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"LearnTech News"
The Quick Overview:
• Where students need to carry out online surveys, and where academic staff do not have a preference as to which tool the students use, we recommend eSurv: http://esurv.org
• A tutorial video explaining how to use eSurv is also available here: http://bit.ly/esurv-tutorial
One area where students sometimes come unstuck with their research projects is when they try to extract data from the free online survey tool they have used. While it is often easy to create a simple online survey for free, and easy for a limited number of respondents to take part in the survey, it is not always so easy for the researcher to access their data.
There are a large number of free online survey tools available for use, and choosing the most appropriate one is not always easy. In almost all cases, accessing the full-functionality of the survey tool is not free. For example, the free version of the survey tool may be limited by number and type of questions available (a maximum of ten questions, for example, and only basic questions). It may also be limited to a maximum number of responses (fifty responses per survey, for example). Another common restriction is to limit access to the survey data, and not to allow the researcher to download the data for analysis in a statistical package. While all these restrictions can be overcome by paying a monthly subscription to the survey tool provider, students often feel rather cheated when they find out that it will cost them, in some cases, £60 to download their data for analysis in SPSS. They often feel especially annoyed when they find out that if they chosen different tool they could have had free access to their data.
As part of a recent University of Northampton URB@N project, Paul Rice, Phil Oakman, Clive Howe and Rob Farmer decided to find out whether there was a genuinely free online survey tool out there somewhere. And they decided to make things more difficult by trying to find one that was also easy to use and that stored data in a way that was compliant with the UK Data Protection Act. The good news is that they found one!
If you would like to find out more then you can read all about it in their paper published in the journal MSOR Connections: https://journals.gre.ac.uk/index.php/msor/article/view/311
To all NILE users, we are aware that there is an issue with the timer function in Blackboard Tests in NILE where a limited number of students are experiencing premature submission prior to end of the test: Blackboard are aware and are working on a fix.
In the interim, where possible tutors are advised not to set the timer when setting up tests and where this is unavoidable, students are advised to use Google Chrome to minimise this occurrence.
If students are still experiencing this problem, please get in touch with your tutor in the first instance. Tutors can refer to learntech@northampton.ac.uk. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but please be reassured that we are working on a solution with Blackboard.
The Learning Technologists have been aligned to specific subject areas within the Faculties. Whilst the general contact for support issues and advice is Learntech@northampton.ac.uk (x2696), you can contact a Learning Technologist for specific training needs or project planning. For assistance with designing your programme or modules then contact the Learning Design team at LD@northampton.ac.uk.
Learning Technologists alignments:
| Education & Humanities | |
| Early Years | Belinda Green |
| Education, Children & Young People | Belinda Green |
| Initial Teacher Training | Belinda Green |
| Special Education Needs & Inclusion | Belinda Green |
| Teacher Continuation Professional Development | Belinda Green |
| English & Creative Writing | Al Holloway |
| English as a Second Language | Richard Byles |
| History | Tim Guyett |
| Health & Society | |
| Criminal Justice Studies | Tim Guyett |
| Sociology (including Criminology) | Tim Guyett |
| Psychology | Tim Guyett |
| Midwifery | Andy Stenhouse / Liane Robinson |
| Nursing | Andy Stenhouse / Liane Robinson |
| Occupational Therapy | Andy Stenhouse / Liane Robinson |
| Paramedic Science | Andy Stenhouse / Liane Robinson |
| Podiatry | Andy Stenhouse / Liane Robinson |
| Sport, Exercise & Life Science | Andy Stenhouse / Liane Robinson |
| Social Work | Andy Stenhouse /Liane Robinson |
| Arts, Science & Technology (FAST) | |
| Acting & Drama | Al Holloway |
| Computing | Al Holloway |
| 2D Design | Al Holloway |
| 3D Design | Al Holloway |
| Engineering | Al Holloway |
| Environmental Science | Al Holloway |
| Foundation Year Programme | Al Holloway |
| Fashion | Al Holloway |
| Fine Art | Al Holloway |
| Leather Technology | Al Holloway |
| Media & Journalism | Al Holloway |
| Photography | Al Holloway |
| Popular Music | Al Holloway |
| Business & Law | |
| Accounting & Finance | Richard Byles |
| Economics, International Development | Richard Byles |
| Leisure Management & Languages | Richard Byles |
| Business | Richard Byles |
| Human Resource Management & Organisational Behaviour | Richard Byles |
| International Relations and Politics | Tim Guyett |
| Law | Tim Guyett |
LearnTech are archiving some of the older NILE sites which are no longer being actively used. This keeps our server storage low, so the University remains under quota and avoids unnecessary subscription charges. This year, all of the sites from the academic year 2012/2013 have been selected for archiving. These sites have been disabled on the system and are no longer available for general use.
