As such, and rather than doing a detailed run though of all the sessions I attended over the course of the day (as I’d do normally), I’ve instead decided to think of the day more and five Take Home Messages (THM) related to:

1. How I might enhance my own practice going forward, with particular reference to supporting academics in supporting the student learning experience.
2. How I might work to enhance of the practice of those academics, and users of our Panopto lecture capture platform at the University of Bath.

Any text in italics below are my thoughts on the thoughts put forward by the speakers.

THM #1 – Kris Roger, London School of Economics

There is a feeling that lecture capture is beginning to form an expected part of the student learning experience. To counter this however, there is a worry that students are becoming over reliant on recordings, with a feeling from lecturers that they are spoon feeding content to learners. How might we mitigate against this? Can or should lecturers be persuaded only to release selected portions of their lecture rather than all of it?

Research also shows that some lecturers feel under pressure to record. Is this departmental or institutional pressure? What are the implications if a member of staff refuses to be recorded?

THM #2 – Neil Berry, University of Liverpool

Lecture capture should not mean lecture replacement. The idea should be provide the recording a supplementary resource to the “traditional lecture” to aid learning. Any students missing the face-to-face session will miss out on the opportunity for interaction and feedback.

Students learn in different ways, and the use of technologies such as these, are likely to lead to maximising the potential of student engagement. Students who have revisited a portion of the lecture are doing so for the following reasons: “found challenging”, “lecturer going to quickly” and “further annotate notes”.

THM #3 – Juliet Hinrichsen and Amanda Hardy, University of Coventry

“People approach lecture capture support based on their own interests”. The JISC funded ELTAC project, based at the University of Coventry, has developed and made available a number of interesting and innovative resources to support lecture capture. These can be found at http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/lecturecapture/ and could be used to good effect for any related staff development related activities that I lead on.

THM #4 – Clive Young, UCL and John Conway, Imperial College London

Everyone needs to understand the pedagogical side of lecture capture. This helps to justify the existence of the service to relevant stakeholders.

That includes managers and support staff, Teachers, Students as well as Learning Technologist. At the University of Bath, our 5 Reasons to Capture Your Lecture document has, without a doubt, captured the imagination. Further work developing this strand over the course of the next academic year. 

THM #5 – Graham McElearney, University of Sheffield

Copyright and IPR related issues in the lecture capture sphere are confusing. There simply isn’t a one statement covers all recordings-type sentence. There seem to be caveats, caveats and more caveats related to this.

The JISC Legal Recording Lectures: Legal Considerations document goes some way to addressing the common issues, but isn’t aimed at end users. Perhaps, something needs to be worked on here. A short one page document aimed at practitioners?!

Thanks to all those involved with organising and hosting the event!

The process of developing clear and consise instructions for end users took me back to some thoughts I drafted some time ago related to good practice for writing FAQs. This advice follows below.

Background

An FAQ is essentially a Frequently Asked Question.”FAQs are organized “collections” of valuable information that usually comes from questions (and their corresponding answers) for the most common issues raised by users, on various topics.” [1]

Since mid-2008, the e-Learning team at the University of Bath has successfully utilised the open source application phpMyFAQ to power its Moodle FAQ database. With tens of thousands of FAQs views so far, it has proved to be a useful resource, not only for staff and students but for the wider Moodle community.

In light of this success, the e-Learning team are launching a new FAQ database focused on a range of complementing learning technologies during early 2010.

Tips for writing FAQs

• Write from the point of view of the person reading the FAQ. What do they need to know to complete a given task, and why?
• Less is more: don’t use twenty words, when five will do. Be concise in your explanations.
• If your text explanation is lengthy, break it up into paragraphs. Use section headings if they make the content easier to break down.
• Bulleted or numbered lists always make instructions easier to follow. If appropriate, divide these lists up into small lists as illustrated at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/hvx2. Within lists, you may wish to embolded key terms (e.g. the text of buttons or links)
• If possible, avoid using screenshots as these often have to be updated when the application software is upgraded. Instead, use directions instructions – for example, “click on the Turn Editing On button near to the top right hand corner of the page”.

