Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Tag: external (Page 9 of 11)

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Student digital experience 2018 – results from the JISC tracker

May 30, 2018 / / 2 Comments

For the past three years the University of Portsmouth has run the JISC student digital experience tracker – a survey that aims to capture students’ experiences of and attitudes towards the digital environment in HE. I’ve just made a preliminary analysis of the results from this year’s tracker, which ended on 20 April 2018.

One of the useful aspects of the tracker is that it enables us to benchmark our results against the sector. A total of 15,746 students at other English HEIs responded to the tracker, and it’s interesting to compare their experience with the 310 Portsmouth students who responded. (Note: the student profiles of those taking the tracker are slightly different, so the comparison isn’t perfect. We deliberately choose to avoid involving students at L5 and L6, in order to minimise any interference with the NSS. At English HEIs the distribution is ‘flat’: students at all levels take the tracker.)

The good news is that, for almost all the questions posed, Portsmouth students give more positive responses than their counterparts elsewhere! For most questions the difference is only a matter of a couple of percentage points, so it would be wrong to claim there is a statistically significant difference, but in some cases there really is a notable difference. For example:

  • 93% of Portsmouth students rate the quality of UoP’s digital provision as good or above, vs 88% for the sector
  • 85% of Portsmouth students rely on Moodle to do their coursework, vs 74% for the institutional VLE at other institutions
  • 77% of Portsmouth students say that digital tech allows them to fit learning into their life more easily, vs 70% for the sector
  • 76% of Portsmouth students use digital tech to manage references, vs 65% for the sector
  • 71% of Portsmouth students say when digital tech is used on their course they enjoy learning more, vs 62% for the sector
  • 67% of Portsmouth students regularly access Moodle on a mobile device, vs 62% for the institutional VLE at other institutions
  • 67% of Portsmouth students regard Moodle as well designed, vs 56% for the institutional VLE at other institutions
  • 64% of Portsmouth students say online assessments are delivered and managed well, vs 59% for the sector

Even more interesting than the percentages, however, are the students’ free text comments. Students were asked what one thing we could do to improve their experience of digital teaching and learning. From their responses, four clear themes emerged:  

  • Students want lecture capture and/or more use of video
  • Students want a more consistent approach to Moodle use, and a less ‘cluttered’ interface
  • Students want better training/help/support for themselves when it comes to using digital tech
  • Students want staff to make better use of existing technology  

Over the coming months we’ll be considering how best to address these challenges.

 

A child playing with dressing up glasses

Gamification in Moodle – a brief introduction

April 30, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Learning through play is obviously nothing new, it is one of the main ways children learn. The fun element in play means that children become absorbed in what they are doing, not even realising they are acquiring useful skills. Gamification, however, is not simply about learning through playing, it’s about “the application of game dynamics and game mechanics to make learning goals more appealing and achievable” (Squire, K  2003). Moodle provides an excellent set of tools that can be harnessed to bring an element of gaming into learning, but more on that later.

Introducing elements of gamification may be fun, but does it bring with it positive benefits and improved outcomes for the learner? On the face of it, research would seem to show that gamification does indeed lead to improved student engagement and motivation. For example an experiment involving High School students in America showed that where game elements were used in Moodle, enthusiasm and motivation levels were higher among the group using gamification as opposed to the group not using it 1. There was an even greater (negative) effect on motivational behaviour where gamification was used and then removed. Similarly a review of literature on gamification found  that “indeed, gamification does work” 2. While both studies came with caveats (the main one being the relatively small size of the study groups), indications are that more gaming dynamics should be used in Moodle, exploiting both the competitive and collaborative traits most people naturally possess. This in turn can improve student engagement and motivation, both important (but by no means sole) elements in improving overall attainment. Speaking anecdotally, introducing a competitive element in learning does, under certain circumstances, seem to improve student achievement especially among boys.

The issue of educational underachievement among certain social groups was highlighted in a 2016 report by the Guardian Online 3 which published research showing that just 24% of white boys from poorer backgrounds achieved the benchmark of five good GCSEs, the figure for girls was 32%. While other groups, from the same economic background, showed a significant improvement in achieving this benchmark, this was not the case for white working class boys among whom attainment levels remain “stubbornly low”. Thus while all students would seem to benefit from gamification, I have seen it particularly help boys from poorer backgrounds where engagement in the learning process can be more problematic. Poor achievement at GCSE level often impacts on achievement at a higher level, but even at HE level the use of “serious games” can “intrigue learners during the process of learning” 4 . So while gamification should be used for the benefit of all students, perhaps its main benefits will be among those groups who struggle more than others to fully engage with their learning.

