Tag: student (Page 3 of 5)

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Guest Blogger: Stuart Sims – Introduction for Tel Tales

September 30, 2019 / Stuart Sims / 0 Comments

Hello! My name is Stuart Sims and I’m a relatively recent addition to DCQE in the Academic Development team. I’m a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education with responsibility for Staff-Student Co-creation and the Academic Professional Apprenticeship (both of which I’ll explain shortly). I joined Portsmouth a few months ago from the University of Winchester where I worked as an Educational Developer and Head of Student Engagement.

Portsmouth CoCreate

One of my main activities in DCQE is to develop Portsmouth CoCreate, an ambitious attempt to promote and embed staff-student partnership in the co-development of the curriculum cross institutionally. Co-creation has grown as an agenda for many universities in recent years, not least of all because it can operate as a way forward from a more transactional relationship with students. Many of us are familiar with the well-trodden arguments about students as customers and consumers which have emerged since the introduction of and increases in tuition fees (for those who aren’t, this article from Molesworth, Nixon and Scullion from 2009 is a good starting point). To cut a long story short, if students are paying an eye-watering amount to study with us they may have changed expectations about what that means. The principles of co-creation are not about giving more student choice (as you may expect in a market-driven system) but rather giving students more responsibility and investment to mutually develop or agree the nature of their learning with staff.

An essential part of this work is to discover and highlight what is being done already in this area here. In a relatively short time I have discovered a wide range of innovative practices at Portsmouth ranging from co-developing assessments to collaborative peer mentoring schemes. In the coming months we will be profiling effective practices from Portsmouth and beyond to support others in taking a co-created approach with their students.

We are taking a multi-faceted approach to developing co-creation, this includes training and support for course teams to apply these principles in their context (including in line with the new annual monitoring processes) and the development of a new cross-intuitional module around co-creation.

Academic Professional Apprenticeship

The other half of my role is teaching on our new Academic Professional Apprenticeship (and PgCert). This is a course aimed at staff new to Higher Education and is part of our institutional shift to prioritise Degree Apprenticeships. A new standard in the sector, we are one of the first institutions to develop a course for new lecturers around this apprenticeship model.

The course is mapped to the UKPSF and course members not only receive a qualification, but Fellowship of the HEA upon completion. This course therefore provides an alternative and complementary approach to the APEX programme to support colleagues in achieving this internationally recognised award.

Our first cohort of around 50 course members are just completing their first year and about to progress on to the Research Informed Teaching module which I lead. This module is focused around the conduct of an enhancement or research project which the course members have developed in the first year. The taught elements relate to Educational Research Methods and key learning theories to support this. As well as supporting the development of colleagues, this will lead to a huge range of innovative practice in learning and teaching emerging across the institution.

Stuart Sims is based in Mercantile with AcDev and the Tel team.

Welcome to the team, Stuart! We look forward to hearing more about your projects in the not so distant future on Tel Tales.

Credit image: Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

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Episode 9 – Game Jam 2019

TelTales Podcast

Episode 9 - Game Jam 2019

00:00 / 42:01

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

The icon which says In Learning with Lynda.com content

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Goodbye Lynda, hello LinkedIn Learning

July 15, 2019 / Adrian Sharkey / 1 Comment

Two years ago the University implemented Lynda.com, an online library containing over 14,000 courses on business, technical and creative skills. Over 7,500 staff and students have taken advantage of around 19,000 hours of learning and nearly 280,000 individual videos. Sadly, however, from August Lynda is no more.

Fortunately, none of the great content accessed by staff and students is going. It is simply being moved to a new platform – LinkedIn Learning. This has a lot of new features and advantages, which will be outlined in further communication. Before seeing LinkedIn Learning though, it is worth having a look at some of Lynda’s greatest hits.

Top Courses

For the whole University, Excel Essentials comes out on top of the most viewed courses. This is followed by programming courses, which make up a few in the top 10. The trend in the most-used courses is for programming and understanding data, although it’s good to see skills like Critical Thinking and Project Management featuring. The skills that are in demand mirror the skills that universities should be developing in students and staff around Digital Capability. For more information on the Jisc Digital Capability Framework, and to help students or staff get a tailored report on their own strengths and weaknesses, check out the Digital Capability Discovery Tool.

