Tag: digital learning (Page 1 of 5)

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WiseFlow – Looking in the mirror with reflective portfolios in WiseFlow

July 3, 2023 / Chris Wood / 0 Comments

Hey there, fellow exhausted souls!

Can you believe it? We’re finally coming towards the end of the academic year, and boy, has it been a fun ride! Our WiseFlow pilot has gone from strength to strength as we support academics through a new assessment process. More importantly, we have successfully run two separate assessments using our innovative approach of using WiseFlow as a reflective portfolio – the first use case of this we know about! We’ve grown, learned, and potentially discovered an exciting prospect for the future of reflective portfolios at Portsmouth University, so let’s take a moment to reflect on the journey we’ve been on.

You may have read our previous blog post on “Unlocking the power of WiseFlow: Transforming ePortfolio assessments” where we discussed the possibilities of using WiseFlow as a viable reflective portfolio platform and the benefits a reflective portfolio approach brings. For students, this helps develop their metacognitive skills and self-awareness as learners over a period of time. Academics, on the other hand, can use reflective portfolios to assess students’ learning outcomes in a more comprehensive and authentic manner. This is all part of our wider WiseFlow pilot to provide one integrated assessment platform that serves our current (and future) assessment needs within Portsmouth University, which Mike Wilson spoke to us about recently on our podcast – you can listen here.

Teach Well and Research-Informed Teaching

This year we ran two reflective portfolios within WiseFlow as part of our pilot project – to test the water and find out if this was even possible. The first was within our Researched Informed Teaching module, which supports early career academics to apply their learning in educational enhancements into their own contexts, through reflection and innovation. Students will draw together higher education policy, research methods and educational developments to build students knowledge for their future work. Secondly, we ran a reflective portfolio in our new level seven Teach Well: Principles to Practice module, which is a professional development route for those in roles related to supporting student learning. Students in this module embark on a pedagogical journey through three pillars of practice for teaching well in higher education, gaining the confidence to critically evaluate learning and design approaches and reflecting on what it means to teach well across different modes of study. We recently caught up with Maria Hutchinson who runs this module in our podcast series, if you missed this one, you can listen here.

We’ve worked closely with these academics and our support teams to develop reflective portfolios for these modules that can be used as a summative assessment vehicle which is both intuitive for learners and versatile enough to encompass a broad range of tools which enable the course learning outcomes to be demonstrated in an engaging and meaningful way.

What the students said…

Following the submission of reflective portfolios into WiseFlow, we sent out a survey to participants to gain their feedback and views. Some of the headline figures are detailed below…

90% of students found the WiseFlow reflective portfolio easy to navigate
90% of students agreed that a reflective portfolio suited this type of assessment (compared with traditional essay-based assessment methods)
82% of students felt their own students would enjoy using a reflective portfolio in WiseFlow
71% of students enjoyed the interactive assessment methods, such as histograms, voice recorders etc.
We received multiple comments about the clear instructions that were given on how to access and use Wiseflow as well as its reliability and stability as a platform. Many users also commented positively on the functionality that WiseFlow offered compared to previously used portfolio solutions.

Students also commented on…

If there was a need to add another system to Portsmouth University’s available assessment platforms – “There are too many platforms for submitting the work, Moodle, ePortfolio, WiseFlow, it is really confusing and frustrating that is necessary to learn how to use different platforms for different modules.”
The lack of formatting transfer from applications such as Word, when copying and pasting into WiseFlow – “Transfer of formatted MS Word document to WiseFlow could be improved. Currently, the document format is lost during the cut & paste process which then requires more effort to re-format within the WiseFlow portal.”
Better integration with Moodle and WiseFlow – “I’d like to see direct access from Moodle”.

The data presented highlights the positive reception of WiseFlow as a reflective portfolio solution by students. The high percentage of students that recognized the suitability of a reflective portfolio as an assessment method, in comparison to traditional essay-based approaches and praised its usability is a really positive sign. The positive feedback on the interactive assessment methods further emphasizes the adaptability of the question bank in a traditional FlowMulti assessment to be used in an innovative way.

However, some concerns were raised by students, such as the frustration of managing multiple assessment platforms at the university, indicating a need for better integration. This all links to our Digital Success Plan to (re)design robust assessments to meet the needs of the diverse student population within a blended and connected setting and incorporate a robust specialist end-to-end assessment platform. Our aims in the project were to make it easier for academics to design assessments, easier for students to find their assessments and feedback, and support staff by reducing the manual workaround assessments for academics. During the next stage of the pilot project, integration into our current systems is a top priority and will alleviate these challenges. Furthermore, the lack of formatting transfer from applications like Word to WiseFlow was highlighted as an area for improvement. These critical comments provide valuable insights for further refining and optimizing the WiseFlow system.

The evidence is clear to see – WiseFlow has the ability to provide a viable solution to reflective portfolios, with a bit of refinement – it could be excellent.