Moodle contains a wide range of opportunities for gamification without necessarily needing specific game style technology. A standard Moodle course can be designed in such a way as to incorporate game orientated activities. In a paper presented at the international eLearning conference 5, Somova provided just such an example whereby the different sections of a Moodle course were designed as a games level. Each level requires students to achieve specific learning objectives with points and badges awarded when predetermined criteria were met. Conditional access, based on activity completion, is used to direct students through the various ‘game’ levels with learners receiving points for assessed activities, which in turn are used to award badges. A badge per level is available, earned as activities are completed and a set level of attainment is reached (eg 70% for a quiz).  As the learner progresses so the levels are made more demanding and involve different type of activities such as group activities to encourage collaboration.

In ‘Gamification with Moodle’ 6 Denmeade (2015) identifies, among others, the following Moodle activities ideal for gamification:

Forum posts – these can be set up for peer ratings or brain teasers.

Quizzes – either team or individual leaderboards can be used to create a competitive element to the exercise.

Feedback module – can be used to set up an interactive pathway based on answers. If questions are answered incorrectly, students can be directed to further reading.

Assignments – custom grading can be used to quickly set up gaming levels, for example Bronze, Silver and Gold

Lessons – progress through lessons can be gamified by setting up prerequisites, such as time limits etc, with advancement to subsequent lessons being made increasingly difficult (or easy depending on ability, or the final goal of the lesson). Lessons can also be used to create different pathways through an exercise, based on student responses to questions and so allow for differentiation by task.

H5P – H5P contains a variety of tools that contain an element of gamification, though the drawback is that the outcomes of some exercises may not be saved in Moodle.

Beyond Moodle there are a huge variety of online gaming tools that can be used by students. https://sites.google.com/site/technologyenhancedlearning/ contains an index of a wide range of eLearning tools that can be used as stand alone learning ‘games’.

While careful initial planning is needed to ensure the above activities are properly prepared to be both academically robust and contain elements of game dynamics, once created they are reusable, and much of the marking is done by Moodle itself. If, at the end of the day, students are more engaged and more are achieving required learning outcomes then the time spent preparing is time well spent. Gamification is clearly not the only answer to tackling underachievement, or a guarantee of improving student outcomes, but it might provide a useful additional tool in helping engage students in their learning.

1 Amriani, A et al (2013,October) An empirical study of gamification impact on e-Learning environment. Retrieved from
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6967110/#full-text-section

2 Hamari J et al Does Gamification Work? — A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification 2014, 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Science. Available via https://people.uta.fi/~kljuham/2014-hamari_et_al-does_gamification_work.pdf

3 Weale, S. (2016, November) Schools must focus on struggling white working-class pupils, says UK charity retrieved from 
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/nov/10/schools-focus-struggling-white-working-class-pupils-uk

4 Somova, E. and Gachkova, M. An Attempt for Gamification of Learning in Moodle Available via http://www.elearning-conf.eu/docs/cp16/paper-31.pdf

5 Somova, E. and Gachkova, M. An Attempt for Gamification of Learning in Moodle Available via http://www.elearning-conf.eu/docs/cp16/paper-31.pdf

6 Denmeade, N. (2015). Gamification with Moodle.  Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd

Image credits: Photo by Clem Onojeghuo   and pan xiaozhen on Unsplash

Man Asleep

Guest Blogger: Lucy Sharp – Sleeping your way to a good degree

April 16, 2018 / / 0 Comments

This may not be what you think it is, at least I hope not!

Humans and animals all need to sleep, how much, when and where will vary but the constant is that sleep is an essential part to living and learning. The quality and quantity of our sleep is a major indicator of our overall health and wellbeing.

We spend up to a third of lives asleep and most of us know that getting a good night’s sleep is important, but too few make the recommended 8 hours between the sheets. This can lead to having a sleep debt and forgetting the feeling of being truly rested. This third of our life is far from unproductive as it plays a direct role in how energetic and successful the other two thirds of our life can be.

