Creating video for teaching

Using video in your teaching can be a great way to get a message across and to enhance student engagement. There are some great videos available on YouTube, iTunesU or TED Talks, for example, that can be used to illustrate a concept or give additional information.

In the last year, we've seen an increase in the number of academic staff who are creating their own videos for use in teaching. See, for example, the NUI Galway Microbiology channel on YouTube, Derek Molloy's (DCU) award-winning channel on Digital Electronics, or setting up the oscilloscope in a Physics lab.

Certainly, recording something on my mobile phone and uploading it to YouTube is surprisingly easy. But how easy is it to create something a little bit more professional and useful for teaching purposes?

With these questions in mind, I went along to Irene McCormick's presentation at the EdTech conference in Maynooth in May. Irene is from IT Carlow and she is responsible for this NDLR-funded video, illustrating why you might want to use a tripod when recording video.


At her presentation, Irene gave some compelling reasons why we might want to bother with video: that it supports innovative methods of teaching, learning and assessment; it's good for our own professional development; it can involve students, particularly where they are producing video; and it can be good fun!

She stressed some important points, the main one being Keep It Simple. Don't use gimmicks, stick to the storyline and aim for high levels of continuity.

Creating video involves three stages. The planning stage is the most important to get right - never go out with a camera and start filming. Consider equipment, your team, dates, locations, actors and whether there is any A/V support available. Write a script. Irene recommends using something like celtx, which I will have to investigate.

The second stage is production, where you actually get out with your video camera. Again, Irene recommends a simple approach: no need for zooming; work methodically; and use a tripod.

The final stage is post-production, where you edit your video. Again, this can be kept very simple; no complicated transitions. Irene recommends Final Cut Pro, but if you're just starting out, Windows MovieMaker does pretty much everything you need (and it's free).

If you're based at NUI Galway, you can use our Kaltura connector on Blackboard to upload your final masterpiece to Blackboard for your students' consumption. Otherwise, YouTube, BlipTV or Vimeo are all possibilities for hosting video in the cloud.

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International Turnitin User Group Meeting

The International Turnitin User Group meeting took place on Monday 16th July at the Sage in Gateshead, just before the start of the 5th International Plagiarism Conference. This was a great opportunity to meet with Turnitin representatives as well as other Turnitin users, to compare experiences and find out about the product roadmap.

After a welcome from Will Murray (VP International), Christian Storm (CTO) gave an update on recent developments and current research in the Turnitin suite.

It's clear that there has been a shift in focus from plagiarism detection towards supporting assessment and feedback, with a view to improving student outcomes. Turnitin aims to be the complete solution for improving student writing and the best-in-class solution for grading. It seems that the company has really been listening to its customers, and my impression is that future directions are very positive and exciting.

Recent developments include voice based grading (which I haven't played with yet), fewer noisy matches and false positives, translated plagiarism (e.g. via google translate) and support for left to right languages (e.g. Arabic). Current research is looking at more advanced phrase exlusion, so that particular phrases (perhaps specific to the discipline, or "boilerplate" text) can be excluded from reports by assignment, or forever. Turnitin is also working on stylometrics, which can identify changes in writing style, to help address the problem of ghost writing.

On the integration side, Turnitin has been working on new APIs, meaning new integrations for Moodle and Blackboard. Different roles and views are also being considered, to facilitate double marking or read-only access. It was stressed that each institution has different workflows, which are a challenge to defining roles.

During the Q&A session there was lively discussion involving plans for globalisation of the product and adding more languages (must get Irish on the list); legal defensibility of decisions arising from originality reports; support for more varied filetypes and assessment types; PeerMark lite, allowing peer review earlier in the workflow; communication with customers about new product features (still not ideal); customer involvement in beta testing; improved workflow for anonymous marking; and bulk download of originality reports for archival purposes. And all this before coffee!

Somebody raised a question about a dashboard for policy makers - which might allow access to orginiality reports to support benchmarking for individual teachers, departments or even institutions. There was a collective intake of breath at this point. Turnitin executives hastened to reassure that this was not a likely development, and that it would require a huge a amount of data. However, there has been a focus on improved analytics, for students, staff and administrators.

