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Wellbeing in difficult times

July 19, 2021 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 0 Comments

Festival of Inclusivity & Wellbeing resources with a £100 prize draw for completing a personalised wellbeing reflection tool

With the impact of the global pandemic continuing to dominate the academic year 2020/21, including a variety of lockdowns and restrictions profoundly affecting everyday and working life, it has been an extraordinarily challenging year. How has the year been for you?

As this challenging year draws to a close, take some time to pause, reflect and engage with wellbeing and inclusion resources, and you could win Amazon vouchers worth up to £100.

Complete the Wellbeing in Difficult Times One Year On tool and be eligible for a prize draw.

A small independent University of Portsmouth research group, led by Head of Wellbeing, Dr Denise Meyer, has been investigating how staff and students at the University have been coping during the pandemic.

Staff interviewed about using the original Wellbeing in Difficult Times tool in July 2020 reported finding it interesting and thought-provoking. They particularly valued the personalised feedback they received and felt it helped them better consider their own wellbeing.

By completing the updated personalised wellbeing tool one year on you will:

Have an opportunity to pause and reflect on aspects of your own wellbeing, coping strategies and resilience during this challenging year.
Get automatic personalised feedback about your answers to the standardised measures one year on, with suggestions for how to maintain or improve your wellbeing.
Help to further test the tool for evaluating future interventions to support staff and student wellbeing, such as the Festival of Inclusivity & Wellbeing described below.
Be able to enter a prize draw for Amazon vouchers, as a thank you for taking the 20-30 minutes to complete it – with a top prize of £100, 2 x £75, 3 x £50, 4 x £25.

The team would like a wide range of perspectives, and we hope to have good representation from participants with minority identities who can provide feedback about their experiences around inclusion at the University – for example, international students/staff, BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) students/staff, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning) students/staff, students/staff with neurodiversity, disability or specific learning difficulty.

Your responses will be dealt with anonymously and confidentially. Full information about the development of the survey tool and wider research programme, and about privacy and confidentiality, is provided at the start of the survey before the consent section. The survey has already been shared again with students.

Festival of Inclusivity and Wellbeing

Catch up with the popular keynotes and sessions from the Festival of Inclusivity & Wellbeing

The opening address on ‘Building a sense of belonging in a compassionate, inclusive learning community’ launched our first Festival of Inclusivity and Wellbeing with a hands-on introduction to our unique whole-institution approach to wellbeing and inclusion – the Learning, Teaching and Working Well framework. The framework promotes a compassionate mindset towards self and others which recognises the emotional impact of learning, work and life challenges and the central role of a sense of belonging in helping to meet these challenges and flourish. The rest of the Festival offered sessions aiming to build hands-on skills related to this framework.

Recordings of this and all the other sessions are now available on the Festival website. Staff who were able to attend the Festival on 12 May used words like ‘inspiring’, ‘thought provoking’ and ‘soothing’ for the various keynotes, workshops and wellbeing sessions they attended.

Why not bookmark this Self-care Break page of 5-minute wellbeing taster sessions as a resource to dip into when you need a break during the working day? You can choose from mindfulness, hand massage, chair yoga, laughter, and mindful movement. Or catch up on some of the sessions listed below.

The inspiring keynote by Dr Doyin Atewologun, an internationally recognised expert on leadership, diversity, intersectionality and organisation culture, on ‘Leading the way to a more inclusive university community’ comes highly recommended from those who attended it. Or catch up on other popular sessions like:

Managing stress, anxiety and burnout – including an introduction to the SilverCloud and Togetherall online resources
Understanding how racism affects us all and how to be an ally
Understanding restorative practice – skills for preventing and healing conflict
Learning more about mental health and wellbeing – including skills for self-compassion and an introduction to the Recovery College
An introduction to UoP staff networks

There are also sessions for academic and other student-facing staff:

Student experiences of inclusion and wellbeing with guest speaker Maisha Islam
Creating brave learning spaces
Universal design for learning and assistance technology – creating an inclusive classroom
Accessible and inclusive examinations and assessments
Report, support and safeguard – managing disclosures of serious issues
Cultural competence for academic staff
Learning Well resources – establishing a community of practice for wellbeing and inclusion in the curriculum

The last day for updating the personalised wellbeing tool is Saturday 31st July 2021.