When we’re asleep the body re-energises cells, clears the brain of waste, and supports learning and memory; two pretty important factors when you’re a student. It also affects the way we look, behave, perform and impacts on our overall quality of life. At different ages we need different amounts of sleep. Typically teenagers need at least 8 hours—and on average 9¼ hours—a night of uninterrupted sleep to leave their bodies and minds time to be rejuvenated for the next day. If sleep is cut short or disturbed the body doesn’t have time to complete all of the phases needed for muscle repair and memory consolidation, neither does the brain have time for its complex clean-up operation (brain cleaning). The effect is that we wake up less prepared to concentrate, make decisions, or engage fully in the learning experience.

The sleep cycle follows a pattern of NREM (non-rapid eye movement) and REM (rapid eye movement), throughout a typical night the pattern repeats itself every 90 minutes. In the NREM phase one, we begin to transition from being awake to falling asleep. In stage two the onset of sleep begins where we disengage from our surroundings, heart rate and breathing becomes regular and body temperature drops. Stage three is our deep and restorative sleep: muscles are relaxed, tissue growth and repair takes place along with the release of growth hormones and our energy is restored. After about 90 minutes we enter the REM phase, this is when we dream, our brains are active and our eyes dart back and forth and our body is immobile and fully relaxed as our muscles are turned off.

So there’s a lot going on when you tuck yourself in at night, but of course in reality we don’t always get a full and restful night’s sleep and the impact is far reaching. The effect of a poor night’s sleep may stay with you for about 48 hours. Other impacts are more immediate, such as feeling groggy, irritable and the urge to consume sugary drinks, food and extra carbohydrates. Therefore, if your weight is increasing, try spending an extra hour in bed!

As well as the health reasons for getting a good night’s sleep, there are also the physiological and psychological reasons why sleeping well will help you to study and learn.

Physiologically, a sleepy brain has to work harder and isn’t as efficient as a rested brain. This is due to diverting more energy to the prefrontal cortex to stave off tiredness. The effect when we’re learning is that our short and long term memory is shot. This means the brain holds a smaller amount of information for a shorter period of time. The impact is that we go round in circles trying to remember what we’ve learnt, and we find it difficult to perform complex tasks and sometimes even simple tasks, such as reading text. The common example is reading a body of text and not remembering what has been read, or simply reading the same sentence over and over again. This isn’t a great state to be in when you’re studying at a higher level.

A healthy amount of sleep is needed for the plasticity of brain which is a vital component of our ability to adapt to input. If we sleep too little then our ability to process information is lessened, as is the process of remembering what we have learnt and then recalling it in the future, such as in exam settings.

Psychologically, lack of sleep may be the culprit if you’re feeling low in mood, less enthusiastic about activities you used to enjoy and it can chip away at your happiness. In a nutshell, not getting enough good quality sleep heavily influences your outlook on life, energy levels and emotions. 

A regular sleep pattern is the foundation needed to enjoy life and engage fully with the learning experience. Without it, it can affect health, wellbeing and the learning process, the ability to perform at your best in exams and presentations, and achieve those high marks you know you’re capable of reaching.

Tips on how to get a good night’s sleep:

  • Sleep at regular times – this allows the body to get into a routine.
  • Make your bedroom sleep-friendly by keeping it dark, clean and tidy. Your bedroom is for two things; sleep and sex.
  • Wind down before going to bed, switch off the TV and electronic devices. The blue screen tricks your brain into thinking it’s daytime. Install software that enables your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, such as f.lux
  • Calm your body and mind (Mindfulness Exercises for Everyday Life).
  • Try not to spend the night in the library revising and studying. Nighttime activity disrupts the circadian rhythm. This is your body clock, this responds to environmental cues such light and temperature.
  • Avoid caffeine and energy drinks 4–6 hours before heading to bed.
  • Read University Health Service SLEEP HYGIENE.
  • and Skills for sleep at UoP for more advice.

Image Credits:  Photo by Toa Heftiba and Cassandra Hamer on Unsplash

 

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The TEL banner

A year of the TEL Tales blog

April 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been asked to write a post to mark the fact that the TEL Tales blog is one year old. Happy birthday! Except… it’s actually a lot older than this. The current blog is in fact the third incarnation of TEL Tales: the previous two attempts limped along for a couple of months, then died.