What the staff said…

It was also vital to us that we gathered feedback from our academic staff.

100% of staff agreed that WiseFlow allowed them to develop their assessment in ways that were not previously possible
All staff agreed the WiseFlow reflective portfolio allowed them to fully cover learning objectives and meet the needs of their students
We received multiple comments about the speed of the platform, intuitive nature and search functionality which made the verification/moderation process seamless. Staff also commended the accuracy of the rubrics for grading and how new interactive elements made them rethink how they could better use this type of functionality in the future.

Staff also commented on…

Comparisons to previously used portfolio platforms – “Historically the module used [another portfolio system] which was really clunky and didn’t work well at all. I really liked that Wiseflow could be scrolled across (as opposed to clicking through each page) and the layout was great”
Design elements within the marking interface – “It would have been useful to have had the comment box movable (I work with two screens and being able to drag the box to another screen to write on would have been a nice touch – several times I had to keep opening and closing the box as I wasn’t able to see the text underneath it)”
Having more time to explore the platform – “I did not feel I had enough time to play before it went live for students, but this was not WISEflow’s fault – it was just timing”.

As an honest answer, we’ve been blown away by our staff feedback. The unanimous agreement that WiseFlow enables new possibilities for assessment development speaks very highly of this solution and its potential in enhancing the teaching and learning experience for students at Portsmouth University. The potential to create authentic assessments through the use of reflective portfolios is exciting. The accuracy of the grading rubrics was also very highly commended – allowing students to have a greater chance of achieving a clear and defined target and making academic decision-making easier, fairer and more accurate. In terms of developmental areas, the movement of the comment box is a fair point – we’ve heard from other academics about the size of the comment box before – hopefully, something that WiseFlow’s New Marker Journey will alleviate.

Where do we go from here?

As we raised in our first blog post – the reflective portfolio solution in WiseFlow is far from perfect, with a few simple tweaks the solution could become very appealing. Sadly, some of these are out of our hands and lie within the code of the platform. We’ve learnt a lot during the duration of this assessment as a project team, including developmental areas we have highlighted for the future.

The single biggest limiting factor when using a reflective portfolio is when using a file upload question type. This is limited to twelve files that are no more than 10Mb each – multiple file upload questions can be used, but will still have limits on them. We have approached WiseFlow about this for development purposes, however, we have yet to have any significant movement on removing this limit. The removal of this limit puts WiseFlow in an incredibly powerful position to offer another “string to their bow” in terms of assessment choice and would truly open up the use of reflective portfolios within the platform. Sadly, with this limit in place, using reflective portfolios with some faculties such as our Creative and Cultural Industry, where students would regularly upload large .psd, CAD files, HD video, and high-quality audio etc) is just not a viable option. Creative students will often build a “portfolio career” and we would love to be able to work with them on developing reflective portfolios, but this limit stops us. Until this is removed, careful consideration must be taken at the planning stage of an assessment as to whether the reflective portfolio is the correct solution. Further to this, other limitations must be considered – for example, once the reflective portfolio is live for students to complete, it cannot be altered, changed or adapted. During the pilot, we’ve worked extensively with academics and our support teams to iron out any issues prior to release. Careful planning and consideration must take place in the authoring phase of an assignment, which will then be rigorously checked prior to release – in the same way an exam would. This has worked at a small scale but we would need to ensure appropriate support mechanisms are in place at a larger scale.

Our student feedback gave us valuable insight into the process of using WiseFlow. Although reflective portfolios save every 10 seconds, if a student deletes a file or a piece of text and exits the platform, this cannot be recovered. Over the duration of the assessments that took place, we encountered one reported instance of this. We also had some reports of formatting that will not copy from Word documents. Again, we approached WiseFlow regarding this and it is recommended to copy/paste plain text from Word and finish the styling in the text editor of WiseFlow. Although this solution works, having formatting that copies across would make students’ work translate much easier – particularly for those who write on external documents before copying into the platform at the last minute (like myself). In terms of progression beyond WiseFlow, we’d love for students to be able to take their work from the platform and have the ability to store it themselves or share it beyond the WiseFlow platform. Currently, there is no solution to this. A “zip folder” that contained all exports and uploaded files of any inputted answers into WiseFlow would be a great starting point. Again, we’ve put forward the idea to WiseFlow, but have yet to have any movement on this.

Where do we take our pilot now?

Although these are risks with using a reflective portfolio solution in WiseFlow, the prospect and the potential gain of this authentic assessment are exciting. We’ve taken the plunge and proven the concept works, highlighting potential development areas which we really hope get some traction and we’d like to think WiseFlow will be open to listening to these developmental ideas. As for our pilot project as a whole, we move into a second phase of the pilot with a continued focus on reflective portfolios but also some other areas of assessment we have struggled with in the past, such as large file submissions. We have a plethora of training and support we are actively developing and working with local teams to ensure staff feel confident using the systems.

