Category: Innovation

A generated image of a student seating on a chair at a desk with their hands in a position as if they were typing on a keyboard.

RIDE 2023 – Sustaining Innovation: Research and Practice

April 11, 2023 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

The Centre for Online and Distance Education (CODE) is a University of London initiative focusing on research, training, capacity building, and strategy and policy development to support innovation in online and distance education. On 28 and 29 March 2023, CODE held its 17th annual conference – a hybrid in-person and online event – on Research in Distance Education (RIDE). The theme of RIDE 2023 was sustaining innovation and sustainable practices.

Here are a half-dozen of my personal highlights and takeaways from the conference:

Photo of the outside of Senate House in London. A grey imposing Art Deco building.

Senate House London

In-person conferences are better than virtual conferences. Last week I met someone from my undergraduate days, a person I hadn’t seen in four decades. And I caught up with a colleague from the early days of the TEL team, who is now working in London. (It’s remarkable how many Portsmouth EdTech people seem to have ended up in London!) It was great to reminisce and to hear what is new. These interactions I guess might have happened online, but I doubt it.
Hybrid conferences are hard to get right. The Senate House was constructed in the 1930s, and it is simply not set up to handle a hybrid conference. The organisers did their best to ensure that in-person and online participants enjoyed an equivalent experience, but the limitations of the technology and the physical spaces in the building made it difficult. I can understand why conference organisers want to run hybrid events (and why teachers want to run hybrid lectures) but these are hard things to get right. I have attended many excellent online conferences, and many excellent in-person conferences, but I cannot recall a hybrid event that has ever worked seamlessly.
The sector is continuing to debate and think-through the opportunities and threats posed by generative AI. Professor Mike Sharples, from the OU, delivered an excellent keynote address. He noted that he had given the talk several times recently, and each time he had to update it: developments in this field are currently happening on a weekly basis. (It was also interesting to learn that Mike began research into AI and education during his PhD – about 40 years ago!)
The concentration on sustainability provided an interesting lens through which to view our practice. One session looked at the move from in-person, paper-based exams to online exams. The claim was that this was a much more environmentally friendly approach to distance education. That might be so – but a full accounting was not given of the environmental costs of online. A lot more research is needed.
The University of London Worldwide is experimenting with AI tutors. The intention is not to replace human tutors with AI tutors but to see whether this technology can help provide some elements of a personalised education at scale. They are just at the start of this project – it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Credit Image: Photo by Open Journey

Explore – A guide for academic staff

August 2, 2021 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 0 Comments

Considering ways to enhance a blended and connected learning experience? Looking for a resource that can provide the basic information on digital tools at UoP? Need help and support with content capture but not sure which tool is fit for purpose? Maybe Explore can help!

What’s Explore?

In collaboration with Professor Ale Armellini, the TEL Team have designed and developed a resource called Explore – A guide for academic staff. We hope it will help provide answers to questions surrounding tool selection in blended and connected learning and teaching.

In the ever-changing world of technology, it can be difficult to stay up to date with the digital tools being used within the University, and the range of tools can often appear overwhelming. For any given teaching situation, knowing which tool will provide the best solution for you and your students is a challenge. For support staff, understanding the purpose behind a given technology is key in aiding learning and teaching. Explore can help you choose the right tool for the job; if you need training on the tool, Explore points to development opportunities.

Pedagogy and technology go hand-in-hand and when a mutual understanding is achieved great things happen.

Learning types

Explore uses Diana Laurilliard’s 6 learning types and Assessment to categorise the various tools and technologies supported by UoP. Most tools can support activities within any learning type. What determines the choice of tool is pedagogic purpose in each context. Explore is a framework to guide decision making and help innovation within learning and teaching.

Acquisition – Learning through acquisition is what learners do when they listen to a lecture or podcast, read from books or websites, and watch demos or videos.
Collaboration – Learning through collaboration embraces mainly discussion, practice, and production. Learners take part in the process of knowledge building itself through participation.
Discussion – Learning through discussion requires learners to articulate their ideas and questions, and to challenge and respond to the ideas and questions from teachers, and/or from peers.
Investigation – Learning through investigation guides learners to explore, compare and critique the texts, documents and resources that reflect the concepts and ideas being taught.
Practice – Learning through practice enables learners to adapt their actions to the task goal, and use the feedback to improve their next action. Feedback may come from self-reflection, from peers, from teachers, or from the activity itself.
Production – Learning through production involves motivating learners to consolidate what they have learned by articulating their current conceptual understanding in the form of an artefact, product, display or another deliverable.
Assessment – Learning through assessment is the way the teacher can gauge the knowledge of the learners, formatively or summatively, and give feedback designed to improve the learners’ performance.