It’s not surprising that the early TEL Tales didn’t survive – many blogs start, last for a few postings, and then fade away. The main reason that the early TEL Tales failed to thrive was simply that few people wanted to tell their tales. This is common. Last week a group of us participated in the PressED Twitter conference, which was devoted to the use of WordPress in Higher Education, and one of the presentations was called “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. The author, Suzanne Falkener, was a teaching fellow at the University of Strathclyde, and she found she had to overcome a large amount of apprehension before starting a blog. She wrote: “It’s ok to have a fear of blogging. There are a lot of ‘what ifs’ including: What if no one reads this? What if people think my blog is rubbish. What if I am publicly humiliated? What if my writing style isn’t good enough for my community?” She felt the fear and did it anyway – and the result was a blog that people found useful, with an audience that grew slowly but steadily.

I think a lot of members of the TEL team here at Portsmouth feel the same apprehension that Suzanne felt. But this time round we’ve applied more pressure to get people in the team to write something. And the same thing that happened to Suzanne happened to our team members – as Suzanne wrote: “Guess what? When I posted my first blog, nothing terrible happened. I wasn’t ridiculed. People read it.”  

We still have some people in the team who are reluctant to write. But in each and every case those people have tales to tell, and they are the ones best placed to tell them. So we’ll keep applying pressure to get them to write … and with luck we’ll still be here for the second birthday of TEL Tales.

Hold Logo

Hold – A rewarding app

April 2, 2018 / / 1 Comment

What is it?

Hold is an app aimed at students that discourages them from using their mobile phone. Hold works by presenting a timer on screen that awards points every 20 mins. If you do exit the app, you receive a warning, and then if you don’t go back the timer resets to zero and you have to start again. The points that you earn can be converted into real-world prizes, such as; Amazon vouchers, coffee shop vouchers, and cinema treats.

The app certainly caught our eye in the TEL office after the BBC published an interesting article about it.

Hold App

Why use it?

Hold is clearly targeted at students who need a way to counter an addiction to using their phones, and is trying to help those students to focus on their lectures, reading or revision. It’s particularly popular in Norway where 40% of students are using Hold to help focus on learning and break their addiction.

What next?

Smart phones have changed how we interact with the world, they provide 24/7 social interaction that is now the norm for many of us, especially young people who have never known any different. Yet some experts are already highlighting how this new lifestyle may not be healthy, so perhaps any way to gain a little more control over our digital lives should be seen as a good thing.

If the amount of users of the app increases it could be a fantastic way to focus the attention of those students who are easily distracted both in and outside of the classroom.

We are living in a digital age, many academics are using phones and tablets as part of their teaching. It could be seen as sending a mixed message if you simultaneously ask students to put away their devices, as they prevent them from concentrating, and also ask them to use mobile technology to learn in class.

It is more than likely that the creators of this app, and those like it, are hoping to tackle the issues of those students who struggle to focus their time on learning. It is not meant to destabilise any attempts at implementing new and innovative teaching tools in the classroom.

Apps like Hold do however raise the wider issue of how much a university is expecting the student to provide their own device for learning interactions. Should more money be put into providing each student with a learning device? Where once it was expected the student brings a pen and paper, should that expectation now be that they have a tablet or PC/Chromebook that they use for their note taking and/or classroom interactions?

Design for Digital Learning

February 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Back in 2005, Gráinne Conole and Karen Fill developed a learning design toolkit. Conole and Fill were concerned that, despite the increasing use in society of “Information and Communication Technologies” (as people used to refer to our connected world), educators weren’t embracing the opportunities of e-learning to enrich the student experience. Their learning design toolkit was intended to guide teachers through the process of creating “pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources”.

In the 12 years since their learning design toolkit was developed, technology has continued to improve steadily – but I’d argue that learning design has failed to keep up. Perhaps a new JISC publication will go some way towards improving matters. Their new online guide to technology-enhanced curriculum design – Designing learning and assessment in a digital age – collates the most significant R&D outputs over the past decade in curriculum and learning design in a digital context. It also includes examples of good practice.

The guide is based on a model with four elements:

  • Discover – understanding of where you are now, and what you want to happen
  • Dream – your vision for what learning, teaching and assessment could be like
  • Design – understanding precisely who you are designing for and the pedagogic purposes that are appropriate to those students
  • Deliver – creating the right environment and culture for high-quality digital learning and assessment

If you are interested in learning design in a digital context then I can recommend reading the guide. Whatever your level of proficiency, you’ll be sure to find something to take away!

