Talking about TurningPoint

[This blog post first appeared on the Audience Response Systems pilot project website]

A few weeks ago, I got talking to a colleague at another university who, like me, supports the use of Audience Response Systems (ARS) at their institution. As the conversation developed, we both agreed that we often feel like sales people, going out to academics and try to encourage them to consider using the ARS to support their teaching. But what are our key phrases or buzzwords?

When talking to and training colleagues on how to use the ARS, I often begin by stressing its potential for use as a mechanism for giving effective and immediate feedback to students. Additionally, I point to the system as an anonymous and formative feedback mechanism as well as a means of promoting deep learning by students within a face to face context. Teaching related to such elements has already been completed and presented at conferences by fellow colleagues at the University of Bath as referenced in an earlier blog post.

On a (non work related!) visit to The Great Wall of China a few weeks ago, I thought about this sales person analogy and put my thinking cap on. With the new academic year soon to be upon us, I consider how could I do something a bit different to promote the ARS, using it as a hook to get colleagues engaged in the system for either the first time or once again. So, for those new to the technology or existing users who’d like to find out more on why you might use an ARS to support your learning and teaching related activities, do take a look at the video below.

The ARS at the University of Bath now totals 400 clickers, which are available in bags of 40 or 80 handsets, accompanied by 1 USB RF receiver per bag. If you’d like further information about the ARS, or would like to use it to support your learning and teaching related activities, please contact me, Nitin Parmar, Classroom Technologies Lead, at: e-learning@bath.ac.uk.

Acknowledgements – Many thanks to Michelle O’Donnell from my travel group for directing the video, and to Carly Seymour for the “Making of…” photo.

QR Codes

There seems to be a bit of a buzz building up around QR ["Quick Response"] codes at the University of Bath, so Ithought that I’d make a posting highlighting of the areas of it that I find interesting.

Simply put, a QR Code is an extension of a barcode that you might see on a variety of products available in any shop. QR Codes, a matrix code or 2D bar code, have been made popular in Japan were they are used in a number of different contexts. It is possible to embed a website adddress, a mobile phone number or just plain text in a QR Code.

The QR Code on the left is an example of one, and will take you to my profile page on the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office website. The code itself was generated by a QR code Generator, an example of which is provided by Kaywa. As with any such code, you need access to a QR Code reader, such as the one (once again) provided by Kaywa. More commonly however, QR Code readers can be installed on a variety of mobile phones where the software utlises the camera on a particular phone. For example, I’ve got QuickMark installed on my Nokia E65 mobile phone, which is based on a Symbian 60 OS. However, readers are also available for other mobile phone platforms suchas Windows Mobile 6.

QR Code were intially used for “tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing” [Wikipedia.org], but are now entering the mainstream. For example, a QR could be put on a t-shirt as a marketing tool. Or on a business card to encourage people to visit a particular website – I’m thinking that I should have done this when I got my last batch printed! QR Codes have begun to penetrate the UK retail market too as one blogger has already observed. Ralph Lauren have also jumped on the bandwagon. It is creating a link between the real and virtual worlds.

The Marketing applications of QR Codes are obviously. But what are some of the learning and teaching applications?

• The e-Learning team have begun to develop in-house, a QR Code generator which automatically appeands a QR Code to the bottom of any Moodle course page that is printed out. This in turn links back to the URL of the page that was printed out. I’ve recently installed the Opera Mobile browser on my phone, and it renders normal websites perfectly. A QR Code could allow students to access Moodle courses very quickly and easily on their handheld device.
• For e-Learning seminars and workshops, the team have been encouraged to put QR codes on PowerPoint slides used for presentations. This could then be extended to lecturers putting QR Codes in the slides that they use for teaching.

Admittedly, QR codes can look like a really badly pixelised image. As such, the first step will be about raising awareness is to what they are.

Update [1]: Roger Smolski has just alerted me to a QR Code-related online magazine, 2d code. Head there for up-to-date news and analysis.

Update [2]: A variety of uses of QR Codes in different contexts have been showcased on Flickr by mobiusmobile.

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Supporting e-Learning applications and tools

During a meeting yesterday, it struck me how many internal and external e-Learning related or Web 2.0 applications I seem to get asked about. As a result of this, I thought it might be good idea to get down a list of tools that I could refer to in future meetings. I’m pretty sure that all of the following have free signups.

e-Learning Tools at the University of Bath

• Moodle – Our institutional Virtual Learning Environment. We’re currently running version 1.9+.
• Confluence – A tool that allows for the fast, easy creation of wiki pages which can be used for collaborative activities.
• Learning Material Filestore (LMF) – An online file storage and sharing facility available to all students and staff at the University of Bath. Whilst strictly speaking this is the responsibility of the Web Services team, we often point colleagues towards this, and might offer some help and advice.

Web 2.0

• Social networking websites, mostly Facebook and LinkedIn in relation to how it might be used to support learning and teaching related activities.
• Social bookmarking websites. I usually point colleagues towards my personal favourite del.icio.us, though Diigo seems to be increasing in popularity.
• Blogging tools such as WordPress. In addition, newer “micro-blogging” websites such as Twitter.
• A place to find images to use in lecturers or presentations. Flickr and Google Images are two examples, though I often stress the copyright implications of using such resources.
• Applications for subscribing to RSS feeds are usually of interest. I use Google Reader, though I’m aware of a variety of others. I point colleagues to the BBC website for a good definition of what RSS feeds are and how to get started.
• For subscribing to podcasts, which could well be hosted in the LMF, I’d recommend iTunes. An alternative is Juice.
• For podcast creation, as well as other general audio-editing, Audacity comes recommended.
• For videos, YouTube seems like the obvious choice. The less popular Google Video is alternative for hosting content.
• There’s also Google Docs, which is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users.
• In addition, we offer recommend SlideShare, which in the spirit of YouTube [see above], allows users to upload their PowerPoint presentations for viewing and sharing. Presentations can be tagged and permissions set so that downloading of presentations can be allowed/disallowed.

Other

• The University of Bath has a site licence to Bristol Online Surveys, which is a service that allows staff to develop, deploy and analyse surveys via the web. For a non-University hosted solution (which students can also use to create surveys), SurveyMonkey is often a good alternative.
• We have implemented phpMyFAQ to power the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) database for our Moodle installation.

Phew! I think that’s all. If there’s anything else I’ve missed, please do let me know.

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19 June 2008 – The e-Learning team have recently acquired in 25 audience response systems from TurningPoint. The specific model that we own is ResponseCard RF. Please do get in touch if you’d like to find out more.

What’s in a name?

Every blog has a first post, so here’s mine! I’m Nitin Parmar, a Learning Technologist within the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office at the University of Bath. You can find about a bit more about me in the About section of this blog.

I’ve created this blog for a number of reasons. First, the name, colligo. What’s it mean? It’s Latin. The definition is as follows:

colligo : legi, lectum, to collect, gather together, assemble

In a word, colligo sums up what I hope to use this blog for. The intention is to get more of my stuff “out there”. By this, I mean things that I’m doing at work, some reflections, thoughts and the like. I’m hoping to develop a research interest in effective online collaboration and will use this blog to highlight things I’ve come across, such as good practice, relevant reading and useful website. I’m already a regular user of Facebook but I tend to this that as a more social activity — this blog is definitely work related, rather than anything personal.So there we go. That wasn’t so hard was it? I’m hoping to update this blog fairly regularly, usually during my two-hour slot for personal development time.