Call for abstracts | EDTECH 2016: ReConstituting TEL - Rising to the Challenge

Date: 26 – 27 May 2016
Venue: Law Society of Ireland, Education Centre, Blackhall Place, Dublin, Ireland

The events of Easter 1916 are of seminal importance in Irish history. What began as a small uprising in the centre of Dublin on Easter Monday set in motion a series of developments which ultimately led to Irish independence in 1922. The Government of Ireland has launched national and international program of events to reflect on the past 100 years, and to re-imagine our future under the following themes: remembering the past; reconciling and respecting all traditions; presenting Ireland to the world; imagining our future; and celebrating our achievements (www.ireland.ie).

The EdTech2016 theme ‘ReConstituting TEL: Rising to the Challenge’ affords us the opportunity to: reflect on the current state of TEL in Ireland in 2016; celebrate our achievements to this point; and consider the opportunities and challenges presented within an increasingly globalised, and uncertain world.

We invite you to contribute to this discourse from a range of local and international perspectives - pedagogical, research, innovation, policy and organisational - at EdTech2016 on May 26-27 at the Law Society of Ireland, Dublin (http://ilta.ie/edtech/edtech-2016).

Closing date for abstracts

11th April 2016 to http://edtech2016.exordo.com/

Conference topics

Submission of abstracts are accepted at http://edtech2016.exordo.com/ for inclusion within 3 presentation formats (i) Research (ii) Practitioner and (iii) *Gasta (brief rapid-fire micro presentations). Conference topics include the following:

• Online Education (teaching, learning & assessment)
• Blended Learning
• Further Education and Training
• Digital Literacies for All Stakeholders – students, staff, institutions and governments
• Evaluation for impact  - contributing to the evidence-base
• Learning trends & technologies
• Digital & identities, competencies & literacies
• Digital Identity
• Data Analytics

To submit an abstract

1. Visit https://edtech2016.exordo.com/
2. Create an account / login by entering your email, name and a password
3. Click submit paper
4. Follow the steps as prompted.

Key Dates

14^th March 2016
Call for abstracts - http://edtech2016.exordo.com/
Conference registration open - http://edtech2016.exordo.com/

11th April 2016
Closing date for abstract submissions

22^nd April 2016
Notification of Authors

29^th April 2016
Early bird offer closes

6^th May 2015
Final versions of accepted abstracts accepted for inclusion to Conference Programme

25th May 2015
Closing date for presentation submissioms

26th – 27th May 2015
EdTech 2016 Conference, Law Society of Ireland

CEL263 Learning Technologies Symposium 2016

The annual CEL263 symposium for 2016 took place almost 2 weeks ago on Monday 29th February. This year, seven participants from the PG Dip Learning Technologies module gave short presentations on their project for the module.

The project brief is:

You are asked to identify and complete a project, based on the material covered in the module, to incorporate Learning Technologies in your teaching.You are given free scope in identifying a technology or technologies and what you want to achieve. The technology does not have to be something that we are covering during the module, and could be something specific to your discipline.

The participants were asked to give a 10 minute presentation to the group (which included module participants and members of CELT) on their project, whether it's complete, in early stages, or halfway through.

As in previous years, I took notes by tweeting. The following is a collection of tweets from the event, using Storify.

Tweet

"Our Digital Strategy - making IT matter" at #cesicon 2016

I have attended the annual CESI conference for the past five years and it's now become an integral part of my personal CPD. As someone that spent ten years teaching at second level, the event helped me to build my personal learning network (PLN) at a level only matched by participating in CESI's #edchatie Twitter chat session on Monday evenings. Having moved on to NUI Galway, I did ponder how the event I had grown so accustomed to might feel different for me this year.  As more of an observer than a participant, I further shook things up by submitting a presentation.

The conference theme was rooted upon the new "Digital Strategy for Schools 2015 - 2020" document released by the Department of Education.  The document aims to "embed ICT more deeply across the system to enhance the overall quality of Irish education".  This is essentially the same ethos that fuels CESI. Though I've only skimmed the document at this stage, but I can see parallels between it and the National Forum's "Teaching and Learning in Irish Higher Education: A Roadmap for Enhancement in a Digital World 2015-2017".