 

 

The discover, dream, design deliver model with improving student outcomes at the centre
©Jisc

 

 

Feature image: JISC Learning Design Toolkit by Graninne Conole and Karen Fill is licensed  under CC BY-NC-ND

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

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

January 29, 2018 / / 0 Comments

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

Tech vs Powerpoint

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

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

How can an academic go about this?

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

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

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

Why Nearpod?

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

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

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

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

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

Other options that Nearpod offers are:

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

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

Image credits: Photo by Lilly Rum on Unsplash

Using augmented reality on a handheld device

Augmented Reality as an Educational Tool

December 18, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Introduction

My first dealings of Augmented Reality within an educational context came with an attempt to engage 4-year-old boys with their first steps in writing. To anyone who has worked within an open plan early years environment containing 90 children, trying to get boys – who would much rather be running around outside – to pick up a writing tool to mark make, is similar to herding cats! Using the Quiver app, children were able to choose a picture from a selection and colour it in how they liked. The app then showed an augmented reality animation of their picture, showing their specific markings. This gave the children ownership and allowed them to buy into the creative process.

Earlier in the year I was fortunate enough to attend the ‘Working with Technology Enhanced Learning’ networking event in association with Southern University Libraries. Debbie Holley from Bournemouth University gave an inspiring and practical presentation demonstrating Aurasma and told us about her experiences researching it in collaboration with Anglia Ruskin University. You can visit Augmented@ARU for further user guides, blogs and some useful resources to use to demonstrate  the app.

What is Aurasma?

Aurasma states that it is the world’s leading augmented reality platform, is currently used across a wide range of sectors and is beginning to filter into higher education. Aurasma allows the user, with the use of a mobile device, to combine a real time/real world view of an object (such as a poster, book, brochure or item of equipment) with an overlay that plays sound, displays an image or even a short video.

It works by using the mobile device’s camera to ‘find’ the image, which then links to the given media that the user has associated with it. Because it is essentially trying to match the image, the subject needs to be static and something that is unlikely to change over time – I’ve tried this out using numerous face images and decided that people or moving objects don’t really work! The ‘Auras’ that the user creates can be stored and used on the device, or uploaded to Aurasma and made public for anyone to find. This YouTube video shows how Aurasma can be used:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuSQo0vAugA

Aurasma in action

Aurasma is relatively easy to use. Depending on their device, users can download the Aurasma app from the relevant Apple or Android store. On downloading you are prompted to create a free account, though free ‘Auras’ are limited in their accessibility to followers of the creator.

There are enhanced ‘Pro’ accounts available at a cost that allow access to a wider range of media content that allows the creation of ‘Auras’ that can be accessed by the general public.  

This makes sense as it allows Aurasma to police the amount of open Auras created, as well as limiting it to high end advertising campaigns of companies that can afford the high cost of this service. While this limits the average user in terms of creation, it does help provide a number of high quality Aura’s that really show the possibilities and the power of Augmented Reality. (I would particularly recommend the Frozen, Star Wars and Mike’s Hard Lemonade as examples of how marketing campaigns have used Aurasma to incorporate video, animation and interactivity with their users.)

You will also need to consider your device’s Wi-Fi connection. Though it can use a phone’s 3G/4G data allowance, do bear in mind that most Aura’s link to video, animations or music, so it will be dependent on this.

Aurasma requires the user to capture a trigger image within the parameters of the viewfinder, namely an indicated rectangle on the screen. When an Aura has been discovered the 7 dots change to a pulsing circle animation to inform the user that content has been found and is loading. The speed of this is dependent on both the speed of the device’s internet connection and the size of the download. Factors such as light and stability of the camera shot can create difficulties in the app ‘finding’ the Aura. Equally, trying to use an Aura displayed on a computer/television screen seems to take longer than when finding a real life object, possibly due to reflection or glare from the screen’s brightness.

Discovering and finding content is great fun given the variety and ingenuity of the Auras on offer. Within the app or website there is an opportunity to search for terms, and most Auras have various hashtags to help you.

