This is part of our wider commitment to evaluating the impact of the service we provide. The aim is not to focus on large scale projects (this is done elsewhere - see link), but the intention is to capture small scale interventions which have had a positive impacted on practice.
| Theme | What were they wanting to achieve? How did we help? Did it work? | Who did we work with? |
|---|---|---|
| Capturing student presentations for summative assessment | A request was to record student presentations. These presentations would contributed towards their final marks. Stephen want them recorded to enable him to provide more specific feedback, and provide access for the external examiner.
Our role was to record the student and the presentation, edit the films to ensure the audio was acceptable, and forward the links to Stephen to share as required. The feedback from Stephen was very positive, it allowed him to focus on different aspects within the actual presentation as afterwards he would re-visited the presentation. This intervention should have enhanced the feedback and assessment process. |
Stephen Sawyers |
| Using social media: Twitter | The Elevate Team facilitate workshops during the student induction period to raise awareness of a selection of technologies a student might use to enhance their learning.
One of the activities we develop is to use Twitter as a Personal Learning Network to gather insights, resources and discourse from other students, practitioners, professionals and peers. Some very positive feedback was captured from one of the students in a blog post. The feedback shows that our session was transformational for some students. Based on this and other sessions we are exploring alternative delivery methods to widen opportunities. |
More info |
| Sharing resources: Diigo | Trevor wished to enable his students to more effectively share, and annotate web resources which they’d discovered.
The software we suggested was Diigo. To help the implementation, we trained Trevor, we wrote a short student guide, we attended a session with the students to support them, and answer questions. We also provided a follow up support session. The outcomes seemed positive, the students shared resources they’d discovered and left comments to help contextualisation. |
Trevor Grimshaw |
| Course Validations | The Elevate Team support course teams as they prepare materials for validations and approvals. We have been exploring the different models we could use.
After discussion with Allison, we attend a course team meeting, and developed a support plan. This involved providing some bespoke training sessions to the team on the effective learning designs for technology enhanced learning. This includes both online and face to face teaching. In addition, we discussed the likely student support requirements and potential solutions. This led to enhancing members of the course teams through introducing new ideas and developing their technical skills. In addition, an outcome was to collaborate on the development of an online taster course. |
Allison Boggis More info |
| Creating and embedding multimedia resources | The Elevate Team were asked to support the creation of an online presentation for students to access anywhere, anytime. After speaking with Nickey Rooke we were aware that the presentation was currently in an online unfriendly format.
To get the most out of an online presentation the Elevate Team worked with Nickey to use a screen capture tool to allow the presentation and Nickey’s voice to be captured and synchronised. The end result was a video of the presentation as it appeared on screen, with Nickey’s voice overlayed talking through the presentation. The advantage of this approach is that we were able to embed the video into LearnUCS meaning the video was accessible to all students on any device. As well as this, as this was a video, the students had full control of the rate at which they watched. They have the ability to pause, rewind, fastforward etc. allowing them to engage much more with the content of the presentation. |
Nicky Rooke |
| Formative objective testing | The request was to design a number of regular formative assignments to monitor student progress, and provide more focussed feedback. This feedback was going to be provided in the classroom setting. The learning design was informed by a flipped classroom model.
After discussing the pros and cons of various options with Will, the selected approach was to use the LearnUCS quiz engine. We trained the lecturer on the quiz engine, and discussed question management, re-use etc. We also provided ongoing support through the module. The feedback from the lecturer was very positive, and we have discussed ideas around making the process more effective for the next implementation. In the wider context this approach has encouraged more use of MCQs in summative assignments. |
Will Thomas |
| Peer Learning & Assessment | We were asked by the Social Work team to help them identify the best way to engage students with group peer assessment using LearnUCS.
After some initial talks it was decided to take the most positive elements of both face to face and online solutions. The students would use the VLE to collaboratively draft up a poster presentation, groups would then present and peer score each other face to face. The end discuss would be put up onto group wikis for each group to sign off. The end result was a collaborative effort between the e-Learning Developers and the Social Work team. Initial feedback has been very positive and we haven’t had any support queries regarding the process or technology involved. |
Sue Taplin More info |
| Extending the classroom: Google Hangouts | The Elevate Team were approached to provide advice and support for real time, online lectures, allowing external speakers to engage with UCS students. We met with the course team to discuss and complete a requirements capture, so we would know exactly what their needs were. This introduced a new element to the scenario, they wanted the lecture to be broadcast live, publically, but then to have a closed discussion, just between the lecture theatre and the external presenter(s).
Two weeks before the lecture we created a Google Hangout event in Google Plus, this creates an event page where both external presenters and students can sign-up to the lecture. Then a few days before the event we had an appointment with the external presenter(s) to invite them into a Hangout, allowing them to familiarise themselves with the tool. Google Hangouts allows you to choose when to start broadcasting, this means once the first part of the lecture was over, we could stop the live broadcast and only those in the lecture theatre and the external speakers could communicate, allow for questions without fear of personal information being publicly broadcast. After the broadcast was finished, the Hangout’s recording is processed and it becomes available from the event’s page that was originally set up, allowing students to review their time with external subject specialists. |
Sarah Housden |
| Enhancing reflection: Mahara | As part of our Digital Literacies Programme we run an online course called e-Portfolios for the reflective learner. The course designed introduces the students to what e-portfolios are and what being a reflective learner is all about.
We had 14 students complete the course and one student was willing to be recorded about how effective the tool (Mahara) had been and what she was now using it for. The feedback was positive as the student states she is now using Mahara regularly to record her reflections to use in her course. |
More info |
| Course Team Training Sessions | As an ongoing commitment to develop staff across the Learning Network we provide ad hoc sessions at their colleges.
A request from Paddy Shaw at Great Yarmouth was to run a session during their HE Professional Discussion Day. The two hour session was delivered to eight lecturers. It covered a range of topics, which were weaved together within a flipped classroom narrative. The feedback was positive, and Paddy said the session was well received. We’ll follow up with individual sessions during September and October, 2014. |
More info |
| Audio feedback using iPads (iAnnotate) | A request from a course team was to pilot a more innovative feedback model for a formative assignment compared to current approach which was text based feedback.
After discussions with the course team, they wished to try audio feedback. Our role was to loan a number of iPads, with the iAnnotate software installed. We provided staff training on the software. We ensured the student work submitted via LearnUCS was accessible on the iPad, and staff could mark it. Afterwards we transferred the annotated work back to LearnUCS, and provided advice to students on how to access their feedback. The initial feedback from the course team was very positive. The course team are indicating they would like to further explore this area in the future. |
Heather Rugg |
Image Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rae_is_kandee/2854765835/
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