Professor Mark Brown kick started the morning at DCU with a keynote insisting that we continue to make change and expressing exasperation at the stunted progress on technological innovation in education.  One can only hope the new strategy will address these issues.  He also received resounding applause when he called for coding to become a Leaving Certificate subject.

Professor Mark Brown's Keynote Address

Professor Mark Brown's Keynote Address

Next up was a presentation by Colman Noctor  entitled "Why do we share what we share?" that focused on the purpose of disclosure on social networking sites.  Colman's talk provided food for thought in terms of how young people are affected by the digital world they live in and the expectations of living up to our ideal (online) selves. 

Colman Noctor made us reflect on our online identities

After addressing some technical issues I was having, it was on to Leigh Graves Wolf's  spotlight session on Design Thinking.  Some might know Leigh from her participation in #edchatie and annual GREAT conference at NUI Galway with the Masters in Educational Technology (MAET) at Michigan State University.  Leigh has recently moved into the role of Assistant Director of the MSU Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology. Leigh's workshop aligned Our Digital Strategy to Design Thinking and had participants brainstorm and tweet/share their thoughts on questions that followed the first two steps of Design Thinking - empathize and define.  If one of the theory's aims is to "make the invisible, visible", then there is no better place to trial it than in front of large group of engaged educators eager to ensure the success of a new Digital Strategy. If we are to ensure the success of such a strategy, we must carefully implement it from the theoretical stages to the beta stages through to the finalized product. In a whirlwind session, Leigh was able to pique participant interest in Design Thinking as well as facilitate a vibrant discussion on the new Digital Strategy.

Leigh Graves Wolf discusses the TPACK model

After lunch it was my turn to present on "Bridging the Gap - Preparing Students for the Expectations of Higher Education".  Like Leigh, I was focusing on current strategies and policies in second level and third level education and aligning the technologies available (and popular) in both sectors that could facilitate an easier transition between the sectors.  In hindsight, it might have been too large a topic for the twenty five minute session, but it certainly helped me to reflect more carefully on an area that I have a vested interest in.

After presenting, I took the time to reconnect with CESI friends from over the years and didn't attend anything else until the National Executive meeting. The most refreshing aspect of CESIcon is the camaraderie and collaboration between the sectors.  It proves that new innovations are adaptable in any educational setting if you maintain an open mind.  If you are interested at all in CESI, I would strongly advise following the #edchatie hashtag on Twitter. Over time, it's easy to build up a strong personal learning network, and you might even be enticed to meet them in person at next year's CESIcon.

You can read about our experience at CESIcon last year on the blog as well.

Tweet

PebblePad Irish Users’ Group Meeting Notes

Overview

The first PebblePad Irish User Group meeting took place in the RCSI on Wednesday 10 February. It was hosted by John Couperthwaite and Debbie Holmes from PebblePad, and featured colleagues from TCD, DCU, UCC, GMIT, WIT, and NUIG; some of which are currently using PebblePad alongside others looking to keep a watching brief on ePortfolio developments and uses in higher education.

NUI Galway Context

Following the cessation of the Learning Objects suite of tools in NUIG, a number of professional-based functions (e.g. Nursing and Midwifery, Engineering, Adult Education) have spoken to me about their interest in pan-programme ePorfolio solutions; and specifically those with post-graduate access options. We do not have access to BB-native portfolios as this requires the Community System which comes with a considerable price tag. I attended this session to gauge the current state of play from PebblePad and the wider user group and found it extremely useful.

