Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Category: Events

Reflecting on the TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival

Reflecting on the TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival

July 27, 2020 / / 0 Comments

As you are probably aware by now, the TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival was a week long festival looking at developments in educational technology with learning and teaching. How the sudden shift to online and blended learning has put a strain on many academics workloads and more often skill perceptions. I say this as what the current situation has shown is people are far more capable than they ever gave themselves credit for. 

Across the week the range of subjects was impressive and comprehensive. All the sessions were recorded and can be found on both the TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival website and YouTube on this playlist.

This post though, is just a brief look at how the week felt to me. The first point to note of every conference is that if you are presenting, you don’t really get to attend. Except with a fully digital conference, I am able to go back and revisit the sessions. This is a real pleasure as there were a few sessions that conflicted with mine that are of benefit to my training and personal interest (now just to find the time to watch them all back)!

The second area for me is the adrenaline rush, even just being sat at my desk. The first day saw a few technical issues that made it all the more exciting to diagnose and solve as part of a team. It got rectified very quickly, and by the 4th session of the day the hangover from the problem was gone. The team came together, set goals, allocated tasks and we did it. The reason I bring this up is not to talk in depth about the issue but to say how great it was to work with the whole team, we were able to overcome obstacles together and  provide a smooth experience to those that attended. 

My third point is that it was great to have another person to present with and to a large crowd (for most sessions) to bounce ideas around and get people involved with the process. It was a shame that my session with Andy Clegg wasn’t a little longer to be able to run the activity in full, which would have essentially been ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’. Throw some ingredients at us and let us help solve a problem on the fly. This did take place with Mike Wilson when we ran beginner and advanced Moodle demos and were able to just show people answers to questions they had. It was live, specific and not fitting a normal conference where you may not get what you actually hoped to see. It is something that I hope to be able to do more of going forward, working with colleagues on sessions that can be fun, engaging and promote creative discussions for those that may not normally see the benefit of what we do in the department.

My final reflection is that I am so proud of what the team and colleagues have done. Watching Stephen Webb and Shaun Searle demonstrate principles of content capture and talk about how quickly they have had to deal with the implementation of Panopto, it makes you proud to be part of something so proactive (maybe a little reactive in this case) and so professional. The whole conference was put together quickly with people quickly developing sessions and actually we all learned of ways to develop our specialisms into the wider field of what the department does. 

bunting

From the feedback I and others have received, it was a great success and I hope to do something similar in the future. It has opened my eyes to ideas that can run across the year and not just in one day. How my training online could be the way to go (don’t get me wrong I love face to face experiences) but actually online, I know people have a device and I can be more creative with what was once a demonstration type session. 

This festival was a pleasure to be a part of, and I was sad it finished. I was also glad at the end as it was intense, mildly hectic and not really a sustainable solution to training especially with trying to help manage a family in lockdown (I was lucky not to be attacked by children!). However, my feeling going forward, even after the worst of this current isolation is over, is that the conferences that we run and organise could and should have more online elements to really engage everyone that wants to attend. It opens up other possibilities that physical locations can’t. The best part of this whole experience though was this tweet from @Drstuartsims. Even in lockdown, conference food is questionable …

Credit Image: Photo by Stefan Spassov on Unsplash

Credit Image: Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

TEL Tales Blended Learning Festival

Guest Blogger: Amy Barlow – TEL Tales: Blended Learning Festival is now LIVE

July 14, 2020 / / 0 Comments

This week the TEL Tales Festival Team are excited to bring a jam packed programme of webinars and online training events as part of this week long event. The past months have seen a huge transformation in the way we teach and we think it’s about time we paused, took a deep breath (or sigh of relief) and pat ourselves heartily on the back. If you’d have shown us, on a crystal ball, in 2019 that the whole university would move to online delivery in the space of a fortnight we would have spat out our tea; that, it transpires, was remarkably possible. The effort, determination, blood sweat and tears that such a transformation required from all staff  is not to be underestimated. We learnt to teach in new ways and our students took it all in their stride. The metrics showing the sudden spike in VLE use, content capture and online webinar instances evidences how adaptable we are as a Higher Education provider. Some may say, educators across school, FE and HE are the unsung heroes of 2020 for pivoting so quickly. 

TEL Me How TicketThe TEL Tales: Blended Learning Festival celebrates the great body of knowledge we have acquired and marks our continued journey into the Blended Learning stratosphere. We’ve been teaching at a distance for decades; now distance learning and our expertise with educational technology is front and centre. Next academic year will not be without its challenges and a continued commitment to high quality online and face to face delivery will shape our teaching and learning going forward. The week makes sure that everyone has access to the ingredients they need to cook up a storm. 

So, what does this week have in store?

I’m personally looking forward to this week’s programme and having a much needed debrief following Teaching Block Two. What have we learnt? What have we gained? What areas do we need to upskill in?

