Earlier on this month, I attended the first ALT LERSIG Event at the University of Bradford. This one day workshop was organised to enable a variety of participants to share experiences on effective methods, processes and procedures for evaluating whether their current institutional learning environments are fit for purpose.  With around 50 people attending on the day, and a similar number participating remotely via Elluminate, I found the day incredibly useful even though my own institution, the University of Bath, evaluated their VLE provision in 2005 and subsequently moved to Moodle from Blackboard.

The key areas of interest that I took away from the workshop were as follows:

• A number of other HE institutions (City University London, the LSE and UCL) are currently, or will soon be, running Moodle as their institutional VLE (or SLE, in the case of City). Like the University of Bath, these institutions have already come across some of the key issues occupying our thoughts at the moment, e.g. service performance (e.g. server architecture, load balancing), database technologies (MySQL vs. Oracle) and the issues arising from Moodle’s ever expanding log tables. These conversations have moved on since, and working relationships between the institutions are developing with a view to sharing good practice.
• Some of the speakers talked about their institutions having a vision for their VLE provision. Our recently published e-Learning Operational Plan might cover this as an overarching statement for e-Learning, but what about Moodle specifically? Are there benefits of having a vision?
• Dr. Susannah Quinsee from City University London and Steve Ryan from the LSE spoke about their managed process about moving from one VLE to another, and the challenges arising from migrating content. Whilst we don’t have a migration of this type to contend with currently (the move from Moodle 1.9+ to version 2.0 in summer 2011 will be an upgrade), they both promoted and illustrated the benefits of having a good, solid project plan. In the case of the LSE, they even hired external consultants to support part of the process.
• The value of staff and student focus groups (or similar) cannot be understated. At the University of Bath, we’re already seeing the benefits of putting together a Moodle Advisory Group, which consists of a number of the campus community.

Overall, the day proved to be an excellent fact finding and networking opportunity. My only hope is that the next LERSIG event isn’t so far North!

Please note that you will need to be a member of the ESTICT Ning Community to be able to access the following links.

Talking Heads
A collection talking heads from the ESTICT community discussing how they found the talks from the first ESTICT event at the University of Leicester on Thursday 26 November 2009. Watch the video at: http://estict.ning.com/video/talking-heads-from-estict-09

Workshop Feedback
Following the afternoon group workshop session, three steering group members presented summaries on some of their groups’ main findings which were focussed on an Exploration of the pedagogical models which can be used for EVS. Watch the video at: http://estict.ning.com/video/estict-09-workshop-feedback. I commented on this part of the day during an earlier blog post.

Many thanks to my fellow steering member, Dr Sian Cox from City University London for producing the videos using her incredibly good Flip camera.

Yesterday, I attended the first event of the recently formed Special Interest Group (SIG), Engaging Students Through In-Class Technology (ESTICT) at the University of Leicester.  The aim of the event was to share best practice in the use of in-class technology, with a particular focus on the pedagogic uses of Electronic Voting Systems (EVS).

At the University of Bath, we have been running our institutional pilot of Audience Response Systems (ARS) [project website] since the beginning of the 2008/2009, so this event provided a fantastic opportunity to meet with other colleagues from HE and FE institutions from around the UK to get their thoughts on EVS/ARS, the functionality of the software and hardware, the pedagogy that should drive its use… and everything else.

An active pre-event discussion of EVS has taken place on the Ning community website earlier in the week, so I headed to Leicester rather excited about the event ahead. A lovely curry on the previous evening with Dr Steve Draper (from the University of Glasgow) and Dr Jo Badge (from the University of Leicester, and a fellow steering group member) at Shimla Pinks did little to stem my enthusiasm!

With the event aimed at those both those with experience of EVS who wish to share their best practice and those with an interest in the technology that would like to know more, the steering group was delighted that delegates ranges from Learning Technologist in e-Learning teams, to practitioners who used the technology within their teaching. Importantly, it gave a more rounded feel to some of the conversations that emerged over the course of the day.