Under each learning type on Explore, we have included some examples of digital tools that are currently in use at UoP and that could be used to achieve certain learning outcomes. For instance, if you are thinking about acquisition-type activities in your teaching you could use Panopto to create videos for your students. By clicking on each tool in Explore, you will find information about the tool itself; how to access it; key features; top tips by current users; useful links to guidance and training; media such as videos; quotes about the tool from UoP and other staff; and examples of other learning types in which the tool could be used.

Feedback

We asked a range of academics and Online Course Developers to ‘test drive’ Explore within their roles. The feedback we received has helped us to further develop the resource.

To conclude

We hope both academic and academic support staff will find Explore beneficial in shaping their decisions regarding learning and teaching over the coming months. If you have any feedback then please contact us at: ale.armellini@port.ac.uk tom.langston@port.ac.uk or marie.kendall-waters@port.ac.uk

If you are using any of the tools from Explore in an innovative way, and would be willing to share your experience, then please let us know – we can include this as we continue to develop the resource.

Explore can be accessed directly via explore.port.ac.uk or within the Learning and Teaching Innovation site.

Thank you to everyone who has provided content and feedback – we hope you enjoy using Explore!

Are you ready to work from home? – Tips from TEL

March 23, 2020 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 1 Comment

As the UK prepares to work from home this week, many people might be feeling a little anxious and overwhelmed by the sudden thought of working remotely. Although working from home is a common practice for most of us within the TEL team, we are aware that this isn’t the case for everyone. Working remotely can provide benefits but it can also pose challenges. The TEL team have been working hard to develop an eLearning Tools Site which features useful resources and information on working from home, particularly teaching remotely for staff at the University of Portsmouth. Throughout the weeks we will be reflecting on the benefits and challenges that we experience through working from home, the tools we have used, and how those tools may have helped or hindered us!

Here are some tips for the week ahead. I hope you find them useful for working from home.

Create a dedicated work space

Some of us are fortunate enough to have a spare room that we can easily transform into quiet office space. For those of us who don’t (myself included!) it’s important to find an area that can be used for working. For me, it’s the dining room table, where I have my desktop set up and space for books, notepads etc.

Use to-do lists

It’s useful to have to-do lists – things you want to get done every day. This keeps you focused and on track. However, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get everything completed: tomorrow is another day and some days can be more productive than others. I always have a list of to-dos on the go, whether it’s on my phone, on a note pad or on post-it notes. This way I feel a sense of achievement when I can tick off the items.

Learn to deal with distractions

It’s easy to get distracted at home and, for some of us during the covid-19 outbreak, it will be even harder while our families are at home too. Allow yourself to surf the internet for 5 minutes – it might provide some inspiration and fuel you to return to your work – but don’t binge-watch box sets on Netflix!

Take regular breaks!

Make sure to take regular breaks from the screen: sit in the garden for 5 minutes and get some fresh air, or go and make a cup of tea. If you can, go for a little walk: it’s so important to move and exercise – you’ll feel so much better for doing so!

Don’t lose touch with your work colleagues

As a ‘veteran’ of working from home, Slack has been brilliant in connecting me with my work colleagues. You can set up channels for different discussion topics and receive notifications as a when people post. There are other apps you can use, such as Zoom and House Party (which is great to use with friends and family whilst social distancing). Working from home can often feel isolating so staying in touch is essential for your wellbeing.

Make sure to drink and eat

It’s so important to look after yourself and ensure you make time to stop for lunch and drink enough water. This is something that I need to personally work on in the coming weeks, as I often skip lunch, snack and don’t drink enough water! It can be difficult to consciously stop when you are engrossed with work.

Make working comfortable

Do what you can to make your workspace at home as comfortable and functional as possible. Working an eight-hour day in a bad chair is uncomfortable for your body and your mind!

Deal with being disconnected

All technologies can be glitchy at times. Remember: if you do lose your connections, maybe in a video conference, don’t worry – everyone is in the same boat and we’ll muddle through together!

Don’t be too hard on yourself

We’ve all found ourselves in a new situation, even for those that regularly work from home. It’s going to be challenging for all of us in lots of different ways, so it’s important to not be too hard on ourselves. We may find some days are more productive than others. We all need to adapt to a new routine, a new way of working and living.

and finally . . .

Good luck to everyone – remember there is s upp ort within your facult ies and departments so make sure to use them.

