment Conference (2018). Birds Migrating in Formation

(The University of Reading). Retrieved from https://sites.reading.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2018/06/Remaking-Marking-5.png

(Assessed: 12th November 2018). Thank you to The University of Reading for letting us use their poster.

Moodle Baseline – A new standardised template for all Moodle modules

January 25, 2019 / Mike Wilson / 0 Comments

In recent student surveys it’s become clear that students want more consistency to the layout of their Moodle modules. Students want it to be easier to find key information such as what the module is about, what they will learn and how they will be assessed.

It’s increasingly important that we present content for students in an accessible way so everyone can engage with content easily.

TEL and AcDev have led a feedback exercise with staff from all University faculties, along with a pilot with academics and students on Nursing Degrees delivered by Science. These exercises have helped us establish what the key requirements would be for a standardised approach to the layout of Moodle modules and the development of the Moodle Baseline template.

The Moodle Baseline represents the basic building blocks for starting to build a Moodle module. Here’s a summary of main tabs available within the template.

The Welcome tab allows staff to add a welcome message to students in html format (this could include a welcome video or perhaps link to a discussion forum).

The Module Overview tab allows a plain text description of the module to be added.

A list of Learning Outcomes can be added to the third tab.

The Assessment Summary tab allows for a description of the assessments that a student will be required to complete. There is also a table to keep track of submissions. Students will be able to see the status of their assessment submissions and upcoming important dates. Staff will see progress bars representing how many submissions have been made along with an indicator of how many assignments require marking.

All new and rolled-over Moodle modules will have the Moodle Baseline template added automatically from March 1st 2019, giving staff time to add content in advance of September 2019.

When the Moodle Baseline launches on March 1st we will also release a web-based resource for guidance on how to complete the template along with useful best practise advice for populating your Moodle module including topics such as marking online and giving effective feedback.

We hope you find the Moodle Baseline a useful tool for creating rich and engaging Moodle modules. If you have any questions please get in contact at elearn@port.ac.uk

industrial building work — Photo taken by Fancycrave from https://unsplash.com/photos/1R3UnJcBCa8

Scenario Based Learning

January 25, 2019 / Tom Langston / 0 Comments

What is scenario based learning?

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, in their influential book Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) argued that learning is most effective when it occurs within the context in which it is going to be used. Scenario based learning (SBL) is rooted in this idea. SBL, according to the definition provided by Massey University, “uses interactive scenarios to support active learning strategies such as problem-based and case-based learning”. The course developer creates a narrative – typically based on a complex, real-world problem – that the student works through and solves. SBL thus provides a safe yet realistic environment for the student to demonstrate their subject-specific knowledge and problem-solving skills. Furthermore, because SBL is often non-linear, it can provide numerous feedback opportunities to students, based on the decisions they make at each stage of the narrative.

I’m a course developer. When should I use scenario based learning?

Sometimes – in cases, for example, where students are required to make decisions and display critical thinking in complex situations – it can be difficult to provide realistic practice opportunities within the confines of a traditional course. In these cases, SBL comes into its own. Amongst countless other examples, SBL has been used successfully in engineering, nursing and business studies. It can be used to support both formative and summative assessment – but note that, for routine tasks that don’t require decision-making or critical thinking, there are more appropriate methods of assessment.

What tools can help me develop scenario based learning?

Moodle contains several tools that can be used to develop an SBL approach. The four tools I’d suggest can be used to build a learning narrative are: Database, Workshop, Forum and Lesson. (This is only a suggestion. The most important thing is to connect various activities and reinforce student learning.)

Below is one model that would permit the assessment process to become a wider, more holistic approach over the duration of a course. A range of short, targeted activities would give the students time to research their next task and help them develop their own learning profile.