Two people standing at a board, both looking at it. One person holding a marker at the board as if to write on it. On the board there's already a diagram on it

Digital Learning Plan (Tom and Aron chit chat)

July 5, 2021 / Tom Langston / 0 Comments

As you may be aware, Professor Ale Armellini is creating a Digital Success Plan for the University. Rather than create the Plan and seek comment after the fact (and after any substantive changes could be made), Professor Armellini formed a cross-University group to help shape his ideas as well as provide valuable input into the Plan.

Aron Truss from BAL and I were both asked to participate in the group and have been working on elements of the Plan together.

With the Plan progressing and nearing completion, the idea of shining a light on where we are up to felt appropriate as there may still be people unaware of the project, that would like to offer some suggestions or find out more about what the Plan hopes to achieve.

This piece is partly promotional and partly reflective of our experiences of working on a project to substantially impact how we approach our digital teaching and learning experiences.

How did you get involved?

TL:

I heard about the Digital Learning Plan while talking to colleagues in another meeting. I asked if I could put myself forward to represent the team and feedback on our ideas. I sent my request in and was asked to join. It was an honour to be asked along and felt really good to actually be aware of the ideas that were going forward. I think more that I was actually able to feed into the process and get the team’s voice heard within such an interesting part of the University’s future.

AT:

During summer 2020, I worked as part of a team, contributing to my Faculty’s (BaL) plans for the 2020-2021 academic year. I was subsequently asked to be part of one of the University workstrands which led to my inclusion on the Digital Success Plan working group. My current role involves supporting and promoting the digital agenda in the Faculty of Business and Law, so I was really pleased to be involved in this, as I’m keen to see how we can continue to enhance digital learning and teaching for both staff and students.

What have you found most interesting about the project?

TL:

I think one of the biggest revelations for me was how unified everyone seemed to be. Of course, there were differences, but generally, everyone had the same idea for where we would like to see this go. I think one key point was while we can offer something that will help guide everyone with the implementation of a more “digital” curriculum, it endeavours to allow the flexibility for people to be innovative and develop their materials to fit their needs.

AT:

The Digital Success Plan is going to work in partnership with the new Education Plan, and its purpose is to facilitate the implementation of the University vision/strategy, so the themes covered are directly applicable to learning and teaching practice. This is what I find really interesting, as I’m excited to see how we can support people, and facilitate the development of digital education in a meaningful and useful way for staff and students. I think the ambition around creating a risk-friendly culture that supports pedagogic innovation is really exciting and important to enable the development of new digital learning opportunities. The promotion of learning design and the use of a clear methodology to achieve this also has the capacity to significantly impact our practice.

What do you think 2020 (lockdowns) have done to shape the Plan?

TL:

For me it was the speed at which the change had to take place. It forced people to look into an uncomfortable situation that helped them realise “I can actually do this”. Obviously, people weren’t experts overnight and they still needed help, but I hope they say that it was not as bad as they had first thought. It did increase stress and workloads and that is something no one wanted, but again, I hope people can reflect on this and see that they can adapt what they have made this year and see that these new resources can be developed and implemented in the future.

AT:

There has been some brilliant practice demonstrated by colleagues this year, including a massive shift in the baseline delivery of things like video resources (Panopto), synchronous online sessions (Zoom) and effective use of the VLE (Moodle templates). The Plan looks to build on this, but it’s clear that the trajectory will be away from “emergency remote teaching” to a more considered and sustainable model that includes learning design planning and enhancements to tools and systems as well.

What does the Plan offer going forward?

TL:

For me the Plan offers those still unsure about digital learning the chance to find a “security” blanket in what they can do. It helps shape ideas and lay a foundation for whatever they want to try next.

AT:

The Plan has been built on a foundation of strong pedagogy and positive student experience, facilitated by a series of aims, which include supporting staff and students to develop their digital fluency, fostering multidisciplinarity, encouraging pedagogic innovation and flexibility (including around assessment), and further cementing the principles, and best practice, of blended and connected learning.

What is the next step?

TL:

Well, the next step is to consider the final suggestions that may have come in and see how they can be incorporated into the Plan as it stands. I don’t want that to sound like it’s already written and set in stone, it really isn’t, but it does have some element of the structure that we are now working within. There are a few meetings yet to happen where the ideas are polished and finalised, and that is the exciting part. We can see what the vision of this was and where it is now going.

AT:

The aim is to launch the Plan later this summer. Ale is still keen to hear feedback from staff if people have questions or comments. As practitioners, I think it might be worth us beginning a discussion about what the implementation of the Plan might look like.

Final thoughts:

TL:

The most important thing for me is that we maintain a good line of communication with the end-users. It is our chance to be real innovators in HE and find ways to engage and develop our digital provision. It is a chance to engage the students in the conversation about what they want but also what we expect from them too. It is exciting to be able to have taken part in this. I think this alongside the new Explore tool is a great starting point for where the University can go next with digital learning and teaching.