Key Features of PebblePad

• This ePortfolio solution is branded as an ‘Award-winning ePortfolio, assessment and metering technology’
• It is being widely used in the UK and is gaining some traction in Ireland (see below)
• PebblePad is utilised primarily with:
  Applied curricula such as Medicine, Nursing and Midwifery, Teacher Education (i.e. those with work placement requirements);
  Competency-based domains (i.e. those with professional body dual accreditation requirements such as Accountancy and  Pharmacology); and
  For wider institutional functions such as careers, alumni and disability services
• It is a cloud-based service and can be used as a stand-alone system or integrated through VLEs via a building block (e.g. BB, Moodle, Canvas etc)
• The building block allows institutions to nominate the specific modules where the ePorfolio can be deployed. This means that it is possible to arrange a licensing model for 100 users which can be administered locally. 
• The building block facilitates single sign-on via VLE
• In line with other learning technologies (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate) PebblePad is moving away from Flash and Java-based infrastructure(V3 of PebblePad) towards HTML5-based technology (V5 of PebblePad) which will facilitate an improved use experience on a range of devices.
• USABILITY:  it is easy to populate ePortfolios through drag and drop and it looks very professional (different themes etc)
• PRIVACY: students manage their own assets and permissions (which allows them to invite/disseminate their ePortfolios - full or partial - to specific internal or external audiences)
• CONTINUOUS/POST-GRADUATE ACCESS:
  (1) PebblePad access across an entire programme cycle allows students and instructors continuous access to all students’ work, thereby circumventing VLE annual roll-over restrictions.
  (2) Graduate students have lifelong access to their assets (e.g. workbooks,ePortfolios)
• MOBILE: Pebblepad has an app for IoS and Android devices  
• SUPPORT: Individual users commented on the high quality of PebblePad initial training and suppo

User Group Presentations

NOREEN HENRY GMIT CASTLEBAR

Programme Coordinator and Lecturer
Noreen described how GMIT were using PebblePad with a group of BSc Digital Media and Society students. The first rollout of the BSc was in 2013 with the final 4th year being delivered in 2016-17.
The use of PebblePad has developed over the first three years from digital asset creation/management, towards submission of portfolios for academic assessment (using templates with pre-populated questions), and now onto student industry placement. The year 4 emphasis will be towards developing projects that can be showcased to multiple audiences during both the programme schedule and following graduation from the BSc programme.

EILEEN O’LEARY UCC

Lecturer in Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry
UCC, UL, TCD, UCD,  IT Tralee and NUIG are part of the ePrePP consortium, an eLearning Platform in Preparation for Professional Practice. This initiative is partly funded by the National Forum.
The focus of Eileen’s presentation was how UCC used PebblePad to mimic the 147 professional competencies required by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland Core competencies framework IIoP. The competencies had to be mimicked due to copyright restrictions of the actual framework.  They used PebblePad as a CPD tracking system by exposing all students to the same resources (i.e. they had better control via the PebblePad rather than through a range of modules in Blackboard).
Eileen and her team were drawn to PebblePad due to (1) the inbuilt tracking  (i.e. student activity is date/time stamped therefore UCC can track activity hours and run learning analytics);  and (2) the reporting outputs that they could use for professional accreditation/certification. They use workbooks (customised for assessment/placement etc) which are employed as a competency self assessment tool.

KIERAN LEWIS, TCD

Occupational Therapist, TCD Disability Services
Kieran works on the TCD Career Pathways Project (transition to employment project for students with disabilities) as part of their Student Ambassador Programme.
This project is run directly with PebblePad, rather via the VLE. Disability services work closely with the 74 students to develop their portfolios towards career progression and have created a wide range of ‘template’-type activities for students to complete.

Further Information

There are a number of National Forum seminars looking at ePorfolios in Feb-March. See: http://www.teachingandlearning.ie/events/

Tweet

Learning from Failure at #durbbu

Earlier this month I made my annual pilgrimmage to Durham to attend the 16th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference. I've been attending this event every January for the last number of years and can honestly say that it's a highlight in my calendar. Even better that it's at the very, very start of the year, meaning I'm not missing too much activity at work, and I can focus my mind completely on the theme of the conference.

