LearnTech

Enhancing Maths support for students using Skype and Wacom Tablets

Rob Howe — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:45:07 +0000

In this case study, Paul Rice reflects on how he has enhanced the ability for Maths students to access support at a distance using a mixture of Skype and Wacom tablets.

Use of a CAIeRO to enhance outcomes on a Research Methods Module

Rob Howe — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:08:59 +0000

In this case study, Jacquie Ridge reflects on how the redevelopment of of module improved student engagement and reduced non-completion rates.

Important News about MyPAD

Rob Farmer — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:10:07 +0000

As you may already know, NILE blogs and wikis are changing this year. This change also involves the MyPAD e-Portfolio, which will be substantially revised for the forthcoming academic year in response to comments from staff and students. Details of what is happening is available here: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/info/200310/nile-for-staff/1695/social-learning-tools-in-nile

Students who are using MyPAD also need to be aware of these changes, so the link to MyPAD has been updated to provide all users with information about what will be happening.

When users select the MyPAD link in NILE, they are now directed to a screen informing them of the upcoming changes to MyPAD, and what they need to do in order to save their work before the changes take place on the 20th of July.

Click on the image below to find out more …

Learntech Conference – 30th May 2012

Rob Howe — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:42:51 +0000

What: The Learning Technology Conference 2012 will celebrate and share good practice to enhance teaching and learning. In addition to a range of presentations we will also be presenting awards to staff who have been nominated by their students as providing a more ‘student friendly’ NILE area.

If you are unable to attend the whole event then please feel free to come for specific presentations.

When: 30th May from 11:00am to 2:30pm

Where: Grendon Lecture Theatre, Park Campus

Agenda (subject to change):

11:00 – 11:20 Anne Eason – SAGE experiences (e-submission, marking and feedback)
11:20 – 11:40 Jacquie Ridge – Use of CAIeRO to reduce student failure rate
11:40 – 12:00 Kim Stuart / Leonie Siddons – PebblePad for portfolios
12:00 till 1:00 – Rate My NILE awards (presented by Tim Joaquim, President of the SU) and lunch
1:00 – 1:20 Anne Segalini – Enhancing the student experience using technology
1:20 – 1:40 Lisa Hanson – Interactivity in NILE for International students
1:40 – 2:00 Mike Twigger – PebblePad within modules
2:00 – 2:20 Roshni Khatri – iPad use within OT

Next steps:

Please let us know if you will be attending by using the signup form

Turnitin issues with Windows Internet Explorer

Rob Davis — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:38:13 +0000

If you are using Internet Explorer and encounter problems uploading your document or viewing your submissions, we recommend you ensure the following sites are added to the “Trusted Sites” setting:

https://*.submit.ac.uk

cdn.submit.ac.uk

cdn.edgecast.net

In Internet Explorer, to add sites to the “Trusted Sites” zone:

From the Tools menu, select Internet Options.
Click the Security tab, and then click the Trusted sites icon.

Click Sites. In the text box beneath “Add this website to the zone:”, type the URL for the site you want to add, and then either press Enter or click Add.

Note: To add sites that begin with http rather than https, uncheck Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone; otherwise, you’ll only be able to add https sites.

Repeat the previous step until you have added all the sites you wish to add.
Click Close and then OK to close all dialog boxes.

Finally, Turnitin currently officially supports the following web browsers:

Firefox 3+, Internet Explorer 7.x & 8.x, Chrome 4+, or Safari 4+ for Windows machines
Firefox 3+, Chrome 4+, or Safari 4+ for Mac OS machines

If you are not using a supported web browser it is recommended that you either update your existing web browser to the supported version or download the appropriate web browser for your computer.

Contact the Learning Technology team if you need more help.

Learning Pathways – How to release material to students to provide flexibility.

Rob Davis — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:12:24 +0000

It’s a really neat trick to make learning material appear to students only when required, or when students have completed previous work or tasks. Just add your learning material to NILE as usual but select Adaptive Release options to choose how and when this material becomes available to your students. You can make content available at a particular time, to a select group of students, or even release different content to different students depending on their grades. You can also ask students to confirm they have reviewed a piece of content, in order to release the next piece.

This is a great way of structuring learning pathways for your students, and allowing yourself and the student to track progress as well.

The User Guide “Using Adaptive Release in NILE” provides details on this and a video tutorial here shows what can be done with the more advanced adaptive release functions “Adaptive Release Advanced”.

You can also talk to the Learning Technology team for further assistance.

Stats Tracking – How to monitor Student activity on your Module.

Rob Davis — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:50:00 +0000

Ever wondered if students are actually engaging with your module content in NILE? Well you can tell, if you simply enable “statistics tracking” on your module!

Not only can you monitor how many students access material you make available on NILE but for really impressive feedback you can activate the “Early Warning System”. This lets you define how you want to measure student activity and performance. Your students can then be made aware that you can see their performance on NILE and support them as soon as you see signs of individuals struggling with certain content.

• The Last access rule, which measures logins to NILE. This rule can identify students who have not accessed NILE within a specified time scale defined by the tutor.

• The Grade rule, which operates in relation to the grades scored in items in the Grade Centre. This rule can identify students with a test score above or below a level specified by the tutor.

• The Due date rule, which identifies students who have not completed a test or assignment by the due date. A due date can be set for a test via the Grade Centre, and can also be set when an Assignment is created within a Module.

More details are available about this in this guide and check out the guides on Notifications Dashboard and Performance Dashboard which explain how to set up alerts and see activity across your sites on NILE.

Feedback and Communicating with students.

