The current Multimedia Service from Elevate Team: Part of Multimedia Review

What service do we offer to academic teams at UCS (Ipswich)?

The first question is to answer, how does our service complement IT Services?
IT Services are responsible for the AV in teaching rooms, and the installation of software on desktops. The Elevate Team take ownership over creation of multimedia teaching and learning objects, and staff and student training on specific software;

• Screencastify
• YouTube
• Audacity
• Tablet (ExplainEverything & HD Record)

The Elevate Team provide the following services to staff at UCS for the creation of Teaching, Learning and Assessment materials.

1. Loan Elevate Team Equipment (camera, mics, tripod), for staff to capture material. Use Elevate YouTube channel. We offer minimal editing (background noise, volume and top & tail) and provide links to unlisted videos,
2. Require The Elevate Team to capture, edit and upload multimedia (this covers Video and Audio)
3. Use Elevate Team offices and equipment for screencasting. Use Elevate YouTube channel.
4. Google Hangouts (web conferencing). Use the Elevate Account, and Elevate personnel to manage the event and provide training. Output into Elevate YouTube Channel
5. Advice around the use and capture of multimedia for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. This will include, top tips, copyright of 3rd party material, OERs, and Consent
6. Bespoke multimedia intensive,augmented / location aware learning objects

What Hardware & Software do the Elevate Team use and/or support?

Capture Process

• Hardware
1. Camera
2. Mics (Desk & Clip)
3. iPads
4. FlipCams
5. Dictaphone
6. Pop Shield
7. Tripods
• Software
1. Screencastify
2. Audacity
3. Inbuilt tools on iPads
4. Record HD (audio) on iPads
5. Explain Everything on iPads

Editing Process

• Software
1. iMovie
2. YouTube
3. Audacity
4. GarageBand
5. Aurasma

Distribution Process

• Software
1. YouTube
2. SoundCloud

Archive Process

• Software
1. YouTube
2. SoundCloud

Deletion Process

With respect to student presentations, once the material has been uploaded during the Distribution stage, all materials will be deleted from Elevate Team hardware. For other materials (uses) we will discuss the archive and deletion of the raw files on case by case basis.

There is no deletion policy for material held / uploaded to YouTube. The material will remain until the Elevate Team informed by YouTube / Google around space requirements. If this occurs, the oldest material will be deleted first, although we will endeavour to keep material within the last three academic years.

What training provision (direct and indirect) do we provide?

An objective of the Elevate Team is to build capacity within staff and students at UCS to take advantage of the opportunities offered through multimedia within their teaching, learning and assessment models. Our current provision is based around;

Online (self paced) - Getting Started Resources, and Guides
Face to Face - Bespoke session for course teams

It is suggested this area needs to be re-designed. In particular, the need for a coherent online and face to face programme. Including;

• development of a specialist half-day multimedia workshop
• creation of Getting Started resources for Screencastify, and Audacity
• authoring of a guide which explores the effective use of multimedia in Teaching and Assessment

Broad Recommendations (these are all owned by the Elevate Team)

1. Review and publish an archive and deletion policy for local and cloud materials.
2. Identify any risks in terms of data protection of multimedia material.
3. Extend our current staff and student development programme for multimedia to ensure it is more effective, and covers the core software.
4. Identify skill and knowledge gaps within the Elevate Team, and identify how these are going to be addressed.
5. Audit hardware to identify gaps in our provision to meet future demands.

Multimedia Management Service (Elevate Team): 2015

The Elevate Team allow staff to upload videos to the Elevate Team YouTube channel, for use in teaching, learning and assessment. On occasions the Elevate Team will be involved in the capture and edit of the videos, or we'll simple enable the distribution. This service has been growing over time, and provides an alternative to course teams needing to support their own approach.

The following outlines the use of this service in 2015.

Total number of videos uploaded: 443

• Student Presentations: 242 (55%)
• Student Viva's: 3 (1%)
• Student Role Plays: 94 (21%)
• Recordings of online events (Hangouts): 5 (1%)
• Screencasts (talk over powerpoints & how to videos): 23 (5%)
• Staff focussed Learning Objects: 47 (11%)
• Marketing (external audience): 12 (3%)
• Other: 17 (3%)

The Elevate Team are starting a review of how people are using Multimedia in their teaching and learning models to ensure the service we provide is fit for staff needs. For more information, see;

• http://ucselevate.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/how-is-multimedia-video-being-used-in.html

With thanks - Image - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Nuvola_apps_multimedia.svg

Creating a Grading/Feedback Column for Offline Assessments

If you are wanting to use LearnUCS to give students grades and/or feedback for assessments taken offline, such as exams you will need to create a new Grade Centre column.

