Using the VLE as a Trojan Horse

The Calman Learning Centre

Last week I travelled to Durham for the 2012 Blackboard Users' Conference. Coming immediately at the end of the Christmas/New Year break, it was a shock to the system, and a rude kick start to my brain. But I survived, and came away with my head buzzing. Now, if I can just get time to implement some of those ideas...

The two keynotes, in particular, got me thinking about training and support for our academic staff in their use of technologies for teaching and learning.  The learning technology team at CELT aims to provide pedagogical support for staff in their use of technology, although often we end up dealing with queries about user accounts and basic support for our VLE, Blackboard. Our mantra is that we want to encourage each member of staff, from their current technology use, to do something a little more. We always keep in mind that the teaching/learning is key, and we're just using the technology to (better) support it.

With this in mind, Gráinne Conole's (@gconole) metaphor of the VLE as theTrojan Horse makes perfect sense to me. Since we went mainstream with Blackboard almost 5 years ago, the uptake by staff members has been very positive. Encouraged by automatic enrolment of students in the correct courses, the possibility of easy communication (announcements, email) and demand from students themselves,  academics at NUI Galway have embraced the VLE, albeit (in some cases) with reluctance and/or trepidation.

We have a significant number of early-adopters, champions and people willing to experiment, and these people really keep us on our toes. But we also have a large group of staff who just use Blackboard as a repository, making minimal use of its functionality. Our challenge now is to use this as a basis to encourage them along and to try something new. Gráinne described the VLE as the "nursery slope" for academics: a safe and supported environment where they can learn the basics of technology for learning. But, how to do this when the average academic is already overworked and doesn't have time to even turn up for basic training?

The other image that I liked in Gráinne's keynote was the notion of the VLE+. It's no longer a case of the PLE vs VLE: we can extend our VLE with a myriad of extra functionality to support teaching and learning activities. This afternoon I met with our learning technologies team, to plan our activities for the next few months, and we discussed all of our Blackboard connectors which make up our VLE+. At the moment, the list includes: Campus Pack (Learning Objects); Turnitin; Echo360; QuestionMark; Kaltura. This all provides a seamless environment for staff and students - to the extent that all our support tickets say "Problem with Blackboard", when it's probably not a Blackboard issue at all.

Is this a bad thing? As raised by Nick Pearce (@drnickpearce) in his presentation Beyond Good and Evil, is "closed" necessarily evil?

Ray Land (now Professor of Higher Education at Durham University and Director of Durham’s Centre for Learning Teaching and Research in Higher Education), in his keynote addressed exactly this point. Higher Education is historically closed - with teaching taking place behind closed doors. The newer, digital world, challenges this; it challenges the authority of the academic and breaks down barriers. While there are some that embrace the digital world, for many academics, this represents "troublesome knowledge", and requires a change of culture. The digital world is constantly changing and evolving. For learning technologies, this means a new tool every day (at least) that could be used in teaching and learning. It's difficult, even for those of us who work in the area, to keep track of developments. The VLE is a way to contain that volatility, and slow things down.

Footbridge, Durham

In the same way that teachers will always have a role in leading students through a new landscape (while not necessarily being the source of all knowledge), our learning technologies team will have a role to play in leading academics through the fast paced, digital world, using the VLE+ as the safe and supported environment.

Up next, when I get a chance, some thoughts on the panel session around threshold, minimum standards for VLE courses.

Welcome to the class of 2011

This afternoon I am meeting the new group of students on the Learning Technologies module, part of the PG Diploma in Academic Practice.

It looks like we have a great group of people and I look forward to working with them over the next couple of months, as they explore the use of technology in their teaching.

E-Assessment Scotland 2011 - my prezi

I was really pleased to be invited to give a presentation at the annual E-Assessment Scotland conference in Dundee last week. The conference itself is a free event, and attracted around 300 delegates, mostly from the UK. I'll write a blog post soon (when Blackboard is fixed) about the conference.

In the meantime, here's my presentation, which I prepared using Prezi. It was my first Prezi, and I learned a lot in putting it together - but that's another blog post.

Supporting Students' Writing Skills using Turnitin on Prezi

Tweet

Blackboard 9.1 is coming

The upgrade of our Blackboard system to release 9.1 is progressing according to schedule. In the last few weeks, we’re received many enquiries about when the new system will be available and what changes staff can expect.

When will I have access to my courses?
It is intended that the new Blackboard system will be available for use during the week of 22nd August.

There will be a new URL to access the upgraded system, but otherwise you will log on using your username and password as before.

You will have access to all your courses for the academic year 2011-12. So, if you are an instructor on a Blackboard course currently, or if you requested access to a course within the last few weeks, you will have access to that new course on the new system.

In keeping with existing policy, the new courses will be created as empty shells, ready for you to develop as you wish.

What about the teaching materials in my current course? How can I get it into my new course?
To facilitate the re-use of teaching materials, the new Blackboard system will also have courses for the academic year 2010-11, to which you will have access. These are not full courses, and will not include student enrolments, so cannot be used for teaching purposes. However, much of your content from the current Blackboard system is being migrated into this area, so that you can import it, or copy components of it, into your new Blackboard course for 2011-12.