Rob Davis — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:47:14 +0000

How to communicate with your student cohort out of class time.

Guess you know you can issue Announcements and Emails through your NILE module directly to your students, but ever thought about using student-led communication tools like Discussion Boards, to continue communication and debate, and get feedback from your students outside of class time?

You might also know that by creating groups of students in your module, you can allocate them their own discussion boards, blogs and wikis to work on collaboratively. But don’t forget you can also use these for peer support, and for delivering group feedback. Imagine how it would improve communication and feedback within the module cohort.

Finally, you can personalise the student learning experience by creating private journals for students to post their thoughts, feedback and experiences. Only you can see their entries and reply to them if you wish. You can even use this to create a confidential ‘backchannel’ in the lecture theatre – if students are unsure on any of the points you’ve made, they can raise a question from their laptop or smartphone without identifying themselves to the rest of the cohort.

Have a look at these video tutorials and User Guides to look into these aspects more.

Lecture Capture – evidence of increasing usage

Rob Howe — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:51:15 +0000

During 2011, the Learntech team coordinated the development of a case study which showed how lecture capture had been enhanced though the use of Panopto. This is available to view on the Panopto website.

It is interesting to note that since the Spt 2010 – Oct 2011 pilot the amount of usage has increased from:

21 modules using Panopto up to 146 modules
87 recordings up to 393
26 hours of recording up to over 150 hours
738 individual views up to 1779 views
10 hours of viewing up to 183 hours

(Figures taken on 15th March 2011)

We are still developing the basic provision within lecture theatres to include web cameras to allow for regular capture (in response to staff feedback) but are seeing a range of innovative use such as capture of student presentations for external examiners; trials on synchronous display and recording of lectures over multiple venues; and discussions are underway to allow for the system to capture offsite case studies (offline) – which are then uploaded to Panopto once back on site.

For further information on using Panopto then please contact the team

Apps for Learning and Teaching – managing files using WebDAV

Julie Usher — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:28:16 +0000

Please note: this post is focused on iOS (Apple) devices, as the nature of this operating system can make transfer of files more difficult than it is on other platforms, e.g. Android. That’s not to say though that you couldn’t also use WebDAV with an Android device.

What is WebDAV?

WebDAV (or Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a technology that allows you read and write access to a shared folder on a server. Basically, it means that you can download files, read them, change them and upload them again (although it can also do lots of other clever things with files too).

Using WebDAV with staff shared (Novell) drives

Ever wondered how you can get to the files on your shared drive via your iPad? Here’s how.

Get the WebDAV Nav app. It’s free.
In your iPad browser (probably Safari), go to http://www.northampton.ac.uk/netstorage. Log in.
Tap on the little notepad icon, next to the logout (open door) button. The web address (URL) of the page you are viewing will change slightly.
Select and copy the URL.
Go into the WebDAV Nav app, and click the ‘plus’ icon at the top right of the screen.
Give the location a name, e.g. ’School Shared Drive’, and paste in the URL in the Server URL field. Add in your username and password. On the next screen you should see your shared drive folders.

Ok, so you now you can get at the files you had stored there. But what if you want to upload something?

Well, lots of apps have a ‘Send to WebDAV’ option built in. In Pages, for example, when you have a document open you can go to ‘Share and Print’ in the settings (top right), and choose ‘Copy to WebDAV’. The iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) will transfer these files directly for you. The first time you do this, you will need to enter the server information, exactly as you did above. After that, this information will be stored for you (unless you choose to Sign Out each time).

Some other apps, like iAnnotate for PDF, will give you an ‘Open In’ option, but then don’t allow you to enter the server address within the app. In this case, the upload is a two part process. Choosing the WebDAV option from the sharing menu here will copy the file to local storage on the iPad.

You then need to go back to the WebDAV Nav app, navigate to the folder where you want to upload the file, and then click the hard drive icon at the bottom right of the screen to pick up the file and upload it.

Using WebDAV with NILE

It’s also possible to use WebDAV to upload files from your iPad into NILE. If you have the iNorthampton and/or Blackboard Mobile Learn apps, you will already know that you can add new text-based content items in to module sites (as long as you have instructor access). However, on Apple devices, the ‘Attachments’ button currently only allows you to pick up image files, from the camera or photo library. WebDAV will allow you to get different types of files in to NILE from your iPad, although you may still need to do some fine tuning on how you present these files to students, using a standard web browser (from a desktop or laptop computer). Here’s how.

In your module site on NILE, go to the Control Panel and click on the double right arrow button next to the ‘Files’ heading. You should see the file storage area for that site, where all of the attached files are kept. At the top right, click on the ‘Setup Web Folder’ button.

Copy the Web address that is highlighted on the next screen – you can use this as you did with the server address details in the steps above. Any files uploaded using this link will appear in the Files area of this course on NILE. Unfortunately this doesn’t let you display the files in a content area for the students to view, but it does mean that the file is transferred into NILE ready to be used. When you log in from your desktop or laptop, you can create an item, and choose the file from the course Files area.

Hints and tips for using WebDAV with NILE:

Each module will have its own URL. If you’re using the WebDAV Nav app to upload files, you might want to set up each of your NILE sites, so that you can add files into the right courses. However if the files you are uploading are mostly from iWork apps, which transfer files directly, then you may prefer to choose one module on NILE that you want to use as a storage point for uploads, to save you having to sign out and re-enter a different URL every time you want to upload something to a different course. Once the file is in NILE, you can create the content item or link in that course, and then use the ‘Move’ function (from the dropdown menu) to pick which module site you want to move it to.