AT:

As a practitioner, the area of most interest to me is the embedding of a methodology for learning design, and the fostering of a culture that enables partnership in design between OCDs/learning designers and academics. I’m keen to see this aim realised, as I think it has the capacity to make the student and staff experience better all round. I’d be interested to hear what our colleagues feel about this too, and how they think this could be facilitated.

Credit Image: Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Episode 11 – John “Hack” Hackmeyer from CyberCrocodile

TelTales Podcast

Episode 11 - John "Hack" Hackmeyer from CyberCrocodile

00:00 / 45:15

Building Effective Digital Training Courses for Onboarding and Enablement

John Hackmeyer – LinkedIn

Nowhere Land – Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Image shows back of laptop to the screen with a smiling man looking at the screenp

Online assessment in the time of Covid

May 4, 2021 / Mike Wilson / 0 Comments

In pre-Covid times, exams delivered via Moodle were limited by the availability of suitable physical spaces. Exam rooms represented a bottleneck to the number of students taking exams concurrently.

For the last year, we’ve used Moodle (and integrated platforms) to deliver the majority of our teaching and assessment online.

A visualisation of the online assessment mix at the University of Portsmouth:

In May 2020 many academics who had previously planned to deliver paper-based exams had to quickly adapt and deliver online assessments. In some cases, these required students to scan or take pictures of their work and upload these to assignments (Moodle or Turnitin) for marking.

In recent months, newer platforms to handle this workflow and ease the marking burden for academics have been developed – platforms such as Turnitin Gradescope and CrowdMark. These platforms leverage the similarities in students’ answers so academics can mark many answers at once. When time allows, we hope to be able to evaluate these platforms in more detail.

In the diagram above you can see “Assignments under exam conditions” as the meeting point between traditional essays and restricted online exams. This year we have seen a big growth in this area as academics move from paper-based written exams to time-restricted assignments. An obvious caveat here is that these haven’t been conducted under true exam conditions and so are best described as open book exams. Many digital assessment platforms now include various types of proctoring and would be able to handle remote time-restricted essays (and other assessment types) securely. There are, however, a number of ethical issues to be considered with online proctoring, and we need to proceed cautiously here.

As a University, I feel we should also be looking to expand our capacity for online assessment as over the next decade we will probably see the end of paper-based exams in favour of typed essay papers delivered online due in part to student expectations.

Academics have had a year to adapt to exams in lockdown and many have discovered the benefits of Moodle quizzes for exams that offer automatic marking. (And note that Moodle is excellent at delivering scientific and mathematical exam questions as well as longer coursework assignment submissions.) Generally speaking the Technology and Science and Health faculties deliver the majority of our Moodle quiz based exams and the number of exams has grown significantly during the lockdown. Many academics don’t want to go back to paper.

In Technology Enhanced Learning we oversee online exams and assessments in terms of supporting and evaluating the digital tools and making sure Moodle can handle the number of exams thrown at it. The number of online exams has increased substantially over the last year, all funnelled into two exam windows. As a team we work closely with colleagues in IS to provide more capacity in Moodle and with timetabling to ensure the exams are evenly distributed to avoid terminal peaks of concurrent users, providing a stable Moodle platform for all users.

Without the bottleneck of physical exam rooms, the January 2021 exams were initially weighed in the favour of academic requests around having exams earlier in the day and only using the first week of the exam window to maximise available marking time. Unfortunately, this translated into a scenario that would have presented a significant number of terminal peaks of concurrent users on Moodle. Members of TEL worked closely with the central timetabling unit to level out these peaks and with the exception of one or two slow points, we all delivered a successful exam window in January.

In advance of the May/June exams, we have gone further and set hard parameters around how many exams (quizzes) or timed assignments (Turnitin or Moodle assignments) can be timetabled in any given time slot. We’d like to thank CTU for their tireless effort to make this happen. It wasn’t an easy job to manage all the necessary requirements but it’s given us an exam timetable that looks like the image below. This really is invaluable work to the University when assessment represents so much effort by students, academics and support staff.

Our increasing reliance on online assessment means, I think, that we should investigate new technologies to support that function. Platforms such as Gradescope or CrowdMark could help relieve the marking burden; one of the many platforms such as Wiseflow or Mettl or Inspera could provide extra exam capacity (with the functionality to proctor exams if that was something the University wanted to do). Moodle, with its advanced quiz and assignment capabilities, would continue to play a key role.