Tea at 3!Each day we will hold ‘Tea at 3’ which is a themed informal discussion. Like so many sector events, we are looking forward to the sharing that happens across disciplines. There will be a selection of webinars covering a myriad of topics and tools – look out for the TEL Me How for more practical training. Many sessions are repeated, including the popular Using the Moodle Template webinar and with consent, we will be able to record everything for those that miss out on the live event.

L&T WebinarsHere are some highlights for the week ahead :

  • Meeting the Challenges of Remote Personal Tutoring
  • An Introduction to Creating Accessible Content
  • Using Vevox to Create Live Conversations with Students
  • Learning Well: Resources for supporting student well-being online
  • The Power of Panopto

We look forward to seeing you there!

Amy Barlow, Head of Academic Development

Don’t forget to follow all the latest festival information and daily line-ups of our sessions on Instagram at @telportsmouth and Twitter at @TelPortsmouth

hashtag info

 

 

A collage of images taken at Digifest 2020

Into the unknown – part 3

May 26, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Digifest (#Digifest20) runs across 2 days and provides a wide range of thought provoking sessions to engage and challenge the audience. 

Day 2 started with a keynote from Hayley Mulenda (@hayleymulenda on Twitter) that was one of the most heartfelt and eye opening talks I have ever watched called “The Hidden Filter”. Hayley talked about her experiences at university, her journey through depression and anxiety. How she felt while having to deal with family and friends all the time maintaining the focus on her learning. This is something that I can not do justice to with my attempt to write about it now. Just to say that if you ever get a chance to hear her speak, I would take it. It will demonstrate how many students are facing challenges that (depending on your age and year of study) you may never have even considered. It equally demonstrated to me that there were times in my life where I was depressed and emotionally raw but not realising it because I was in the middle of the situation, it is only when I think back and reflect that I can see the damage I was doing to myself. 

She concluded her talk with the notion that we should not rely on technology in this ‘technology driven world’ (which has become an even bigger issue at the time of writing during the COVID lockdown). We now face an even greater challenge to support each other those who may be isolated, not only literally but figuratively. (I will provide some wellbeing support and guidance at the bottom of this blog for extra reading). It is with the “Hidden Filter” that Hayley addressed that our reliance on presenting a show of permanent strength and happiness in a digital world can ultimately lead to a rise in negative and harmful experiences in the “real” world. My favourite quote of her session was “You don’t need to listen to respond, you need to listen to understand”. 

The second day was just as inspiring as the first, with sessions covering a range of ideas, however the last one, I want to mention for this series of blogs is the one hosted by Michelle Capes and Sean Randall of the Wiltshire College and University Centre. This session was on digital escape rooms and demonstrated how you could use Microsoft OneNote to create pages of questions, restricted by passwords that require you to challenge your students and get them to investigate the material. Creating riddles and puzzles that can be discovered through online research as well as having to work around physical locations to find the information. 

During this session, I was inspired to look at how Moodle may be a potential option in creating ‘Digital Escape Rooms’. I found that it was possible to recreate using a Moodle book to house H5P activities that are all set with restrictions that require a set score from a previous question. It was a quick test I did during the presentation but with more work, the idea could be developed using a range of activities and conditions within Moodle that create more a more in depth experience. What it demonstrated to me was the idea that we are often limited by our own creativity and not the technical limitations. The OneNote option being demostrated was simple but very effective!

What I realised is that often we are all working on creative solutions to problems or have ideas that we don’t elaborate on and this can lead us to the point where we are not always great at sharing those ideas that we have. With that in mind, if you have worked on something in Moodle that is slightly more interesting, or have an idea that you are not sure what to do with, please do get in touch with myself, your Online Course Developer (many of whom have kindly written for the blog) or the TEL team, and we can discuss these ideas and potential solutions. 

To close this post and my experiences of DigiFest 2020, I would recommend to everyone that can attend this event in the future, they do! It is a fantastic example of creative minds and inspiring innovations that demonstrate learning and teaching within the FE and HE sector. It has made me think about things we should be looking at for our institution and what I can personally do to inspire others with the technology we have available. It demonstrated to me that there are more aspects to the life we lead within a university that we might miss from the students perspective (thanks @hayleymulenda). We traditionally work in silos a lot of the time, and it is an easy trap to fall into, but we should be looking at how best we can connect our work with others throughout the university. There is more we can offer, but we might not see the direct value elsewhere or how others might also be able to apply it to their subject. It is a very easy mindset to create, isolating ourselves and not sharing our work or innovations. Often this is not deliberate but just one factor in how we approach what we do in our daily working life. Digifest has shown me we should be singing each other’s praises and looking at ways to connect and integrate our best practice around the university and also what we can offer the wider community (be it learning and teaching practice or what we can offer others who might use our teaching ideas in the outside world). 