Use By Faculty

All Faculties have adopted the use of Lynda, but usage is highest where the content relates directly to taught courses.

In Technology and CCI many courses relate to specialist software such as AutoCAD, design, animation or programming – skills directly related to the type of courses taught.

Lynda contains a big section of courses on Business skills, so Business and Law can take advantage of the range of Marketing courses.

Usage in Humanities is quite a bit less, but students are using the courses for applications such as G-suite and SPSS. One way to encourage usage would be to tailor playlists around the kind of skills students need for study and employability, link them to course Moodle pages so they’re readily available. This is something the IT Training team can help with.

BAL

Excel 2016 Essential Training

Advanced Grammar

Creating and Giving Business Presentations

CCI

3DS Max 2018 Essential Training

Cert Prep: Adobe Certified

Associate – Photoshop (2017) Learning Design Research

Hum

Google Drive/Docs/Slides

Word 2016 Essential Training

SPSS for Academic Research

SCI

AutoCAD 2019 Essential Training

ArcGIS Pro Essential Training

Programming Foundations:Fundamentals

TEC

Synchro Essential Training

Xcode9 Essential Training

ArchiCAD Essential Training

Mini Case Studies

Nadim Bhakshov, Teaching Fellow, School of Computing

Nadim has, for some time, looked at alternatives to the classic textbook. A well written textbook – as we all know – is a huge benefit to teaching complex material. For a few years now Nadim has been experimenting with Lynda. He has offered students the occasional supplementary video from Lynda to support his teaching. This year, however, he decided to find some learning paths and courses on Lynda and provide parallel material for students.The idea was to use Lynda as a supplement to provide another perspective to what was being taught in lectures and practicals.

After spending more time looking at Lynda, listening to student feedback and looking to establish better integration, Nadim is now working on the ‘alternative to a textbook’ approach more seriously. Next year, he hopes to replace the classic textbook with learning paths and courses from Lynda and use Lynda in his own teaching.

Lee Woods, Associate Dean (Students), Faculty of Technology

In the Faculty of Technology, Lynda links have been embedded in Moodle for student induction and the U/F students. In the School of Civil Engineering and Surveying, all courses have AutoCAD and technical drawing Lynda.com resources embedded into the appropriate Moodle Units.

Lee has used Lynda videos directly in the teaching of his units, International Built Environment Fieldwork (IBEF) and Transportation Engineering. There are a series of videos on Lynda around urban planning. Lee has played sections of these in lectures as a teaching aid. Part of the IBEF unit is a field trip to Copenhagen, and there is a video in Lynda, part of the Urbanised course that directly relates to the trip.

Sarah Harris and Emily Parry, Business & Law and Technology Placement Offices

Sarah used Lynda to point students in the right direction for resources to help with skills for placement interviews and assessment centres. Lynda was also used throughout the year to help students build confidence in their abilities. Emily embedded links to Lynda on their Moodle page emphasising employability and soft skills generally. Specific links were added for GDPR, Excel, communication skills and email communication.

The Lynda resources were also used to support and consolidate learning from the Excel trainer led sessions that Sarah and Emily arranged for their students.

LinkedIn Learning Upgrade

The upgrade to LinkedIn Learning from Lynda is planned to take place on August 1st. The content is the same as Lynda but it offers a new interface and range of new features, making learning more personalised and relevant to your study or work. There will be an option to connect a personal LinkedIn account with LinkedIn Learning – this means that learning history acquired at the University can be kept on the personal account, even when students or staff leave. Another advantage would be the more personalised recommendations based on the skills from the LinkedIn account. The only information the University will see from a personal LinkedIn account will be the profile picture. The alternative is just to choose not to connect and use LinkedIn Learning in exactly the same way as Lynda has been used up until now.

There will be more communications on LinkedIn Learning and all its features. In the meantime, keep an eye on www.port.ac.uk/linkedinlearning and the Myport article to stay up to date.