I believe we will get through this coming assessment period well, but as our reliance on online assessment grows so must our technologies to support it.

As a University the Covid-19 pandemic has been a driver for the uptake of online learning and assessment. As a University community, we need to harness this positive momentum and diversify our offering of assessment platforms to support students and staff.

Credit Image: Photo by MayoFi on Unsplash

Various device's PC, tablet and mobile, plus another mobile being held in a hand. All have the same image Username, Password and Sign In. The other hand is positioned to touch Sign In button

Digital Accessibility in Teaching and Learning – What is it?

March 15, 2021 / Abigail Lee / 0 Comments

‘Digital Accessibility’ or ‘Accessibility’ is a heated topic at the moment. Public sector bodies like us have the obligation by law to comply with Accessibility Regulations 2018 with a series of deadlines to meet. It is also an important part of our University Vision 2030 and Strategy 2025 where it says we should ‘respect and celebrate diversity and equal opportunity through an inclusive culture’.

But what does ‘Digital Accessibility’ mean and how does it apply to us in teaching and learning?

Before we look into that, let’s first find out what is ‘Accessibility’.

What is ‘Accessibility’?

Accessibility is about removing disability.

What is disability? Disability happens when there’s a barrier between people and their environment. It is commonly seen as a condition or a problem of the body or mind (impairment) that requires medical treatment. However, UK Equality Act 2010 recognised and acknowledged that disability, or barriers, can be caused not just by the impairment(s) but also by the way society is organised. This is defined in the social model of disability. According to the social model of disability, these barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets, or they can be caused by people’s attitudes to difference, like assuming disabled people can’t do certain things [3]. For many people with impairment(s), the main barrier they experience does not stem directly from their bodies, but rather from their unwelcome reception in the world, in terms of how physical structures, institutional norms, and social attitudes exclude and/or denigrate them. [4]

This is where ‘Accessibility’ plays a part.

Accessibility is about finding and dismantling these social barriers, creating an environment that adapts to the needs, ideally as early as possible in the process. For example: accessible toilets, lifts, wheelchair ramps, braille on printed materials, even simple things like left-handed scissors etc. When barriers are removed, disabled people can be independent, autonomous and equal in society.

Accessibility supports and celebrates inclusion; it should be ok to be different, with impairment(s) or not. It is about ending exclusion and oppression so that people with impairment(s) are not required to change who they are in order to be entitled to the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.

What is ‘Digital Accessibility’?

Digital accessibility is ‘Accessibility’ in digital media.

It is about making digital products like websites, mobile apps and other digital tools and technologies accessible to everyone. It is the ability for all users to have an equal opportunity to access and benefit from the same services or digital products, regardless of any impairment(s) they may have.

So, what is ‘Digital Accessibility’ in Teaching and Learning?

Digital accessibility in teaching and learning is ‘Accessibility’ in digital teaching and learning products – the courses’ contents and activities, and the service we offer to our students.

It means all students are given access to all teaching materials and the ability to participate in all teaching and learning activities, regardless of any impairment(s) they may have.

Taking digital accessibility on board in teaching and learning is very much about understanding that, if we’re creating inaccessible learning materials or activities, then effectively we’re responsible for creating barriers. These kinds of resources often lack structure, written and designed with a set of assumptions. It is about having the realisation when we create resources that fail to accommodate a certain group of students, effectively we have disabled them.

What ‘Digital Accessibility’ is not.

Now we know what digital accessibility is and its role in teaching and learning, let’s have a look at what it is not.

Misconception 1: digital accessibility is just about disability.

It’s not. Digital accessibility in essence is about inclusiveness and universality.

It’s about having good design and making resources that can be used by as many people as possible.

I believe every student, in fact, everyone was once in one or more of the situations below; maybe even more than once:

In different cultural environments e.g. in a foreign country
In a noisy environment or a public place where you can’t hear properly
Using many different devices e.g. desktop computers, mobile phones, tablets etc
Are temporarily or situationally impaired e.g. from injuries or with caring responsibilities
Have age-related cognitive decline.

In these situations, everyone can benefit from the flexibility brought by materials and activities designed with digital accessibility in mind. In fact, many of us use elements of them without particularly thinking about them. We might think that only disabled students use assistive technology, but, in fact, we are walking around with a kind of assistive device in our pockets all the time – our mobile phones. Have we not used and enjoyed its built-in accessibility functions like voice over, browser enlarge, colour changes, speech recognition, screen reader etc ever? When digital accessibility is put in place, everyone benefits including ourselves; inevitably everyone grows old and will eventually be impaired by age. So, essentially, we are just helping ourselves.

