The Case for Digital Textbooks

My son will be 14 next month. He starts his second year at secondary school on Friday. He'll do his first state examination, the Junior Certificate, in summer 2015.

Pictured is a selection of just some of the textbooks he is required to have. This is about 60% of the total set, not counting copybooks, homework journal etc. This lot alone weighs more than 10 kilos.

Luckily, his school runs a book loan scheme, so we've only had to pay a fraction of the total cost of these books. So, I'm not complaining about the cost.

My son gets quite a lot of homework. Each evening he has homework for between 6 and 8 of his subjects. That means he is carrying at least one textbook and one copybook per subject home in his bag. Some mornings last year I could not physically lift his schoolbag. He's a little bit taller than me, but fairly skinny. I watch him staggering down the road to the bus stop with a heavy weight on his back.

David Hopkins wrote last week about digital textbooks and how we are not yet at the point where digital textbooks can be embraced. But surely there must be a better way?

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Explore Technology: #GREAT13 student conference

Earlier this month I was very pleased to give a keynote at the #GREAT13 student conference. The event was organised by 2nd year students of the Michigan State University's (MSU) MA in Educational Technology. One cohort of this programme is the Overseas Summer Cohort, which came to NUI Galway this year. The programme is aimed at primary and secondary teachers from all over the world, who come together to learn and to share their experiences, creating an international community.

The conference organisation, planning and implementation as a requirement for a Technology and Leadership course. Over just two weeks, the students have to act as a team to identify and invite keynote speakers, create a conference schedule, design a website, consider social media and conference promotion to the local community. Apart from the keynote speakers, the sessions themselves are prepared and delivered by the students, so they also have to put a lot of work into preparation and presentation. On the day, they are responsible for registration, technical support, delivering their own workshops, recording activities, opening and closing sessions. Wow - that's a lot of work.

In the run-up to the event, some of the activity was captured using Storify.

On the day, Dr Tony Hall (pictured) gave the opening keynote, describing some grand challenges for education; in particular looking at storytelling and narrative in education.

During the first parallel session I sat in on two workshops led by Emily Mullins, Jillian McSweeney, and Bobbi Jo Staley. The first of these, on Student E-Portfolios, was a comprehensive overview of the area, with some important considerations of issues and approaches. The second workshop, on Digital Citizenship, was particularly impressive in terms of approaches to teaching school children to be good digital citizens. Both workshops were well-prepared and contained plenty of useful information and resources.

I have to admit to skipping the third parallel session while I got ready for my own keynote. I spoke about some of the initiatives at NUIG involving the use of video to support teaching and learning. I really enjoyed the experience of speaking to an enthusiastic, experienced and informed group.

The highlights of the day were captured, again using Storify, through tweets, photos and video. The whole 2nd year MAET group is to be congratulated for the success that was GREAT13.

Finally, I'd like to thank Jess, Desi and Laura for their invitation to be part of this event. I look forward to connecting with you all in the future as part of my PLN.


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Social Media at #celt13

Earlier this month we had our annual Galway Symposium on Higher Education, entitled "Thinking Differently" - New Curricula, New Skills in Higher Education.

Although the conference theme itself is not technology-focused, we did make use of technology to support and enhance the conference experience.

Twitter

Back in March, we agreed the twitter hashtag for the conference and I used Martin Hawksey's excellent Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet to start archiving all tweets using the hashtag.

About 2 weeks before the conference itself, I enlisted the help of a twitter team, targeting people that I knew would be at the conference and giving them advice on how to keep the backchannel going. This meant that we had an active twitter stream before, during and after the conference, with about 850 tweets currently in the archive.

The Archive Tool produces a complete archive and TagsExplorer, which lets you explore the connections between the people who are tweeting. 

From this we can see that Helen Crump (@crumphelen) wins the award for Top Conversationalist.