Guidance and Support for Wellbeing:

Digifest 2020

Digifest 2020

March 30, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Although a regular delegate at Jisc’s annual Digifest I had never before given a presentation so was excited to have had my presentation proposal accepted. The topic for the talk, naturally enough, covered my work as an Online Course Developer on the university’s degree apprenticeship programme. Since the university launched its first degree apprenticeship in 2016 with just 7 Business and Management students, numbers across the university have grown to over 600 involving all faculties and 17 different courses. 

With a long history of involvement in work based learning, the university’s early involvement in degree apprenticeships would have been a natural progression along with a small handful of other trailblazers. Roll forward to 2020 and there are now over 90 HEIs delivering degree apprenticeships including Russell group institutions. 

Anyway, back to Digifest! Given the rapid growth of our degree apprenticeship programme I knew I had a good story to tell and, hopefully, some useful experience to pass on and for me this reflected a shift in emphasis of this year’s conference. I have always enjoyed the two days spent at the ICC every March but this year I was particularly looking forward to sessions looking at the practical application and development of eLearning tools and methodologies. In this respect two sessions in particular stood out. The first was a panel discussion titled “How do we address the digital skills gap” the second a presentation on how staff and students are actually using technology.

Having worked in the field of eLearning for some time, I’ve found one of the main barriers hindering the greater use of technology has been, and continues to be, time. After demonstrating a particular piece of technology, a frequent, and understandable reaction is “Yes, that looks great but I just don’t have the time to create resources using it…” Coming from a teaching background I can empathise, with preparation, marking, meetings and actual teaching, time is often in short supply In the sessions mentioned above different strategies were discussed in addressing the issue of time. One involved recognising and rewarding digital development, thus partly overcoming the digital skills gap with a carrot based approach. The other approach involved a more stick based strategy whereby developing digital skills becomes part of the standard annual appraisal.

In terms of the contrasting approaches proffered, my starting point is very much carrot based, which doesn’t necessarily need to be physically tangible. The use of technology in teaching can bring measurable gains, with some upfront investment in time, resources can be created that can be used multiple times and thus be time saving in the long run. For example a Moodle quiz can be used for either formative or summative assessment and is self marking. A short video can be quicker to produce than a handout and be a more effective learning resource. Use of tools such as Padlet, Nearpod and Vevox can add meaningful participation and interaction in lectures and seminars with the same resource being re-usable for as long as the modules are taught.

For students the greater use of technology can bring real benefits and Jisc’s digital insights survey regularly shows that students do want greater use of technology even if it is just lecture recordings. Moreover, according a report produced by the European Commission (Human Capital: Europe’s Digital Progress Report, 2017) 38% of workplaces stated that a lack of digital skills was harming business while in the panel discussion mentioned a performing arts student explained how the use of technology in his course had helped him develop the skills he needed to be able to gain employment in his chosen field. One suggestion I am a little unsure about is the rewarding of staff with badges they can wear when they achieve a given level of digital skills, a strategy used by one college, but some kind of recognition for digital development can only help spread good digital practice.

The presentations from Digifest 2020 are now available online to view, along with Andy Taggart’s: Degree apprenticeships – meeting the technical and teaching challenges

Image by Klaus P. Rausch from Pixabay

 

Into the unknown - part 2

Into the unknown – part 2

March 26, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Digifest (#digifest20) as a conference is awe inspiring, Jisc really know how to create that wow factor on entering the central auditorium. It was an area divided between trade stands, a village green and a futuristic stage. Next to it housed a massive screen that projected holographic messages signposting exhibits like AR, as well as when sessions were due to start. 

The first two sessions of Digifest were thought provoking and relevant to what we are all facing, a greater need to work online and provide a digital solution to our traditional working practices. Unsurprisingly enough, this is even more relevant now! Since I wrote part 1, we have gone through a seismic shift in learning and teaching, and had to adapt at a rapid pace to the new ways of working. 

This ties nicely to the third session that I attended called Digital Imposter Syndrome in Pracademia. We are all now facing a new way to interact with colleagues, students and our families. The fact that in the not so distant past, people would shy away from attempting new ways of using technology, yet are now being forced to change and adapt. This session had the perfect message for our current working environments. 

Just give it a go! It might fail. If it does … so what? 

We are a diverse community of practitioners and academics that are rallying, more than ever, to provide support and resources for each other and our students. 

The previous worry and the point I would have made, had I written this when Digifest was fresh in my mind, was that our students know more than us. That might well be true in certain technological areas, but actually, this is also a challenging time for them too. We are in a prime situation for students to give us their feedback, which can only benefit us and them in collaborating going forward.  This idea of digital support and digital co-creation is something that the TEL team are happy to discuss so please let us know if this is something you are doing or want to know more about (you can start with me tom.langston@port.ac.uk or the general help email elearn@port.ac.uk ).


At the time I made this tweet, it summed up nicely where we stand today. At the moment quick wins are the name of the game, being adaptable and using new tools to try something new. 