This video from the Web Accessibility Initiative shows a variety of ways that content produced to be accessible is beneficial for all users regardless of their ability or disability.

Misconception 2: digital accessibility is not my problem.

Yes, it is. Digital accessibility is everyone’s responsibility.

We’re all in this together. As mentioned before, it is required by law and it is the University’s Vision. More importantly, as an educational institution, we are responsible. We are the teachers and role models, what you do makes a difference. We can change and have the responsibility to lead the change in society’s perceptions and practice. We can create a society that accepts and celebrates that everyone is unique, recognises and encourages the strength and talents of people with impairment(s).

The whole purpose of providing education is to give the young the things they need in order to develop in an orderly, sequential way into members of society; to impact and change lives. Digital accessibility helps us fulfil that purpose. It provides us with an opportunity for education to reach everyone who needs it, in a way that can benefit as many people as possible. It gives us an opportunity to improve our teaching and learning materials to fulfil their purpose of existence. It is our responsibility to make that change.

Misconception 3: digital accessibility is hard.

No, it’s very easy. All you need is empathy and consideration.

What you do at the start makes it easier at the end. Follow these good practices when designing and adding your content. When you start doing it, you will realise that most of them are really just common sense! Information should be consistent and easy to find, easy to read, and easy to navigate; documents need good structure and colour contrast; images and graphs are described well; videos have captions or transcriptions etc, just to name a few. It is all a matter of common sense. eLearning Tools website has all the support and information you need to create this kind of accessible content.

Remember that when you design and create your content with digital accessibility in mind, you will not only create better learning materials, you will have content that can be more easily reused and repurposed – saving a lot of time in the future!

References

Credit Image:Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

A pair of glasses sat upright in front of a monitor. The monitor has some coding on the screen, which is blurred.

Don’t Lose it, Reuse it! Uploading old videos to Panopto can breathe life into old material

March 8, 2021 / Shaun Searle / 0 Comments

Introduction

I normally start all of my blogs with an anecdote from my decade of teaching and this time I’m going to take you all the way back! Back to my early days when I was a headstrong newly qualified teacher that had aspirations to be inspirational, full of new and cutting edge ideas and naive to any of the politics around the job. The pressure to achieve results and improve particularly my classes’ writing levels meant I always spent a lot of time (far too much!) trying to think up new activities to address the issue. Being an English specialist and with aspirations to lead the subject, it became my own personal crusade. I felt if I could improve my classes’ fine motor skills, this, in turn, would hopefully improve the quality of writing produced. I used to have sleepless nights over why my tasks that had taken ages to prepare, were in tune with their interests and created with cool computer images were having no impact. I ran this past a more mature teacher who showed me quite a thick book from the mid-’70s / early ’80s that contained cutting activities. The book itself had seen a lot of action and initially, I was very dismissive, saying that kids nowadays would have little interest in something so dated. She asked me to try it for a week and lo and behold my class loved it! It had other benefits I hadn’t foreseen such as calming and improving behaviour, making them take pride and care in their work. The writing levels did improve but not for my innovations but from my repurposing of old material that had been successful previously and was still relevant to my current students.

I then probably broke numerous copyright laws and spent a couple of hours after school photocopying the whole book and actually learned quite a big lesson in respecting the input of others. This particular resource helped me throughout my career, in 3 different schools for years and when I started leading Early Years, the ideas behind the resources became a staple part in providing children with the building blocks to begin their writing journey on.

No need to reinvent the wheel

This probably seems a very convoluted way in which to start a blog post for a University but currently, I am working through moving old Ubicast videos over to Panopto. While this is a long-winded process (I have to download them and reupload them on an individual basis), watching some of the Learning and Teaching Conference videos from 4 years ago has made me realise that a lot of the pedagogic messages ring true today.

I won’t use the blog to explain how to upload videos to Panopto as it is all outlined on the relevant page of the Content Capture part of the Preparing for Teaching in a Blended Learning Context.

The process of uploading videos to Panopto is fairly straightforward and perhaps a key element of it is that on a video’s upload, it inherits all of the features of a newly created Panopto video. This includes Automatic Speech Recognition, which is essential for the video to adhere to modern accessibility standards. It is worth stating that it is dependent on the sound quality of the recording itself (particularly if it is an older video or one of a live event) and the captions will need to be reviewed, just as any should before the video is used publicly.