Moreover, the annual Durham event is one of the best organised, consistently enjoyable and useful, and the friendliest Ed Tech conference. If Carlsberg did conferences! This is mostly down to the amazing team behind it all, including Malcolm Murray, Julie Mulvey and the Learning Technologies Team at Durham University.

If you are a Blackboard customer in the UK or Ireland (or considering becoming one), you should not miss this annual event. Because it's a Users' conference, it does not have the corporate feel of, say, the Blackboard Teaching and Learning conference. Instead you have the opportunity to hear about and share the real-life experience of fellow Blackboard customers, warts and all. There is also a good representation of staff from Blackboard, giving you great access to raise issues, ask questions and find out about new developments.

Learning from Failure

This year's conference theme was Learning from Failure. It was an excellent theme because this is how most of us learn. It's normal for our efforts to go wrong, but the important thing is to learn from that failure and try again. Even better if we can learn from others' failure, and avoid making the same mistakes ourselves.

We don't often talk about our failures, so I felt privileged to hear about how other people have overcome problems to achieve goals in the use of technologies for teaching and learning.

#durbbu Failure should be our teacher pic.twitter.com/zCWKv04TIo

— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) January 7, 2016

My notes from the conference extend to several pages. Here I just describe some of the more relevant learnings for me. I did also create a storify from all the tweets from the event, using hastag #durbbu. Some other attendees have written excellent blog posts from the event, which I list at the end of this post.

 

Bb Student app

I was particularly interested in the launch, in the UK and Ireland, of the new Bb Student mobile app. This is because we've had some particular problems with the current Blackboard Learn mobile app, related to a current (major) project concerning release of grades. The new app, which I write about here, is slicker and more student focused, but unfortunately doesn't solve our problems. This was good for me to learn, if not entirely satisfying.

Collaborate Ultra

We've been hearing about the new Collaborate Ultra product, which will eventually replace the current Collaborate, with the dreaded java download. We have done some testing at NUI Galway, but haven't made the switch, due to limitations in functionality.

However, I was very lucky to hear from Kelly Hall of Edinburgh University about Stepping into the unknown with Collaborate Ultra. Kelly gave a very engaging and informative presentation where she described how 3 groups at Edinburgh have piloted the new system. She was able to identify exactly the limitations and difficulties experienced, but concluded that the groups were overall very happy with Collab Ultra. The main loss of functionality is the ability to create break-out groups, but Blackboard is working on this.

#durbbu Feedback on Ultra pilot pic.twitter.com/uHlphtYlcv

— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) January 7, 2016

Based on the experience of the pilot, Edinburgh is looking to rollout to Ultra during the summer of 2016. She suggested that case studies, based on the pilot groups, are being compiled and may be made available to those interested.

Enterprise Surveys

I've never really considered Blackboard Enterprise Surveys functionality, because I was under the impression that it was only available as part of the Community System licence. It turns out - I was wrong! After putting the question to twitter, I soon got the response that it is available in the basic, vanilla Learn licence - though clearly turned off in ours.

A presentation from Chris Slack and Adam Tuncay described how they have deployed module quality surveys using different approaches: OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) forms, Blackboard tests, and finally Enterprise Surveys. While there are clearly a lot of challenges in using the Enterprise Survey tool (59 known issues, 3 critical issues) the increase in response rates and the reduction in labour costs were particularly impressive.

Moving to enterprise survey has saved Leeds £8752 and 443 hours of staff time each year. #durbbu

— Graeme Boxwell (@GraemeBoxwell) January 7, 2016

Hearing about this project (and its many set-backs) has encouraged me to take a look at Enterprise Surveys on our own environment, some day in the future when I have a bit of time!

Blackboard Updates

The Durham conference always includes a keynote from Blackboard itself, where we can learn something about the current direction and future roadmap for the company. This year, Alan Masson (Head of International Customer Success) gave an engaging keynote reflecting on our shared journey (Blackboard + customers) and what has been learned along the way.