More information

Further details on writing a good FAQ can be found at: http://www.avangate.com/articles/writing-faq_89.htm

We’re currently supporting a variant of Moodle 1.9, though any decisions made would need to also consider Moodle 2.0 (or 2.1, 2.2…) which we’ll most likely be moving to in summer 2012.

Our Moodle-Turnitin integration was first mooted for investigation within the Moodle Development Plan 2010 that I developed in January of that year, but due to to technical difficulties at the time, we temporarily abandoned the idea.

One year on, online submission of work using the Moodle Assignment activity continues to rise. Additionally, and in light of a review tothe QA Statement for Examination and Assessment Offences, it was timely to review the integration, with a view to having something in place by the beginning of the 2011/12 academic year.

I’m currently in the throws of testing our chosen integration, but whilst waiting for things to happen in the background, I thought that I would take a few moments to reflect on our evaluation process and the decisions taken.

After some initial investigation, it was clear that two competing integrations, both with the respective pros and cons, would need to be considered before a decision was made as to which one to go for.

First up was the Catalyst integration aka ”Dan Marsden’s code”. Further information on this particular integration can be found at: http://drgn.in/k5fYrQ

This integration has the key advantage of being integrated with the existing Moodle Assignment activity in Moodle 1.9.  Importantly, this integration works  with Moodle 2.0 core code and takes advantage of the new Plagiarism API.

Whilst this integration does not currently include an interface for GradeMark, Turnitin’s e-feedback software, hooks into this functionality are planned for the Moodle 2.0 version.

If enabled (see options below), any supported file (the two popular file types, .doc and .pdf, are supported) submitted to the Assignment activity is automatically submitted to Turnitin whenever a side-wide cron job is called or is run.

The Turnitin related options within the Assignment activity.

The similarity score is returned when the cron job runs again, but this can be delayed depending on how busy the Turnitin server is. The similarity score and report can then be made available to the student, who can then review their performance but clicking on the relevant Similarity link.

Teachers can access the Turnitin originality report by clicking on the 'Similiarity' link, as illustrated above. The student view is similar.

One of the real advantage of this integration type was that it existing within a Moodle activity that academics at the University of Bath  are already very familiar with. Deployment would not require a massive support overhead, with a few FAQs and possibly a How To Guide being written to guide colleagues through the process of creation of a Turnitin enabled assignment activity. (Of course, the wider issue about how to get staff and students to interpret similarity scores in an appropriate way needs to be addressed elsewhere.)

The other integration that we considered was the iParadigms / Moodle Direct Integration aka “the one by nLearning Ltd.” (official Turnitin integration). According to the Turnitin website, this integration “allows access to Turnitin OriginalityCheck and GradeMark (not PeerMark) without having to leave the Moodle environment or log into Turnitin directly”. Further information can be found at: http://drgn.in/k63qKR.

The main difference between this integration, and the one discussed above, is that this is a new and distinct Moodle Assignment type with a different submission handling process to the usual Moodle Assignment activity one.

It is clear that the workflows employed by the iParadigms integration is markedly different from other Moodle activities – one of the hallmarks of some third party integrations, unfortunately. It was clear that this approach would require far more support than the Catalyst integration discussed above.

Given these two options, it was important that we conducted a side-by-side comparison of the two integration – available on request. The key emergent themes were as follows:

• The Catalyst integration was considered to be more usable and ‘Moodle like’ in this embryonic stage of Turnitin uptake. It would provide a low level entry point and would in turn encourage uptake.
• As such, the inability to integrate with GradeMark at this stage would not be a “deal breaker” as internal assessment processes would need to be amended to reflect this alternative method of marking.
• It was felt that use of the iParadigms integration type and its associated new/complicated workflow processes, might in fact inhibit uptake of Moodle to support online submission of work.