Also within Panopto, there is an ability to add clips from other Panopto videos and you could also take this one step further and splice multiple video clips together to make a whole new creation.

I have old videos, what’s the next step

We will be looking to automatically migrate videos from the University’s repository, Compass in advance of the next academic year, however, due to the scale of the operation (there are nearly 30,000 videos) and the complexity (not every video has a clear owner), it needs to be actioned after periods of activity such as the assessment period.

That does not mean you have to wait! If there is a video in the Compass repository that you feel would be immediately beneficial to your teaching, please contact eLearn@port.ac.uk with all of the relevant information as they have administrator access to both systems and would be able to assist with moving this content over. Equally, you may feel more comfortable talking to the faculty Online Course Developers local to you as their role is to assist with Moodle content and they may have some excellent advice regarding it.

Final Thoughts

Most importantly, really consider why you wish to use a video and what the learning intention is behind it. The TEL Training session Content Capture and Distance Learning will promote the idea of using shorter videos to efficiently get your message across and engage the viewer more. Just because it is possible to upload an old 4-hour conference video, does not necessarily mean that you should. However, what it can do is to provide a different focal point to affirm a concept or to address a misconception.

Credit Image: Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

A purple background with various coloured arrows pointing up the page with the writing RISE The University's Online Journal

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

March 1, 2021 / Julian Ingle / 0 Comments

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!

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.

Starting page to the course, image of mature lady in a blue chair, in what looks like a hospital cubicle

H5P Branching Scenario: Students as Decision Makers

February 22, 2021 / Jonny Bell / 0 Comments

Adapting during Covid

Due to covid, students have unfortunately missed out on a lot of practical aspects of their courses, which may have been the main reason they decided to take the course in the first place. The Branching Scenario tool in H5P can be used as a substitute of sorts to allow students to have a more meaningful learning experience.

How have we adapted since last March to try and make our courses more content-rich? The use of videos is far more prevalent than before. Videos are great! BUT we need to also use them in conjunction with other learning tools. If you’re asking students to watch video after video it becomes a passive experience and then we fall into a similar situation when we ask them just to read ppts, notes, etc.

How can we show there is “added value” to our courses?

Interactivity is key here, good synchronous sessions can help engage students, but often there are issues that mean students are unable to attend or the experience of the session is spoiled by a student’s connectivity issue. It’s important not to neglect asynchronous resources. A mix of both makes for a good module and better student feedback!

The following branching scenario is more of an asynchronous activity but you could also deploy it in a live session if needed.

In late October 2020, I was approached by a member of the nursing academic team to film some scenarios within our own simulation suite, to be used as an online resource/substitute for activities that could not go ahead due to covid restrictions. The three scenarios involved a student nurse and a patient (played by actors) and covered various aspects of Patient focussed care.

Being interested in filming (Read my previous blog post), I jumped at this opportunity but I further suggested that we make certain elements interactive, to put the student in charge of making decisions. They would play the role of the student nurse and based on how the scenario panned out they were given 3 key decisions to make with one “good” and one “bad” choice at each decision point.

Set up and execution

The filming was set for the end of November in Covid secure conditions and two of the three scenarios were scripted to have these decision elements within them. In terms of filming style, I decided to go with a three-camera setup, one on the patient, one on the student and a wide-angle also so that students could see the whole environment these characters were in. If I could do it again I might go for a POV (Point of View) style which might give an even more immersive experience.

The editing process was interesting as I had to be creative in some places where audio quality was not as good as I’d hoped and splicing the scenes to make them run more smoothly.

Creation of the H5P object was in itself very easy to do. Once I had exported the individual video files, it was a case of dragging and dropping them into place within the Branching Scenario editor. I would certainly advise anyone who’d like to do this, to map out exactly how you think it will look beforehand so it makes the actual building of the resource much quicker.

Did it work?

I received some fantastic feedback from both the academic in charge and the students who used it. I honestly believe that this could be a way forward in bridging the gap between practical elements and online learning. Whilst these types of resources lend themselves well to medical courses where students will need to take important decisions in their future careers, I can also see that this has a broader appeal in Languages, Law, Criminology, Coaching/management and many others.

If you want to have a go at one of the resources I’ve made, check out this link:

https://portsmouthuni.h5p.com/content/1291197333648269337

(You don’t have to be a student nurse to complete this! There’s no difficult terminology or complicated procedures to understand.)