It should also be an educator’s first port of call when wishing to add augmented content to their lectures and resources, as there is no need to reinvent the wheel by creating content that already exists, and the eclectic range gives a good scope of possibilities. Should you not find exactly what you were after, it is quite easy to create your own Aura with the user placing an overlay over an image. The overlay can be one of the animations provided by Aurasma’s default library. You can use existing video, audio and images up to a 20Mb limit on your portable device within the app.

Alternatively you can download Aurasma Studio, which is a free desktop application available from the website allowing up to 100Mb overlays, so if you want to have video of a higher resolution, this may be the method for you.

Creating an Aura is very straightforward and user-friendly and there is a nice feature of quality control on the image capture, which grades your Aura by contrast from red (insufficient) to green (good image quality). The overlay image can be positioned simply by dragging, and intuitively uses all of the finger gestures of a portable device for resizing and rotating objects. Once created, the user can publish it to a ‘public’ channel that followers can access on the Aurasma app.

Final thoughts

I think the use of augmented reality can only help engage students further into the subject they are studying. The advantage of using Aurasma is it’s ease of use, the ability to use it on a variety of devices and platforms, as well as being free and actively encouraging users to create their own content.

The drawbacks come with a limited choice of templates and a cap on the amount of data you can use, but as a ‘gateway’ for encouraging educators to use augmented reality in their session, it is excellent. It’s ability to provide information and weblinks give much wider usage – from interactive university maps during induction of new students, to historical views of monuments on field trips – that mean higher education has numerous and unlimited possibilities for its usage.

 

Images from:

https://gigaom.com/2012/09/17/telefonica-bets-on-augmented-reality-with-aurasma-tie-in/

http://readwrite.com/2010/06/02/how_augmented_reality_helps_doctors_save_lives/

Featured Image:

Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash

 

Guest Blogger: Johny Cassidy – How technology enables me to do my job as a journalist

December 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Johny Cassidy
Producer at BBC Business News

Johny’s Bio – Guest-blogger Johny Cassidy is a producer at BBC Business News and masterminded the BBC Disability Works week earlier this year. He tells us how using the latest technology enables him to do his job as a journalist – Johny is blind, so technology is an essential tool. He goes on to say that with greater understanding from employers, disability shouldn’t exclude anyone from the workplace.

“It’s fair to say that technology and the fast pace at which it’s developing has been pivotal to me in my job as a BBC journalist. It’s also not an exaggeration to say, that without it, I simply wouldn’t be able to do my job to the standard expected.

I began losing my eyesight when I was in my teens. The things that the majority of people take for granted slowly began to be taken from me. The simple pleasure of reading a book or accessing information became difficult, and then impossible. That’s when I began looking around to see how technology might be able to bridge that gap, which thankfully it has been able to do.

It’s vital for me as a business and economics journalist to have access to the same information as other people. A normal day will usually start and end with Twitter, which is all accessible for me on my iPhone through the voiceover function, which reads things on the screen out loud through headphones. Apple really changed the landscape for the majority of blind people when it first introduced the iPhone with this access technology built into the operating system as standard. Up until then I had to pay for a separate piece of software which was then integrated into the phone I was using. This was, whilst a useful tool to read texts and to access simple functions on the phone, a clunky solution which wasn’t really fit for purpose. The fact it cost over £600 also meant it was out of reach for a lot of people. Apple changed all that by levelling the playing field and by understanding the need for accessibility in their devices.

By using Twitter I’ve got a direct feed into the financial markets and business publications. I follow thousands of different feeds to ensure the information I’m getting is up to date and accurate. The fact as well that the majority of newspapers and magazines are also available to me on my phone means that, by the time my train to work gets into London, I am usually up to speed with the overnight developments in the business world. 

Once I’m in the office the phone is replaced by my laptop. Again this has a voiceover function which allows me to read the hundreds of emails waiting for me. I could of course do this on the train as well, but that time is usually set aside for gathering information.

Once emails have been waded through and either answered or deleted, I then start to look at what stories might be around for the next few days. As a forward planning producer I need to know what’s coming up in order to make sure the dozens of BBC programmes and outlets know what business stories they should be looking at. All these stories are held on a news diary which is, after a lot of collaboration with the developers, also accessible to me with the voiceover function on my laptop. This is perhaps one of the biggest problems I face at work. The myriad of different BBC applications, for news production, both TV and radio and online, all need to be accessible, which means it’s vital that I feed back into the developer teams if I come across any accessibility issues. All sounds pretty straightforward, but for an organisation as big as the BBC and with so many different points of contact, the process doesn’t always go as smoothly as perhaps it should.