Back to the wider Digifest angle, and each session I attended, offered new and creative ideas for teaching. Harlow College provides their students with an iPad for their studies and with it they are creating digital scrapbooks to help with dementia patients in the community, writing and directing drama performances for the community around evocative subjects like cyber-bullying. It lets the students’ creativity flow through all their studies and is not fixed to traditional technical subjects. This is key when thinking that ‘they’ know more than we do. We, as academics, understand that the generations surrounding us have different skills to offer, and to ignore that is only going to slow innovation. If we develop why we want to use the technology and think about the pedagogic rationale, maybe the students can run with the theme and ideas and inspire us in how we work, assess and challenge our previous norms. 

Digifest was an amazing space to share ideas and hear about innovations in teaching that are surprisingly easy to implement. So far I have written only around day 1, day 2 was equally fruitful. The final blog post in the series will look at the highlights of day 2 and what we can do going forward with the enforced digital revolution that we are all now part of.

into the unknown - part 1

Into the unknown – part 1

March 17, 2020 / / 1 Comment

Just like Elsa being called by unseen voices into an adventure as yet undefined (for those that don’t know, this is a reference to Frozen 2 and Elsa’s new and improved version of Let it go), Digifest 2020 or #digifest20, if you want to track it on social media, opens its doors and I step into the unknown, exciting event hosted by Jisc. Digifest is new to me, but to those that have been before it offers innovation, inspiration and opportunity. 

This two day conference that Jisc organise every year at the Birmingham ICC is a window into the latest ideas that help create and shape fantastic innovations in learning and teaching. 

The conference opened with, what would turn out to be, a controversial keynote from Jonah Stillman (@jonah.stillman on instagram), firstly outlining how the generations were categorised and then with a look into Gen Z and their approach to learning. It was an interesting insight into how Gen Z are not like the Millenials (who started in 1980!) and are being told they are winners and losers, it’s not about the taking part anymore, it’s about the winning. This, he argues, will be a potential hurdle through their learning and into the world of work as they are not able to collaborate (while admitting this was a wide generalisation). 

For me the biggest take away was that you can’t wow Gen Z with technology. They quickly investigate and analyse a tool and quickly decide if it is useful or redundant. Where the older generations would see themselves as technology inept and the problem is with them, the Gen Z learner sees it as a problem with the product and that it either works for them or doesn’t. 

We are all at that point where we have technology or using technology in some way as part of our lives, but for Gen Z there is the expectation it is there. It should be integrated and seamless to their experiences. Jonah Stillman expanded on this with the concept of Weconomists. The simplest example of this is Uber, but it is the shared economy. If you need something there will be someone available that can offer that service. How that fits educationally is going to be the next big sticking point. At worst we have the idea of buying essays, but how can we turn this into a positive? How can the shared economy of learning be expanded? 

For me it fits into the idea that was presented by Rachel Hall (@rachela_hall on Twitter) at the next panel “Changing the world of work in the digital age” and how The Guardian has focused their future on the digital output of their journalists. They have looked at how people access the news depending on the time of the day. Headlines in the morning, just short sharp bite sized pieces of information that people can choose to discover on their commute to work. At lunch a more in depth article that expands on their day while they have a larger chunk of time to be critical of the stories that hold the most interest to them. By the evening they are looking at more lighthearted content that relates to their social experiences and lifestyle. This for me presents one potential solution to the shared economy, where students can share their stories and knowledge. They each process that information differently but if they can help interpret that to their fellow learners they will adapt the material and help reframe learning in a way that makes it accessible to everyone. 

Just from the two opening sessions of this year’s Digifest, I feel inspired to think about my own practice and how as an educator I am trying to predict what is going to be useful for students in their learning. I am now more aware than ever that I am using technology in such a different way to that of the students at the university. The change we are seeing should not be seen as a problem. It should be seen as an opportunity, while we are taking a step into the unknown (just like Elsa!). We can take the challenge and channel our current students desire to learn and look at how we facilitate that desire in a way that may not be comfortable to us. 

Stay tuned for Part 2, when I will focus on academics who are facing this challenge of a student body that potentially knows more than they do in terms of technology!

All the notes taken at #digifest20 can be found on Twitter @TelPortsmouth

Woman standing behind video camera smiling

Video in Higher Education

July 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

A recent visit to Oxford University for a conference on the use of video in Higher Education provided an excellent opportunity to pick up insights into how video is being used in universities across the country. In the words of conference organiser Dominik Lukes:

“Since the advent of YouTube, video has gained in significance as a medium of instruction. It has become an invaluable resource for informal learning and teaching, professional development, and formal instruction”

The morning session consisted of a series of ‘lightning’ presentations, each no more than around 7 minutes. This allowed for a good number of issues and ideas to be presented from a wide range of universities. In the afternoon we could choose from a variety of topics to discuss in small groups, such as student created videos as assessment, accessibility and inclusion, and how to tell a story.