Can I still access the old site?
The old Blackboard site will continue to be available until October 2011. This is to facilitate any courses that are active over the summer period, and to facilitate access to 2010-2011 materials and student work.

What benefits are there to the upgrade?
There are many benefits that you will experience with the new Blackboard, many of which will become clear as you use the system. Just some immediate advantages are:

Improved Interface

• There is a new drag-and-drop interface making it easier to navigate the system and complete tasks with less clicks.
• The OK confirmation button (which displayed when creating content in Blackboard 8) has been removed.
• The course control panel is located on the main page of the course for easier editing.
• A new “edit mode” makes editing your course easier and gives you a (95%) student view of your course.

Course Statistics

• The course statistics function will be fully operational.

Improved Group features

• The new group features allow instructors to create any number of groups at once.
• Students can be randomly assigned to groups, manually assigned to groups, or asked to sign-up for groups themselves.

User Information Sessions: What’s New in Blackboard 9.1?
In preparation for the new release, CELT is facilitating User Information Sessions. During the session we’ll go through the main changes in BB 9.1 (working on the test server) and we’ll provide you with your own sandpit Blackboard test module which you’ll be able to access during and beyond the drop-in session.

A list of upcoming CELT events, including these Information Sessions, can be found on our CELT events site.

CELT will announce a full programme of training sessions. These will be a combination of short “What’s new in 9.1” for experienced Blackboard users as well as a new version of our popular “Introduction to Blackboard” workshops for new users.

We will also arrange a number of drop-in sessions to coincide with the start of teaching, for hands-on support and advice.

We are currently working on some on-line resources and will update our own Blackboard Support site in time for the new system.

Ken Robinson keynote at BbWorld 2011

In CELT, we are busy preparing for the introduction of Blackboard 9.1 in NUI Galway. More information about the new system will become available over the next couple of weeks and you can expect a full schedule of information sessions and training opportunities.

In the meantime, here is a recording of a keynote given by Sir Ken Robinson at Blackboard World 2011 two weeks ago.



Tweet

The #nairtl11 backchannel

Last week we hosted the joint Galway Symposium/NAIRTL conference at NUIG, with the title Engaging Minds: Active learning, participation and collaboration in Higher education. Iain has already blogged about the event and the recordings of the keynotes will be available in the near future.

As part of the local organisation, and having participated in a number of very active conference backchannels in the last year (for example #pelc11), we wanted to ensure an active twitter experience. This was particularly important because one of our keynotes, Derek Bruff from Vanderbilt University, has already written about Encouraging a Conference Backchannel on Twitter.

The strategy we used was based on Derek’s guide. Here’s what we did:

Hashtag: obviously, nothing can happen without a hashtag. It has to be short and easily remembered. With a joint conference, this can be tricky! So, I just proposed using #nairtl11, which was accepted, and it worked a treat! We started using this a couple of weeks before the conference, to build up awareness. We also made sure it was included on the conference programme, so nobody could be in doubt.

Twitter Team: About a week before the conference, I assembled my twitter team. This included a number of people who I know are active on twitter and have participated in backchannels before. Their role was to “keep the backchannel going” and to encourage others to join in. Recruits were @catherinecronin, @marloft, @kellycoate, @thecosmicfrog. We also let @iainmacl join in, though it took him a few attempts to get the hashtag right! A couple of days before the event, I pointed them to Derek’s Instructions to the Twitter Team

Twitter Display: During down time at the conference, before keynotes and at breaks, we displayed the twitter stream in the main venue and in the breakout rooms. We used Visible Tweets, and the rotation animation style, which I’d seen used at #pecl11 to great effect. This display had a number of positive effects:

• It alerted participants to the existence of the backchannel and encouraged them to take part;
• It illustrated the participation of people who were not at the conference at all, but were engaging with our reports;
• It ensured that those tweeting were being polite, knowing that what they said could be projected in big letters on screen.

The backchannel conversation was very effective, with over 800 tweets generated, mostly over the two days of the conference. As well as tweeting what was happening and key points being made, there was a rich conversation going on as well. We got a good following from outside the conference location, including colleagues in DIT who couldn’t attend because of exam board meetings (@muireannok, @m_crehan) as well as contributions from tweeters outside Ireland, including the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand.

I used the Archivist to analyse the #nairtl11 tweets. It gives some pretty graphs to show, for example, tweet volume over time and top tweeters.

Tweet

Echo360 Community Conference Europe

The Echo360 Community Conference Europe event, entitled Education Unconfined, took place last Wednesday at the London School of Economics. I went along, with Labhaoise Ni Dhonnchadha, to find out about the new release (version 4.0) and to network with other users.

We have been piloting Echo360 for lecture capture at NUI Galway for the last couple of years, with 5 installations in lecture theatres and seminar rooms.

We were very impressed with the venue, the New Academic Building (NAB) at the LSE. It is bright and airy, with lots of space. The view from the 8th floor was stunning.