Just two days before the conference, Blackboard had announced that Bill Ballhaus was to succeed Jay Bhatt as CEO.With a new CEO, the focus of the company is likely to shift, so Alan couldn't really say anything about current direction. However, he did speak about some upcoming Roadmap Webinars for the International market. These webinars are a good opportunity to find out more about product strategy, developments and releases.

Alan also pointed us to a new Technology Adoption Guide - 6 Characteristics To Increase Technology Adoption.

#durbbu If these are in place - successful implementation pic.twitter.com/tho2pYTZm2

— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) January 8, 2016

Grades Journey Tool

We are currently, at NUI Galway, in the middle of a major institutional project which involves the use of Blackboard's new Grades Journey tool. At the time of the conference, we were on the cusp of rolling out, using a big-bang approach, new grade centre columns to all modules, in all Schools and Colleges, across the University. So, I was particularly interested to hear from Jim Emery from Glasgow Caledonian about his experience of the Grades Journey tool.

Glasgow Caledonian's context is slightly different from ours, albeit with similar goals ultimately. Perhaps very sensibly, GCU is about to commence a pilot of the system, rather than our all-or-nothing approach. His description of the endeavour as a "series of small battles rather than a long war" rang true for me, although I currently feel like I'm involved in a very long war!

Jim's presentation was very honest, as he described his learnings from the project so far. We also spent some time comparing notes on our experiences, which was extremely valuable for me. Jim has written about  Marks Integration, framing it in the context of the Digital University.

Digital Badges

I enjoyed Graham Redshaw-Boxwell's talk about digital badges at Newcastle University and beyond. I think there are plenty of links with the All Aboard project in Ireland, especially the digital badges component of this.

Conclusion

I realise that I'm writing this post three weeks after the conference took place, and I've focused only on those talks that made the most impression on me, in terms of my own learning. I also very much enjoyed Eric Stoller's keynote, about academics and social media.

Why Educators Can’t Live Without Social Media - my keynote slides from @Durham_Uni #DURBBU https://t.co/ASSmhxBlFj pic.twitter.com/ynttSqoN2p

— Eric Stoller (@EricStoller) January 7, 2016

Unusually for a conference, any of the talks I went to were of high quality, and I learned something new in each one.

Other blog posts about this event include (apologies if I missed any - let me know in the comments):

Learning from Failure – The 16th Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference- Rosie Hare
Reflections on Day 2 of the Blackboard Users’ Conference- Richard Walker

Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference 2016: A Few Reflections - Danny Ball
Learning from Failure…- Maria Tannant
Durbbu - multiple posts by Matt Cornock

Tweet

Campus Create - A daily dose of creative challenges at NUI Galway

In December, a PhD student, Sally McHugh, called into my office to tell me that she had successfully received Explore funding for a project called Campus Create, with Dr. Tony Hall in Education. The idea was to promote and encourage creativity in all its forms, including within digital media. Sally and I had talked before about Digital Storytelling DS106 from the University of Mary Washington, and the work of Jim Groom, Alan Levine and colleagues. They had been working for many years, encouraging people to make art, to create, share and remix, in an open way, cognisant of copyright and domain ownership. Our heroes.

http://campuscreate.eu/

Before Christmas, Tony, Sally and I met to talk about how we might explore and enact these ideas at NUI Galway within the Campus Create project. We came up with the notion of having twelve weeks of themes, to correspond to the first twelve weeks of semester 2, and to post daily create challenges, similar to projects like the Daily Create, the Daily Post, and the 12 Apps of Christmas.

Things progressed further, and after a furious effort in the first week of January with collaborators (including support from Alan Levine) and developing the technical infrastructure, the experiment began.

It's now week 2. The theme is Sound. Well, the jury is still out on whether that's a literal statement or not, as yet. Getting the daily create prompt together for the website and cross posting on Facebook and Twitter has been become a daily (and late night and weekend) challenge for us too.

Thanks to the good work of John Caulfield and Connell Cunningham, users' contributions have visibility on the large video wall in the library and on display screens  around the campus. This is a display of the latest moderated user posts via six or seven social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, etc.), once the weekly hashtag is used within a contribution on any social media platform. These are also accessible live on the website on http://campuscreate.eu/category/your-creations/ No mean feat.