Once stories have been identified for the next few days, it’s time to begin the meetings in order to explain to other producers and editors what they should be doing businesswise. My phone is again a really useful tool to take notes and have information I need at these meetings.

The BBC is a fantastic employer of disabled people. The fact that attitudes are finally beginning to change and that more employers are realising that disability isn’t a barrier to work means that the need for technology and solutions to problems will continue to be an ongoing battle. The biggest battle though is still trying to ensure that hiring managers understand that these solutions exist. Many disabled people have dozens of their own workarounds and socalled hacks they use every day in order to work or to simply live. The more people who know what technology as a tool can do in order to push more disabled people into employment the better.

I read a statistic recently which said that around 65% of the jobs our children will be doing when they reach working age don’t even exist yet. That’s a huge concept to try and understand, but it proves how fast technology is moving and the fact that we can’t stand still. We need to be constantly looking around for more innovative ways of harnessing technology in order to be able to do our jobs, whatever they may be.” 

Image credit: BBC News

Twitter: @johnycassidy

‘Disability Works: Breaking down barriers in business’ – article by Johny:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38962050

‘Tech Tent: Making tech work for everyone’ – article featuring Johny:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39077592

‘Disability Works Special’ – Tech Tent radio programme featuring Johny:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04t4kcm

JAWS screen reader software:
www.freedomscientific.com/Content/Documents/ProductFlyers/JAWS_Flyer.pdf

‘Sit Down with Johny Cassidy’ – article featuring Johny:
http://towerproject.org.uk/sit-down-with-johny-cassidy/

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Listening to the Student Voice | an Overview

November 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The University of Portsmouth places the student experience at the centre of its philosophy and vision. The University’s vision as expressed in its education strategy 2012–2017 is: “To provide an excellent, inspiring and challenging educational experience underpinned by research, scholarship and professional and ethical practice, through which our students will be able to achieve personal, academic and career success”. Since the University strives to provide an excellent student experience, it creates and follows policies that promote ways in which such an experience can be facilitated. Such ways include teaching and other staff practices, support services, mechanisms that enable student participation in the shaping of University policies, student surveys, and other forms of feedback that allow the student voice to be heard.

In order to improve its standards, various teams are involved in undertaking research and conducting surveys. The Department for Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) plays a major role in these activities. Other departments that are involved include the Academic Registry and the Graduate School. In addition to working with its people (staff and students), the University of Portsmouth often works closely with other institutions, the government, and bodies such as the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

With both external and internal support and participation, the University of Portsmouth conducted a number of student experience surveys over the last few years, including the:

  • annual National Student Survey (NSS);
  • biennial Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES);
  • biennial University of Portsmouth Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (UPPRES);
  • biennial Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES);
  • International Student Barometer (ISB);
  • UK Engagement Survey (UKES)
  • Mres Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (MPRES)
  • JISC Student Digital Experience Tracker
  • Unit Satisfactions Questionnaires (USQ); and the
  • University of Portsmouth Student Experience Survey (UPSES).

Furthermore, the University participates in various student experience projects, such as the Postgraduate Experience Project (PEP) and policy change projects that focus their efforts on the student experience, such as the Transform Project. These among other surveys and projects explore aspects of the student experience and educational excellence which revolve around the key areas of ‘teaching quality’, the ‘learning environment’, ‘student outcomes’, and ‘learning gain’ (as stated in the Teaching Excellence Framework). Overall, the University of Portsmouth promotes and achieves a student experience of a very high standard which results in a number of desirable outcomes: it places us very high up in the national rankings; encourages the pursuit and attainment of teaching and learning excellence; offers an equally rewarding experience to its staff; and contributes to the academic ethos that the University strives for.

The very existence of such a variety of student experience surveys and projects reflects the values that the University puts on a quality student experience – values that are upheld in the University’s policies. The high performance of the University – as presented in reports following these surveys and projects – as well as the subsequent action taken in response to such surveys demonstrate this. The University will continue to undertake research and conduct surveys in order to promote its values and strategies; provide first class educational opportunities to its students; improve its standards for and with society; develop the potential of its areas of strength; and gain a better understanding of areas in need of improvement.

Image credits: Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash

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