Image Credit: supplied by LinkedIn

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Technology and our mental health and wellbeing

May 7, 2019 / Alana Aldred / 0 Comments

I am very fortunate that I get to walk to work daily (okay, except on really rainy days, then maybe I’m not so fortunate!) and I am obsessed with listening to podcasts on my journey. On my walk in this morning I stumbled across a podcast episode from Ctrl Alt Delete with Emma Gannon who was talking with Dr Megan Jones Bell, the Chief Science Officer at Headspace.

Headspace, in case you haven’t heard of it, is an app that promotes positive mental health and wellbeing through the practice of mindfulness. The app takes users through guided meditations and shares techniques in dealing with, for example, a busy, overthinking/negative-thinking, mind – a state that can impact on sleep, performance and relationships, which of course can in turn lead to feelings of stress, anxiety and depression… basically all of the things preventing you from being your best self!

Dr Megan Jones Bell was, interestingly, talking about how businesses are buying into meditation apps such as Headspace for their employees, because employers are starting to recognise the value of nurturing a sense of positive mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.

Listening to this got me to thinking about our students and colleagues University-wide, as I have recently been working closely with personal tutors and support services at the University. Through these encounters I have heard first hand how mental health issues are a real concern, and they appear to be on the rise. I’m sure this is not just an issue within our institution.

Our University freely provides staff and students with software licenses and accounts, such as Lynda.com, for free online training to develop our academic and professional skills. However, knowing what we know about the current situation regarding mental health and wellbeing, I wonder whether we are doing enough in this area? Is it time for Portsmouth and other institutions to invest more in access to products such as Headspace (and other apps are available – I’m using this just as an example), which encourage self-care and have a more preventative approach to mental health and wellbeing? In other words, should employers be helping to embed practices such as mindfulness and meditation, potentially via apps, into people’s daily lives so that we are all armed with tools to deal with difficult and challenging experiences when they arise? Surely this can only be a good thing for staff and students? What are your thoughts?

Note: I am by no means forgetting that mental health and wellbeing is a very complex subject and that apps alone cannot ‘fix’ things in times of crisis! If you or a student are experiencing any mental health issues please seek support from either Occupational Health or refer students to the Student Wellbeing Service.

Resources

Brown, D. & Triggle, N. (4 December, 2018). BBC News. Mental health: 10 charts on the scale of the problem. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41125009

Economides, M., Martman, J., Bell, M.J. & Sanderson, B. (2008). Improvements in Stress, Affect, and Irritability Following Brief Use of a Mindfulness-based Smartphone App: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-018-0905-4

Mental health and wellbeing apps:

https://www.mindcharity.co.uk/advice-information/how-to-look-after-your-mental-health/apps-for-wellbeing-and-mental-health/

Emma Gannon (2019). Ctrl Alt Delete. #189: Dr Megan Jones-Bell: How To Invest In Yourself (California Innovation Tour #2). 3, April. Available at: https://play.acast.com/s/ctrlaltdelete/-189-drmeganjones-bell-howtoinvestinyourself-californiainnovationtour-2-

Online Exams in Moodle

April 5, 2019 / Mike Wilson / 0 Comments

We’ll start to see a lot of online Moodle exams from Monday 29th April.

At this time of year a lot of time is dedicated to preparing for the formal exam weeks to begin. Academics and Online Course Developers are creating questions and testing exam quizzes. The TEL team are testing the Moodle infrastructure and exam reporting, and working with IS to ensure we have enough server resources at key times during the exam period. This year the formal examination weeks will run from Monday 13th May 2019 through to Friday 7th June 2019. It’s worth making a note in your diary about these dates but as I’ll highlight in this blog post, you’ll probably want to set these dates to start from Monday 29th April.

What constitutes an online Moodle exam?

We encourage staff to tag Moodle-based exams with the ‘exam-official’ tag and set appropriate dates. This information, along with data provided by Online Courses Developers, helps us build a picture of the when exams are happening. It means we can spot ‘pinch points’, times where we expect a lot of concurrent exam attempts, which could represent a need for more server resources to be made available. In short if you don’t tag your assessments we’ll find it difficult to guarantee a seamless exam experience for your students.