So, Campus Create is off to a promising start. The warm encouragement and strong participation from many around campus has heated our frozen winter feet. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and seeing how it all unfolds.

Check out the next creative daily prompt on http://campuscreate.eu/ (and register if you want to receive the weekly email). I hope to see your 'creates' join the conversation.

Tweet

Flipping great.

Earlier this year, we had the good fortune of catching up with Dr. Bryan McCabe, a lecturer in Civil Engineering at NUI Galway. Bryan has been re-configuring his pedagogic approach, by giving students exposure to lecture materials out of class through lecture videos and quizzes. He then uses lecture time to problem-solve, discuss and debate. More popularly known as "the flipped classroom", this learning model has been growing in popularity in recent times, due to its emphasis on active student engagement (Chen, Wang, Kinshuk & Chen, 2014).

In this short video with Bryan, he discusses his approach, and the feedback he has received from students on allowing them to take more responsibility for their learning, and engage collaboratively in the practice of engineering.

 

Further Reading:
Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Kinshuk & Chen, N.S. (2014). Is FLIP enough? Or should we use the FLIPPED model instead? Computers & Education, 79, 16-27.
 
Straw S., Quinlan, O., Harland, J. & Walker, M. (2014). Flipped Learning: Using Online Video to Transform Learning. Nesta Report. Accessed from http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/flipped-learning-using-online-video-transform-learning

Check out two NUI Galway Library Books:
Bergmann J, & Sams A. (2012)Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

Bergmann, J. & Sams, A.(2014). Flipped learning Gateway to Student Engagement, Learning & Learning with Technology.

Tweet

Why I blog

Image by andyp uk on flickr 

A couple of weeks ago, as part of an informal lunchtime conversation session on the topic of Academic Blogging, Simon Warren (@worried_teacher) invited me to speak, along with John Danaher (@JohnDanaher), on my blogging experiences. This forced me to take some time and reflect on my own practice as a blogger, what I blog about and why. So, thank you Simon for giving me the purpose to reflect.

John blogs at philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.ie and is a prolific blogger. He admits to spending between 10 to 15 hours per week on his blog, writing an average of 2 lengthy posts each week. His writing is habitual and he starts most days writing at least 1000 words. He writes for research purposes and much of what he writes is repurposed for papers and articles. 

Clearly I am not nearly in the same league as John Danaher, but listening to him speak, I realised that some of our reasons for blogging are similar. 

 
The LearnTechGalway blog

This blog first started as a conference blog in May 2007, and has since accumulated more than 400 posts, with various authors from the Learning Technologies team at NUI Galway. We use the blog to document our work; to highlight and showcase the work of others; to share information about upcoming events; to document events we've hosted or attended; and to network with other groups.

The audience for the blog is the university community at NUIG and a broader network of academic, academic-related and educational technology people nationally and internationally.

Writing for me

But actually, my primary audience is myself! As a non-academic, there is not the same pressure on me to write; but as a former academic (who is still interested in research) I find that blogging provides me a platform to articulate and make sense of the world around me. John described something similar - he uses his blog to explain things to himself. 

When I first started blogging (in 2007), my contributions were short and factual. I blogged about news, gave details on upcoming events and wrote up conference reports. The conference and event reports developed as I started to reflect more, and began to put my ideas in writing. As my online identity continues to develop, through blogging and Twitter and other social tools, my blogger's voice has also continued to develop. It is still not a confident voice, but that is something that I would like to work on. 

So, blogging, for me, supports my own professional self development, allowing me to reflect, and helping me to shape my identity, both online and in real life.

Me as an open practitioner

It has also become important to me that I reflect openly and I'm working to become more of an open practitioner. This is not necessarily a comfortable place to be, especially as a woman online. But through blogging and twitter in particular I have developed a pretty good (and constantly shifting) personal learning network (PLN).