(Reference: Moodle/Turnitin Integration report by Lisa McIver, Moodle Operations Manager)

Whilst the Catalyst integration fast became the preferred option of the e-Learning team, we were keen to get some feedback from our academic colleagues in departments. Whilst some new items came to light during this meeting, their thoughts broadly supported our own internal evaluation.

So, that just about tells the story of where we are now! Should you have any thoughts or questions, do get in touch through the contact details provided elsewhere. Onward with testing…

Some time ago, I was interviewed for the article Kids’ Stuff, where the author focuses the conversation around the use of classroom technologies – including Electronic Voting Systems (EVS) and Lecture Capture – as a means of promoting interactivity within learning and teaching.

This item appears on pages 4-6 of the pull out, and the electronic version can be found at: http://europe.nxtbook.com/nxteu/tsl/THE_ITinHE/index.php#/26.

Happy reading!

In particular, Stephen looked at a range of learning spaces that exist in schools, colleges, Higher Education (HE) and elsewhere, and sought to help the audience visualise what they might look like in the future.

In a world of new, social and digital media, I was struck by one Stephen’s closing items, which focused What is the equivalent to a 1,500 word assignment? The suggested he put forward were:

• Managing an on-line discussion for a week
• Editing a 10 second video
• Scripting and posting a 3 minute podcast
• Authoring an animated diagram in Flash
• Annotating 10 website links
• 750 words with 1 Augmented Reality object embedded
• 500 words on a web page with SMS comments

Further to this, the question that I feel that (I) need (to) answer(ing) are: How can we encourage academic to take this approach? How might this work with university QA statements, in particular, current methods and modes of assessment (and feedback), and marking criteria? How can be ensure that a unit/programme’s learning outcomes are met with the assessment form isn’t traditional? Might any academic really want to take this approach?

Sharon Flynn (@sharonflynn) from NUI Galway presented on Clickers for Large Class Teaching which gave an overview of the approach that her institution have taken to the deployment of an Electronic Voting System (EVS) across particular department. Given my own interest, and work, in this area, I was keen to see how they’d been doing. One area that I still feel that we’re lacking in at the University of Bath is clear evaluation data from the use of Classroom Technologies as a whole, which might be used to support decisions made/taken in future. I think that I’ll be contact Sharon about the questions that she used!

My short paper, Looking Forwards Whilst Glancing Backwards: Institutional Deployment of Classroom Technologies, was well received by the audience and provoked a good discussion in the Q&A part revolving around particular deployment techniques and what might be expected of institutions and students technology-wise in five years time.

Whilst the presentation slides appear above, the full paper describing the work completed, is available from our institutional Publications Repository.

Following this, I managed to catch the end of Sarah Knight (@sarahknight) from JISC’s session on a Future focused curriculum which showcased their work on the JISC The Design Studio. Unfortunately, I didn’t managed to make too many notes from this session, so will have to investigate and reflect on this at a later date.

My final session attended was Mark Power (@markpower) and James Clay’s (@jamesclay) session Mobile Web Applications. The session highlighted for me the difference between a mobile app, and a mobile web app – and which might be most appropriate for an institution to deploy (if they were going down this route). Indeed, is the Apple App Store, or the Android Store, appropriate for delivering institution-specific apps?

Two HEIs have already embarked on the mobile web interfaces - MyMobileBristol (University of Bristol) and Mobile Oxford (University of Oxford) – utilising different frameworks. I know that within my own institution, a number of stakeholders groups are interested in the development and deployment of such an app, but nothing has as yet seen the light of day.

As I left Plymouth and headed back further up the south west, I reflected on another successful (alas, shortened for me) Plymouth e-Learning Conference, where future gazing and horizon scanning were both out again in full force. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and look forward to returning next years. My sincere thanks to conference chair Steve Wheeler and rest of his conference team, for such a fantastic and enjoyable conference.

The Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth

With this being the third such conference I’d attended in successive years, I attended to the conference looking forward to catching up with familiar faces and meeting new colleagues.