The event was keynoted by Dr Steve Draper, a Senior University Teacher from the University of Glasgow and a long time user of such technologies, who spoke on Ways to improve learning with EVS: some deep procedures for teachers, and what software features matter for these [talk website]. With the focus on the learning design, and moving people away from simply ‘pushing buttons’, Steve challenged attendees by giving a brief tour of a variety of approaches that could be considered when writing EVS-type questions. In particular, he spoke about the nature of Assertion Reason questions (I have reviewed this approach elsewhere in this blog), Mazur’s approaches to peer instruction, learner authored questions, promoting enquiry based learning using EVS and the nature of contingent teaching. This made me think quite carefully about practice within my own institution where I have not yet, as the Project Lead, considered how colleagues may have developed their practice of using EVS since the project was launched. Indeed, have they at all? This is something I hope to explore in the coming month, in part through leading on the Enhancing feedback in the classroom using ARS online course that is due to run during semester 2.

Following a short break, Mark Goodwin, a Teaching Fellow within the GENIE CETL at the University of Leicester, spoke on Teaching bioethics using electronic voting technologies. This talk gave a more practitioner focus to proceedings, as Mark worked through his ideas about generating ethics-related debates through using EVS in his teaching. He was keen to stress a difference between student interaction and engagement in lecturers, and later in day, highlighting the (sometimes forgotten) difference between engagement and learning in lectures.

Mark Russell, a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire delivered a rather inspiring talk entitled Tracking student progress with EVS: Should we know our students?. During a slightly shortened presentation, Mark gave an insight into just some of the approaches and techniques that he employs within his own teaching to really engage with students, and those that we all might wish to consider. For example,

• Learner Centrered Environments (Bradsford – “How People Learn”)
• Developing independent and Social Learning (Mentkowski. LtL)
• Engaging students at their current level of understanding (Ramsden)
• Staff-student contact (7P’s Chickering & Gamson)
• Maximising students awareness of own misconceptions (Biggs)
• Self-regulation (REAP)

During a presentation of some of his reaching, I liked Mark’s idea, related to EVS question design, about framing questions differently, so that practitioners are testing the same concept from number of different angles and ‘ways in’, which in turn lead to the suggestion that this would identify an misconceptions that the students had. Related to this, he correlated students answers to questions so that if they voted X on question 1 (correct answer), followed by Y on question 2 (incorrect answer – logically they should have got this question correct as it followed from question 1), he wanted to know why.

After a delicious Thanksgiving carvery lunch, the delegates headed back to the main room and split into group for the workshop part of the day which focussed on an Exploration of the pedagogical models which can be used for EVS. Facilitated by two/three steering group members, each group explored the questions,

• What have you done with EVS that has worked well? Why did you do it? What happened as a result?
• What might be required to move from individual innovation to embedded practice?

After a slightly quiet start, the groups quick became animated with a number of conversations revolving with delegates agreeing that a clear focus for the use of EVS should be on the pedagogical model underpinning its use, rather than it being viewed as a magic bullet. A further key comment from my group was that responses and feedback to questions asked are absolutely key to the structure of a lecture – practitioners show that they care about the results generated, and be prepared to alter the session is the results so demand.

The event concluded by delegates discussing the future direction of the ESTICT community, and what form the next event might take. In particular, delegates were keen to see the EVS focus retained for the time being at least. It really does serve quite a niche… but one that we all wished to continue learning more about with a view to developing both individual and departmental practice.

The next event is planned for March/April 2010 and details about this will appear in due course. In the meantime, do head along to to the ESTICT Ning community website, and join in the conversation!

I had a meeting with a colleague at the University of Bath yesterday, where we spoke about a number of e-Learning and Web 2.0-type applications, including Moodle, the institutional VLE. However, he was keen to explore different institutionally supported tools and technologies which might enable him to do something different. Appearing below is a short list of the items that we discussed, along with accompanying links.

Panopto, the lecture capture software – Further information about the institutional installation can be found at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/fxl8

Bristol Online Surveys (BOS) – A user guide, including details on how to request an account can be found at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/cg31

The University of Bath currently has four Access Grid Nodes. A past news item can be found on the BUCS website. All information contained within it however, is still very relevant.

In addition, I pointed to two blog posts I’d written over the last year or so.

