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Personally I love the CAIeRO (module redesign) process. It’s creative, innovative and definitely challenging at times, but most of all it’s fun. My favourite part of the day is storyboarding the module – aligning Learning Outcomes with (new) assessments and then looking at how learners are to engage with appropriate content in order to deepen their learning and apply their knowledge and understanding.
Having an ‘outsider’ to your module can be crucial to the level of creativity and innovation that results. As a former FE tutor, and AL for the Business School I have experienced first hand many of the difficulties of trying to deliver engaging content and being so focussed on ensuring that the core content is covered that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Being able to take a step back and view what you are doing from an outsiders perspective, often that of a fictional learner, can therefore bring a number of benefits.
As an example, I was involved in a recent CAIeRO with the School of Health, working on three modules to be delivered fully online. We reached the storyboard phase and the tutor and I were looking at what the module was covering and thinking about how to translate a face-to-face course into an online one. To begin with, the tutor was replicating his F2F module, whilst simultaneously regaling me with stories of student feedback and complaints. “Why am I studying statistics?” and “Why am I studying maths on a health course?!” were two common phrases. It wasn’t that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the module content. There were core concepts that needed to be covered. Creating an agreed glossary was one, and understanding the governmental policy in this particular area was another. And so on, until week 12 when the tutor explained that at this point the students have to apply all their knowledge acquired to date in order to respond to a disease outbreak.
As the ‘outsider’ my instant response to this was … “Now I’m interested. But it’s taken three months of doing this boring stuff to get there!” So my suggestion was to turn his module on its head and put the students into groups in week 1 and then give them the disease outbreak scenario. Their role during the remainder of the module would be the drafting of a suitable response to the outbreak. On the way they would have to get to grips with statistics, appropriate terminology and even governmental policy, but this time, they would have an interesting hook upon which to hang it.
But what are the benefits for students? Well, here are my top five (in no particular order):
- the course should still be constructively aligned;
- students have a guided pathway through core components of the module but are free to explore those components in an order of their choice;
- keeping the same case study for all groups means that each group has to make a specific choice in terms of the preventative strategy adopted – this will increase opportunities for challenge and justification from the remainder of the cohort;
- increased student engagement – the module introduces a real-life scenario and asks them to find a real solution; and
- it potentially enhances their employability skills – learning how to do this in an academic environment is good preparation for the sorts of careers these students typically pursue.
OK, so what’s the big deal you might ask? I mean, it’s great for those students, but there are thousands more on this campus. It’s an approach that I have used in other schools and in vastly different subject areas to good effect. Sharing good practice when it comes to module redesign is important and is something that we share as a team through regular team meetings or through this blog. I have also shared the story at a staff development session in NBS. In my new role as a Learning Designer, I am working more across Schools and, together with my colleagues am seeking to make these creative approaches more visible. As a student, I would want my modules to capture my interest and require me to actively engage with content, whilst preparing me for the real world. Hopefully, full and willing engaging with the CAIeRO process, putting aside your preconceptions and a mindset of ‘this is how I teach this module’ will see more creative ideas such as this become more widespread throughout our institution.
A common issue that has been reported in the last few weeks is that of students who can’t see feedback on their Turnitin assignment. This is commonly mis-diagnosed as a technical problem, when it simply relates to the Post date, which may have been set some time ago. If this date and time hasn’t passed, students will be unable to select the Grademark tab in the document viewer or see their numeric score.
Changing the Post date to the current date and time (or aligning it with an announcement) will fix the problem.
Following the SaGE survival guide will help markers avoid these technical niggles.
If you’ve ever needed to explain how to use something on a PC, a screen capture application is a great thing to use. Many University PCs have Snagit installed, but there are occasions when you don’t have access to it or you’d like a colleague or student to create one for you.
This is where screencast-o-matic comes in. Just visit http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ and start recording. You will need Java installed, but this should be on most modern PCs or free to download and install from http://www.java.com/.
The resulting file can be uploaded to YouTube to share or downloaded as an MP4 file. The free version does include a watermark and only allows one file to be produced at a time, but this shouldn’t be a major drawback for the scenarios described above.
Here’s an example of the sort of thing you can produce …
Thanks to everyone who was able to make this month’s App Cafe. I know it’s not always easy to find the time, but we’re very pleased eight people were able to come along and share their experiences, interests and views on mobile learning. In this session we took SIRI as the starting point for our session and began with a hands-on look at how accurate SIRI is. We talked about Dragon Dictate as an alternative PC-based voice-to-speech solution and the discussion then moved on to research ethics, accessibility and other issues which rose naturally amongst the group.