The award for Top Tweeter, however, goes to Iain Mac Labhrainn (@iainmacl)

Streaming and Recording of Keynotes 

During the conference, we had some excellent speakers, including: Prof. Marijk van der Wende, Amsterdam University College; Dr. Camille Kandiko, King's College London; Dr. Vicky Gunn, University of Glasgow; Dr. Alastair Robertson, Abertay University; and Prof. Derek Raine, University of Leicester. Their presentations were all streamed, the link being broadcast regularly on Twitter. Recordings of the keynotes are all available, via the Kaltura platform, on the conference website.

Conference Photos

Finally, I'd like to mention the excellent work done by Blaneth and Margaret on taking images from the conference and putting them into this very nice little animation using animoto:



All of these technologies facilitate us to archive the conference in different ways, allowing the conversations to continue. Hopefully this blogpost will further support the discussion.

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UL Learning and Teaching Day

I was very pleased to be asked to speak at the Faculty of Science and Engineering 4th annual Learning and Teaching Day, which took place at the University of Limerick last week. The focus of the event, organised by Hussain Mahdi and Michael English, was on Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning.

My own presentation, which had the title Trends in Technology Enhance Teaching and Learning, is embedded below. While developing it, I realised that 20 minutes was too short for me to cover a multitude of trends, so I decided to focus on video in teaching and learning, and the opportunities for video to play a part in content production, delivery, supporting of student learning and assessment. I mentioned a number of video initiatives by NUIG staff, including Conor O'Byrne, Oliver Ryan, Bryan McCabe, Ger Fleming, Susan Folan, John Breslin and John Murray, as well as Anne Wiseman from GMIT.



What I enjoyed about the day, though, was the opportunity to hear from a group of practitioners at a sister institution who have been trying new things in their teaching, and conversing with a group of academics who are committed to improving the experience for their students.

Summary of the Event

After an introduction by Hussain Mahdi, UL Vice President Academic & Registrar Prof Paul McCutcheon opened the event. He congratulated the organisers on making this a regular event, embedded in the academic calendar for the faculty. He expressed his hope that the materials from the event would be disseminated to other faculties within UL, so that the conversation can continue on a larger scale.

Following my own presentation, Angelica Risquez from the Teaching and Learning Centre at UL spoke about Students' Experience of Using a VLE. She reported on the work of a national project looking at VLE usage across a number of Irish institutions. In general, Irish students find a VLE useful for content distribution, announcements, course documentation and assignment submission; but don't appear to be using more interactive features such as social media tools, discussions boards, quizzes etc. The study has not found any correlation between VLE used (Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai) and student satisfaction levels. Students want increased usage of the VLE by their lecturers. They find that the VLE gives them good access to their lecturers, but doesn't facilitate improved communication with peers. According to student reports, the availability of course materials on the VLE does not impact attendance at lectures.

Hussein Mahdi responded to Angelica's presentation noting that students expectations are that lecture materials will be provided on the VLE.  But he noted that there are other administrative and pedagogical benefits to TEL.

"Try not to be seduced by technology for its own sake. It is essential that you have a considered reason for using it"

The morning proceeded with a number of talks from academic staff in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Jeremy Robinson talked about two technologies that he is using in his teaching of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Biomedical Engineering: wireless presenting using a tablet and multiple choice software QCM Direct. The first he demonstrated very ably during his presentation. I had the impression that Jeremy enjoys dabbling with technology, but he's not convinced yet of the academic value of his efforts (which are substantial).

Dermot Shinners Kennedy, who teaches first year programming in the department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS), gave an engaging talk about the need to focus on the students and their learning needs, rather than on the technology. In fact, this became the theme for the day.

After a short coffee break, Keelin Leahy of the department of Design and Manufacturing Technology described how she has been flipping the classroom in her course on 3D CAD Modelling. In response to student requests that they wanted more hands-on, practical work, she decided this year to swap lecture time for more practice time. Using Camtasia with embedded quizzes (to check understanding) she prepared an number of videos for students to review before class, allowing a more active and collaborative learning environment. Videos were all less than 10 minutes in length. Keelin found a small to medium effect on outcomes, and students responded well to the new format. Students learned how to think about the subject matter, and Keelin learned more about what topics caused most confusion.