The Product Roadmap
After the coffee break, Steve Golik (VP Product Management) gave us some updates on the product roadmap, repeating the vision of the company To be the world's more innovative and effective technology for improving students' written work.

One welcome development is the GradeMark interactive tutorial, which allows instructors to practice and get used to the functionality of GradeMark without worrying about live student work.

The new Instructor Dashboard is currently being rolled out, providing a more modern entry point and easier navigation. Unfortunately this is not yet available via integrations, but the interface looks clean and user-friendly.

On the horizon are common core rubrics, which will make the sharing of rubrics easier. Also, digital receipts will be accessible within the system, by both instructors and students, improving traceability. There will be more flexible grading and marking, including support for letter grades and decimal points.

Grading on an iPad
In the last 6 months I've been working with a number of academic staff to use of GradeMark to support electronic assessment and feedback for students. One barrier to this has been that the full functionality of GradeMark doesn't work on an iPad.

Perhaps the most exciting development is the new GradeMark iPad app, due for release in January 2013. Steve gave a demo of the current version, which looks very promising. This will be an instructor focussed, grading application, giving full support for grading, voice comments, text comments, access to rubrics, on-paper marking and with originality as a layer. An instructor can grade offline; the app will synch back to the web when the iPad has a suitable connection.

I tried to get a photo of the demo as it was happening, but the screen was just too bright for my camera to focus.

More on What's New with Turnitin is available online and by following @TurnitinProduct on twitter.

That, more or less, brought the User Group meeting to a close, in time for the start of the International Plagiarism Conference, but it was not the end of discussions about Turnitin. I'll blog about the conference in the next couple of days.

Cath Ellis has already written a number of blog posts on the event:

• iParadigms Focus Group
• 5th International Plagiarism Conference: Day 1 Keynotes
• 5th International Plagiarism Conference: Day 1 Sessions and Workshops
• 5th International Plagiarism Conference: Day 2 Keynotes

(I'm beginning to suspect she is WonderWoman)


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International Plagiarism Conference

This afternoon I am UK-bound again, this time to Newcastle, for the 5th International Plagiarism Conference. Having been to two previous events, I'm looking forward to catching up with some old friends and meeting some new ones. I will miss Jo Badge @jobadge, who has moved on to new challenges.

Although not strictly learning technologies, I will post my thoughts on the conference, and will certainly be tweeting from the event - the hashtag is #5ipc. Day 1, Monday, incorporates the Turnitin User Group meeting, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the roadmap for this product.

So, do follow me on twitter for updates. And if you are going to be at the conference, let me know so that we can meet up.

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Centre for Learning Innovation

Yesterday I attended the inaugural event of the Centre for Learning Innovation, a new organisation funded by Enterprise Ireland and the IDA, to bring together industry and research in the area of technologies for learning. The event was held at Croke Park, where the pitch was busy being prepared for the farewell Westlife concerts tonight and tomorrow. (That's not an omen - I hope.) The theme of the event was Learning for Growth, and the purpose was to launch the Centre for Learning Innovation, an organisation which has been in gestation for some years, and which only arrived at its name the previous evening. Yesterday it was announced that the government is to invest €6m in the Centre over the next 6 years.

The first keynote speaker, Donald Taylor (@DonaldHTaylor), chair of the Learning and Performance Institute, spoke about the many changes in Learning Technology in the last 13 years. He identified 3 major changes in that time, leading to new opportunities for the Centre:

1. Learning occurs in a boarderless world, but it's not just the classroom walls that have been broken down. The ubiquity of the internet means that information is available anywhere. Mobile technologies mean that we can access the internet from wherever we happen to be. Moreover, the boarders between work and social life are also breaking down, leading to a blur between formal and informal learning.
2. Information is free. There is no point writing/developing new courses that already exist and are freely available. Business models have got to change, because it will no longer be possible to sell content.
3. The expectations of learners have changed. People want immediate, focussed, social learning. Donald particularly noted the increase of video in "how-to" learning. Learner-generated content brings the notion of authority into question.