We continue to have a waiting list for academics who are wanting to work with us to develop reflective portfolios in WiseFlow. I find myself meeting with academics on a weekly basis to discuss potential projects and reflective portfolio solutions in their disciplines. So far, we’ve done no real advertising, and this interest has been created from word of mouth and from those who have used it as students. We are keen to share our experiences with other Universities in WiseFlow user groups, who are actively keen to explore this and want to learn about our innovative approach. However, we need to be open and honest about the limitations that this solution has at the moment. Collectively, we might hold enough power to make change happen but until that point, caution must be taken before embarking on a reflective portfolio to ensure this is the correct fit for assessment.

The potential of this solution is game-changing, not just for us, but for a lot of other Higher Education institutions across the world.

The future of reflective portfolios in WiseFlow is exciting – keep watching this space.

Chris

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TEL in 2020

December 18, 2020 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

Well … 2020 has been quite a year. The most extraordinary 12 months any of us have experienced. Although 2020 has had its stresses (to put it mildly) I’m proud at how the TEL team has helped the University maintain its mission. Our existing students were able to progress and new students have been able to start their University career. Without technology, that would have been impossible.

Like many people, we understood the disruptive potential of Covid-19 in late February. By early March we started thinking about the support we could offer if the University had to deliver teaching remotely. We thus had the elearning Tools website ready to publish when the VC sent his email about home working.

That move to home working affected the TEL team less than many other teams in the University – partly because many of us already had some experience of home working and partly because we work with technology on a daily basis. All we need to do the basics of our job is a fast, stable internet connection. (One team member, stuck abroad when airlines began to remove scheduled flights, spent several days working from Australia. For a while we truly were providing around-the-clock service!) It helped the team enormously that we used SLACK: the platform held a record of our thinking and enabled people to catch up on discussions they might otherwise have missed.

That’s not to say working at home (or living at work?) was without challenges – especially for those of us who were homeschooling children or who had other caring responsibilities. One lesson I think we learned far too late was this: when we’re working at home we don’t need to be available all the time. Too many of us jumped to respond to a SLACK message immediately or to answer an email the moment it reached our inbox. It’s nice to know our team members are conscientious – but that “always-there” mentality is ultimately self-defeating. And although SLACK enabled us to work efficiently while we were remote, it’s undeniable that face-to-face communication is quicker and less prone to misunderstanding than text-based communication. All that raises an interesting question: when we get back to some sort of normality, will we all rush back into the office? Not many people miss their commute, but some do miss the office environment – so will we work more flexibly, with one or two days spent in the office and the rest working at home? Or will some of us become full-time home-workers?

Returning from speculation on future events to events that happened back in the spring of 2020: the University started to develop its “Blended and Connected” approach to the new academic year. To support that initiative, the TEL team created the website Preparing for teaching in a blended learning context, with content coming from across the whole of DCQE. We also worked closely with our colleagues in Academic Development to put on the TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival (and more recently a Blended Learning Mini-Fest).

The “Blended and Connected” approach allowed us to address a long-standing complaint from students. In response to our yearly Digital Experience Tracker, students regularly criticised the lack of consistency across their Moodle modules. We now had the chance to develop and implement a templated approach to Moodle. The TEL team also improved the Moodle theme, in light of co-creation work with a group of University computing students studying UX/UI design.

Of course, all those other tasks involved in running a large Moodle installation did not go away because of the pandemic. Integrations with other systems (more of which below) had to be managed, the upgrade to Moodle version 3.9 had to take place, and all of this took place as the University moved from Quercus to SITS. (Can anything be more stressful for a university than changing Student Record systems in the middle of a pandemic?) The SITS project touched most aspects of University life; for us, it required the development of new feeds into Moodle.

Moodle itself has performed robustly since the start of the academic year, despite routinely serving numbers of students that in previous years would have been considered extraordinary. By the start of December our new Moodle had clocked up 1,264,306 logins and students had engaged in 14,088,187 activities (read/writes). Phew…

Throughout 2019, discussions and consultations around content capture had taken place (and a new policy on content capture was eventually agreed). We entered 2020, however, in a difficult place. We were concerned about the technologies we had available to support content capture: our existing platforms had reached end-of-life. The team facilitated a number of supplier demonstrations early in the year, with the last demonstration taking place just before the work-from-home directive took hold, and UoP chose Panopto – the most widely adopted video platform within universities. The implementation and roll-out of such a platform would normally take place over the course of a full year, but we made Panopto available (complete with Moodle integration and a support website) within six weeks. Quite an achievement! And the platform is being heavily used: by November, we had 29,793 videos created; 10,464 hours of video created; 736,081 views and downloads; and 97,759 hours of video delivered. Again, phew…

To support synchronous delivery for the new “Blended and Connected” approach, the University purchased Zoom. And, of course, we were quick to integrate this with Moodle. One useful feature in Zoom, which at that point could not easily be replicated by existing options such as Meet and WebEx, was the easy creation of breakout rooms. (Offering a plethora of technologies that do similar things – Zoom, WebEx, Meet – has the potential to lead to confusion for staff and an inconsistent experience for students. It can be difficult to take options away from people; in some cases, it might be technically impossible to remove options. But – in the interests of a consistent student experience – perhaps we need to be firmer in our recommendations of what tools to use?)