The video below shows how to create a new column that is not associated with an online submission process.

Student Stories - Social Media

Learning Services regularly run workshops to both students and staff on how to effectively use Social Media to help engage their learning at University Campus Suffolk. We include sessions in the student inductions and the early adopters Get Ahead sessions.

We thought it would be nice to gather a couple of success stories of how students have been using social media to showcase it's effective use while we run our workshops and sessions.

Pam Ramsden and Geraldine Barker gave up their time to talk to us about their experiences, you can listen to our discussion below.




The examples both Pam and Geraldine gave, highlight two very different ways of using Social Media and these stories will hopefully help reinforce our message that the effective use of social media for learning can help gather resources and connect with peers and professionals based around your discipline.

If you would like to know more, keep an eye on Learning Services publications as we run social media workshops where get to run a more hands on approach to the subject.

Learning Services Workshops - http://ucslssessions.blogspot.co.uk/p/workshops.html

Alternatively if you are a member of staff at UCS who wishes to use Social Media with your cohort, please don't hesitate to contact the Elevate Team in Learning Services.

Using multimedia in T&L: the low tech option was the real winner

We have just run a workshop session for staff in Health on using multimedia in teaching, learning and assessment. The session seemed to be well received. Something which struck David and I was the enthusiasm around using the flip cam to generate the materials.

The context was we'd shown them the Katie Gimbar's Flipped Classroom FAQ: How do you make your videos and why? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icn8kMoH28Y&feature=youtu.be).

A couple of interesting educational approaches where mocked up:

1. students generating the materials, uploading to the course YouTube area, and integrate within a blog comment / discussion within the VLE. This is designed around collaborative learning, and personal reflection.
2. a simple means of creating and annotating talk over slides, or generic feedback. This could be as simple as attaching the flip camera to a tripod, arranging so it will capture the printed slides / pages, to allow a round table discussion. This could be used as either a pre-session (lecturer creates it) or post-session (students creates a summary of the session) activity. The video is quickly uploaded to YouTube, some basic editing and then embedded within the VLE.

The use of the flip cam resonate with staff around the quality of the video / audio and how low tech it was in terms of capture, editing and distribution.

Something which came out of the discussion was the realization where are aiming for good enough quality, it is authentic for the students (it is their lecturer, or peers), and maximise the audio (external mic plug into to flip camera). Also, perhaps we should be running a short YouTube editing masterclass.

If you'd like to discuss these ideas further or how you might bring them into your teaching and learning, please email the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk)

LearnUCS and Mobile Access

UCS has recently renewed its license with Blackboard, the virtual learning environment software supplier.

The license has been renewed until 2018, allowing UCS to continue to develop and enhanced its use of the market leading software solution.

One change in our license is that the Blackboard Mobile Services functionality has been included in the core product for the first time.  This means UCS staff and students can now take advantage of the mobile app, available for both smartphones and tablets completely free of charge.

One scenario that we are looking at taking advantage of the mobile functionality is for class-based work.  Students can create photos and/or videos during class time and they now have the ability of quickly and easily pushing that content into a discussion board or blog within the VLE.  This allows that content to be shared and seem immediately by all those on the course/module.

Below is a Blackboard video demonstration of the application.

If you would like to discuss how you could use the mobile application please get in touch with elevate@ucs.ac.uk

LearnUCS Stats: February 2015

Application Insight

Below is the continuation of the publishing of monthly statistics for LearnUCS. These stats cover the period from February 6th 2015 to March 5th 2015.

Comparing these numbers to last month we have had a very small dip, this, we believe is due to these stats being the month after the start of a new semester, with the initial flurry of both staff and students accessing the newly released modules.