The full list of affected NILE sites can be found here: 12/13 NILE sites for archive. The file should open with Acrobat reader, which is installed on all PCs. You should should use ‘Ctrl-F’ and search for the sites that interest you by module code, or module name.
If you do wish for a 12/13 site to be re-enabled, please contact LearnTech via email (learntech@northampton.ac.uk) before 14th October with the module codes and titles of any sites you need to remain live and exclude from the archive process.
We would like to emphasize that we are archiving, not deleting, so sites and files can be recovered at a later date if necessary.
by Robert Farmer and Paul Rice
It’s no easy thing to create an interesting, engaging and effective educational video. However, when developing educational presentations and videos there are some straightforward principles that you can apply which are likely to make them more effective.
The following videos were created for our course, Creating Effective Educational Videos, and will take you through the dos and dont’s of educational video-making.
1. How not to do it!
This short video offers a humorous take on how not to make great educational videos.
- Prof. Oliver Deer discusses his approach to making educational videos: https://youtu.be/cKXx9GkeGGQ
2. Understanding Mayer’s multimedia principles
This 20 minute video outlines Richard Mayer‘s principles of multimedia learning and provides practical examples of how these principles might be applied in practice to create more effective educational videos.
- A Practical Guide to Mayer’s Multimedia Principles: https://youtu.be/m0GMZgaC7gM
3. Applying Mayer’s mutimedia principles
Because much of Mayer’s work centres around STEM subjects (which typically make a lot of use of diagrams, charts, tables, equations, etc.) We spent some time thinking about how to apply his principles in subjects which are more text based. To this end, we recorded a 12 minute video lecture which is very on-screen text heavy in which we tried to make use of as many of Mayer’s principles as possible.
- Are we ever justified in silencing those with whom we disagree? https://youtu.be/Dyu94dH2aeo
4. Understanding what students want, and don’t want, from an educational video
Given the current popularity of educational videos, and given the time, effort and expense academics and institutions are investing to provide educational videos to students, we thought that it was worthwhile to evaluate whether students actually want and use these resources. You can find the results of our investigation in our paper:
- Rice, P. and Farmer, R. (2016) Educational videos – tell me what you want, what you really, really want. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, Issue 10, November 2016. Available from: https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/297
5. Further reading
Mayer, R. (2009) Multimedia Learning, 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/psychology/educational-psychology/multimedia-learning-2nd-edition
Rice, P., Beeson, P. and Blackmore-Wright, J. (2019) Evaluating the Impact of a Quiz Question within an Educational Video. TechTrends, Volume 63, pp.522–532.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-019-00374-6
This week I have been having a look at making the grade centre easier to read and navigate by applying colours. The grade centre can be a rather complicated beast, particularly when you have large numbers of students and various assignment points within a module. Searching and finding students work can be tricky, students who do not submit can be missed and those students at risk may fall through the net. By applying colour coding to the grade centre columns you can highlight various stages in the grading process including, ‘Needs Grading’, G grades and assessments that have not yet been attempted and let’s face it- a little bit of colour can go a long way!
Colour coding your grade centre can be useful for:
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Quickly highlighting at risk students
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A traffic light system to highlight various grades in the grade centre
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Quickly see students who have not submitted any work and those pieces that need grading
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Highlighting marks within a specific range, for example A grade students
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Spotting students work ‘In Progress’ (usually online tests or online submissions)
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Quickly being able to see student development (when traffic light system is employed)
To apply colour coding to the grade centre you can follow these quick instructions:
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Go to ‘Full Grade Centre’.
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Click ‘Manage’ and choose ‘Grading Colour Codes’.
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You will now see the Grading Colour Codes page. Select the box to allow you to add ‘Grading Colour Codes’.
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If you want to colour code items that are In Progress, Needs Marking or Exempt, click to change the Background Colour to your chosen colour (keep in mind accessibility issues).
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If you want to colour code ranges of marks, click the ‘Add Criteria’ button. Select the criteria for highlighting:
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‘Between’ two grades, ‘More than’ a grade or ‘Less than’ a grade.
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Choose a Background Colour and a colour for the Text.
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If you want to add more criteria, click ‘Add Criteria’ again.
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Click ‘Submit’ to apply the colour coding to the Grade Centre.
This will apply all of these settings across the entire module for all assessments (which means you only need to set up your criteria once). You can copy over these settings to other sites when you do a site copy highlighting the ‘Grade centre columns and settings’ option.