We invested in other tools, too: Padlet to facilitate collaboration; Vevox as an audience response system; and we continued to push Nearpod for interactive lessons. For all of these, we continued to provide our usual training support for staff, and offered face-to-face and small-group sessions – mediated by Zoom, WebEx, and Meet!

Throughout the pandemic, the TEL team has been active on social media – and the stream of positive, uplifting, motivational messages from TEL accounts were well received during the lockdown. More than one member of staff said the posts cheered them up!

We worked with staff across DCQE to help them create support sites (for example the Wellbeing and ASK sites) and with staff across the University in workstrands, workstreams, and elsewhere. We supported departments in adapting to an online alternative to their usual ‘go-to method’ of face to face presenting such as the Staff Induction Welcome Event for new staff members held by HR. I hope that cross-institution working carries on when we return to some form of normality because everyone agrees it has been beneficial.

What else? Well, we have kept abreast of accessibility issues and our responsibilities under PSBAR. This is a difficult issue for all universities: the legislation was written, I believe, with static content in mind. But a VLE contains rapidly changing content from thousands of users. The sector as a whole is grappling with the implications of this.

We hope to develop our (externally hosted) CPD Moodle. As more people become aware of the platform, more courses are going on there. And we are working closely with CEG Digital, the University’s partners for expanding our DL offering.

Questions around analytics and data have been of interest and, when we’ve had any spare time (hah!), we’ve tried to make progress in this area. We have liaised with a Business Analyst on the creation of a Student Engagement and Monitoring dashboard; locally, we have started to look at how to surface useful statistics on the Moodle dashboard. Watch for developments over the coming months!

I could write much, much more about the team’s attainments – but I’ll leave it there.

We have encountered many setbacks and challenges – inevitably so, given the amount of change that has been implemented over such a short period of time – but the team, as part of the wider University, has achieved so much this year. We can leave the plague year behind us and enter 2021 knowing we have a bright future.

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A different way of welcoming students

November 16, 2020 / Andy Taggart / 0 Comments

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

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

Screenshot from the SCES pre-applicant site.

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

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

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

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

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

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Recap of available support for teaching in a blended learning context

September 7, 2020 / Alana Aldred / 0 Comments

Over the past few weeks TEL and the Academic Development Team have been super busy developing and collating lots of resources to support our colleagues across the University in preparation to teach in a blended learning context.

It is crazy to reflect on the amount of work that has gone on in the last few months – so I just wanted to highlight some key resources and communication channels that we have developed – new and old – that can support and inform you in the coming weeks ahead as we plan for TB1.

Preparing for teaching in a blended learning context website

Information on this site includes:

The UoP’s Principles of Blended Learning.
The new UoP Module Template Tool to support academic staff in delivering an excellent blended and connected learning experience to students.
The University’s recently adopted Content Capture policy as well as information and guidance on our newly purchased content capture – Panopto.
The University’s guidance to create the accessible, inclusive and supportive environment for our diverse student body.

Learning Well resources to support student wellbeing and inclusion.

elearning tools website

This website was set up in the immediate week after Covid-19 lockdown began but is pretty much updated daily with new resources.

The site covers:

teaching remotely guidance on lectures, seminars, assessments etc.
elearning tools and how to use them in the correct context.
a huge resource bank of relevant articles and other media.
links to upcoming internal and external events to support you in teaching in a blended learning context.

TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival

The TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival may well have finished but you can still visit this website and engage with the recorded sessions from this super successful week-long event.

Training events calendar

We have a wide-range of virtual training sessions covering teaching in a blending learning context and the functionality of tools within Moodle and beyond.

Digital Learning Portsmouth

Visit our YouTube channel – dedicated to providing support for Moodle, Turnitin and other interesting technologies that can be used in teaching.

The TEL Team

Of course, if any of the above doesn’t have the support that you require – please do not hesitate to contact us (elearn@port.ac.uk). We are a lovely bunch who will do our best to help at all times!

Our Social Media

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter to keep up-to-date with our posts, sharing information about upcoming events and resources.