Tagging also means you can run your online exams in one of our supported secure exam browser environments (Safe Exam Browser, FAQs available here or Chromebooks in secure exam mode). This means students can’t easily access other websites during their exam and makes invigilation a lot easier.

How many online exam attempts were there last year?

During the official exam period last year (13.05.2018–07.06.2018) there were 5426 exams attempts that we all helped support. However, this figure isn’t the full picture. In the two week preceding the exam period 2737 official online exam attempts took place. That’s quite a staggering number of exam attempts happening outside of the time-frame that staff are focussed on supporting and something we should all be mindful of this year. Monday April 29th is the start date for your diaries.

Exams change freeze

IS and TEL enforce a number of Moodle change freezes throughout the academic year. These are periods when no updates can be made to Moodle. We have one in place during the exam period to ensure changes don’t inadvertently interrupt exams. The exam change freeze this year will run from Monday 29th April through to Friday 7th June (inclusive).

How do we monitor exams are going well?

The TEL team gather data from a number of sources to help monitor what’s happening through the exam period. We combine it into a real-time dashboard of where exams are happening and how Moodle is performing. You can see a picture below from last year.

We rely on support from a number of sources to produce this dashboard. Lead Online Course Developers have their finger on the pulse of when exams will happen and any last minute amendments. In the very near future we’ll be asking again for your help to populate a spreadsheet with the exams you know about. We combine this information with data from student records, which is thorough but lacks local knowledge. We also use Google Analytics, Moodle database and server infrastructure reporting to keep an eye on how our systems our performing. This combined data is extremely useful at spotting pinch points and monitoring how things are running but it’s not as effective as people in faculties such as exam invigilators and online course developers ensuring all is running well and reporting to elearn@port.ac.uk any issues that are encountered.

A new exam theme for Moodle

It’s worth mentioning at this point that we’re close to final testing of an updated version of the Moodle exam theme. This is a stripped down version of our theme intended for use in exams. We’ll provide more information on this in the next few weeks. It will look very similar to the existing exam theme but will be a bit closer to our regular theme in terms of question layout and styles.

Thank You

We just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone involved in making sure the exam period goes well. It’s very much a big team effort and all the work we put in ensures students get as stress-free an experience as possible. I’m sure they appreciate it, I know that the team in TEL certainly do.

If you have any questions about online exams, please get in touch at elearn@port.ac.uk

Image credits: Photo by Lip on Unsplash

Students in a study room, one student looking a laptop laughing

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Digital Capability Discovery Tool

March 4, 2019 / Adrian Sharkey / 0 Comments

The Digital Capability Discovery Tool is an empowering first step for students and staff to self-assess their digital capabilities and to identify current strengths and areas of development.

What is Digital Capability?

DIgital capabilities are defined by Jisc as ‘those that fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society’. Digital capabilities are more important than ever: they are essential requirements for employability in a digital economy.

According to Jisc’s Digital experience insights survey 2018, only 41% of UK students felt that their course prepared them for the digital workplace. Everyone should be looking to continuously develop these skills and reflect on their own digital capability.

Using the Digital Capability Discovery Tool

Staff and students are encouraged to use the Discovery Tool to self-assess their digital capabilities. For staff, the tool could potentially be used to inform the PDR process. For students, there would be benefit to discussing the results in personal tutoring sessions.

When you log into the Discovery Tool for the first time you will be asked about your role at the University – there are different question sets for new students, current students, teaching staff, and library and learning support staff. It may be that the options don’t fit your role exactly – just choose the nearest match.

Upon completing the questionnaire you will receive a confidential, personalised report showing your results in each area of digital capability and with links to high-quality, tailored resources.

All responses are confidential, so tutors and managers do not have access to them. The University does, however, have access to aggregated, anonymised data – which will help us identify gaps in our digital learning support and improve our provision for both students and staff. This is yet another reason that everyone – staff and students – are encouraged to complete the survey!