Database -> Workshop -> Forum -> Lesson

The student writes a short essay, based on their own experiences relating to a given task, and submits to the Database tool. Then, from these submissions, the academic allocates each student a different piece of work to mark/analyse.
After assessing their assigned piece of work, each student submits their analysis to the Workshop tool (following criteria defined by the academic). The Workshop tool allows students to peer assess the submissions and get a final grade based on both their submission and their ability to assess others’ work.
Once all this is finished, the Forum is used to get the students to discuss their experiences of the subject and how they could each improve certain aspects of their work.
Lastly, the Lesson tool presents a high-risk situation to the student. The lesson can be developed to provide a realistic yet safe environment to explore the situation. The Lesson tool allows for either a branching or a linear format.

Each phase offers the student the chance to reflect on what they have learned and offers them ideas on what they should now do with the new information and theory they have researched as part of the unit.

These various elements could be done one straight after the other, or spaced out over the course of a unit. My recommendation would be to allow time between each assessment, which would give students the chance to develop and learn from what they have previously done.

If you are considering SBL as a means of assessment but would like to have a discussion about how you can implement within your teaching the TEL team runs a training session called “Facilitating Scenario Based Learning” or you can contact me tom.langston@port.ac.uk

Reference

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Cambridge: CUP.

Image credits: Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash

Fancycrave

Accessibility of digital learning content at UoP

January 17, 2019 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

On 15 January 2019, following a two-month pilot, the TEL team switched on the Blackboard Ally plug-in across all modules on Moodle. In brief, if a lecturer has uploaded some digital course content to Moodle (typically Word documents, Powerpoint presentations or PDF files) then Ally permits students to download that content in an alternative format (electronic Braille, html, epub, tagged pdf, or mp3). This is great for accessibility, of course, but this is also an inclusive approach: any student, not just one with a particular need, might choose to download a Word document in mp3 format (to listen to on the go) or in epub format (to get the benefit of reflowable text on a e-reader). The TEL team will be providing students with more information about Ally over the coming weeks, but in this post I want to mention a feature of Ally that is of interest to authors of digital course content.

Ally generates an institutional report about the accessibility of course content on the institution’s VLE. So we now know what the most common accessibility issues are for the 38,462 course content files on Moodle. The top five are (drum-roll please):

The document has contrast issues. Just under half of all documents (48%, to be precise) have contrast issues.
The document contains images without a description. Roughly 43% of all documents commit this accessibility sin.
The document has tables that don’t have any headers. Just over a quarter (26%) of all documents have this issue; I suspect that the documents without this issue are simply those without tables.
The document does not have any headers. This is a problem for 24% of documents.
The document is missing a title. Again, 24% of documents have this problem.

The first four are classed as major accessibility issues; the fifth issue is classed as minor.

At first glance this seems shocking: about half of all documents suffer from a major accessibility issue to do with contrast. When we compare ourselves against other institutions, however, we learn that these issues seem to be common across the HE sector; indeed, we seem to be doing slightly better than many institutions. And the important thing is, now that we know what the issues are, we can start to address them. Over time, we should be able to drastically reduce the number of documents with these common – and easily fixable – problems.

One piece of good news: we have a relatively small number of documents that possess accessibility issues classed as severe. The most common severe issue at Portsmouth – just as it is at other universities – involves scanned PDFs that have not been put through OCR. There might be good, valid reasons why a scanned PDF has been used. But accessibility would certainly improve if authors minimised their use of such files.

Header image taken from Blackboard.com link. Retrieved from https://www.blackboard.com/accessibility/blackboard-ally.htmlpng

(Assessed: 17th January 2019). Thank you to Ally for giving us permission to use their image.

Tel Tales

Page 15 of 26

Online Exams in Moodle

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

Digifest 2019

Education 4.0

Moodle Baseline Launch

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Digital Capability Discovery Tool

What is Digital Capability?

Using the Digital Capability Discovery Tool

Logging on and further support

Guest Blogger: Julian Ingle – Writing Retreats Take Off

Remaking Marking Conference

Moodle Baseline – A new standardised template for all Moodle modules

Scenario Based Learning

Accessibility of digital learning content at UoP

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