The value of the network is manifest in multiple ways. The feedback from comments on the blog or on twitter (or LinkedIn or Medium or wherever they happen to be) reminds me that I'm part of a wider community, but also supports the development of my thinking. Blogging can also result in unexpected opportunities for research or collaborative work, such as my chapter in David Hopkins' Really Useful #EdTech Book last year.

This post has taken me a couple of weeks to complete (though you wouldn't know that to read it). Yesterday I had the immense pleasure of hearing Joseph O'Connor speak at the National Summit for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. As well as providing the hugely accurate description Writing is like attempting to juggle with mud he also said

Learning is a way of seeing, again, a way of looking at the world 

I think blogging does this too. And blogging is part of my learning.

See Also..

Can blogging be academically valuable - by John Danaher

Blogging helps academic writing - by Pat Thomson

Tweet

Providing campus wide video services with limited resources

This article first appeared in the December issue of the Media and Learning Newsletter, published by the Media and Learning Association. Sign up for regular issues online.

The Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the National University of Ireland, Galway is a staff-facing central unit which has the broad aim to enhance the quality of teaching and learning at the University. The centre is responsible for various types of activities, grounded in the promotion of good pedagogy, including the support of learning technologies and media production. In the last 5 years, we have seen an increase in the use of video in online, blended and on-campus courses, including the flipped classroom approach.

With a small complement of staff (just 4 members in the learning technologies team) to support an institution with about 17,000 students and 2,500 staff across 5 Colleges, we have to be selective in how we allocate our resources. We have a small recording studio, for video and audio, with facilities for video editing. Our approach is to empower academic staff to develop their own resources through a combination of technology provision, formal and informal training, advice, support and good practice guides.

There is an impression that video is inherently complicated and that advanced knowledge and skills are necessary to produce anything worthwhile. However, increasingly people are walking around with a smartphone video camera in a pocket, and this is particularly true for our students. We can create and upload a short video to YouTube or Facebook in seconds, so why not educational video too?

Since 2011 we have used the Kaltura platform and VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) building block to make video easier for all staff and students. Instructional videos, webcam or screen recordings can be created and uploaded to the VLE using simple tools that don't require anything more complicated than a webcam and headset, and no knowledge of video files and formats.

While having a technological solution is a necessary first step to support and grow the use of video as a mainstream teaching and assessment tool across campus, it's not sufficient. The CELT learning technologies team is involved in a range of activities to raise awareness and enable the whole university community to leverage the power of video in teaching and learning, including:

• provision of basic advice and support, through a ticketing helpdesk, online resources and good practice guides for self-support. Online resources include both text guides with screenshots as well as video guides using the tools themselves.
• highlighting and showcasing existing good examples of video that have been well integrated into the curriculum.
• hands-on training through workshops on using the tools and technologies for video. The workshops can be stand-alone or included in staff development technology events.
• embedded in the formal CELT professional development programmes (PG Cert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, PG Dip in Academic Practice), thereby situating the use of video technology firmly within the pedagogic context.
• leading by example, by making use of video in our own teaching and training activities, even when the focus is not video.
• working closely on selected, defined projects with individual staff and/or student groups, thereby creating showcase opportunities.
• provision of recording and editing facilities and services, where appropriate and feasible.

In an environment that is increasingly driven by measurements and metrics, it's important for us to monitor the use of video. From the Kaltura analytics tools we know that contributors, contributions and entries played have increased year-on-year since 2011, and are likely to grow further.

Republished with permission. 

Tweet

A lecturer perspective on peer assessment

When it comes to student learning, there is no activity with greater impact than how you design your course assessment. We all know that it works best when it facilitates meaningful and engaged learning by allowing students to participate in the process and gain timely and relevant feedback. It must be fair, accurate, and manageable for those undertaking it, and this is no easy task.