The event itself was successful, with lots of exciting new features in version 4.0. We especially like the contextual collaboration for students, along with usage trend reports for instructors. The delegated admin capability is also very important for us, as we contemplate scaling up.

There was an excellent session from Jeremy Speller and Andrea Sella from University College London, where there are 20 lecture theatres equipped with Echo360. I liked Andrea's image of lecture capture as a time machine - offering the possibility for students to go back and revisit those parts of a lecture that were unclear. He made it particularly clear that students do not see recordings as a replacement for a lecture. His talk finished up with some interesting questions on how/where lecture capture can make an impact: performance, attendance or experience? And how can we measure this effect?

Inspired by Doug Belshaw and his use of Storify to document conference attendance, I've put together a small story myself, using my tweets from the conference and a couple of photos I took.

EdTech2011 Early Bird Registration iPod Touch Draw on Monday 23 May

This year's EdTech conference Innovation, Technologies and Practice: Show me the Learning! is being held from 1-2 June 2011 Waterford Institute of Technology.

As usual, there is a wonderful representation from NUIG covering the following innovative areas:

• Bonnie Long 'Implemention of Digital Storytelling with Pre-Service Teachers - Challenges and Lessons Learned'
  
  
• Anne Egan 'Podcasting as a Novice an a Legal Environment'
  
  
• Catherine Cronin 'Re-thinking the Lecture - Audio Podcasts and Telling Stories'
  
  
• Paul Gormley and Anne Walsh 'The Quick Win Meets the Trojan Horse: Formative 2.0 Assessments and the Adult Blended Learners Experience'
  
  
• A number of CELT staff are also involved in the EdTech Organising Committee, which gives us an inspiring overview of the learning technolgy landscape in Ireland.

For those presenters or potential delegates, registration is now open. For a chance to win an iPod touch please register before lunchtime on Monday 23rd May


You can register for the conference and you preferred free workshops via the EdTech2011 online registration system.

The draw will take place on Monday afternoon!

Best of luck!

Blackboard Student Survey 2011

Photo: Sharon and Lindsay at the iPod Touch prizegiving

Over 2,500 NUI Galway students completed the annual Blackboard Student Survey in April of this year. We hope to publish the findings shortly, but are very heartened that so many of students took the time to share their thoughts and suggestions about their experiences of using Blackboard as a student, at NUI Galway.

Congrats also to Lindsay (pictured above), the lucky winner of the draw for an iPod Touch!

Call for NDLR LInCS (Learning Innovation Community Support) Project Funding 2011

The call for applications to fund projects supporting the development of learning resources /materials for the NDLR Users is open. All material pertaining to the call is available from http://www.ndlr.ie/view/view.php?id=171

The deadline for applications is Friday 20th May 2011

We are issuing funds from 17th June to:
(a) Support projects that will create learning resources and
(b) Generate use and activity around these learning resources and the repository and portal.

The outputs of these projects will be showcased at the next NDLR FEST event in March 2012

Bids should focus on short, practical projects with clear identifiable outputs (i.e. resources and examples of use and reuse). The outputs of these projects should aim to actively progress and support the realisation of the new and dynamic streamlined SMART CoP model ( new CoPs and/or mergers between existing CoPs) over the next ten months.

Reviewers Rubrics and a screencast with details for completing these forms will be available on the NDLR portal ( http://www.ndlr.ie/view/view.php?id=171) over the coming days. If you have any queries about the application form or the process for completion, please do not hesitate to contact the NDLR team at helpdesk@ndlr.ie

Infection, Prevention and Control

I would like to highlight a fantastic project, titled Infection Prevention and Control, which was led by Liz Kingston, Nursing and Midwifery, University of Limerick in collaboration with NUI Galway and HSE West.

The project was supported by the NDLR and is a really brilliant reusable learning resource.

NDLR - Liz Kingston from NDLR on Vimeo.

Open Source doesn't just equal Moodle

I'm sure by now most of you will have heard of the new LMS/VLE (call it what you prefer) that is both offered as a cloud-based service or in an Open Source release that aims to challenge Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai and Desire2Learn. It's called Canvas and I took it for a 'test drive' (to use the cliche much loved of technology magazines!) recently and I have to admit that there is something pleasing about the simple, plain design. It cheered me up a little since I'd been seriously disappointed in the over-hyped but really naff Moodle 2.o. Indeed, plenty of others have commented that they have a cheek using '2.0' for software that looks as if it was designed in the 1990s. Maybe I expected too much.

Not that we have any plans to move from our official Blackboard system, but we always have kept an eye on other systems and have run test implementations of Moodle and Sakai. Moodle is also used for courses that span multiple institutions or other work that doesn't meet with Blackboard licensing requirements (ie with external organisations).

Canvas is very new and it may well get a good real world testing in Utah (where the company is based) where it has been adopted as the state-wide LMS. It has as you might expect of a new entity very basic features (and certainly nowhere near the capabilities of Blackboard in terms of assessment for example, etc), but if it can grow via Open Source, things will no doubt improve, though it does need progammers with some penchant for Ruby (Google it if this makes no sense!).

Anyway, you too can have a free course set up on their website and see what you think.