Logging on and further support

IS and DCQE provide sessions for staff to find out about digital capabilities in general, and about the Discovery Tool and how to use it. In these sessions we also discuss how to use the Tool with students and colleagues.

For further information, and to access the Tool, go to digitalcapability.port.ac.uk

Moodle Baseline – A new standardised template for all Moodle modules

January 25, 2019 / Mike Wilson / 0 Comments

In recent student surveys it’s become clear that students want more consistency to the layout of their Moodle modules. Students want it to be easier to find key information such as what the module is about, what they will learn and how they will be assessed.

It’s increasingly important that we present content for students in an accessible way so everyone can engage with content easily.

TEL and AcDev have led a feedback exercise with staff from all University faculties, along with a pilot with academics and students on Nursing Degrees delivered by Science. These exercises have helped us establish what the key requirements would be for a standardised approach to the layout of Moodle modules and the development of the Moodle Baseline template.

The Moodle Baseline represents the basic building blocks for starting to build a Moodle module. Here’s a summary of main tabs available within the template.

The Welcome tab allows staff to add a welcome message to students in html format (this could include a welcome video or perhaps link to a discussion forum).

The Module Overview tab allows a plain text description of the module to be added.

A list of Learning Outcomes can be added to the third tab.

The Assessment Summary tab allows for a description of the assessments that a student will be required to complete. There is also a table to keep track of submissions. Students will be able to see the status of their assessment submissions and upcoming important dates. Staff will see progress bars representing how many submissions have been made along with an indicator of how many assignments require marking.

All new and rolled-over Moodle modules will have the Moodle Baseline template added automatically from March 1st 2019, giving staff time to add content in advance of September 2019.

When the Moodle Baseline launches on March 1st we will also release a web-based resource for guidance on how to complete the template along with useful best practise advice for populating your Moodle module including topics such as marking online and giving effective feedback.

We hope you find the Moodle Baseline a useful tool for creating rich and engaging Moodle modules. If you have any questions please get in contact at elearn@port.ac.uk

industrial building work — Photo taken by Fancycrave from https://unsplash.com/photos/1R3UnJcBCa8

Scenario Based Learning

January 25, 2019 / Tom Langston / 0 Comments

What is scenario based learning?

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, in their influential book Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) argued that learning is most effective when it occurs within the context in which it is going to be used. Scenario based learning (SBL) is rooted in this idea. SBL, according to the definition provided by Massey University, “uses interactive scenarios to support active learning strategies such as problem-based and case-based learning”. The course developer creates a narrative – typically based on a complex, real-world problem – that the student works through and solves. SBL thus provides a safe yet realistic environment for the student to demonstrate their subject-specific knowledge and problem-solving skills. Furthermore, because SBL is often non-linear, it can provide numerous feedback opportunities to students, based on the decisions they make at each stage of the narrative.

I’m a course developer. When should I use scenario based learning?

Sometimes – in cases, for example, where students are required to make decisions and display critical thinking in complex situations – it can be difficult to provide realistic practice opportunities within the confines of a traditional course. In these cases, SBL comes into its own. Amongst countless other examples, SBL has been used successfully in engineering, nursing and business studies. It can be used to support both formative and summative assessment – but note that, for routine tasks that don’t require decision-making or critical thinking, there are more appropriate methods of assessment.

What tools can help me develop scenario based learning?

Moodle contains several tools that can be used to develop an SBL approach. The four tools I’d suggest can be used to build a learning narrative are: Database, Workshop, Forum and Lesson. (This is only a suggestion. The most important thing is to connect various activities and reinforce student learning.)

Below is one model that would permit the assessment process to become a wider, more holistic approach over the duration of a course. A range of short, targeted activities would give the students time to research their next task and help them develop their own learning profile.