From my own experience, and within the context of Higher Education, I don't agree with everything that Donald said: I think it applies more to the context of training in industry.

Donald then looked at how the world is responding to these changes. In Learning and Development, the training model is moving from design, develop and deliver, to one of find, facilitate and filter. He gave some examples of innovative use of technology for training in industry (including Ericsson, Eskom and TTi) and mentioned briefly the Open Courseware movement.

The second speaker of the morning was Jonny Parkes, who is chair of the board for the new Centre for Learning Innovation, representing industry.  Jonny started out by differentiating between "best practice", which is what may be going on today, and "next practice", which means trying to see into the future. He spoked about 3 principles upon which the new Centre will be based.

1. Learn from the past. Jonny gave a very nice overview of learning technology since the 1980s, starting with CBT (interact), through multimedia in the 1990s (engage) and eLearning in the 2000s (connect). None of these were perfect solutions, but we can learn from each of them. What then is the next practice?
2. Be brave, but be open to change. The themes of the Centre will be social learning (search, interoperability, personalised); mobile learning (intelligent content delivery, location based, hands-on learning); immersive learning (agents, games & virtual worlds, augmented reality); metrics and assessments (is it working? are we improving learning?).
3. The need for smart people, including academic partnerships and industry-led collaboration. (Apparently the smart people are all in the heart of Dublin, but I'll let that go)

After the coffee break, Vinny Wade (TCD) gave more detail about the mission of the Centre for Learning Innovation, which will be based at Trinity College Dublin: it is to support breakthrough research for learning innovation, through collaboration with industry. It will not be another learning technology centre, but aims to be a hub for industry and research, with a focus on application and transfer to achieve real results. Vinny identified 5 factors crucial for success

1. Research excellence, achieved through partnerships with research groups in TCD, UCD, NUIG and WIT.
2. A deep understanding of learning and the learning sector.
3. Proven transfer success
4. Industry direction and partnerships
5. Need to lower the risk in technology adoption

Vinny spoke about ensuring that key challenges are defined by industry, while there is a need for use cases and authentic evaluations. The Centre will welcome further industry partners to participate with membership, collaboration and trials.

To date, the percolate project, a precursor of the Centre, has been working in the area of social discovery for learning. The final speakers of the day, Paul Mac Cartney and Lynda Donovan gave a good overview of the work so far in three areas: corporate, schools and higher education.

Focus on Technology
I'm still trying to get together my thoughts on yesterday's event. I can see a role for the Centre for Learning Innovation as a hub to bring together industry and research in technologies for learning. But I do think that the expertise in Teaching and Learning is missing. The "academic" partners of this initiative are research centres and, just because they are based within a higher education institution, doesn't mean that they have expertise in pedagogy or pedagogic research.

The canvas for online learning is certainly changing and moving fast. I found it strange that none of the presenters mentioned any of the recent developments in MOOCs; see this quick snapshot of advances in online education by Catherine Cronin.

Much of the talk yesterday focussed on technology, and there seemed to be a basic view that learning is a matter of finding the best content. But learning is much more than content, and teaching is more than delivery.

There was very little talk yesterday of the learner and no consideration of how people (children, students, employees) learn. This was particularly evident in the final presentation on the homework help system for children. From the evaluation of the system, it appears that it was of more use to "fast" learners than to "struggling" learners. It was suggested that this might be because children of high ability are more proficient at searching. For me, this immediately raises issues of digital literacies, of which there was no mention during the presentation.

So, I think it's worthwhile keeping a watch on this Centre for Learning Innovation. It will be interesting to see how it develops. But I am concerned to see such a focus on the technology and so little on the pedagogy.

All of yesterday's sessions were recorded and will be available on the Centre's website. For the moment, that website is www.percolate.ie.