Next to speak was Gabriela Avram, also from CSIS, who spoke about online student portfolios. These are being used in an undergraduate programme in Digital Media Design to support assessment, reflection, deep learning and job-seeking activities. First year students are encouraged to document whatever work they are doing (course related or external). In second year, they begin to reflect on the content in the portfolio and make decisions about what they want to include and why. The online portfolios are used by potential employers in the 3rd year placement aspect of the course, and students further build on the portfolios while on placement. In final year students refine their portfolios while they actively seek employment.

Having tried a variety of platforms for the portfolios, the students are now advised to simply use a Wordpress site, and some training on Wordpress is provided. Students have also used blogger or weebly for their portfolios.

Ross Higgins  spoke about his experiences with podcasting (in fact vodcasting) in a final year Civil Engineering module. This arrangement was to support a particular issue, where the department did not have a lecturer to deliver the module. An external expert was identified to deliver one face to face lecture per week, and the second lecture each week was provided using voice over powerpoint, brought together using Articulate. These were provided within the VLE and students were motivated to review the videos which contained content necessary for a project. The students liked the videos which provided them with the opportunity for self-paced learning and a good revision tool.

Another CSIS lecturer, Patrick Healy, described the development of handin - a system that supports the submission and efficient administration of student programming assignments. He is also developing a system called inspector, a GradeMark-like system used for visual inspection and grading of code.

The final speaker of the day was Con Hussey from Civil Engineering, who brought along a bag of tools including a small axe, a block of wood, a stone and some sticks. He spoke eloquently, without the use of a visual presentation, on the theme of unplugging from the matrix. His warnings about the world of technology were reminiscent of the article The Human Touch by Monke. He argues that we all need to unplug from a world of illusion, delusion and collusion, which prevent us from thinking. Real thinking, according to Con, is the work of brain and hand together. He proposed that the most creative act is to "do nothing"; noting that doing nothing is not the same as standing still.

As he spoke, I just wished that his presentation was being recorded, so that I could go back and review again later.




I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Faculty of Science and Engineering Learning and Teaching Day, and thank my hosts Hussain and Michael. It is very positive to see these kinds of events, where staff have time and space to discuss teaching and learning issues.




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#celt13 Instructions to the Twitter Team

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

Hello #celt13 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 #celt13 again this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt13 twitter team? Glad you asked....

1. Take a few moments at several points during the 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 #celt13.
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 #celt13 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 new skills, so demonstrate how Twitter can be a part of it.

#celt13 is the official hashtag of the 11th Galway Symposium, entitled Thinking Differently: New Curricula, New Skills in Higher Education.

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Blackboard Course Template - Designed by Students

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of attending a workshop in the School of Medicine, involving a small but dedicated group of staff and students. Earlier this year, the Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Working Group (UGTLG) of the School conducted a review of students' perspectives on using Blackboard and compiled a comprehensive report. The report highlights a number of issues relating to how the VLE is being used, and it was clear that a more consistent approach to using Blackboard within the School is needed. A survey on staff use was also carried out.

The purpose of yesterday's workshop was twofold. First, the students were asked to design a template that could be used/adapted for all undergraduate modules in the School of Medicine, based on how they would like to access resources. Second, and deriving from the discussion, the UGTLG would like to write up a set of guidelines/policies for staff on good practice in using Blackboard, particular to the School of Medicine.

Dr Rosemary Geoghegan leading one group of students

In two groups, the staff and student participants got working with flipcharts, pens and post-its, to design a template that suits them. I flitted between the two groups, taking notes and explaining some of the functionality that might support their requirements. Very quickly we found the same issues and question emerging. Although the two designs differed in structure, there was also a lot in common.

A second year Health and Disease course design

The situation within an undergraduate medical degree is not standard, in that each Blackboard course will have a large number of teachers/instructors all uploading materials; more than 20 instructors on a course would not be unusual. So, it's not surprising that students found their Blackboard courses disorganised.