The App Cafe happens at 1pm on the first Monday of each month and anyone is welcome to come along and share. We have experience of iPad technology but these sessions are conversational rather than training-focused so if you use an Android or other mobile device, please come along and share.
We publicise the theme of each session a couple of days before as we like to be spontaneous. If you can’t make a Monday or you have an interest in a specific application or a learning and teaching question in relation to mobile technology, then get in touch and we’ll try and support you.
Between Saturday 16th August 4:30pm BST and Sunday 17th August 4:30am BST , NILE will be upgraded to the latest version.
Northampton is currently on Blackboard 9.1 service pack 13 and will be upgraded to the April 2014 release. This version jumps two releases above our current point. (SP14 and April 2014 releases). You can see the new features which will be added as part of the SP14 upgrade and the April 2014 upgrade. All users of NILE should ensure that browsers are updated to keep within the supported levels.
Whilst during the academic year security fixes are applied, annually we need to ensure that NILE is at the most stable version with the latest features to benefit staff and students. Our hosting contract provides us with at least 99.9% availability for NILE 365 days a year providing we ensure that we maintain our version.
The new version contains new functionality which will be of use to staff and students and ensure that NILE is maintained as an advanced virtual learning environment to maximise the student experience.
Please contact Rob.Howe@nothampton.ac.uk if there are any comments or questions around the upgrade process.
Bit.ly is great for creating and editing links used in multiple locations – particularly useful if you don’t remember where you used them. Within a VLE you might use the same link many times or copy it to a new module site – it’s easy to loose track – ‘corporate’ managers often restrict editing rights within institutional web sites.
But do you want to manage your bit.ly links more efficiently? Check if they are still valid URLs? Keep a backup copy of your links in a spreadsheet?
This Google spreadsheet draws on the bitly API to pull out the links, then runs a script to check the status of the full URL on a ‘Link summary’ page. I’ve colour coded the main response codes to indicate real (red) problems and potential (orange – login may be needed).
Early days, but this spreadsheet can be used for any bitly library – you just need to generate an access key at https://bitly.com/a/oauth_apps from your own login and add it to cell B1 in the ‘data’ sheet. It currently processes up to 1000 links, but you can easily change this. I would recommend making a copy of the values in a new sheet too, just in case there is ever a bit.ly disaster.
Here’s a link to a public version – please save as a copy before adding your access key or the world will know how to access your bit.ly links!
As ever, I am standing on the shoulders of giants, so great credit must go to the component writers:
JSON import: Trevor Lohrbeer (http://blog.fastfedora.com/projects/import-json)
URL checker: Cheok Luk (http://www.tinkeredge.com/blog/2012/04/check-on-page-for-broken-links-with-google-docs/)
When a member of staff suspects academic misconduct the University policy is that the student’s grade is exempted (or suspended) pending the outcome of the investigation. During this time the student should not be able to access their provisional grade. Prior to Submitting and Grading Electronically (SaGE) students whose grades were suspended due to suspected misconduct were allocated a ZZ Grade.
The Exempt Grade tool in NILE is the electronic equivalent of the ZZ Grade, and if you are considering using it for the first time we have already produced a useful guide, accessible via the NILE Help tab.
However, since writing the original guidance, a member of the teaching staff has helped identify a bug which is not detailed in the guide, but this bug is significant only if staff use the Exempt Grade tool where a rubric has been used to grade a student paper.
If the Exempt Grade feature has been applied to a paper marked with a rubric then once the Post Date passes, although the grade appears to be hidden from the student, they can still access the associated rubric via the Feedback and Grades link in their NILE module. This means a student can potentially access their provisional numeric grade from the rubric, and convert the numeric to a letter grade.
This bug has been reported to Blackboard, but it won’t be fixed for the 14-15 academic year so we have developed a technical workaround we can offer staff who need to exempt a student’s grade which has been marked using a rubric.
If you would like help relating to the Exempt Grade tool, or any other part of the Grade Centre, then please get in touch with learntech@northampton.ac.uk and we will be happy to offer support and training.
The LearnTech team have arranged for a Clever Touch Fusion Table to be available between the 9th-15th April in the Park Library Tpod.
Please indicate when you would like to see this table by emailing LearnTech
The latest roundup of LearnTech news is now available
Library and Learning Services (LLS) have produced a document detailing LLS on-campus, off-campus UK and off-campus overseas service provision. This document provides information on the alternative but equivalent services to students who are not on site.
It is expected that the contents will be of use in any planning, development or curriculum review meeting to enhance student experience.