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Learning about Digital Literacies at EdTech 2012

The last couple of weeks have been busy, between the EdTech 2012 conference organised by ILTA, our own CELT conference, and then a presentation to the WRSLAI event last week. I haven't had time to think!

So, before my memories fade completely, I'll write a couple of blog posts about all these events. I'm starting with the keynote speakers at EdTech 2012, compiled from my notes and tweets, using storify.




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Top Tweeters at #celt12

Using Martin Hawksey's twitter archiving google spreadsheet, we can now reveal the top tweeters at the 10th Galway Symposium: The Written Word - writing, publishing and communication in higher education.

The conversation is still continuing, using the #celt12 hashtag . So far, we have archived more than 1000 tweets from the event.


To see a visual representation of the archive, you can visit the Interactive Archive of #celt12 tweets (static image below). Click on any name to get a list of that person's tweets and interactions.

A full archive of tweets, though it's not particularly pretty, is also available.

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#celt12 Instructions to the Twitter Team

This is based on the original post by @derekbruff who has kindly given his permission to re-blog for #celt12.

Hello #celt12 twitter team (you know who you are) and thank you for agreeing to take part. We're looking forward to an active twitter stream at #celt12 this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt12 twitter team? Glad you asked....

1. Take a few moments at several points in each day (during keynotes, during sessions, whenever) to share highlights of the conference.  What are you learning?  What useful resources are you hearing about?  (Include links when you can!)  What questions or answers are occurring to you as you  participate in the conference?
2. Don't forget to use the hashtag! It's #celt12.
3. You’re encouraged to tweet some photos of the conference if you have that ability. Having some photos in the Twitter steam makes the conference experience more concrete for folks not there.
4. Feel free to be critical when appropriate, but please always be civil.  If one of the keynotes, for instance, turns out to be a big dud, let’s not have any harshtagging or tweckling.  (See http://chronicle.com/article/Conference-Humiliation-/49185/.)
5. Engage with other #celt12 Twitter participants: respond to question and add value when you can.
6. Finally, if a conference participant new to Twitter starts asking you about Twitter, be ready to share your experiences. The conference is all about written communication in Higher Education, so demonstrate how Twitter can be a part of it.

#celt12 is the official hashtag of the 10th Galway Symposium, entitled The Written Word: Writing, Publishing and Communication in Higher Education.

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New Blackboard support site

Today we are very pleased to announce the launch of our new Blackboard help website. This site brings together useful documentation and resources on using Blackboard at NUI Galway. It can be found at the following location: www.nuigalway.ie/blackboard

Based on user feedback about our existing support site and on support calls and requests since the upgrade to Blackboard 9.1 last Summer, we have completely redesigned the website and developed new materials to help you find the answers to your most asked questions. The resources are grouped into categories, to help you navigate quickly to the required resource, and an A-Z of help topics is also available. It is also possible to use the Quick Search facility to jump straight to a topic.

We hope you'll agree that the new site is tidier and easier to use. We will continue to develop resources for this area, based on common queries and requests. If you have any comments or suggestions for the new website, please get in contact.

As we launch our new site, we are also introducing a new Blackboard @ nuigalway blog, at http://blackboardnuigalway.wordpress.com/ to coincide. The learning technologies team in CELT intend to use this blog to post regular updates and announcements, as well as quick tips and tricks to support and improve your experience with Blackboard. Our intention is that the blog will be a dynamic space for the Blackboard community at NUI Galway and we hope that you'll bookmark and follow our updates. Comments are especially welcome.

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NDLR Fest 2012: Let's talk about the learning

Poster by Andrew Flaus, NUIG

Last Wednesday, a group of us from CELT took the early morning train from Galway to Dublin to attend the 2012 NDLR Fest at Croke Park. A number of our NUIG Learning Innovation Projects (LIPs) from last year were included in the poster showcase, and we welcomed the opportunity to participate in an event to highlight the valuable work being done by academics across Ireland in the area of open educational resources (OER).

What was good about the event?
It seems that we are finally reaching a critical mass in terms of creating a culture of sharing and collaboration. This is wonderful to see, though I suspect it still exists in pockets of good practice, rather than being widespread.  