Some of the common themes that came up were:

• Students don't want large PDFs of course handbooks, that are also distributed in hard copy. Forget the hard copy completely. Instead, put the information into easy-to-browse format within Blackboard.
• Organise materials by theme, and not by type of material. This is how students approach their study, and they want the Blackboard course to reflect that.
• Do include staff details - names and email addresses. Include a link to the person's website, if it exists. No more information is required. When I asked if a photo would be useful, one young man replied "If I know his name and how to contact him - why do I need to know what he looks like?"
• Have a policy about announcements, particularly regarding changes to the schedule. A live schedule would be ideal. (I'm hoping the new Calendar functionality in SP12 will help here)

Once the students had some time to design their ideal course, we quickly mocked up one design on our Blackboard test environment. Seeing it on the big screen, we were able to discuss organisation and tools in more depth and started to make changes and move things around. After three hours, the workshop came to an end.

While the work of the UGTLG is not finished and there is a lot more to do, I thought that the involvement of the students at this stage was invaluable. I was very impressed with their engagement and willingness to discuss the issues as they saw them. While the outcomes of this particular workshop are not generalisable, the workshop format and aims could be very usefully repeated in other disciplines.

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First experience of a flipped learning approach

Bryan McCabe is a lecturer in Civil Engineering at NUI Galway, and a winner of a President's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2011/12. About a year ago, Bryan was considering how he might use a flipped approach in his teaching and began planning such an approach for his 3rd year undergraduate course in Soil Mechanics, to be delivered starting January 2013. Bryan had a number of conversations with us in CELT during the year and we were keen to find out how his initiative had worked out. So, we invited him to give a CELT lunchtime seminar on March 21st.

In advance of the seminar, Bryan was keen to point out that this was his first experience with flipped learning and he could only talk about initial findings. He didn't want to be perceived as an expert in the area, but was willing to share his experiences and thoughts. The seminar abstract is:

First experience of a flipped learning approach to a 3rd year Engineering module

Flipped learning is a form of blended learning in which technology is used to make course content available outside the classroom, freeing up valuable classroom time for active problem solving and learning. In his presentation, Bryan McCabe will talk about his first attempt this semester at flipping his 3rd year (3 ECTS) Soil Mechanics module in Civil Engineering. The presentation will cover the production of short videos covering the basic module content and the active workshop approach adopted in the classroom. The response of students to the new experience has been captured by survey both early in the semester and at the end and these are discussed. Bryan will reflect upon what aspects of the approach have worked well and what areas need be to improved, in addition to the pros and cons from the lecturer's perspective.

The following narrative is based on Bryan's fascinating talk.

Background

The flipped model of teaching turns the traditional model - content introduced in the classroom and students learn through assignments and self-study outside the classroom - on its head. Students review basic content in advance of the classroom session, often made available through technology (videos, podcasts etc), and the classroom time is used for learning through doing - interactive workshops.

For more information on flipped learning, Bryan references the excellent Flipped Classroom Infograph, although the concept of flipped learning has been around for much longer than this infograph suggests. He also made reference to Julie Schell's acronym as described in her blog post How to FLIP your class ... in 4 basic steps.

Julie's Peer Instruction blog, Turn to Your Neighbour, is an excellent source of resources on the flipped classroom and peer learning in general.

The Soil Mechanics Module

The course that Bryan decided to flip is a third year engineering module, comprising 24 lecture hours over 8 weeks. It is taken (in 2013) by 64 students, from 4 different programmes. It is assessed using quizzes on Blackboard (20%) and a final written exam (80%).

Back in January, Bryan prepared the students for flipped learning using the Educause 7 Things You Should Know About Flipped Classrooms (pdf document, February 2012). He also issued a number of strong statements to students:

This change has major implications for how you should approach this module and gives you more responsibility for your learning, with potential for greater rewards as a result.

It should be noted that looking at the video clips alone or attending the classroom sessions without having looked at the video clips are strategies that are unlikely to serve you well in this module.