Total Page Views	1,342,625
Average Page Views Per Day	Non course - 31,452 Course - 15,362
Most Active Date	Non Course - 45,988- 10 February 2015 Course - 24,451 - 10 February 2015

Application Metrics

Total Monthly Logins	36,275
Total Number of Courses	9748
Total Number of Active Courses	2017

LearnUCS Mobile Statistics for 6 December 2014 to 5th January 2015

Total unique logins for the period was 466 with 3,144 logins.  This shows another significant rise in the use of the mobile app.  This may be to do with our new Blackboard License that includes the mobile app as a free download for users.

iOS is still the most popular operating system for those devices.

It will be interesting to compare these with the next set of statistics to see if there is continued growth.

Open Education Resources Week:

Open Education Week 2015 (http://www.openeducationweek.org/) starts today. There are a number of free events to develop awareness around the opportunities of open education (http://www.openeducationweek.org/event/). The ALT Open Education Special Interest Group is arranging two free webinars.

Tuesday 10 March at 13.00: A Preview of OER15: Mainstreaming Open Education

This session will provide a preview of the OER15 Conference, due to take place in Cardiff on 14-15 April 2015. Two members of the planning committee will offer their personal perspectives on the key issues being raised in this year's conference. Further details and access instructions at: https://www.alt.ac.uk/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=152.

Thursday 12 March at 13.00: Living and learning in the open: Supporting and developing open courses

In this session we talk to Martin Hawksey, Chief Innovation, Community and Technology Officer at the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), about the development of the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning (ocTEL). As part of this we explore how ALT Members supported the design, development and running of the course as well as the technical challenges of facilitating a distributed learning experience and in particularly helping learners make connections to knowledge and people in an open learning space. Further details and access instructions at: https://www.alt.ac.uk/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=143.

If you'd like to discuss how you could use open educational resources in your teaching and learning at UCS, please contact the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk).

How is multimedia (video) being used in teaching and learning at UCS? Will the current approach for managing multimedia meet future needs?

The following post outlines a small scale research (thought leadership) piece of work the Elevate Team will be undertaking in over the next few months. If you have any questions, or would like to contribute your story, please contact elevate@ucs.ac.uk.

What we are doing?

The broad aims of this research project are to undertake a preliminary exploration into how multimedia (video) is currently being used at UCS within teaching, learning and assessment, and draw out some likely future requirements from lecturers. This research project is to act as a landscape study, to identify where we are now, where might we might need to be in the future with respect to multimedia.

The study will review the current Elevate Team model for multimedia creation, storage, distribution and archive of multimedia, with the aim of suggesting future enhancements within the service. This will include exploring alternative service provisions.

The output of each phase will be a short report made available through the Elevate Team Blog, and the final report (combination of all outputs and recommendations) will be reported back to the UCS’s LTAG and IT Services Strategy Group for information.

What is the timeframe?
The proposed timeframe is March-June 2015, with three key phases;

1. Review of the Elevate Team Multimedia Support Model: March 2015
2. User Stories (Lecturer’s Tales): April 2015
3. Alternative Institutional Support Models: June 2015

Methodology: Lecturer Stories
Undertake a number (target 20) 1-2-1 semi structured interviews. These aim to answer two question.
Answer two questions:

1. How are your currently using multimedia (video) in your teaching, learning and assessment?
2. How would you like to use multimedia (video) in the future?

With thanks - Image - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Nuvola_apps_multimedia.svg

Publishing Open Badges to Mozilla Backpack

We have had problems with publishing Open Badges to the Mozilla Backpack directly from LearnUCS (Blackboard), as have all other institutions.

Blackboard have been looking into the problem and have now applied a fix to our database, meaning we can now automate the awarding of an achievement and publishing the Open Badge to Mozilla Backpack.

We have one area already waiting to use this feature, if you would like to offer these skills based awards please speak with a member of the Elevate team, elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Augmented Reality Project at Holywells Park

Aaron has been blogging about our collaborations on the Holywells Park Heritage Lottery Project, with Ipswich Borough Council.

I thought it would be good to outline the project.

The Elevate Team’s role is not to simply create the resources but ensure they are scaleable, re-usable (easy to adapt) and effective as learning activities. We’ll provide training, advice and act as test users for the tasks.

The intention is to complete three pieces of work:

1. Quick survey of the mobile connectivity around the park
2. Creation of three trails (two using Aursama, and one using Layar)
3. Follow up support package for the Holywell Park team on the augmented learning activities

For more information, please contact the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk).