Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

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Online assessment in the time of Covid

May 4, 2021 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

Diagram of how the Assignments and the Exams overlap during assessment period

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A screenshot of the exams for a week, days, dates, section, then slips into assignments and exams then the total of students expected to be in Moodle during that period

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

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

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

Credit Image: Photo by MayoFi on Unsplash 

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Digital Accessibility in Teaching and Learning – What is it?

March 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

What is ‘Accessibility’?

Accessibility is about removing disability. 

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

This is where ‘Accessibility’ plays a part. 

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

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

What is ‘Digital Accessibility’? 

Digital accessibility is ‘Accessibility’ in digital media. 

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

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

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

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

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

What ‘Digital Accessibility’ is not.

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

Misconception 1: digital accessibility is just about disability.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misconception 2: digital accessibility is not my problem. 

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

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

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

Misconception 3: digital accessibility is hard. 

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

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

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

References

  1. Codeacademy: What is Digital Accessibility
  2. Equality and Human Rights Commission: UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
  3. Social model of disability
  4. Rethinking disability: the social model of disability and chronic disease

Credit Image:Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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

March 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Introduction

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

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

No need to reinvent the wheel

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

An image of how to Add a clip

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

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

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

I have old videos, what’s the next step

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

Credit Image: Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

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

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

March 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

We’re pleased to announce the launch of RISE, a new online journal to showcase students’ work. RISE has been developed as a platform for publishing and sharing the exciting work of our students, from all disciplines, with a wider audience. 

Across the University, our students are engaged in exciting and innovative work, which ranges from disciplinary research as part of their course to their own artistic and creative endeavours. Our editorial team is keen to showcase these efforts (their work?). Particularly during the pandemic, when opportunities for students to feel as if they belong to a learning community might be few and far between, RISE provides a platform for sharing and engaging with others.

There are many benefits for students in getting their work published. Not least of which is to have your achievements celebrated in a public forum. RISE is designed to showcase what our students are doing so that it goes beyond the world of assessment and is appreciated by everyone at the University. 

While we’re open to a range of different media and formats for publication, in terms of research, there is an imperative to disseminate original work: 

“Every university graduate should understand that no idea is fully formed until it can be communicated and that the organisation required for writing and speaking is part of the thought process that enables one to understand material fully. Dissemination of results is an essential and integral part of the research process.” (Boyer Commission, 1998:24 in Walkington, 2015)

Most students’ research at the taught level ends in assessment; students are therefore missing out on a key aspect of developing as a researcher. This is an opportunity for students to experience disseminating their work, exposing them to the processes of academic publication as well as the wider attention and scrutiny that this brings. At the very least, it is an interesting line on the CV for anyone to say they were published in the University journal!

Four boxes setting out the ways taking part in the RISE Journal offers opportunities. The under them a paragraph showing how it meets the Portsmouth Hallmarks

Our website gives further guidance on how and what students can submit. If you teach undergraduate or taught postgraduate students, please share this with them. If you are aware of particular students who have done an interesting piece of original work, please recommend they publish with us or contact the RISE team to discuss – we’d love to hear about it. We are very open to creative, interactive and original pieces as well as written articles.

The current deadline for submissions is May 14th, 2021 at 5 pm. Please send any queries to risejournal@port.ac.uk.

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

H5P Branching Scenario: Students as Decision Makers

February 22, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Adapting during Covid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Set up and execution

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

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

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

Did it work? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View our top tips to Re-Engage here.

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

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

Would they like to use their videos during calls? 

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

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

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

How will they hold each other to account?

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

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

Read more at our Re-Engage resources 

Are you struggling with engagement on your module and could use some fresh eyes or advice? Contact your Academic Development Liaison for support :

Faculty of Science – amy.barlow@port.ac.uk

Faculty of Technology – catherine.murgatroyd@port.ac.uk

Faculty of Business and Law – andy.clegg@port.ac.uk

Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries – stuart.sims@port.ac.uk

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences – andre.van-der-westhuizen@port.ac.uk 

 

Credit Image: Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Designers should always keep their users in mind

From compliance to culture

January 18, 2021 / / 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credit image: Photo by fauxels from Pexels

TEL in 2020

TEL in 2020

December 18, 2020 / / 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.

A cartoon drawing of a person sitting at a desk with a screen in front of them. The screen has people in different small boxes and a teacher in a larger box with a screen with writing on behind her

Zoom vs Webex vs Google Meet: Important Features to Compare and Consider

November 23, 2020 / / 0 Comments

There is a growing need to deliver lectures online and capture online live lectures with the new Blended and Connected learning approach, which was recently introduced by our University to help our students in this challenging time. The Blended and Connected learning approach is driven by our Content Capture policy which emphasizes that “…all students should have access to learning from all formal teaching sessions regardless of whether they are able to physically attend.” Furthermore, with the regulatory requirement that our content needs to meet the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications)(No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, it is now more important than ever to ensure that our online taught content is captured and captioned. 

The University has a few online conferencing tools available to meet this need. They are all easy to use with some differences between them. This document compares and considers important teaching and learning features in each tool to hopefully help you find the best tool to use for your needs.

On top of that, the University has acquired Panopto which helps to pre-record lectures and has a built-in auto caption facility. It is advisable that all formal teaching sessions, including online live lectures, are captured, uploaded and stored in the Panopto server for caption, security and storage purposes.