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An iPad laying on a table so you're looking at it flat on. On the screen is the titles of the new training sessions

TEL Training Workshops and Bespoke Sessions

August 3, 2020 / Mandy Harcup / 0 Comments

For the next few weeks, the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Training Team have put together a schedule of workshops, incorporating some of your old favourites, sprinkled with some online interaction, a dollop of digital technology and stirred in with a jugful of pedagogy resulting in some great revamped, updated and brand new workshops. During the last few months of virtual workshops, we’ve taken on board your comments and suggestions, which we’ve received through the feedback you’ve given us. The topics you really want sessions on and recommendations on breaking some workshops down further into bite-sized chunks. In addition, we’ve collaborated with the Academic Development (AcDev) section of the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) to develop a new familiarisation programme to help colleagues find out more about using digital technologies to complement and enhance their teaching and interactions with students.

How do I book on a session and find more information on TEL Training Workshops?

You’ll find our calendar with all our new times and description on the sessions by going to the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) website and clicking on the TEL Training Calendar. For alerts on up and coming training sessions from ourselves and the Academic Development (AcDev) workshops, follow us on our social media platforms:

#telportsmouth on Instagram
@TelPortsmouth on Twitter

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.

Bespoke sessions

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 or a group session for you and your colleagues. Topics for bespoke sessions can be based around our programme, or we can tailor the session to answer any specific questions or needs that you have. Please complete a Bespoke Training Request form and simply tick the box next to the session you would like training on. If you tick ‘Other’ please give a brief explanation of the topic you wished to be covered in the session. Complete with the date on which you would like your virtual training session to take place, along with your preferred time then click ‘SUBMIT’.

Please click on the link below for the Bespoke Training Request form:

Bespoke Training Request Form

We look forward to welcoming you at a TEL Training Session in the near future.

Credit Image: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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Moving online – the experience of Business and Law

June 22, 2020 / Andy Taggart / 0 Comments

The sudden and dramatic shift to virtual teaching and learning has brought not only challenges but also opportunities and for the 120 undergraduate degree apprenticeship students working towards their Certified Management Degree Apprenticeship, staff have worked hard to make sure it’s ‘business as usual’.

Although circumstances meant limited time to prepare for the new ways of working, the transition to a virtual environment has, in the words of one apprentice, been “a good experience, tutors had access to all their systems and were able to quickly respond to my emails or schedule video calls”

Clearly, the technology we now have available makes it possible to recreate some of the elements of face to face lectures and seminars, but what has also been impressive is an openness and willingness to try out different ways of teaching using tools that have long been available but not necessarily seen as relevant.

So what has been the experience in Business and Law? Some lecturers were already familiar with delivering distance learning to military personnel but for most lecturers it was a new experience requiring them to learn how to use new platforms and applications and adapt their resources so they could be more easily delivered online.

Quickly after lockdown, what amounted to a working party was set up to bring lecturers and technical support together online to share ideas and plan how best to deliver the modules online. A variety of elements had to be brought together, for example: what tools to use, how best to structure content on Moodle, how to engage students in a virtual environment, supporting those apprentices working in key sectors, ensuring resources were fully and easily accessible.

From these meetings came these top tips:

Don’t be shy to ask for help.
If you have time, practice with a colleague.
Especially at the start – go for simplicity rather than creativity.
It does get easier after the initial learning curve.
Whether a video or a quiz, keep it fairly short and snappy.
Encourage more informal feedback from your students on their learning experience.
Be prepared to respond to change with a degree of flexibility.
Don’t be afraid to make reasonable adjustments to your online design as teaching progresses to improve student engagement.
Group working (use breakouts etc) to increase interactivity and build relationships .

The team’s top tools include:

Screencastify
Vevox
Google Forms
Moodle scheduler
Padlet

Supporting staff online has been made easy using Google Meet or Zoom as both allow participants to share their screens. Online help is backed up by the use of a dedicated Moodle site providing more detailed advice on moving to online teaching. For students, the use of tools like Padlet and Jamboard mean that they can continue to work collaboratively.

Overall, the experience of the Business and Law Degree Apprenticeship has been positive, in the words of the Director:

“This has been an incredibly busy time, but everyone was determined that our apprentices were going to have an excellent summer term and the feedback has been very good from everyone involved. I am very proud of the team and the apprentices as they have all shown dedication and professionalism throughout.”

As someone who has worked with educational technology for many years, I have been pleased and impressed with how quickly colleagues have taken to using tools they were not previously familiar with and how this has helped contribute to the positive experience students have had in moving to online learning.

Acknowledgements

Would like to thank Liz Sharples, Deputy Course Leader (CMDA) and Becky Quew-Jones Director for their input and quotes used.

Credit Image: Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

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A Dreamer in TEL

June 8, 2020 / Abigail Lee / 0 Comments

Hello, I’m Abigail Lee. Many of you know me as an online course developer (OCD) in the Faculty of Technology. I am still an OCD in Technology, but now, also an OCD in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), working part-time in both departments. Yes, it’s crazy and it’s mad. I am mad. Lots of consideration went through my mind before accepting this job: family, health and also being very comfortable with my ‘part-time’ life. However, when I found out that this job is about accessibility, I jumped right in.