• Details on a wide range e-Learning/Web 2.0 tools that I use, promote and offer limited support for. (Note that this blog post is over a year ago, but still very relevant)
• My thoughts on the use of Audio Feedback to support both formative and summative feedback. I’ve alos considered that this process could be facilitated through using the Moodle Assignment activity.

Looking back, did I miss anything out?

There’s a rather nice screencast of the new Workshop activity (based around Harry Potter) at: http://mahara.org/view/view.php?id=3482. It is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in the peer assessment related activity, and shows off an exciting new development that’s on the way.

The original specification for Workshop 2.0 can be found on the Moodle Docs website, and goes into more depth about some of the new features that users can expect such as Groups support. It is expected that this redeveloped activity will be included in the core package of Moodle 2.0, which is due to be released to the community later in 2009.

As an aside, a couple years ago, I investigated the Moodle Workshop activity as a means for both self and peer-assessment. I authored a short guide which details a hypothetical scenario which highlights some of the key features of the Moodle Workshop activity and suggests ways in which it may enhance or complement existing assessment and feedback mechanisms. It appears below and can be downloaded from my SlideShare area.

Over the course of the last months, I have been fortunate enough to be have been given the opportunity to travel around the UK, attending various meetings and conferences. Given that we are soon to embark on the summer vacation period, I thought that this might be a good opportunity to summarise where I have been and pick out one highlight from each trip.

January
Learning Futures Festival 2009, Walkers Stadium, Leicester [blog post] –  The opening keynote was delivered by Professor Sugata Mitra from Newcastle University, who spoke on the title An Alternative Schooling: Self Organising Systems in Education. He spoke about self-organising systems, in particular, describing and reflecting on his involvement with the Hole in the Wall (HIWEL) research work.

February
EVAF4All: Electronic Voting Analysis and Feedback for All project, University of Edinburgh [blog post] – First meeting of those institutions involved in the project. Development of an innovative system which allows students to view their results after taking part in EVS related activities. Students will be directed back to relevant content through the system and presented statistics regarding whole class performance.

March
Engaging Students Through In-Class Technology: EVS and beyond SIG, City University, London – first meeting of the steering groups. The first event will be in November 2009 at Leicester University. For those interested in finding out more, visit the relevant Ning community at: http://estict.ning.com

April
MoodleMoot UK 2009, Imago Centre, Loughborough [blog post] – Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Moodler, gave an exceptionally enjoyable and interesting presentation about the Moodle development process, and an insight into the features that await in Moodle 2.0. The new Repository API can connect to Alfresco, YouTube, Flickr, Google Docs, Mahara (e-Portfolio), other repositories (OPuS?!). Martin’s demonstration used this (slick) functionality to search and copy in an image from Flickr… and embed a video from YouTube. [very cool!]

Plymouth e-Learning Conference 2009, The Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth [blog post] – Delivered my first conference presentation with Alan Hayes (Department of Computer Science). A fuller description of the study, including the presentation of research data, conclusions and scope for future work, can be found in the paper. This can be downloaded from OPuS.

May
An Introduction to Google Apps, University of Bath – Sam Peters, Business Development Manager (Education) at Google came to the university to give a useful introduction to cloud computing in the form of Google Apps. This presentation gave an insight into how these applications are being used at other universities in the UK and US. My former colleague, Roger Gardner at the University of Bristol, has reflected on a similar session on his blog. Since the presentation, I have started to use Google Sites to power my website at nitinparmar.co.uk.

June
The 3rd Technology Supported Learning Conference, Technology Supported Learning in the 21st Century: Issues and Paradigms in Transformative Tertiary Education 2009, Staffordshire University [blog post] – I presented my first conference poster, Developing and Facilitating a creative teaching culture using an Electronic Voting Systems,  that I had co-produced with Andy Ramsden, Head of e-Learning at the University of Bath. It can be downloaded via OPuS.

Roll on ALT-C 2009 at the University of Manchester in September!

Earlier this week I attended 3rd Technology Supported Learning Conference, Technology Supported Learning in the 21st Century: Issues and Paradigms in Transformative Tertiary Education 2009 at Staffordshire University.