We are building up experience and data in the OER movement in Ireland, so that our practice can be evidence based. It was suggested that Ireland is currently "punching above its weight". I am not sure about this, but I think we are holding our own.

The OER movement is now visible to those in government, though it may have come as a bit of a surprise. Sean Sherlock, in his opening address, said he found the OER movement "refreshing" while admitting that sharing of knowledge is the foundation of higher education, and open sharing is a logical step.

What about the learning?

Panel with Paul Gormley and Catherine Cronin of NUIG

I was concerned about the way language was being used at the NDLR Fest. People spoke about developing, delivering, packaging and pushing (resources, content, eLearning). There was very little discussion of teaching and learning, and little mention of students (with some notable exceptions). Isn't this just reinforcing the student as consumer model?

There was a lot of talk about quality of the learning resources developed and what role there is for peer review. I think we are in danger of reinforcing the academic as gatekeeper of knowledge (as promoted by Mr Sherlock) instead of recognising that students will go to wherever they find the most useful information. We need to be thinking more about how we can teach our students to be digitally literate, to be able to evaluate critically whatever information they come across and how to gather it into useful collections. See this recent presentation from Dr Nick Pearce on Students (and Staff) as Content Scavengers.

Natalie Lafferty wrote a lovely piece recently Why can't learning repositories be more like Slideshare? We need to make it easier for academics to contribute and share their resources, and easier to find and access useful resources for their own context. This relates to Brian Mulligan's observation about a "rate my resource" tool, and his question which was given so little consideration during the panel session.

Why are we still talking about eLearning? 
During the event, the word "eLearning" was used by many to mean a package of content. But content does not imply learning!

Should we drop the 'e'? Or can we debate about what it stands for? Steve Wheeler wrote a provocative piece on this issue last year: Dropping the 'e'.

For me, it's all just learning. Some of it is face to face, some of it is online, some of it is formal, some informal. We don't need to differentiate, it's just a continuum of blending.

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#pelc12 : All about connections

Last week I spent 3 days at the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference. Since I came back, I find myself reflecting on the experience. At the time, it was a whirlwind of enthusiasm, inspiration and tweets. Now that I'm back at the day job, back in reality, I'd like to write down some reflections and share them.

For me, PELeCON 2012 was all about making connections.

Travel Connections
For a start, there was the travelling. Last year, @catherinecronin and I travelled direct from Dublin to Plymouth, at a civilised time of the day. This year, unfortunately, travelling to Plymouth from Galway was a little more complicated. We had to fly to Bristol at the unfortunate hour of 6:40am from Dublin. This meant a stopover in one of the Dublin Airport Hotels, after a bus journey from Galway to Dublin. We met up with @crumphelen at Dublin airport, ready for the early morning flight. Once we arrived in Bristol, we got a bus to Bristol Mead train station, then a two hour journey by train to Plymouth and finally a taxi to the hotel. All about connections, see?

What was a short journey last year, turned into an expedition this year. But, it was all worth it. As Steve Wheeler put it...

 ... and at just £160 @pelecon must be one of the best value 3 day international learning technology events in Europe. #pelc12
— Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) April 24, 2012

People Connections
Then there were the people connections. It was a pleasure to meet up with twitter friends, some of whom I'd met before, and some who I was meeting for the first time. For myself, because I'm a bit shy, knowing people on twitter is a fantastic ice-breaker when you meet them in real life.

I was particularly pleased to be reunited with @crumphelen, @hopkinsdavid, @mattlingard, @drbexl and (of course) @boyledsweetie. Though we've only ever met a couple of times, they feel like old friends.

I was also pleased to meet many twitter pals for the first time, especially @suebecks, @romieh and @dcotton11 (who wasn't really at the conference at all).


Paper Connections
Another area where I was making connections was while listening to the fantastic talks, keynotes and parallel sessions. Because I was scheduled to speak in the final parallel sessions, I found myself making connections between the various themes and my own presentation. I identified where a speaker's message supported my own message, and also where there appeared to be conflict. I was determined to integrate all these into my own presentation, which meant that my head was buzzing and I got very little sleep on the second night.