But of course, it is almost impossible for any caption, generated by automated speech recognition tools, to achieve 100 per cent accuracy. So, please do check and edit your captions to ensure the accuracy, and add a disclaimer to the video or module site. 

The following text has been officially signed off by Harriet Dunbar-Morris, Dean of Teaching and Learning.

“Currently our video content, delivered via Panopto, uses closed captions generated using automated speech recognition. This is about 70–80% accurate depending on the topic, audio quality and lecturer. We advise you not to rely solely on the captions when reviewing your video content. Make sure you check the captions against the PowerPoint and readings to ensure you have a good understanding of the topic and the terminology used. If you are reliant on these captions due to a disability or additional learning need then please contact ASDAC for advice on additional support for your study.“

Below is the list of online conferencing tools available in the University and their important learning and teaching features to compare and consider.

Zoom

Zoom is the new online conferencing tool that the University has acquired to support our Blended and Connected learning environment.

Screen or application sharing

  • Zoom allows hosts to easily share their device screen with meeting participants. There’s an option to choose between sharing the complete screen or to share a specific app or document such as Powerpoint or MS word. 
  • Hosts can enable or disable the participant’s ability to share audio, video, and the screen in the meeting.

Mute/Unmute

  • Hosts have a distinct level of control during the meeting. As the host or co-host in a meeting, you can manage your participants, including muting and unmuting participants, to manage background noise and distractions.

Breakout rooms

Remote control

Storage and Caption

  • All Zoom sessions recorded with the ‘cloud recording’ option are automatically uploaded to Panopto and captioned. Please check your captions to ensure the accuracy and add a disclaimer to the video or module site. 

Webex

Webex is a web conferencing and video conferencing application by Cisco Systems.

Screen or application sharing

  • Hosts can easily share their device screen with meeting participants. There’s an option to choose between sharing the complete screen or to share a specific app or document such as Powerpoint or MS word. 

Webex Meeting Center

    • Participants can share the content in the meeting by simply selecting ‘Share’ on the Quick Start tab, Menu Bar and Floating Icon Tray. This feature is enabled by default to make it easier to change presenters in a meeting and improves the overall collaboration experience. If hosts want more control over sharing, they can disable this feature while the meeting is in progress by selecting ‘Participant’ -> uncheck ‘Anyone Can Share’.

Screenshot showing that anyone can share

Webex Training Center

    • By default, the host has to designate participants as the presenter before they can share contents or screen. Hosts can reclaim the presenter role or change the presenter at any time by right-clicking the name on the Participants panel, including the host themselves, then select Change Role To -> Presenter.

A screenshot of how to change the role to presenter

Mute/Unmute

Webex Meeting Center

    • For Webex Meetings, you can choose to prevent attendees from unmuting themselves until you grant them permission to. 

Webex Training Center

    • When you mute participants in Webex Training, only you can unmute them, they can’t unmute themselves.

Breakout rooms

Remote control

(To assign this privilege, while in the session -> select ‘Participant’ -> ‘Assign Privileges’ -> Control shared applications, Web browser, or desktop remotely).

A screenshot of the label showing where to assign privileges

To remote control another participant’s screen in the meeting, the host needs to assign them the presenter role then request them to grant remote access control to the host.

Storage and Caption

  • All recorded Webex sessions should be downloaded and uploaded to Panopto for storage and captioning. Please check your captions to ensure the accuracy and add a disclaimer to the video or module site. 

Webex Meeting Center 

Webex Meeting Center session is recorded in mp4 format. It can be easily uploaded to Panopto.

Webex Training Center

Webex Training Center session is recorded in a Cisco specific .arf format. It needs to be converted to mp4 before uploading to Panopto.

Google meet

Previously known as Hangout, is Google’s video conferencing solution.

Screen or application sharing

  • By default, all participants can share their whole screen or a specific window, or chrome tab during the meeting. Through screen sharing, one can share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. When you share a Chrome tab, it shares the tab’s audio by default. Hence, you can play an online video as well.
  • Hosts can prevent participants from sharing their screen but they need to update this setting for every new call, even if it is a recurring event. 

To prevent sharing:

  1. Join a Meet video call.
  2. At the bottom, click ‘Host controls’.
  3. Turn off ‘Share their screen’.

Mute/Unmute

  • Anyone in a Google Meet conference can mute anyone else.
  • If you mute someone, no one in the conference will be able to hear them.
  • When you mute someone, everyone will be notified that you have muted the person.
  • You cannot unmute someone once they have been muted. They have to unmute themselves. Google says this is for privacy reasons.

Breakout rooms

Remote control

  • Google Meet does not have a built-in option to give remote control over to another person. However, Google has provided a tool that can be used right alongside Google Meet to accomplish this. That tool is called Chrome Remote Desktop.

Storage and Caption

  • All recorded Google meet sessions should be downloaded from Google Drive and uploaded to Panopto for storage and caption. Please check your captions to ensure the accuracy and add a disclaimer to the video or module site. 

 

Credit Image: Image by Hatice EROL from Pixabay

A person holding a tablet with the view over their shoulder of them holding something in their hand touching the screen

A different way of welcoming students

November 16, 2020 / / 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 of the Google Site containing the Welcome page for the School of Civil Engineering & Surveying

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.

Screen shot of one of the pages on the Google Site it's titled: IT Skills Required

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.

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

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