For a short video on how to do this follow this link: http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r91/movies/bb91_grade_center_color_code.htm
Go on give it a whirl- and let me know what you think: geraldine.murphy@northampton.ac.uk
There will be some minor updates to Blackboard Learn on the 18th of July 2016. These security updates will involve a slight change to the Turnitin interface. Under Site Tools>Turnitin Assignments, each assignment will be listed with a Delete Assignment link beside it (please see fig1 below).
Clicking this link will delete the entire submission point, all submitted papers and all grading. Please do not use this delete link unless you are absolutely sure you wish to remove the submission point. If you do click this link by mistake, a confirmation box will appear. Click on cancel to retract the request.
Fig1 - Turnitin delete link
Over the past few months there are a range of blog postings and updates which have been collated below for information and easy access:
NILE and SaGE updates
NILE 2016-7 – rolling out and onwards – new templates available for use
NILE guides have been enhanced with a completely revised layout and updated content
Update on NILE quality standards 2016-17
Best NILE Site – Student Teaching and Representation Awards 2016
SaGE – March Update – Dissertation Marking / Exempting Grades / Health and Safety
Pedagogical / developmental discussions
Have you heard about the CAIeRO and wondered what it was? Have a look at this posting on Demystifying the CAIeRO
Are you still referencing preferred learning styles? – perhaps time to think again
Staff Case Studies
Blended Learning and Physical Volcanology with Professor Nick Petford
Xerte software receives praise from Karen Brasher, Lecturer in the School of Health
Using Trello to Enhance Teaching and Learning in Fashion
Supporting understanding and engagement through continuous assessment
George Dimmock on How the Academic Librarians can help you.
Anne Misselbrook on content development with Xerte
Kate Swinton (CfAP) on Effective Feedback
Hannah Rose (Academic Librarian) on Aspire Reading Lists
James Smith: Blended Learning in Studio Based Modules
Sylvie Lomer (CfAP) on Active and blended learning
Education E-tivity Development: Tanya Richardson & Claire Dugan-Clements
James Underwood (Principal Lecturer in Teachers’ CPD) demonstrating an essay planning technique
‘Blogging for students’ case study video
Assessed Online Debates using discussion boards in NILE
Exploring innovative digital approaches to assessment project
Science and Technology Research in Pedagogy (STRiPe) blog
Blogs for Assessment in History with alternating ‘classroom’ and ‘online’ fortnightly structure.
Using Pinterest for Aesthetic Development: Elizabeth Palmer
How to be a page-turner for the right reasons!
Designing e-tivities: some lessons learnt by trial and error!
Making an impact in open education
Employability support for Geography students
Staffing updates
Welcome to new staff in the Learning Technology Team
Grateful student appreciates Learning Technology support
For any questions regarding the above articles then contact your Learning Technologists or email learntech@northampton.ac.uk
This summer, we’re moving away from using the Panopto system to expand and extend the use of our Kaltura MediaSpace platform.
We have enjoyed an excellent service from Panopto, but based on a number of factors, including lots of feedback from staff, we’ve decided to move away from Panopto and instead use our MediaSpace platform to support all our video capture, storage and streaming needs going forward to Waterside. This means we’re going to migrate your content out of Panopto and onto MediaSpace over this summer. So, if you use currently Panopto, can we ask that you do not create any new materials from now on, and instead start using MediaSpace instead.
If you’re new to MediaSpace then there are some useful Help videos at video.northampton.ac.uk, like this video and we are happy to run training sessions and 1:1’s on request, or you can email learntech@northampton.ac.uk if you have specific questions.
Please note, you will not be able to access Panopto beyond 8th July 2016. The videos in NILE will still be viewable by students, but staff will not be able to record any new videos.
There will be more communication from us, to ensure your content is transferred smoothly and that you are confident using the MediaSpace platform but if you have any questions, then please get in touch.
NILE will be upgraded between 6:00pm BST, Saturday 13th August and 6:00am BST, Sunday 14th August.
Northampton University is currently using the Blackboard 9.1 October 2014 release which will be upgraded to the 2015 Q4 release. The new features of this release can be viewed on the Blackboard Website. Please ensure that your browsers are sufficiently updated to keep within the supported levels of this new release.
While security fixes are applied to NILE throughout the academic year, the annual update ensures that we are providing the most stable release and latest features for both our staff and student users. The University’s hosting provider requires us to keep our version of Blackboard up to date in order to meet the 99.9% availability agreement over the rest of the year.
If you have any questions about the upgrade process, please contact Vicky.Brown@northampton.ac.uk