For example, while I thoroughly enjoyed @simfin's call to action, I was very disturbed by his definition of a technophobe as a teacher who has given up. Simon's context is very different to my own, but this statement bothered me, particularly as I was classifying some of our academic staff as technophobes as part of my presentation. Well, the technophobes who take the #cel263 Learning Technologies module haven't given up; far from it, they have bravely opted to give technology a go, with a little support from us, and are thriving as a result.

Many staff report that lack of time is a barrier to integrating technology in their teaching. In his talk on Improving Digital Capability, @dajbelshaw suggested that time is not the issue; it's a matter of priorities. I agree! But I don't think it is the role of learning technologists to dictate priorities to academic staff. They are already getting the message, loud and clear, that they have to prioritise research. By the way, Doug Belshaw is keynoting at next month's EdTech conference in NUI Maynooth. It should be a great event.

Other connections on the issue of learning technologists supporting academic staff

• On the first day, Jason Truscott talked about the role of learning technologists to empower academics.
• Back to Doug Belshaw; he spoke about forward thinking institutions using (technology) projects to link to the strategic view, making the digital literacies movement sustainable. He also said that the best way to get somebody (an academic) started is to solve their problems. This is something we do every day!
• In her talk on Digital Identity, Privacy and Authenticity, Catherine Cronin said that not all lecturers feel they have the authority to make changes in their teaching. I think this links back to Jason's point; by empowering academics we can increase their confidence to allow them grasp that authority.
• Pat Parslow (@patparslow), in his session on Letters to Santa, spoke about communication barriers when technologists talk about technology. While he stressed that we shouldn't try to break down the silos that exist (particularly in academia), he said we need to find ways to link those silos. He also did a rather good rap!
• Bex Lewis (@drbexl) gave an impressive talk that incorporated Skype, prezi and video. She made some good points about embedding innovations across programmes.

Online Connections
Finally, there were the online connections in the firehose that was the twitter stream. I cannot imagine what this conference might be like for somebody who is not on twitter. It was constant, in the run up to the conference, during the event, and it's still going. I have a few thoughts and reflections on this as well, but I'll leave them for the next blog post. Coming soon.

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Assessing the impact of our CEL263 module

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Over the last three days I have been immersed in the very special conference that is PELeCON 2012. The theme this year was Create, Connect, Collaborate, and that is certainly what was achieved over the three days. The annual conference in Plymouth, organised by Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth, @stevewheeler), is well worth the long travel. It's also an event that can be enjoyed virtually, because the participants are so active on social media and, this year, all sessions were live-streamed.

More thoughts on the conference are to follow.

I presented yesterday (Friday) on our initial attempts to evaluated the longer-term impact of our Learning Technologies module (#cel263). While more in-depth analysis is needed, initial results from a survey of our alumni are very positive. In particular, we do seem to be affecting a change in culture, with the creation of technology champions within the disciplines.

Here's the prezi from yesterday. I already tweeted the link yesterday morning, and it's had more than 600 views in just 24 hours. Wow!

Assessing the Impact of a Learning Technologies Module for Academic Staff on Prezi

Please comment your response, either here, or on the PELeCON blog. As we heard so often during #pelc12, it's important to give back, in the form of comments. This was just one of my take-home messages.

EdTech Call for Papers: Deadline Extended to 7 April

Hi folks

Looking forward to seeing a range of NUI Galway-related submissions at EdTech2012: Digital Literacies for Life, NUI Maynooth from May 31st to June 1st.

The call for paper has been extended to 7 April. The EdTech organsisers are particularly keen to hear about interesting practitioner initiatives (and any lessons learned) that can be shared amongst the EdTech participants at the conference and online via http://ilta.net/

Submission guidelines and abstract links are available from here.

As an incentive, all accepted abstracts and papers will be included in a new ISBN eLearning journal being launched in October 2012.


Go for it!

Paul