The conference kicked off with some glorious sunshine on Wednesday afternoon with a Robotics Research showcase from research students at the University of Plymouth, who talked at some length about their work in this fascinating area.

In particular, the discussion around the development of emotional intelligence within such robots was of interest and gave an insight into some of the technologies we might see in the future.

My highlights from this session were undoubtedly seeing a robot attempting to take part a penalty shootout (England football players take note!)  and kids from local schools getting involved. As Steve Wheeler has already noted, these kids really added a fresh energy to conference proceedings this year.

Andy Black’s (@andyjb) Gadgets & Gizmos for Education presentation gave a fantastic insight into the technology journey travelled over the last decade or so, and where we might be headed. To think that Google is only 12 years old, when it is currently seemlessly embedded in a range of my working practises (Google search, Gmail, Docs, Chat, Reader – not to mention Google-owned YouTube) was a bit of a reality check. It is also emphasised that the students now coming into Higher Education (HE) are very much digital natives, from whom such tools have always been around.

Andy demonstrated a Chinese iPhone imitation, which included projection capabilities within the case, sparked some murmuring from within the audience. Indeed with Apple having patented such technologies as early as mid-2009, I’d be interested to see if Andy’s prediction of the iPhone 7 or 8 (released 2013/14) having such technologies embedded, becomes a reality. Does this mean that HEIs might be able to do away with projectors in some rooms and just equip lecturers with a iPhone which has a version of Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer (or something) installed? To work alongside Apple TV, perhaps? Unlikely, but who knows?!

Next up, was Zak Mensah (@zakmensah) and Doug Belshaw’s (@dajbelshaw) thoroughly enjoyable session on Exploring Mobile: Considerations and opportunities, where audience participation was encouraged, and indeed sought. At some conferences sitting in silence through sessions is acceptable, but at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference, such interaction is almost expected!

During the session, delegates were asked: What do you use mobile devices for? To be honest I surprised myself when thinking about a what I used my BlackBerry Bold 9780 for. In short, my list was as follows:

Texting, Phone, Photos, Email (two Gmail accounts and my work email via the BlackBerry Internet Service), Mobile Web, Twitter, Evernote, Facebook, BlackBerry TravelCheck,  Tube/Train times, Google Maps, Calendar (syncing with Google Calendar), Contacts (syncing with Google Contacts), Task list (syncing with RememberTheMilk), Weather app, Scan QR Codes, setting alarms, listen to music and podcasts.

As my group buddy Craig Taylor (@CraigTaylor74) observed, “we’re creating and consuming content”. And lots of it!

Are students doing the same? (Possibly? Probably!) Are they wanting their academic related content delivered in a mobile form? I’m thinking about access to Moodle and Panopto in particular here. But, can we (and/or do we need to) go further perhaps?

The Horizon 2011 Report as already touted Augmented Reality as the next big thing, and with the University of Exeter having already completed an evaluative study into the technology, will those students paying fees in the region of £9,000 from the 2012/13 academic year be expecting more innovative technological developments from their universities?

Day #2 report to follow…

In particular, much of the work that I have been involved with in the last six months or so, have been concerned with operationalising Classroom Technologies as a whole, with an underlying emphasis of the pedagogical principles behind such a deployment.

[For those who are interested, I have both presented and written about the the operationalising side of my work within the last 3-4 months.]

And whilst I feel strongly that this part of my work continues to be important, and needs to be maintained, I am realistic enough to appreciate that being part of an educational development unit entails a responsibility to the academic community where pedagogical enhancement should be the centre of much of what I do.

Very simply, I’ve thought about how (and why) I support Panopto in particular, with a set of Inputs and (Pedagogically focused) Outputs from and to our staff development model.