Professor Mark Stiles of Staffordshire University gave the opening keynote at the conference which emphasised that we are living in a change world, in part relating to the directions that universities are currently moving towards. He argued that universities must be flexible, responsive, agile, learner focused and engaged. Instead colleagues are seeing some universities continuing to follow business processes which are not fit for purpose, and/or allowing themselves to be driven by the mainstream or past. Universities, and departments needs to identify what the things they take for granted are, and what they could potentially stop doing (to keep on moving forward). He went on to say that,

Bureaucracy can be a very real barrier to innovation, and much bureaucracy is founded on satisfying “sectional” needs or “regulatory” requirements.

This talk was followed by an inspiring (and fast paced!) keynote from Sian Bayne from Edinburgh University who gave an insight into the opportunities for developing teaching approaches in the 21st century. In particular, she spoke about her (and her students’) experiences of studying on the MSc in e-Learning programme at Edinburgh at the use of Second Life to support their learning. In particular, I was stuck by the comment that e-Learning artefacts are often linked to conventional metaphors and conceptions. So, a virtual art gallery-type space that was developed in Second Life (where just about any artefact can be created) was created to follow the pattern of a traditional gallery, rather than… well… something completely different!

During the lunchtime poster session, I spoke briefly to Sabela Melchor Couto, a Spanish Teaching Fellow at Roehampton University about her resource My Roe Spanish. This Netvibes powered website is an innovative use of both the personal homepage aggregator, where Sabela tags appropriate websites with tags via delicious for her students.

Roehampton University's Netvibes Spanish portal

This resource was developed in collaboration with Andy Hoang, an e-Learning Advisor at the university. As a Spanish learner myself(!), I particular liked the use of different tabs along the top of the screen to guide students towards different parts of Spanish grammar… as well as the innovative useful of two popular Web 2.0 applications. This does of course raised question of using external (free) solutions to power core services – Sabela assured me that RSS feeds with backed up using diigo. Another Web 2.0 service. Hmmm…

I also presented a poster, Developing and Facilitating a creative teaching culture using an Electronic Voting Systems,  that I had co-produced with Andy Ramsden, Head of e-Learning at the University of Bath. It can be downloaded via OPuS, our institutional research repository.

During the afternoon, Professor Gilly Salmon from the Beyond Research Distance Alliance, University of Leicester, painted a picture of how learning spaces might look in the future under the title ‘Dream Learner’. During the keynote, two areas caught my interest the most.

The first were thoughts on the use of Web 2.0 technologies currently, which in part is being driven by learner expectation built up from practice at schools. [Gilly gave an amusing example of her granddaughter using a VLE or ‘Virtual Learning Environment’ at school]. We already know that Web 2.0 is high in HE being “deployed across a broad spectrum of university activities”, but in learning and teaching usage is sporadic and non-uniform. In particular, there seems to be no blueprint for the implementation (or should that be, embracing?) of Web 2.0. I note that the University of Edinburgh published draft Guidelines for using Web 2.0 services, but am yet to see this practice repeated elsewhere.

Second, the JISC funded, The MOdelling Of SecondLife Environments (MOOSE) project. “MOOSE investigates the scaffolding and processes needed to enable groups of students in Higher Education to establish their socialisation and engagement for more productive information and knowledge exchange and learning through the medium of online 3-D Multi User Virtual Environments using Second Life.”. In particular, Gilly mentioned that a version of her Five Stages Model, related to Second Life, will soon be published.

I rounded off my time at the conference by attending a workshop by Christa Appleton (Staffordshire University) entitled Using e-Learning Models to inform teaching practice. This engaging session gave an introduction to a number of development models which are in use at Christa’s institution, some of which are detailed on the relevant website. The session concluded with the presenter offering a glimpse at the Best Practice Models for e-Learning Online Community which is power via a Moodle website.

Finally, and as always, there was a useful back-channel of Twitter tweats running – see http://tr.im/nhEP. Unfortunately, the lack of a free, open wi-fi network for conference delegates reduced the impact of this. Overall though, a useful conference that was worth attending.