Among the highlights from the day was a lightning talk covering lecture capture. The presenter (James Youdale, University of York) considered the difficult issue of whether lecture capture was changing how teaching takes place and how students engaged with the video lecture. The thorny issue of whether to have lecturers opt-in to have their lectures captured or an opt-out option with all lectures captured unless the lecturer chooses otherwise was also touched on. Among statistics James’ research had found was that 41% of students watch the whole of the captured lecture, 23% skip to what they regard as the important points and 96% watch on their own. This talk raised, without necessarily answering, a few interesting questions such as

  • Should lecture capture change pedagogical practice?
  • Do students need better guidance/help in note taking?
  • How can lectures be made less passive?

From the work done at York, it would seem students generally do value lecture capture and would like more of it.

Taking lecture capture one step further and actually replacing lectures with video was the theme of a presentation by Chris Evans from UCL. Two studies were carried out to gain insight into what students thought about such a bold move. In this case a 2 hour lecture was replaced with a 1 hour interactive video lecture (Xerte was used to provide the interactivity but H5P could also be used). Student feedback was very positive, and to help ensure engagement with the videos assessments were used every two weeks.

Certainly lecture capture and substituting videos for lectures allow students to learn at their own pace but not sure either are a real replacement for direct human interaction

In the late nineteenth century the Psychologist Ebbinghaus created his now well known forgetting curve illustrating how quickly information is forgotten. More modern studies tend to confirm that students quickly forget what they are told in lectures. However, they also show that going back over materials in short bursts can greatly help information retention, perhaps that is the context in which lecture capture can be viewed. In terms of replacing lectures with videos, personally I am not convinced entire courses over a sustained period of time could be delivered this way.

The afternoon discussions developed some of the themes from the morning, of particular interest were views on overcoming barriers to the greater use of video. These barriers seemed to fall into two broad areas – time and skills. Making a video can be time consuming when all production factors are taken into consideration, from writing the script, to editing the raw footage and, many lecturers may feel they have neither the time or the skills to devote to creating videos. In terms of time, what needs to be emphasised that once the video is made it’s there to be used over and over again and down the line can actually save time – students can revisit the videos which can leave time for discussions on critical analysis and evaluation without having to go back over content. For as long as a course module exists, then the video will continue to be a useful teaching and learning resource. In terms of editing, lecturers would not be expected to necessarily have the skills required, but that is where developers are key, and they can be called on the handle the technical side of things.

Overall, the key message I took away from the day is that the research presented indicated videos can be a very useful tool but it’s simply not being used enough – maybe the carrots need to be made more obvious and possibly a few sticks as well?

Image credits: Brett Sayles  on Pixels.com

A speech bubble

The Portsmouth Moodle – Accessibility Snapshot

July 11, 2018 / / 0 Comments

In January 2018 we were lucky enough to host a visit from Alistair McNaught, a JISC subject specialist on accessibility and inclusion. Alistair spent a day at the University as a “mystery shopper”, playing the role of a student with disabilities who was trying to access various digital resources and services. He looked at the full range of services – prospectus, website, Library platforms and Moodle – but here I’ll focus on his observations about the VLE.

The first thing to note is that Alistair had difficulty logging on to a PC in the morning: it took more than ten minutes for the desktop to appear. The student sitting next to him confirmed that, after the initial boot, it often did take a long time before a public PC was in a state that allowed work to take place. Not good for a student with ADHD!

Alistair confirmed that tab order (for keyboard navigation) works well in Moodle and the visual tracking of focus is good. There’s easy navigation with breadcrumb trails and a navigation side panel; this is important because good navigation assists all users, especially assistive technology users. The Moodle accessibility block is available and obvious on all pages, and Equality and Diversity information is easily discoverable. The self-enrol E&D course has lots of very good, easily accessible, generic awareness-raising resources; and there are easy-to-find PDF resources on equality data – these have good reflow and colour change possibilities. All this is good news and it allows us to build on – in Alistair’s words – conscious competence.

However, there are some things we need to think about. For example, some of our third-party resources have accessibility issues; we are to some extent a hostage to fortune in these cases, but at least now we are in a position to raise the points with the suppliers. Another issue was that some of our generic units have poor colour contrast; Alistair pointed us to a tool – the Colour Contrast Analyser from the Paciello group – which will help us identify these problems more readily. And once we are aware of them, it’s easier to fix.