There has been much written in recent times on innovations in assessment. Lecturers have long been striving for new ways to make it more valid, transparent and diverse (Race, 2007). Asking students to review and give feedback on each others work is one such approach. With the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this practice of allowing students to assess and give feedback on each others work has grown in prevalence (Bali, 2014). Surely, it makes sense that students would benefit from understanding the criteria of an assignment so well that they could appraise the work of others for quality.

But introducing peer assessment can seem to be a daunting and hazardous prospect. How well do students undertake this task- would they be too harsh or too generous in their comments? Would they benefit from seeing their own mistakes and others? What other outcomes does it bring? And most importantly - how easy is it to manage?

We spoke with Michael Coyne, in the School of Law at NUI Galway about his experience in using peer assessment with students, and heard about the benefits it brought. The result is a short three minute interview.

Watch Michael's video interview here.


References: 
Bali, M (2014). MOOC Pedagogy: Gleaning Good Practice from Existing MOOCs”, MERLOT. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10, 1, 44-56.
Race, Phil (2007). The Lecturer's Toolkit: A practical guide to assessment, learning and teaching. 3rd edition, London: Routledge

Additional Resources: 
Blackboard's Guide to Peer Assessment
CELT Resources on Peer Assessment
JISC Exemplars of Peer Assessment

See more showcase videos

Tweet

The 5 x 12 apps of Christmas

12 Days. 12 Apps. 10 minutes per day.

I've just signed up (again) for the 12 apps of Christmas #12appsDIT offered by the Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre at DIT, and facilitated by Frances Boylan. This was launched last year (and I blogged about it at the time) based on a similar initiative at Regent's University London.

Each morning over 12 weekdays, starting Dec 1^st 2015, a page will be released that reviews a particular mobile app and explores it in terms of how it could help students personalise their learning. Like an advent calendar, every day you open a new door and see what's behind it.

This year the DIT folk are focussing on personalisation of learning, and are inviting teaching staff and students to take part. Already more than 600 people have registered. Why not sign up too?

As well as #12appsDIT, Chris Rowell of Regent's University London, has launched Christmas 2.0 #RUL12AoC.
Aimed at academic and academic support staff, this open course offers to cover the basics and some more advanced tips on using 12 educational apps.

You can sign up for the RUL course, which is offered via Blackboard's Open Education platform.

Meanwhile, the University of West London has also launched their 12 apps of Christmas open course #UWL12Apps. This course aims to inspire you to explore how you can use your smartphone or tablet in education and beyond.

In case 3 apps per day isn't enough for you, the University of Brighton has also launched a satellite cMOOC of #RUL12AoC, with hashtag #12brightapps.

So, starting on 1st December, with a new app (or 4) every weekday until 16th December, you could learn about the educational possibilities of up to 48 apps. At that stage, we could all do with a rest!

Update (18 November): Thanks to Chrissi Nerantzi (@chrissinerantzi) for alerting me (in the comments below) to another 12 apps  offered by Manchester Metropolitan University Library. This course, which does not need any registration, promises engaging hands-on activities, top tips and support from expert facilitators. Staff at MMU are also encouraged to participate in #RUL12AoC for the experience of an online course, with a suggestion that a common hashtag #12AoC is used.

That's a potential 60 apps, although I suspect there'll be a certain amount of overlap.

Tweet

How to effectively engage students through video

Last term we spoke with Mary Barrett, at NUI Galway, about her involvement in a project that created short screencasts within Blackboard for students. Along with her colleagues, she was looking for something to explain the technical nature of the subject, in additional to lectures and tutorials, for students. They arrived at a solution of working through problems on screen, narrating the process, and explaining steps involved. The resulting recordings allowed students to access these clarifying steps again, and again. Each screencast became a very valuable and engaging resource for learning.

Behind the scenes is a technology called Kaltura Desktop Recorder, which enables you to quickly and easily recording your screen or lecture and upload online to share privately in Blackboard, or with a wider audience on MediaSpace or other public video channels.

Watch Mary's video interview here.

You can see some further examples of their results on http://www.nuigalway.ie/cairnes/leavingcert/ and read more about Mary's Accountancy Nuggets project on the Explore project website.

Tweet