Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Tag: tel team

Jo and Sarah sitting on different sofas looking at each other

Introduction for Tel Tales

February 24, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Hello!

My name is Jo Fairwood and at the start of January 2020 I joined the Technology Enhanced Learning team as an Online Course Developer, on a one year secondment. I previously worked for the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies (ICJS) as a Student and Academic Administrator. I started there a long time ago, back in 2006, so I felt it was time for a change.

My role as Student and Academic Administrator was not a traditional one. As technology developed so did my role and so did my passion for technology. I was responsible for harnessing new technologies to engage and enthuse our undergraduate distance learning students. When I first started working in ICJS everything was paper-based and posted out to our students. Over the years I developed new ways of bringing the courses fully online so that the students receive the best experience possible, wherever they were located in the world. This included broadcasting a day’s worth of live and pre-recorded sessions to them in what we called Virtual Study Days. They’re a bit like ‘This Morning’ but with our own ‘Holly’. Sadly we didn’t have time for a fashion tips session!

As you can probably tell I’m into filming, film editing and all that goes with film production. I like being creative when it comes to multimedia and I relish the opportunity to try new technologies that help with this. I think communication is important so I really like using social media for engaging with students and the wider community, and I also enjoy sharing best practice with colleagues and collaborating with colleagues around the University.

In my spare time I play tenor saxophone in two function bands and I like keeping active, so I play a lot of sports including squash, football, golf and netball. I’m also a huge football fan, in particular, a Watford FC fan (I’m originally from Watford) but I’ll watch any football match over anything else if it’s an option. I’m currently listening to a hilarious podcast called That Peter Crouch Podcast. I recommend it to all football and non-football fans!

Anyway, enough about me. All that’s left to say is that I’m thoroughly looking forward to getting stuck in with the TEL team and working on new, exciting projects over the coming year.

Twitter @jofairwood

Jo is based in Mercantile House with the eLearning Support (TEL) team .

Welcome to the team, Jo!

coloured labels with different areas covered in our workshops

TEL Training Sessions – Update

April 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Can’t spare 2 hours (let alone 3 hours) to attend TEL Training sessions, but would like to . . . . . well you can now!  

We’ve reviewed our sessions and have been able to reduce the running times of our longest sessions to make them easier to fit into the already busy working day. We’d like as many of you as possible to be able to attend our sessions, so in reducing the running times (in some cases by 50%) by keeping content relevant but concise, we hope more of you will be able to join our sessions in the future.

How do I find more information on TEL Training Sessions?

You’ll find our calendar with all our new times and full description on the sessions we run by going to the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) website and clicking on the TEL Training Calendar.

Where else can I book onto the sessions?

The calendar on our blog pages also indicates the training sessions with a dot underneath the date, just click on the dot and the session information will appear. You can also book yourself onto a session here; just click the button at the bottom. Feel free to switch through the months to see what training sessions are coming up.

Who are your training sessions for?

Primarily, the workshops are for lecturers and PHD Students, but they can be adapted for professional service members of staff too. If you’re not available at the times of our training events, or if the programme does not cover a specific area you’re interested in, we can offer a 1-2-1 session tailored to your needs. In addition, if there’s a group of people in your department who would like a session to update their knowledge in a certain area, we can also arrange that.  We have a meeting room here in Mercantile House, but we can always come to you. To arrange these bespoke sessions, firstly complete the Bespoke Training Request form, click here give us a brief outline into which areas you’d like the training to cover and for how many people, someone will then contact you to discuss your requirements.

So if you’ll looking to embark on a project involving technology, or if you would simply like some support or advice on how to use the various elearning tools available at the University, the TEL team are here to help.

We look forward to welcoming you at one of our training events in the near future.

 

Using Service Desk for your TEL Queries

November 21, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Firstly, please don’t be alarmed – the elearn email address is not disappearing! We would just like to encourage everyone to start using Service Desk for their Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) queries.

Why email Service Desk rather than eLearn

For You:

  • Confidence knowing straight away that your query has been logged.
  • That by accessing your Self Service Portal you’ll be able to track your query.
  • Should you ever need to revisit the email again, it’ll be easy to do so through the call reference number.

For Us:

  • Traceability of emails: we often have to provide evidence for ECFs (e.g. Was Turnitin down on a certain date? Did my student report problems in Moodle on this date?)  
  • As a team we can clearly see who is actioning which query, and no emails will be lost in the system.
  • The IT Service Management (ITSM) tool, Service Manager (was Supportworks), can supply reports and analytics quicker than us working our way through elearn email folders.

Some background information

Some of you may already be familiar with Service Manager, but for those of you who are not, the ITSM tool records all queries to the Service Desk for IS and for other departments in the University. ITSM helps to standardise the IT procedures across departments.

How does it work?

  • From the moment you contact Service Desk (servicedesk@port.ac.uk or telephone them on +44 (0) 23 9284 7777), a call reference number is allocated to your query.  
  • The email is acknowledged by return, supplying the customer with a call reference number.
  • At the same time Service Desk logs the call and assigns it to the DCQE Group.
  • A member of the TEL team will accept the query and will try to resolve it.
  • If further information is required to complete your request. The TEL member of staff  will reply to the original email, if this happens, the query is put ‘on-hold’.
  • This number can be tracked through your Self Service Portal  (http://myport.ac.uk/), servicedesk.port.ac.uk, where you can check the status.
  • Once completed, the customer is emailed back with the actions that have resolved the query.
  • The call reference number stays with the query so should the issue arise again we’ll be able see how it was resolved.  
  • If a pattern appears we’ll either be able to prevent it occurring or be in a position to inform other Moodle users.
  • Templates are available for you to complete (in some cases) on your UoP Self Service Portal, so that TEL can action your request immediately, as you would have supplied all the key information  e.g. new modules, adding members of staff to your modules etc.
  • All the TEL team will be able to see if a query status has changed and should the original member be away from work, one of their colleagues would be able to complete your query.