Alistair also took a look (with the consent of the academics involved) at a couple of teaching units from ICJS. He was highly impressed with the pedagogical approach taken in these units, and he praised a number of aspects. A “lovely human [video-based] introduction adds value for many students” – but he added that it “would be even better with transcript or captions”. It was “great to see active use of rich media and a nice visual key to resources”; the “direct links to reading resource and final assessment” were useful; and the “impressive range of resources” were “well organised” and had “clearly scaffolded teaching with explanations and pointers to the purpose of the resources”. Where resources could cause access issues this has been recognised and a genuine attempt made to remedy it with a PDF alternative (however, the PDF had its own accessibility issues and so does the ‘Click here’ link text). Finally, a Useful News and Information block showed “great currency, with tie-in to contemporaneous issues”. So, again, there is a lot of conscious competence on which we can build.

These units had some issues; fortunately, they are easily fixed. For example, hyperlinks need unique and meaningful link text so that assistive technologies that gather page links together can give users meaningful information. If an author writes “Click here to browse an interactive timeline of key events” then the result from assistive technologies might be a long list of “Click here”s – which is entirely uninformative. Much better to write: “Click here to browse an interactive timeline of key events”. Another problem came from an interactive Articulate resource that failed to load; even if it did load, Articulate generally produces output with limited accessibility. And some structures had untitled navigation elements, which would cause problems for some users. (This last issue might be down to an underlying Moodle template issue; Alistair pointed us to another tool – the HTML5 Outliner plugin for Chrome – that will help us investigate this further.)

All in all this was a tremendously useful visit. We know there are areas of good practice we can build on, and there are issues we can fix.  And it truly is worth pursuing this: if we take an inclusive approach to Moodle and the content on it, all learners will benefit.

Feature image title:  Web Accessibility Word Cloud by Jill Wright is licensed by CC-BY 2.0 on Flickr

MoodleMoot banner

MoodleMoot 2017

April 27, 2017 / / 0 Comments

MoodleMoot UK & Ireland is held each year; it is the main Moodle conference in the UK which focuses on collaboration and sharing best practice. This year MoodleMoot ran for three days between the 10th and the 12th April, I attended the two days that make up the main conference and missed the “hackfest” on the first day which is typically more developer-led.

The choice of sessions available to attend were diverse and interesting. I was able to visit a number of sessions that have some great ideas, which I can hopefully introduce to the team.

I’ll will try to highlight some of the most relevant or interesting information from the sessions that I attended. However I would recommend searching Twitter for the hashtag #MootIEUK17 as many people were tweeting notes, comments and observations from each session. It really enhanced the first day of the conference for me (until my phone with the Twitter account died, but that’s another story!).

The first session I saw was from the University of London. They reviewed Moodle from both staff and student perspectives, specifically looking at navigation and how to improve the user experience. An example they used was how it’s difficult getting feedback to the student when the gradebook only displays a grade and no indication of feedback. From the academic point of view they discussed how it wasn’t clear if work was marked, or whether the student could or couldn’t see it. They reviewed the new themes being developed at Moodle and the problems they may face rolling them out before they were ready.

Janice Button from Plymouth University implemented the grid format which is a Moodle plugin that hides all the topics and creates a grid view of icons. When they are clicked the relevant section of content is then displayed.

The next session I attended was presented by Lewis Carr. He demonstrated how well developed badges increase engagement, creating more gamified interactions, this was interesting at Portsmouth we have looked at creating badges within Moodle and a few in academics within the University are using them. Properly thought out achievements and goals can also improve how the student progresses through a course. It was pointed out by Janice Button that from entry courses to level 5 (second year courses) the amount of content increased dramatically, this made the progress bar more daunting and the revisiting of quizzes and similar interactions dropped off as the amount of work to be done increased. Lewis also highlighted the need of social interaction and engaging the students before, during and after the course to develop and build the learning experience.

The morning sessions were interesting and informative and gave us plenty to discuss over lunch. After we’d eaten, there were pico presentations (short and snappy when compared the the morning talks) which opened the afternoon sessions and were a great way to continue. Two sessions stood out: our own Mike Wilson spoke about Assessment Enhancement and the customisations that have been developed for our Moodle installation, and Rebecca Barrington put the “oo” back into Moodle by looking at how to keep academics on-board with the development of sites, explaining how embedding resources within Moodle is a great way to enhance and develop what you already have.

My turn to present was nearing, now, I am not normally a nervous presenter but the thought of presenting on a stage with the glare of lights and a massive screen behind me contributed to the nerves this time around! Whilst I got through it with positive feedback and managed to handle a few questions reasonably well, I felt I could have been better and should I be lucky enough to do another talk will endeavour to get those nerves in check and slow down!

Looking back, there certainly wasn’t a need to be nervous, the whole day was incredibly relaxed and just a creative hub for people who are keen educators, all looking at how we can approach our teaching, training and Moodle usage in a interesting way.

A panel discussion on getting rid of the desktop and turning to only a mobile solution ended the day. This was a very open discussion with questions from the audience and a range of views. A point that resonated with me, was the idea that we should always look at what we do for those end users on a mobile as the number of active mobile users is rising. The other side of this argument however, is that development from a mobile is not really practical. Whatever we develop should allow us to be flexible though, ensuring that our end users having the easiest and most simple experience of Moodle. The new themes and tools that are being added to the newer versions of Moodle show that this is also a concern for the ‘core’ Moodle team.