Last month, Alan Hayes (Department of Computer Science) and I travelled to the Plymouth e-Learning Conference 2009 to present a paper that we had written with Prof. James Davenport, entitled The use of an Electronic Voting System to enhance student feedback. The slides from the presentation appear below.

The presentation began by giving a brief overview of the of the ARS pilot project at the University of Bath before moving onto exploring use of the technology to support the (formative) assessment and feedback process in the CM30072 Networking unit.

For a fuller description of the study, including the presentation of research data, conclusions and scope for future work, colleagues may like to download the paper from OPuS at: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/12505/

Earlier today, I attended a keynote by Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Moodler, at MoodleMoot UK 2009 which is currently taking place at the Imago Centre, Loughborough. [photos on Flickr]

Over the course of 90 minutes, Martin gave an exceptionally enjoyable and interesting presentation about the Moodle development process, and an insight into the features that await in Moodle 2.0.

Whilst following the #mmuk09 Twitter tag might give a wider insight into some of the areas covered through Martin’s talk, I’ve sumarrised some of the key things that I found to be of interest.

• Moodle core code cleaned up for further development, that is for Moodle 2.0 and beyond.
• The most popular feature requests are handled and evaluated via the Moodle Tracker, e.g. site-wide groups. As such, the development process is pretty transparent. In addition, every core code change is documented.
• The new Moodle.org theme is sitting on new servers. Mixed reaction to the new theme, but positive overall. I’m liking the menus along the top, which links to thinks regardless of whether they’re in Moodle or not, e.g. Moodle Docs which runs on MediaWiki software.
• Moodle Docs link at the bottom of pages; can be turned off but currently switched on on the University of Bath Moodle installation. Complements our existing Moodle FAQ database which we direct staff to in the first instance.
• The new Repository API can connect to Alfresco, YouTube, Flickr, Google Docs, Mahara (e-Portfolio), other respositories (OPuS?!). Martin’s demonstration used this (slick) functionality to search and copy in an image from Flickr… and embed a video from YouTube. [Very cool!]
• New Moodle 2.0 standard theme called ‘anomaly’. Rather WordPress like as commented by @mberry.
• TinyMCE HTML editor in Moodle 2.0, which replaces the current HTML WYSIWYG editor. Hopefully, this will handle certain things [e.g. pasting text in from Microsoft Word] a lot better.
• Moodle 2.0 core services will support Web Services (SOAP, XML-RPC, REST, AMF-PHP). Can connect to external web server application and/or external client application.
• Navigation: Blocks will be put in ‘regions’; no longer bound by blocks having to be on the left or right hand sides. More details available on the relevant Moodle Docs page.

Martin moved on to talk about the Gradebook improvements currently planned for Moodle 1.9.5. He noted that some of the interface changes “might freak some people out!”.

I would assume that this might be something we would need to make our users aware of before we move to this version. The University of Bath currently run Moodle 1.9.4, so I would assume that Moodle 1.9.5 upgrade might have to wait until the summer months. This would give us time to update various training materials and FAQs.

A couple of additional things to note about the improved Gradebook functionality,

• The tabs are back in the Gradebook interface. This can be turned off however.
• Scrolling has been introduced in the Gradebook interface, so the students’ name is always next to their grade. Additionally, hovering over items/marks provides student name.
• Grades over 100(%) can now be added to the Gradebook!

Finally, Martin answered the question that we’d all be dying to hear: When will Moodle 2.0 be released? Christmas! He didn’t confirm which year though – I’m hoping for 2009!

The MoodleMoot UK 2009 conference continues at a fantastic pace. There are a number of very interesting sessions, and a number of useful conversations are coming out which will feed into an end of conference reflection on this blog later in the week. Til then…

A couple of weeks ago, I travelled up to Edinburgh [photos on Flickr] for a meeting to discuss the JISC funded EVAF4All: Electronic Voting Analysis and Feedback for All project. Led by Simon Bates and Keith Brunton from the e-Learning unit in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, colleagues from Imperial College London, City University, the Universities of Bath, East Anglia, Leicester and Manchester were in attendance, along with a representative from the JISC-RSC for Scotland.