Inputs

• Webinars – I am fairly new to the area of lecture capture, and have been keen to upskill in this area. A range of webinars, both specific to Panopto and not, have been appearing in a variety of places over the last few months. One such source has been the ViTAL Special Interest Group (SIG), which is focused on the use of video in education. Recent webinars have focused on the deployment of Panopto at Imperial College London, and another on “webinar visited some of the pedagogical questions raised by new(ish) technologies such as lecture capture”. My aim is to watch these webinars (usually a recording, unfortunately), jotting down some notes along the way. Questions can always be followed up with presenters either during the session, or afterwards.
• Distributors – I’ve always been keen to build good working relationships with the distributors of such technologies, both with the UK-based people, and sometimes, with those in the US too. Whilst their approach can sometimes be sales focused, their published case studies often provide invaluable pedagogically sound reasons for the deployment of such technologies. Such strands can subsequently be developed locally at institution level.
• Blogs & Tweets – This area really shouldn’t be underestimated. Much of the Lecture Capture-related work that I’ve been made aware of has been through a variety of RSS feeds, or through Twitter. Custom searches on Lecture Capture and Panopto, setup using Tweetdeck, have been incredibly useful in locating new, relevant and consistent sources of information.
• Papers & Journals - Lecture Capture has been around in several guises for a number of years, and some research in the area exists. Mostly it has been case studies, but occasionally, there’s a relevant paper that catches the eye.
• Special Interest Groups – As a Steering Group member of the ESTICT SIG has enabled me to connect with like minded individuals and teams around the UK HE sector. The ViTAL SIG, mentioned above, is also another source of interest. This aids the process of what is being discussed at other HEIs, both pedagogically and technically.

(Pedagogically focused) Outputs

• Classroom Technologies website – This is the central point of CT activity at the University of Bath.  The resource contains details on staff development,  service updates and session reports and case studies (often written by practitioners). It is the last item which is vitally important – academics are more likely to engage with the technology if they can identify with the benefits to their students.
• Staff Development – I facilitate a range of opportunities, which include a Using Technologies in Face to Face teaching workshop as well as our now renowned Masterclass seminars, which are co-trained with product distributors. Whilst it is easy to become diverted by the What? and the How? of such technologies, the Why? is always, always (said twice for reinforcement!) at the centre of what I promote. I often look to broader sector intitatives (assessment and feedback), the institutional Learning & Teaching Strategy (innovation) as well as the National Students Survey (timely feedback on learning) for inspiration, as well as drawing on local work (Bath-based research papers that have been presented at conferences).
• Presentations – I do my best to get involve and present information on Classroom Technologies at Departmental Meetings, or sessions for the programme for new lecturers. Often, the technology has to be the hook (it’s often rather shiny!) but emphasising how engaging in Lecture Capture can add value to the learning and teaching experience has to be discussed. Subsequent further meetings with those interested, often helps to draw out the valued added.
• Posters – Our Innovations Day 2011 with provide for a perfect opportunity to feed back current project progress colleagues, both those who have used Lecture Capture so far, and those who may wish to do so at the moment. This poster is likely to be based on a particular Semester 1 unit, where some quantitative and qualitative data, collected from students, is available to support any findings.
• Conferences & Papers – Inevitably, the buzzing conference scene is a useful place to disseminate any work undertaken at the University of Bath. My paper at the 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference is focused more on technological deployment, but once academics become more comfortable with the technology, I feel that it will be easier to explore (and collaborate with them to apply) pedagogical models related to Lecture Capture. The flipped lecture is one that I’m especially keen to explore, for example.

Undoubtedly, this approach will continue to evolve as the months and years roll on. If your approach is similar, or different, why not leave a comment on this blog or drop me a line via email.

The relevant video clip is now on YouTube, though only in Arabic currently – though people who don’t understand the language should be able to get a sense of what is being discussed.

I understand that an English language version will follow in due course, which I’m sure that I’ll post to this blog too. Happy viewing!

I contributed to the question and answer session towards the end of sessions usually, but yesterday, the arrangement was formalised a little further where I was given a 2-3 minute slot to give students some tips on how best to complete their portfolios.