Day two of the conference saw my phone die, which meant that tweeting from the @TelPortsmouth account was curbed! The sessions I would like to draw on from the second day happened just before lunch as the second day was more sedate due to the evening festivities of the reception dinner the night before.

Mary Cooch, who is known amongst the Moodle community as the ‘Moodle Fairy’, did two sessions and I attended one entitled “10 user experience improvements since Moodle 3.1” of which I had heard of most updates. It was useful to see but essentially if you go through a versions release notes they will be highlighted there (I am sure many people don’t!)

The second session and my pick of the second day was “Competency based education a look at the features in Moodle 3.1 / 3.2”. This session was interesting, informative and above all confusing! Competencies are used to “describe the level of understanding or proficiency of a learner in certain subject-related skills”. Competencies are a new and growing feature of Moodle. TEL are researching Competencies so that members of staff in the University can possibly make use of them in the future.

MoodleMoot is a fantastic event that I would suggest to anyone involved with any aspect of Moodle. It was engaging, with a great range of subjects and everything from back end/admin level sessions to those designed to be understandable for the average user. It was also a great place to ask anyone a question, everyone was approachable and for the reception dinner, a great place to hijack the Moodle stage display and use it for photos!

Image credits: https://moodlemoot.org/mootieuk17/

A seminar room full of people facing a screen

Learning Technologies Conference 2017 – Reflection

April 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The 2017 Learning Technologies conference took place on 1st and 2nd February. There were two sections to the conference, the paid sessions and the open floor with free talks. The free talks were to some degree or other essentially sales pitches from trade stands on the floor. That being said, they did attempt to not be too “salesy” and provided some very useful ideas and concepts.

Learning Technologies to me implied educational technologies and this is very true about the subject matter and stands of the show, however, it looked at a wider sphere of corporate learning and systems that develop the skills required to train and enhance business learning.

I was keen to listen to as many of the shows as I could and had plenty of choice with about 81 free session to choose from. 11 Theatres (Open floor spaces) with sessions on a wide range of topics and varying perspectives on similar topics.

For the rest of this post I will summarise my notes from each session with key points that will help with your eLearning.

The sessions I attended were:

  1. Beyond the Buzz: use social learning to supercharge your training program
  2. Transforming the real learner experience
  3. OMG not another seminar about eLearning
  4. Harnessing the power of social learning
  5. (Traditional) eLearning is dead – here’s what the future holds
  6. Meet the modern learner: digital strategies to engage millennials

Beyond the Buzz: use social learning to supercharge your training program

Hosted by Docebo.

The session was ironically a lot of buzzwords and talked very little in depth about anything however the main focus was around the 70:20:10 model for learning.

Looking at how to blend formal, experimental and social learning with the split being 70% on real life experience, on the job experience and tasks and problem solving encountered through real world problems. 20% can be achieved through observation and social environments. The final 10% from traditional formal training including both face to face and online training.

It stressed that click through learning objects that are created as digital learning that might give you a quiz score and a tick to say the training is complete are not the only option to learning (This was actually a key feature of many of the presentations).

A progress line was illustrated along the Who/What/When/Why/Where idea that featured the focus of Who are the champions of the company, What can they share and offer, When can they offer this and how, Why should the information be learned? A reward system for the learner to achieve goals towards many tasks and Where can this all be hosted or acquired for others to develop their knowledge, A central location for knowledge transfer that is simple and easy to investigate is key to the process.

As this wasn’t a direct sales pitch some of the answers were left to the potential to talk to them on the trade stand and look at the product that they offer.

Conclusion:

It was an interesting starting session for the conference and looking back at my notes it actually echoes through all the session I attended. It offered a model of learning with experts available to talk through this, however reading subsequent literature the 70:20:10 model of learning has had criticism leveled at it towards the effectiveness of the model.

Transforming the real learner experience

Hosted by David Perring from Fossway.com

This session looked at the statistics behind a learners needs and key importance drivers, starting with “What makes a compelling learning technology?”

It was argued that as developers and educators we should hold higher ambitions than just acceptable. The role of acceptable is not adequate in the 21st century learners portfolio and each resource should be able to offer a great user experience and provide the information.

The question of key drivers behind what influences a good learning platform were ranked:

  1. Usability
  2. Deliver engaging learning experiences
  3. Expertise
  4. Ability to deliver learning impact
  5. Quality of partners and support
  6. Learner engagement features.

It was then asked, How can we improve with the increase in demand from many organisations to have more solutions for their learners to access content.

Surprisingly the figures had video resources as the key improvement, followed by Mobile, Blended and User generated content.