Please remember whichever way you choose to raise your query, either via elearn or the service desk, we’ll endeavor to resolve your query and get back to you as soon as possible.

The TEL banner

A year of the TEL Tales blog

April 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

A book laid open with a pen and an eye glass resting on it

3 eLearning definitions for new University students.

August 24, 2017 / / 0 Comments

After the stress of sitting A-level exams passes, and the last of the summer fades, the realisation dawns that you are about to start university. For many of you the first few weeks of university will constitute your first real taste of freedom away from your family home, and getting settled here at Portsmouth will be high on the agenda. You will rightly be concerned about making friends, joining clubs and societies, and exploring your new environment. Of course beginning your studies  is important too, so in this article I have tried to create a quick summary of what is to come in terms of eLearning.

In this post I have picked out the top three most commonly used terms that occur around the University. There are, however, many phrases, abbreviations and acronyms that you may hear which will soon become part of your own life’s lexicon. The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team has a glossary of eLearning terms that you might also find useful.

So the three terms that will be most likely to be relevant from your first day at university are:

  1. VLE.This stands for Virtual Learning Environment; at Portsmouth, this is Moodle. This is the place where academics and administration teams provide information, learning materials and interactive activities for you to complete during your course. Moodle is normally the place where you take quizzes, submit assignments and check your writing for plagiarism.
  2. Plagiarism.Plagiarism is essentially the copying of other people’s work and passing it off as your own – a serious academic offence. To help with this, the University makes use of software called Turnitin. Turnitin checks your work against its vast database of past papers, journals and internet sources for similarities; although many people refer to it as a plagiarism checker, all it’s really doing is checking how similar your work is to existing sources. Our Youtube playlist looks at Turnitin and Moodle Assessment to help you understand how to use the software. If Turnitin returns your work with a high similarity score the problem might not be plagiarism, but poor academic referencing. Which brings us to the third term I want to discuss.
  3. Referencing.Correct citation and referencing will help you to avoid high similarity scores in Turnitin – and might help you gain marks. Plenty of help is available. The University Library, for example, offers a comprehensive referencing tool to help you; and the Academic Skills Unit provide guidance and workshops on a range of subjects, including referencing – and in academic writing more generally. This video was produced by one of the ASK tutors called ‘One way to write an essay’ that will help you start, plan and execute your academic writing style.

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These definitions are just the first step into eLearning at the University. We hope you find them useful but remember they are by no means the exhaustive list of terms or services that can help you complete your studies. For instance, Lynda.com has been rolled out for the first time at the University and has increased the depth of resources for both staff and students. Read more about this provision in this blog post.

Header image taken from Unsplash.com under a free to use license.

João Silas

coloured labels with different areas covered in our workshops

TEL Training Sessions

May 3, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Some of you may have noticed that the way TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) training sessions are advertised has changed, you no longer receive a weekly email from Staff Essentials on a Friday afternoon. Our training sessions can now be found at the bottom of the Monday’s Staff News Update email. To see our sessions you’ll need to scroll down to ‘More news’ and look under the section ‘Staff Development’.

We’ve been amalgamated under the Learning and Teaching heading, but there’s nothing there to differentiate our sessions, we can only advertised three  sessions per week in this format.

To see more of our sessions you’ll need to scroll down and click on the banner which says More Staff Development, this takes you to the Staff Development page.  Published on this page are the sessions on the Staff News along with a few more training sessions from across the University, but again there is nothing to distinguish which ones are our training sessions.

Where to find our training sessions

We have added our training sessions to the calendar, here on our blog page.  Training sessions are indicated with a dot underneath the date, just click on the dot and the session information will appear. You can book yourself onto the session here, just click the button at the bottom. Feel free to switch through the months to see what training sessions are coming up.  During August 2017 we’ll be without our training room, but please contact us to arrange a 1-2-1 sessions or group training session tailored to your needs in your place of work.

Another place to find our training information is to go to the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) website and click on the TEL Training Calendar here you’ll find our calendar with dates, times and full description on the sessions we run in this department.

Who are the training sessions for

Primarily, the workshops are for lecturers, but they can be adapted for professionally service members of staff. If you’re not available at the times of our training events, or if the programme does not cover a specific area you’re interested in, we can offer a 1-2-1 session tailored to your needs. In addition, if there’s a group of people in your department who would like a session to update their knowledge in a certain area, we can also arrange that too.  We have a meetings room here in Mercantile House, but we can always come to you.  To arrange these bespoke sessions, firstly contact elearn on either extension: 3355 or elearn@port.ac.uk, giving us a brief outline into which areas you’d like the training to cover and for how many people, someone will then contact you to discuss your requirements. So if you’ll looking to embark on a project involving technology, or if you would simply like some support or advice on how to use the various elearning tools available at the University, the TEL team are here to help.

We look forward to welcoming you at one of our training events in the near future.

About This Site

We are a talented bunch of individuals that specialise in providing support, development and design to staff around the University. We help to support staff in using technology to enhance their students' learning. Follow our blog to see what the TEL team are doing!

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