It’s that time of year again when we get chance to have some time out, recharge our batteries, reflect on all the things we’ve done in the previous year and start thinking about what we hope to achieve in the coming year.
Looking back on 2017
2017 was a busy year for the TEL Team, not only did our team grow in size but we also took the scary plunge into the blogging world by starting an online team blog; Teltales (something that I hope to revisit and reflect on later in the new year).
In the first part of the year, we attended MoodleMoot 2017 where some of us took part in presenting. Online assessment has remained at the forefront of our focus as a team and finding ways we can best support and provide an accessible environment for our students and academics. As part of this effort we have created the eAssessment information site which we hope becomes established in 2018 as the place to go for information on eAssessments for academic staff.
We took part in the JISC Digital Student Experience Tracker and welcomed Degree Apprenticeships, along with two new members of our team Becky and Andy. Lynda.com was launched for staff and students, this also meant we welcomed another team member, Adrian – our Lynda.com guru!
A few of us had our first ever MOOC experience and loved it, MOOCs have now become addictive within the team. We looked at open source repositories, copyrighting particularly in terms of blogging and the psychology behind colour use. We looked at the effectiveness of Podcasts – something we hope to develop in 2018.
We’ve developed a selection of new resources such as Skills4Study@Portsmouth, Learning at Portsmouth and the new Personal Tutoring platform. We also introduced Moodle 3.3., Turnitin, Lecture capture and Safe Exam Browser remained part of our support and guidance.
Through the year we looked at lots of new tools such as Slack, UbiCast, Relay, DigiExam and TestReach. Our regular ‘Did you know?’ posts have provided our audience with helpful information and guidance. We’ve had lots of interesting and thought-provoking pedagogy and instructional design posts, not forgetting our guest bloggers who have kindly contributed by writing for our blog site too. We ended the year with our 12 apps of Christmas!
What’s on the horizon for the TEL Team in 2018
This year, will be another busy year for the team. We are already planning an exciting new theme for Moodle in Summer 2018, which many of you are already helping us plan and develop by being part of our academic and OCD working groups.
Degree Apprenticeships courses will be launching and we hope to take part in JISC Digital Student Experience Tracker 2018. As always we will continue to update you on any new tools we are using, conferences we have attended and information that we think will be useful to you on Teltales.
As part of Teltales we plan to introduce a set of podcast posts, so please keep an eye out (or ear out!) for them in the coming months.
So from myself and all the team we hope you all have a very happy 2018!
Image credits: https://pixabay.com/images/id-2711676/