A laptop opened with what looks like a zoom meeting going on as lots of different faces. Sat next to the laptop is a cup with a chair pushed against the table

Lockdown Learning Fatigue – How can we re-engage drifting students

February 15, 2021 / Amy Barlow / 0 Comments

Amy Barlow, National Teaching Fellow and Head of Academic Development reflects on how in TB2 ‘Connection and Belonging’ should be the priority curriculum activities

Universities first went online in lockdown, March 2020; webcams were fired up, adrenaline was high and we were all navigating teaching from a place of unfamiliarity and novelty while the sun shone outside. Our pets and children became part of the daily Zoom on-screen family as tails hovered across the screen and toys were passed to Mum or Dad during calls. ‘You’re on Mute’ became the unspoken mantra of the working day. Restricted trousers and heels were replaced by comfortable joggers and leggings – it was academia Jim but not as we knew it.

Fast forward to February 2021 and the prolonged need to teach online, during another lockdown (in Winter this time) has resulted in a sense of fatigue for many staff and students. It’s been months since some of our students have been physically on campus and seen their peers and tutors. The ebb and flow of each semester starting and beginning haven’t been felt. They have not experienced the celebratory feel on campus when their assignments are finally all handed in and they have not revelled in the social buzz of navigating their new timetable as teaching resumes and new exciting subjects take centre stage. Lockdown learning fatigue has settled heavily on the shoulders of many and there is a growing concern for their progress when attendance is minimal and much of the well designed self-directed learning is missed, or engaged with, out of sequence. The blend of online tools and the skillset of colleagues, to deliver distance learning is at an all-time high – but how can we bridge the disconnect that seems so apparent for some lecturers staring at empty discussion boards and sitting patiently in silent Zoom rooms?

Studying has become a lonely activity and the multiple ways students orientated their studies previously have stopped. Although on the plus side lockdown has taken away many distractions and time pressures, it has also brought with it a learning environment that has many new barriers especially in terms of mental health and wellbeing. Staying on track week to week and navigating multiple module pages in the VLE is a new method of time management required from students. In terms of community, the face-to-face interaction and ‘get to know you’ activity which scaffolds peer groups and support structures for students have been diminished. For example, the chats walking out of lectures, the informal opportunity to meet over coffee and a safe space to ask their friends questions are no longer a learning resource available to them. It’s this period of orientation to new modules which is so crucial to the curriculum gaining momentum and to students staying on track.

Over time, withdrawal from study may escalate into missing a week, or weeks of teaching and then feeling that re-engaging, or attending the Zoom taught session is too much to face. A student, for example, may feel overwhelmed. Some may just feel uncomfortable studying in bedrooms and attending online classes in this private space. Ironically, they are disengaged from the one shared learning experience and readily available support structure which may help them. If they get out of sync with their peers and the module content, it is understandable that they may not want to join in, feeling embarrassed for not completing the prep work they may have been set. Logging into Moodle may seem daunting when done sporadically – all of sudden there are new posts, everyone is chatting and answering questions and it’s a confusing picture. This Learning Well resource is useful to help students understand why they may find it hard to concentrate when they are feeling anxious and overwhelmed. It’s on our course and department pages but is a good tool to bridge the subject with them. Many courses saw at the end of TB1 that all of these factors had resulted in a last-minute assignment panic for many. This was seen when views of recorded sessions spiked in the days prior to deadlines and demand for one-to-one catch up sessions increased.

Meeting the needs of this students group is new territory for teachers everywhere, who are also battling with their own lockdown fatigue and the challenges of home working.

So, how can we re-engage students during a time of lockdown learning fatigue?

View our top tips to Re-Engage here.

There is no quick fix. There are, however, some simple steps that can be taken to bring students back into the online learning space. To re-engage and help them all to feel on track – but most importantly relaxed about their studies so they can learn. They need to understand that everyone (including their lecturers) are sharing the same struggles and anxieties as they are. It’s safe to speak up and share that they feel a bit lost – no one will judge them, they can catch up – it’s all there on Moodle if they feel able to work through the scaffolded learning activities that are set in small chunks. Importantly, they work together as a team to help each other succeed in a difficult time.

A key recommendation is focusing on the first, three weeks of the module being fun, accessible and social-based around fascinating disciplinary content. This time is make or break in terms of engagement. Then bring in further social, low-pressure activities as the module progresses. Students may not want to keep their videos on during zoom sessions, that’s fine – perhaps a quick wave at the start and a commitment from everyone to communicate with the chat function would help the group to get to know each other. Informal drop-in sessions have been successful in our Faculty of Business and Law to create a social online space to ask the questions that may otherwise seem stupid. For example, setting clear expectations about participation is key, but don’t just tell the students what you expect, ask them to discuss what they think is fair:

Would they like to use their videos during calls?