Database -> Workshop -> Forum -> Lesson

The student writes a short essay, based on their own experiences relating to a given task, and submits to the Database tool. Then, from these submissions, the academic allocates each student a different piece of work to mark/analyse.
After assessing their assigned piece of work, each student submits their analysis to the Workshop tool (following criteria defined by the academic). The Workshop tool allows students to peer assess the submissions and get a final grade based on both their submission and their ability to assess others’ work.
Once all this is finished, the Forum is used to get the students to discuss their experiences of the subject and how they could each improve certain aspects of their work.
Lastly, the Lesson tool presents a high-risk situation to the student. The lesson can be developed to provide a realistic yet safe environment to explore the situation. The Lesson tool allows for either a branching or a linear format.

Each phase offers the student the chance to reflect on what they have learned and offers them ideas on what they should now do with the new information and theory they have researched as part of the unit.

These various elements could be done one straight after the other, or spaced out over the course of a unit. My recommendation would be to allow time between each assessment, which would give students the chance to develop and learn from what they have previously done.

If you are considering SBL as a means of assessment but would like to have a discussion about how you can implement within your teaching the TEL team runs a training session called “Facilitating Scenario Based Learning” or you can contact me tom.langston@port.ac.uk

Reference

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Cambridge: CUP.

Image credits: Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash

Fancycrave

Using motion to improve the user experience

October 31, 2018 / Tom Cripps / 0 Comments

The use of animation in user interface (UI) design, and the effect it has on the user experience (UX), is something I’ve become interested in recently — especially now we have started to redesign the Moodle interface.

What started me thinking about this was reading the endlessly fascinating Google Material Design Guidelines. These are extremely easy to read, and provide a comprehensive background to Google’s look and feel across it’s many products and services.

Incidentally, if you’re that way inclined, read it! It’s full of ‘I didn’t realise that, but it makes so much sense’ moments. For example, did you realise that there are rules governing what elements look like as they overlap?

Motion provides meaning

Material Design is a good place to start when trying to work out what effect motion has on the overall UX of a given product. Material Design specifies motion to be able to offer:

Guided focus between views
Hints at what will happen if a user completes a gesture
Hierarchical and spatial relationships between elements
Distraction from what’s happening behind the scenes (such as fetching content or loading the next view)
Character, polish, and delight

(Material Design, 2018)

Some of these have been used long before this specification was written; loading indicators, for instance, have existed in many forms — almost always as a “distraction from what is happening…”. Often they are simply a single repeating animation to help users pass the time, and to communicate that the waiting time will be finite, i.e. something will eventually happen.

Many of these points have been created as a result of the rise of mobile design and the necessity to tie together the various screens of an app with some sort of visual metaphor so the user is aware that the screen they are currently looking at relates to one they were just using — but can no longer see.

Retaining user engagement across page transitions

Let’s look at that last scenario — moving from one page of a mobile app to the next — in a little more detail. Google aims to maintain user engagement across page loads by maintaining elements on screen between those pages, and animating the change. A user’s eye is intended to follow elements that exist in both pages: the elements don’t disappear and reload in a new position; instead they animate and move to their new position.

The overall aim of this — and I think it works — is to start with the user looking at the new page from a position of engagement. The user already knows what content they expect to see, because they know why the page has appeared (it’s the result of the action they performed earlier, e.g a tap on a button), and what relationship the new information on the page has to the information on the previous page.

(Material Design, 2018)

The image above is from a video illustrating the approach to maintaining shared elements across a screen change (in this case a card expanding to provide more information). Click the link beneath the screenshot to watch the video in full.

Material Design provides this advice for pages with different amounts of shared content:

If all content elements are shared
While a surface is expanding, a significant number of elements should remain visible during the transition.

Few content elements are shared
While expanding a surface, if only a single element will be present after the transition, that element should be the focal point of the transition, controlling all other elements.

No content elements are shared
If there are no shared elements between views, anchor all crossfading elements to the surface’s vertical movement. The surface crops the content within.

These rules ensure that no transition becomes too complex and overwhelming to the user.

I’ve really only touched the surface with this topic. I hope to expand on this further by looking at some other ways that motion is employed in UI design to create a satisfying UX.

Tag: student (Page 3 of 5)

Guest Blogger: Stuart Sims – Introduction for Tel Tales

Top Four Moodle Questions

Episode 9 – Game Jam 2019