Please continue to follow us on Tel Tales, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram where we will be sharing more tips and information. If you would like to share your experiences of working remotely on Tel Tales then please get in touch with me at marie.kendall-waters@port.ac.uk

Credit image: Photo by Agnieszka Boeske on Unsplash

Some comments on “The future of assessment”

February 17, 2020 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

The Curriculum Framework Specification document, which provides detailed precepts and guidance for the design, development and review of all new courses at the University, contains UoP’s policy on assessment. The policy’s authors made a conscious choice to call it an Assessment For Learning Policy: the policy advocates assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. As the policy states, assessment for learning enables a culture in which:

students receive feedback from academics and peers that helps them to improve their work prior to final/summative assessments;
students understand what successful work looks like for each task they are doing;
students become more independent in their learning, taking part in peer and self-assessment;
formative assessment is, where possible, aligned to the module summative assessment, in order to facilitate cyclical feedback opportunities which will clarify expectations and standards for the summative assignment (e.g. the student’s exam or portfolio submission).

As the University considers how to implement its new five-year strategy, however, and how to meet its ambitious vision for 2030, might we need to rethink assessment? Not rethink the approach of assessing for learning, but look again at some of the details of how we assess?

The changing nature of assessment over the coming five-year period happens to be the subject of a recent publication from JISC: The Future of Assessment: Five Principles, Five Targets for 2025. This report, the output of a day-long meeting held in 2019, identifies five key aspects of assessment and the role that technology can play. The report argues that assessment should be (in alphabetical order, not order of importance):

Accessible – taking an inclusive approach to assessment is the ethical thing to do, of course, but we now have a legal requirement to meet certain accessibility standards. Digital technology can certainly help with accessibility. Contact DCQE if you would like further advice in this area.
Appropriately automated – it hardly needs to be said that marking and feedback, although crucial elements of the assessment process, is time consuming. Technology can help here, too. Technology can be used to automate the process and, if the assessment has been properly designed, students get the benefit of immediate feedback. Technology might also be used to improve the quality of feedback: in this regard TEL is currently exploring the Edword platform.
Authentic – this is, I believe, a key area for the University to develop. How does it benefit students to make them sit down for three hours and hand write an essay under exam conditions? This doesn’t prepare them for the world beyond university. Surely it’s better to assess students’ ability to work in teams; display their knowledge in a realistic setting; use the digital skills they will undoubtedly need in the workplace?
Continuous – in order to be successful in their chosen careers, our students will need to keep up with changes wrought by technology. So perhaps the most important skill we can teach our students is how to be independent, self-directed learners. An over-reliance on high-stakes, summative exams does not help. Of particular interest to me, in the JISC report, was the mention of using AI to personalise learning and assessment: the technology is not there yet, but it might come in the next few years.
Secure – if we are going to assess a student then we need to know we are assessing the right student! For a long time the focus in HE has been on detecting and deterring plagiarism. Nowadays, though, we also face the threat of essay mills and contract cheating. Once again technology can play a role: data forensics, stylistic analysis tools and online proctoring platforms can help tackle the problem. Such tools are best used, however, in a culture that promotes academic integrity: we should use technology to help promote a sense of academic community rather than to “catch the bad guys”.

The five principles identified by the JISC working group seem to me to be realistic and practical. They are also, if I’m being honest, slightly unambitious. I think mixed-reality technology, for example, opens up many opportunities to develop assessment for learning. But perhaps that is more for a 2030 vision than a 2025 strategy.

Credit Image: Needpix.com

A man with virtual reality goggles on looking at his hands

A VLE without a screen?

November 9, 2018 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

Staff use Moodle to upload learning resources, post and mark assignments, and set quizzes. Students use Moodle to access learning resources, submit assignments and take quizzes. And, of course, there are other activities that take place on Moodle – discussions, forums, wikis, and so on. It goes without saying that all of these activities involve a screen of some sort, whether a computer screen, tablet screen or phone screen. Can we imagine a VLE without a screen?

That question had never crossed my mind, but then I saw a recent edtech challenge from JISC. They are looking for ideas that can help them address the next big edtech challenges in education and research, and one of their key themes is: what might the future VLE look like? In particular, right now, they are asking: what a VLE might look like if the interface were something other than a screen?

If you have sensible answer to that question – from the perspective of either a teacher or a student – then you might want to submit your idea to the JISC challenge. Describe your idea in 1000 words or less, along with a design overview (in appropriate media) and a vision for how your idea would benefit users, and you stand to win £1000 (for best idea), £250 (for one of two runner-up ideas), or being showcased at Digifest 2019 (the top ten ideas).

Further information can be found on the JISC edtech challenge page. Closing date is 3 January 2019 – so get thinking!

Feature image title: Man trying on VR Headset by Maurizio Pesce is licensed under CC-BY 2.0 on Flickr

Category: Innovation

RIDE 2023 – Sustaining Innovation: Research and Practice