Flipping the Module

Based largely on existing materials, Bryan produced 15 narrated Powerpoints using Camtasia, covering core concepts, and uploaded these to screencast.com and YouTube. The total duration over the 15 videos was just 2 hours (distilled down from 24 lectures). Here's a sample video on Groundwater, Permeability and Seepage, demonstrating Bryan's approach:



Students were invited to ask questions about video content by email, twitter (@geotechNUIG) or at the start of class. In fact, none of these communication channels worked particularly well, and questions were normally prompted by the classroom problems. In hindsight, Bryan suggests that he might make better use of the Blackboard threaded discussion boards, which are available to all and visible to the entire group.

In the classroom session, Bryan did not summarise the videos, in case students might rely on such a summary. Instead, the students worked through a set of 17 soil mechanics problems, available in advance in a workbook. The problems were complex, requiring application and synthesis of the content provided in the videos. The problems were solved by the students, with prompts from the lecturer as required. Discussion of challenging or difficult topics, as identified by the students, were encouraged. Bryan reports some evidence of peer learning during these discussions.

On average, engagement was good; although Bryan admits to some slow days.

Six of the 15 videos produced are openly available on YouTube, and are being accessed in several countries. A second year civil engineering student in the UK has recently contacted Bryan, saying that he found the videos useful and could he produce more.

What the Students Thought

Bryan surveyed the students at the end of week 3 and again at the end of week 8. The results from the first survey were very positive, while those from week 8 were yet to be fully analysed at the time of the seminar.


The week 3 survey had 38 respondents (from a total of 64 students). Of those 80% reported that they watched the videos on a personal laptop or home pc rather than a mobile device or campus pc. They had not experienced flipped learning before.

80% of respondents said that watching the videos in their own time was either convenient or very convenient. Only 14% claimed not to have watched the videos in advance of the classroom sessions. Almost 90% found the classroom sessions more valuable or much more valuable than traditional lectures (see diagram). Further, 90% of students were comfortable or very comfortable with the environment of the problem solving sessions.

When asked about the flipped learning approach, two thirds of respondents identified the combination of videos and classroom sessions as being important.

The initial results were very positive and encouraged Bryan to continue with the approach.



An initial analysis of the week 8 survey results showed that just 24 students had responded to the survey at the time of the seminar. Engagement with the videos was poorer than indicated in week 3, but the effectiveness of the classroom sessions and the likelihood of attending the classrooms sessions had increased.

Bryan also asked the students how they would like to be assessed using free text responses (he had deliberately not changed the assessment method of the module from previous years). Students asked for more continuous assessment: short quizzes on video content during class, in-class tests and in-class exams.

Some sample responses are:

I think having some tests in class throughout the semester would be good. The online quizzes are good but I think tests in class would be better because it gives incentive to learn and revise the material as a whole, instead of just answering specific questions

Probably earn continuous assessment points as you go through the year by doing more in class exams this would make the videos compulsory to have viewed before every class

This feedback from students will inform changes in assessment for next year.

Bryan has now started to analyse the exam results from this year's group of students. Not surprisingly, exam performance is better for those who attended more classroom sessions - but with a lot of scatter!


What the lecturer thought

Bryan enjoyed the fact that there was less "delivery" going on and he described getting a "buzz" from the classroom sessions - not knowing where it might go or what he might be asked. He also felt that he added more value to the classroom sessions by being able to provide specialist technical knowledge as well as being able to focus on those areas that were more challenging or where misunderstandings were evident.


The videos themselves were time-consuming to make, but he now has a reusable (and shareable) resource. Next year he can put his efforts into rethinking assessment. There were also challenges around the existing timetable, with the scheduled hours being bunched and not conducive to the problem solving activities he wanted to promote.

Bryan's final words were "There's no going back".

Finally

I'd like to thank Bryan for sharing his initial experiences during the lunchtime seminar and for giving me permission to write up this post, linking to his YouTube videos.

I'd also like to thank Julie Schell for her permission to use her diagram within the post.


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