The current EVAF system allows students to obtain a record of their progress in formative assessment using an Electronic Voting System (refered to an Audience Response System, ARS, at the University of Bath). When viewing their results, students will be directed back to relevant content and presented statistics regarding whole class performance. This feedback can thus aid their developing self-management of their own studying and provide valuable diagnostic feedback. The staff view of the system will enable aggregated data to be extracted and analyse aggregated student performance. [see EVAF website for further information].

The aim of the EVAF4All project is be create an EVS-neutral solution the application to be installed at a variety of institutions irrespective of the VLE and EVS handset (“clicker”) loan scheme. This process in turn would in turn close the ‘feedback loop’ (see Nicol and Mcfarlane-Dick (2006) for further information about this concept) for students engaged in learning activities.

Over the course of the day, a variety of topics were covered in relation to moving the project forward. I have divided these conversations into three main areas, as follows.

1. “Loanership” schemes

The conversation moved onto the different forms of clicker “loanership” scheme currently employed at the different institutions. At my own institution for example, 200 TurningPoint clickers are held by a central AV team. Bags of clickers can be booked out in multiples of 40 clickers [and a single USB RF receiver]. Generally speaking, student participation in formative assessments are completed anonymously.

Other institutions had developed a variety of mechanisms for supporting EVS-related work within learning and teaching. For example, at the University of Edinburgh, students borrow the handsets from their library, where the handset is lent out using a similar process for when taking out a book. Once the barcode on the back of the handset is scanned, the library system, the students records system and the VLE (as well as the EVAF software!) all know that the student has that particular handset. This in turn makes tracking student progression that much easier. The University of Edinburgh currently have over 2500 handsets, across a wide range of disciplines, which are loaned out in such a way. Students can then track their progress using the EVAF application.

In the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester, first year students are lent a handset for the academic year in return for a £10 refundable deposit – the overall loss rate in the first year was 10% of handsets broken or not returned (the latter mainly from students who dropped out). The handsets have been used in the past to track student attendance, meaning that a clicker can be tied to a particular student.

It is because of such loanership models, that these two institutions are in a better place to use their existing e-Learning/MIS infrastructure to participate in the EVAF pilot, and thereby provide a case study of usage. That said, the University of Bath could do so too… it might just take a little longer to get to the end point, and require a little more human intervention to make the process work. [I'll blog about this further as the project progresses.]

2. Technical infrastructre

As I alluded to in the section above, the are a number of technical requirements that will need to be addressed before the University of Bath will be able to connect to the relevant EVAF instance. For example, at the University of Bath, we have the following systems: Moodle (our VLE), SITS (the student records system), TurningPoint (the EVS system). I would expect that these details will vary across the institutions involved in the project currently. Both Simon and Keith stressed that they will make best efforts to integrate EVAF into our existing structures, but given the timescales, this may be tricky without additional support at a local level. Thankfully, the e-Learning team at the University of Bath have two excellent and enthusastic software developers in house!

3. Getting feedback to students

The key element of this project is of how to best get feedback back to students once the EVS has been used in a lecture. Whilst initial, whole class feedback can be give within the assessment context (e.g. the lecture theatre), the EVAF application seeks to allow students to review the questions post-lecture in their own time. Aligned with this, it is about stressing the importance to students of formative feedback in the learning process. For staff, the software provideds for an easy and effective way to present and view large volumes of user data in a simple way, and begin to assess the effectiveness of the questions used.

Using the TurningPoint 2008 software, colleagues at the University of Bath can already make some question data available to students in a proprietry format, which the students can then analyse themselves. However, this is whole class feedback rather than individual feedback. EVAF takes this process further by personalising feedback and giving the individual student the opportunity to examine their strengths and weaknesses.

At Bath, where no loanership scheme is in place, we still have the problem of how to make this individual feedback available to students (and staff) in an easy and quick way, without a significant additional overhead of time or resource.

I have no doubts that EVAF would be a success if it was implemented at the University of Bath, and in turn, used by the students. I would hope that it would have an impact on any surveys such as the NSS, where students often complain about the lack of feedback from assessment!