I am a dreamer. I believe dreams can come true. Helping students by giving them the best learning experience and the environment we can offer to inspire them; giving them this little extra helping hand for them to grow and, to realise their dreams is my passion. Accessibility is all about that. It is not just a standard. It is a way for us to realise Inclusive Learning, a way to give everyone the same opportunity to chase their dreams and realise them. Everyone means everyone. It doesn’t matter what ability or disability you have, what background you are from, who you are, where you live, how little time you have; everyone. As long as you have the heart to learn, desire to chase your dreams, you can.

I attended the Sticky RoadShow workshop in June 2018. From the workshop, I have a deeper understanding of the kind of challenges our disabled students face every day just to be ‘normal’, just to access information that many have taken for granted. We often overlook their needs and their struggle because they are the ‘minority’. However, according to the new Government data, “there are now 13.9 million disabled people in the UK. That means disabled people now make up 22% of the UK population – more than one in five.” So, in fact, for every five of us, there is at least one who is disabled. In addition, we have hidden disabilities that are often overlooked or ignored and older people with changing abilities due to ageing. We have to acknowledge this issue, remove barriers and help to solve it by making information accessible. Now that the Accessibility Regulation is in force, there is even more reason to do so.

Moreover, in many cases, improving accessibility benefits all students, not only our disabled students. Students who are carers, students who are working full time, students who are geographically restricted, students with English as a second language, even those who just prefer different ways of learning are benefited. The list is endless, as you will see from some of the examples below:

Example 1: A digital copy of a document instead of a scanned one benefits disabled students by being accessible through screen readers. But, that’s not the only group that is benefited by it. In fact, it has made the resources more usable to all students. It made the document easier to read, students can search through the document, find specific content, copy and paste sections of the document, and so on. All these are useful to any student in their learning.
Example 2: A good structured document supports screen readers and helps visually impairment students. And, it makes the document more user-friendly to all students. Its additional structure makes it easier to navigate, to work through and process the content. Thus, improve the understanding of the information the document is trying to convey and enhance the learning process.
Example 3: Video with captioning or transcripts help students with hearing impairments. However, it also benefits all students by allowing them to search through the video and find specific parts for research or revision, to watch video in noisy environments, or to understand difficult jargon or terms etc. This is especially useful for students who are not native speakers.
Example 4: Images with quality descriptions not only helps students with visual impairments, it helps clarify the content and purpose of the image to all students. It also makes the image searchable.
Example 5: A fully accessible and responsive website not only helps disabled students navigate around the site and adapt the website to their learning needs, it also benefits any students who just prefer different styles of learning. On top of that, it is mobile-friendly. That means it is easy for all students to consume content anywhere, on any platform – which promotes distance learning and flexible learning. An accessible website also means alternative formats are provided. These alternative formats benefit all students; audio alternative format can be used during a commute or on a run, alternative translated version can help students who are not native speakers and so on.

I can go on forever but I think you’ve got the point.

“ For people without disabilities, technology makes things easier.

For people with disabilities, technology makes things possible. “

(Radabaugh, 1988)

This is an old quote but it sums up my work and what I dream to archive in TEL perfectly – using technology to make things better, easier, and possible; to enhance accessibility and benefits all.

It is our University’s vision to become the UK’s TOP Modern University and one of the TOP 100 Young University in the world by 2030. A modern university is an accessible university. A young university should be accessible. This is our dream. I am new to TEL and there is still a lot to learn but hopefully, I can play a small part in contributing to make our dream come true.

Credit Image: Photo by mohammed alherz on Unsplash

Credit Image: Photo by Isabella Mariana from Pexels

Ablue background with four outlined images on people's heads in a semi circle around the earth, with piles of books either side of the earth

Guest Blogger: Ankur Shah – Are we ready to deliver Online Learning?

May 11, 2020 / Ankur Shah / 0 Comments

Overview

With COVID-19, teaching delivery has had an impact across the higher education sector. With the unknown of lockdown being lifted, higher education across the UK faces a challenge of delivering courses online for the new academic year. This post considers options, suggestions from the University of Portsmouth perspective and identifies how the university can be ready to deliver online teaching.

Challenge

Everyone across the university had to change the way they deliver teaching when the lockdown or closure of university premises was implemented. Academic members have had to not only figure out what technology to use, but have also needed to think about how the technology they use fits in with the pedagogy for their modules.

The second challenge was to think about the implications on assessments and exams and how they would be conducted online.

There was a requirement to provide essential training or tools to our academic colleagues for delivering teaching online and also a concern over student engagement due to the suspension of face to face teaching.

How did we overcome the challenges?