Would they expect to contribute to the VLE activities every week or every few days? Are they happy to be part of a group chat (e.g. Whatsapp) just for this group?

Should all sessions be recorded and available for those who didn’t attend?

What should they agree to do if they feel they are falling behind?

How will they hold each other to account?

What will the group do if they are confused or have missed content?

Icebreaking and ‘Get to Know You’ activities could feature at the start of each week not just at the start of the module. Many small steps early on can make a big difference –

From compliance to culture

January 18, 2021 / Stephen Webb / 1 Comment

The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR) provides clear legal requirements for universities in terms of making learning accessible for all students. In turn, most universities have begun a journey towards compliance with PSBAR. This is a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily; at least, not by itself.

Alistair McNaught, a leading champion of accessibility and inclusion for the HE sector, argues that we need to move from an approach based on compliance to one of culture change, a culture in which we minimise barriers to learning and maximise the benefits of different learning technologies. As educators we need to ask: who is consuming our resources, what are their needs, and how can we most effectively meet those needs?

The need for us to shift from a compliance-based approach to one of developing a culture of accessibility maturity is clear when you compare a university virtual learning environment (VLE) with the other types of website covered by PSBAR.

A typical public sector body – a local council, for example – will often run a website that has content that rarely changes, is primarily text-based, and is under the control of a small team of web experts. A university VLE, on the other hand, typically has thousands of academics with a range of skill sets uploading a bewildering variety of content and pointing to third-party tools on a daily basis. A compliance-only approach for universities is thus extremely challenging. In the worst case, a compliance-only approach could lead to unintended consequences that are entirely counter-productive (and there are anecdotal accounts of this happening): an institution could choose to be “compliant” with PSBAR by dispensing with digital diversity and reverting to paper handouts. If they did this it wouldn’t matter if the handouts were poor-quality, smudged, third-generation photocopies – because the accessibility standards don’t apply to printouts. This “compliant” approach would be bad for all students but it would hugely disadvantage disabled students – which is, of course, the opposite of what PSBAR hopes to achieve.

McNaught visited UoP a few years ago when he worked for Jisc as their Accessibility Subject Matter Expert. He played the role of a “mystery shopper”, acting as a disabled student who was trying to access the University VLE, website, and other online systems. He is now an independent consultant and has recently posted some thought-provoking articles about accessibility maturity in an educational context. Throughout 2020 he worked with the charity AbilityNet to build on and update the old TechDis Accessibility Maturity Model. Together they have developed two versions of a maturity model: an institutional model and a course/module model. For anyone interested in issues of digital accessibility and inclusion, it is worth following McNaught’s upcoming series of blog posts.

At the close of 2020, McNaught also published a couple of related posts (part 1 and part 2) that provided an explicit example of how PSBAR can lead to unintended consequences. The example involves something with which UoP and many other universities have been grappling since we all increased the amount of video being produced: captioning.

At face value, the legislation requires us to provide 100% accurate captions for deaf people. A risk-averse institution that lacks the budget to create “compliant content” might remove videos from the VLE. This unintended consequence would have a negative impact on all students, including disabled students. McNaught argues that an approach rooted in accessibility maturity would take into account context, and would provide a roadmap for improving video accessibility.

For example, many courses provide most of their content as text. Alongside this, some tutors provide a video version of the content. If the video explanation provides no more information than a text alternative, then the video does not require captions. It’s only if a video introduces new information, not explicit in the text, that the issue of captioning arises. So that’s one lesson: depending upon the context, videos can be an alternative format.

Here is another example of where context is important, and where the guiding principle must be a pedagogic purpose. Imagine a video of a debate. The video might be used for different teaching purposes: to examine rhetorical devices, to study non-verbal communication, to illustrate legal arguments, to highlight technical recording considerations … there are many possible uses. And the best accessibility solution for each use case might well be different! Captioning might not be the best solution. Thus if you provide a caption and then tick the box marked “compliant video” you might nevertheless have created a barrier, not a solution, to learning needs.

Or consider a video of a long-winded, rambling, needlessly prolix interview: a summary consisting of a few bullet points might well be a better solution – for all students – than captions.

Context is important. As McNaught writes: “digital accessibility is about culture change … we need to steer a path between legalism and realism, a path that raises awareness without raising hackles and that encourages skills rather than excuses”. Steering that path won’t be easy – but the destination makes the effort worthwhile.

Credit image: Photo by fauxels from Pexels