The top 5 demands of what a learning platform should offer the students were:

  1. Learner engagement
  2. Mobile learning
  3. Social / Collaborative learning
  4. Analytics and dashboard features
  5. A Virtual Classroom.

Many organisations focus on the short term operational performance but lose site of the long term and need to have a future readiness that can adapt to changing market places and challenges.

Fossway have developed PLASMA Learning.

Plan – What do I need to know?

Learn – How can I learn?

Apply – How am I using the information?

Sustain – What am I doing to achieve the long term learning goals?

Measure – How well am I doing with my targets?

Analyse – Where do I need to go next?

This model takes experiences that we want to create and looks at how to use the technology we have available to achieve that. Real learning experiences are not just the technology  but how we use it to engage the learners own learning.

It is not possible to assess learning through checklists and tick box activities, it is developed through a story and describes a journey of what a learning experience should be.

Conclusion

This was the most interesting talk of the day with a real look at the data behind the student experience. It clarified many of the ideas that we all now understand behind student learning and how the technology is key to the learner experience but is not the central point.

OMG. Not another seminar about eLearning

Hosted by Learning Heroes.

The presenter was very candid about the purpose of these free seminars and how they were offered to them due their investments in the show. The short session was focussed on old elearning skill vs the new skills required. The old model looked at the creator of resources, In-house production of materials. The new model it was argued was as the curator of materials. These would be a person that can gather information from multiple sources and evaluate the experience of other experts rather than being a subject matter expert. The ability to think laterally and find content for free over expensive charged for content.

This last part was not just about it being completely free but developing the model of a singular paid for experience per user, when you can source and disseminate materials for unlimited usage.

Conclusion

This was a very short session that felt under prepared (especially compared with the previous session). It had a the glimmer of a great idea regarding the way subject experts should develop and curate their learning information but it was lost in the fact the slides were uninteresting as was he about delivering it.

Harnessing the power of social learning

Presented by AstraZeneca

This felt irrelevant to me as from the start they were talking about compliance training for a corporate audience, however they underlined their ability to take a small team of developers and produce a resource that was beneficial to all the people within the company that required training.

The key message was that they got the end user to record and share their experiences of learning, and get others to ask questions of that experience so that everyone was learning from everyone else a little each day.

The importance of story telling and keeping information simple and understandable with the learner helping take the subject matter and distilling it down into relevant examples that then develop overall understanding.

They created a search feature for the question “How do I?” that provides each user with a blend of experience and activities that enable the learner to reach the answer to the question.

It showed again how it’s not just a tick box exercise to say you now understand the subject, or pass a test to show competency but an ongoing process of learning and reflection.

Conclusion

The session was interesting to hear a case study for the Fuse Universal product, but was focussed on compliance training.

The confusion for me came when after they finished the talk the showed a video (shot like a documentary) that was essentially the talk again. It felt that they had spent all this money on a video and decided they had to show it.

Traditional eLearning is dead what the future holds

Presented by Juliette Denny of Growth Engineering

This was the presentation that OMG (See above) wanted to be. The presenter was also dressed as a superhero (did I miss that bit out before?) but had a very positive attitude, well designed presentation and had worked hard to get the content and message to be understood.

They key point raised was this; eLearning assumes one off learning is effective. Create one resource, tick a box and you have learnt the subject. This is a flawed concept. Bloom’s Taxonomy was brought in and the idea that the goal should be to change behaviour of the learner, and key to that is making learning fun. Entertainment beats education, people want to play games and they gravitate to what they like. Learning can be seen as boring, but why should that be the case? Research from the University of Colorado shows that game based scores for activities are 11% higher than the equivalent standard test.

Mobile learning is also over taking traditional desktop learning, so the need to make content that is fun and engaging, competitive as well as multi device friendly is a major task. She posited that the human attention span has gone from 16 seconds to on 8 seconds (less than a goldfish at 9 seconds). This was why micro-learning is a more efficient way of learning for current students, apparently 17% more efficient but I was unable to get the data source for this.

Echoing back to the opening session of the day the idea of social reinforcement with 90% of learning being informal and the social aspect is the bridge into changing and adapting the learning behaviour. The idea is to make each area campaign driven and more exciting.

Conclusion

This was a very enthusiastic session and passionate towards the product that was being sold (albeit indirectly). Growthengineering.co.uk is the framework for creating competitive games that feed into their own LMS/VLE platform. They are working hard to change the approach taken by corporate clients but I am not sure that it would transfer to HE.

Final Thought

The conference was extremely interesting with a large selection of products on offer. The free seminars were interesting despite being a little sales orientated, there was still a lot of information worth reflecting on and transferring into our future decisions.

I still have a bag full of flyers to investigate and decide what might be worth considering for implementation.

The conference was vast and I hope to attend again next year as it drives learning within the business sector which will tie to what a HE institution should be offering students who study while on placement or within a role. For free, it was worth the money!

Image credits: http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/

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