In order to ensure teaching can be delivered and support can be provided to both staff/students, there was an initiative to design a one stop support page defining all the necessary tools, technology and pedagogical approaches academics can use to deliver their teaching. We directed staff to our faculty support page and also TEL’s elearning tool site. Within our faculty we started email communication everyday highlighting key tools/technology and training guidance to academic members to make this period as smooth as possible for them.

There was also constant communication with the students on a regular basis to reassure them in this pandemic period. Support teams across the university worked really hard to ensure that staff/students can access the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Moodle without any issues.

From an academic perspective there were some very good practices noticed within our faculty in terms of using the technology to integrate with the pedagogy of learning. Recording tools (Camtasia, Screencastify, PowerPoint Recording) were used extensively to create short recordings followed by longer ones for the lecture/seminar – examples can be found on the BAL Good Examples – Modules on Moodle. Video conferencing applications (Webex and Google Meet) were used in high demand to conduct live sessions, record student presentations for assessments, seminars etc.

Looking forward

Being the uncertainty of the country, due to COVID-19, no one knows when face-to-face teaching will resume and there are plans for the university to consider delivering online teaching for the new academic year.

If we look back on how the university approached this before Easter when the lockdown was implemented, we can argue that quite a lot of things were done on the fly such as using Google meet for sessions, recording using Powerpoint recorder if no access to Camtasia or recording software, or finding other tools that are not supported but still did the job in terms of delivering teaching.

However going forward this can’t be the case, for the new academic year if the plan is to deliver online teaching then we need to consider the following…

A robust lecture capture solution with the capability of captioning to ensure recordings are fit from the accessibility side of things as well (this can be beneficial for distance learning and on campus delivery).
Provide essential training to academic members to deliver their teaching smoothly.
Identify the preferred application to deliver live sessions that can integrate easily with Moodle (Webex or Google Meet).
Implement a standard structure across Moodle pages to keep consistency.
Identify how students engage with the content on Moodle pages (i.e. thinking about specifying time a student might require to complete an activity or read an resource).
With regards to online submissions of coursework, have a standard deadline time across the university.
Consider the communication channel you will use with the students (emails, forums on Moodle, video chat etc.).
Think about how attendance can be monitored during the interim period of online teaching.
Ensure all the materials uploaded on Moodle pages are easily accessible for the students.

Conclusion

Based on the consideration made above and also from experience, the university needs to take action on this rapidly, as there is less time to act on the changes mentioned above. Once the academic year starts, students attending, whether on or off campus, will have expectations to get value for their money. There is also a potential expectation on a lecturer to design their materials fit for online, so stating the requirements to them as early as possible could prove beneficial.

Ankuh working remotely.

Credit image: Photo by https://pixabay.com/illustrations/online-library-education-book-4091231/

Staying Healthy

April 30, 2020 / Mandy Harcup / 0 Comments

Lockdown has been in place for around 5 weeks now and in our own way we’re trying to cope and work from home. How are you doing? Remember, don’t be too hard on yourself, you’re doing the best you can in unusual circumstances.

Right at the beginning of the pandemic the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team put together some tips on working from home. Marie’s blog post ‘Are you ready to work from home? – Tips from TEL’ was published on the 23rd March. If you haven’t read it yet, grab a drink and have a read -there could be some advice here which might just help you! Also in this blog are the links to the eLearning Tools Site which features useful resources and information on working from home, particularly teaching remotely for staff at the University of Portsmouth.

Whether you’re a student or a member of staff, staying inside and staying healthy is everyones’ main priority at the moment. Many students are probably used to shutting themselves off for hours while they work on their latest assignment or revise for an exam. However, for a lot of people this is the first time they’ve had to work from home, life as they know it has certainly changed. Being able to log onto a device and access work or study materials is only one part of remote working. Having a routine, some physical activity and making sure you take regular screen breaks are just as important for your wellbeing.

Get Dressed

How many of you thought it’d be great just to lay around all day chilling out in your pjs and laying on the settee, whilst working on your laptop? By keeping to your normal morning routine of getting dressed, making breakfast etc, these activities all help your mind to adjust from sleep-mode to work-mode. I’ll be honest I’m not wearing the same clothes I’d wear for work, but what I am wearing are the clothes I exercise in. This is so that when I have a break, I can jump on my exercise bike, no excuses.

Move

For those of you with a smartwatch you’ll be familiar with a buzz on your wrist 10 minutes before the hour if you haven’t got around to walking 250 steps. Don’t ignore the buzz, it serves two purposes. The first, is you need a screen break, but don’t go from your screen to another kind of screen, like your mobile. The second reason is for some activity: get up and move around, pop along to the kitchen and grab yourself a drink (water is good to keep you hydrated) or check on the rest of your family. If you don’t have a smartwatch, set the alarm on your mobile.