I drew on the experiences of working to complete my own CMALT portfolio, which I hope to submit in late-April 2011.

1. Read through and understand the Bath Award guidance documentation including the Competency Skills Framework

Understanding the assessment criteria that the assessors are going to use to mark the portfolio is absolutely key. Read it, understand it… and if you don’t understand any aspect, ask for clarification from administrators or the assessors.

2. Plan how you’re approach writing the portfolio, including what evidence you’re likely to cite

I remember spending a good 3-4 hours noting down what I might write for each section within the CMALT Portfolio Submission Form. It’s easy to forget what one might’ve done and achieved over the time period that you’re likely to reflect upon for your portfolio. Working out what you’re going to write in each section also helps when you’re trying to build a story, or if you’re keen to avoid repeating yourself, and drawing on particular evidence too many times.

3. Set aside some time each week to work on the text

I’m doing my best to do this myself. Friday’s at 8.30am for a focused two hours seems to work for me. It seems to give me enough time to get into the writing zone and produce sometime of note – usually with The Chris Moyles Show as a soundtrack. A shorter time slot wouldn’t allow me to have the space to reflect on my practise, whilst I think that I’d tend to get side-tracked (responding to emails and the like) for anything longer. A defined end date also helps to focus efforts and the mind.

4. Prepare a draft and ask for feedback

This part is absolutely key. Both in the case of The Bath Award and CMALT, students are allowed two submissions, before the portfolio gets rejected outright. Usually, and if the first submission doesn’t meet the criteria, a second submission is allowed following feedback from the first. Why not approach The Bath Award assessors, or colleagues who have completed the CMALT already, to get additional feedback?

5. Submit!

Possibly the most difficult bit. If you’ve got all (or most of) the evidence to support your portfolio, and have already started writing the portfolio, it’d almost be crazy not to submit. The key is not to lose sight of the goal, when the finishing line might only be a couple of sprints away.

Now all that remains is for me to follow my own advice!

Recently, I remember being struck by something Derek said in an interview with Inside Voice on this topic, namely,

“I think that for students too, it [agile teaching] can be a little intimidating. Their role is no longer to turn up to class, take notes and figure it out later. They’re being asked to put their thinking caps on, talk to the their neighbour. And so some students are resistant to this too, as it’s not the educational model that they’re used to.”

Derek goes on to cite the example of the American public watching, and engaging with, the television series, Lost. It wasn’t enough just to watch the show on television – people looked towards Facebook, Twitter and that sense of being part of a community, which added to the enjoyment of the show. This example of the Participatory Culture is one that could be transposed to a learning and teaching content, in particular where lecturers are using EVS as one of the mechanisms in which to engage their students.

In this EVS-backed lecturers, students are guiding lecture content by becoming actively involved in their learning – in conversation with not only their lecturer, but the students around them. They might be masters of their own destiny more than they believe – which the lines of the programme/unit description, of course! Mazur’s Peer Instruction Model lends itself to this approach because it encourages students to talk with their peers during a voting exercise. The process “involves students in their own learning during lecture and focuses their attention on underlying concepts” [further information].

I ran a TurningPoint 2008 Masterclass at the University of Bath last week, and along with a TurningPoint UK Account Manager, we ran participants though a range of things related to effective use of EVS, along with the nuts and bolts of the software. When revisiting the workshop in preparation for its next delivery though, I wonder if more needs to be made of the pedagogical models that can underpin the use of EVS.

(I might be being overly self critical here, but…) Currently, the pedagogical aspect could be perceived to be too much like an uncomfortable bolt on, where I guess, it needs to be more of a stripe through the toothpaste. This could then be applied through the Classroom Technologies initiative when looking though the “Why?” of how we might push the boundaries of the technologies within this scope. I’ve had a few thoughts on this area this morning, which I think, might make the basis of a good conference presentation sometime in the future.

Anyhow, if you’d like to find out more, Derek recently presented at Georgetown University titled Connecting with Participatory Culture, with his slides being available on Prezi.