Lunch Break

Whilst working at home it’s easy to forget about your lunch break, don’t!! More than anything it’s especially important at the moment, it’s time for you to step away from the computer/laptop. Now’s the opportunity to take a walk around the block, get some fresh air or log onto Facebook and follow one of the UoP Sports live sessions. Try to do some kind of activity. Maybe spend time with your family or if you have a garden and it’s dry, take your lunch outside and have a picnic!

Log Off

It’s important to maintain a good work-life balance, so after working on and off for eight hours (remember to take short breaks often, and long breaks, less often) or so, log off. When working from home it’s easy to ignore the separation between professional and personal time, don’t! If you’re lucky and you have a separate room as an office, log off and close the door behind you. If, like me you’re sitting at your dining room table, log off and put your laptop away. Remember, your home “office” is also your personal space, a place for relaxing and recharging your batteries.

21 Day Self-Care Challenge

The challenge may have started already, but you can start your 21 days at any time.The aim is to help to increase our own self-care with simple tools, strategies and personal challenges to get us through this difficult time. Small changes can have such a huge impact, to your wellbeing. Read more about the challenge in the Isolation Motivation – are you up for the challenge? blog post. Then let us know in the comments box which two things you’re going to drop and the two you’re going to take up.

Positive Pictures from TEL

If you have a minute or two go to our Instagram account #telportsmouth and here you’ll find that we’ve been sharing with our audience some great positive photos taken by members of the TEL Team whilst they’ve been out and about on their daily exercise. Enjoy!

For a more concise interpretation of working from home please refer to Marie Kendall-Waters blog post: Are you ready to work from home? Tips from TEL.

Areas covered in the blog post are:

Create a dedicated work space
Use to-do lists
Learn to deal with distractions
Take regular breaks
Don’t lose touch with your colleagues
Make sure to drink and eat
Make working comfortable
Deal with being disconnected
Don’t be hard on yourself

For regular updates and tips for working at home following us on Instagram #telportsmouth and/or on our Twitter account @TelPortsmouth

Credit image: Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash and Photo by Emma Matthews Digital Content Production on Unsplash

A lady sitting on her bed with a laptop on her knees, whilst her golden Labrador lays next to her

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Making the best of a bad situation – digital capabilities

April 23, 2020 / Adrian Sharkey / 0 Comments

One really positive thing to come out of the current situation is how creative and adaptable students and staff have been in using digital tools to keep the University running virtually. They’ve been backed up by the awesome support from IS and other digital support teams like Technology Enhanced Learning and faculty Online Course Developers. Lecturers and students have quickly adapted to teaching and learning online, using tools like Webex and Google Meet. Support staff have transitioned to online working using video conferencing along with messaging tools like Google Chat and Slack. It’s also been impressive to see how social media has been used to keep staff and students connected, the UoP Sport Facebook group being a great example. Although setup to share fitness tips, it does much more than that in keeping people connected.

It would be great to keep this momentum going once things get back to normal. If this has shown anything it’s that the workplace is quickly changing and along with changes brought by Industry/Education 4.0 everyone is going to need the skills to be creative and adaptable as technology changes quicker than ever.

One of the tools we have available to help with this is the Digital Capability Discovery Tool. Also, one of the really hard things to get across is that digital capabilities are not basic literacy skills. All of us will have areas of digital expertise, but there will be gaps in our capability, whether in information, data or media literacy, digital creation or presentation, or even digital well-being. The framework the tool is based on is designed to help students and staff develop their digital capabilities to cope with how things are changing.

Give it a go, you might be quite surprised about the results. Available for both students and staff, when you sign up you’ll be asked if you are a new or continuing student or if you are academic or professional services staff and then taken through a questionnaire. It’s not a test of your knowledge, it’s a self assessment of your confidence in the different areas of digital capability. It will take a bit of thought for you to decide on honest answers and be around 45 minutes to complete. It is personal to you, the University doesn’t see individual results, only aggregated ones so we can compare ourselves in the sector and possibly see where resources can be emphasised.

As a result of this effort you’ll get a tailored comprehensive report on your capabilities with links to great resources. Check out the LinkedIn Learning landing page linkedinlearning.port.ac.uk where there are learning paths with resources mapped to the different areas of the framework.

Lastly, if you have any groups of students or staff that you support and who might be interested, we have a presentation that can be dusted off to explain all of this, which we’d be happy to deliver. If you find it useful, please recommend it to colleagues, or you may use it to inform your PDR process, teaching staff could use it with students perhaps to help with a ‘baseline’ of digital capability.. However you feel it might be useful please feel free to get in touch with me or ittraining@port.ac.uk

@adrianjsharkey

Image Credit: Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

Tag: digital learning (Page 1 of 5)

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A Dreamer in TEL

Guest Blogger: Ankur Shah – Are we ready to deliver Online Learning?

Overview

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How did we overcome the challenges?

Looking forward

Conclusion

Staying Healthy

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Making the best of a bad situation – digital capabilities

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