Great learning design and quality assurance are two sides of the same coin. When you make changes to a module or programme, there are a range of QA procedures that might apply, and it helps to understand how these processes interlink – particularly when planning ahead.
New programmes or modules
When writing a new module or programme, a CAIeRO workshop can help you with everything from writing the learning outcomes, to choosing the assessment and creating the learning activities. The first day of the workshop will help you set the foundations, and the second day helps ensure these are workable in practice.
New programmes and modules are subject to validation, and as part of this process you will be required to write a rationale for the new offering. The planning work you do in the CAIeRO can help you complete this, as it includes consideration of strategic goals, the student experience, and resource and training requirements. The CAIeRO process can also help you firm up your curriculum documentation (also required for validation), and make decisions about the allocation of teaching and learning hours, assessment strategy and more. In addition to documentation, the CAIeRO can help you get started creating sample teaching materials, which are required for validation of distance learning programmes.
At the University, many validations can be completed online, but some (particularly those involving PSRBs) require a validation event. For these programmes, validations usually take place in the Spring term. For a new programme starting in September, you should aim for validation early in the term to allow the maximum possible time for development of the course materials (if you want the course to start the following January, you might aim for validation later, in March or April). This means you should be scheduling your CAIeRO in the previous Autumn term.
For more on the validation process, see the validation page of the website, which has information and links to the handbook..
Periodic subject reviews
PSRs are a chance to reflect on what has worked well in your teaching over the previous five years. It is also a great opportunity to use those reflections to define the future direction of the programmes involved. The CAIeRO process can be used to support this process in a number of ways: as a ‘health check’ or review of a programme; to target specific issues you may have identified; and/or to plan how to implement changes you’d like to make.
For PSR you will be required to submit a Self-Evaluation Document (SED). This document will ask you to reflect on things like alignment with frameworks and standards, the currency of the curriculum and student achievement and feedback. All of these elements can be considered within the CAIeRO process, to help you complete the SED form and prepare for any questions during the PSR event.
At the University, PSRs usually take place in the Autumn term, and the documentation is submitted in advance. CAIeROs for PSR can be scheduled at any point in the year (although you may want to note the Change of Approval guidance below when considering timing).
For more on the PSR process, see the PSR page on the website, which has information and links to the handbooks.
Ongoing review of delivery
Of course, adjusting and adapting your teaching and assessment practice happens all year round, and is not dependent on big events like those listed above. You might have taken over a module or programme, or be considering a more blended approach, or just want to try a new idea you’ve heard about. You can book a CAIeRO for issues like this at any time in the year, but you should be conscious of timing the implementation of these changes, and the possible impact on the student experience.
Wherever possible, you should avoid making big changes that will affect current delivery of a module or programme part way through. In addition to this, for level 5 and 6 modules, be aware that students need to know what to expect when they make their module choices. Any changes made after students have chosen the module should be made in consultation with those students.
Changes to existing modules and programmes are achieved through the Change of Approval process, which recognises three levels of change (based on degree of impact). Type B and C changes (more substantial than Type A) must be submitted well in advance of the proposed delivery, and for levels 5 and 6, in advance of the publication of module information to students. For 2015/16 delivery, the deadline for change of approvals for these modules is 13 January (for levels 4 and 7, the deadline is May).
For more on this process, see the Change of Approval page on the website, which has information and links to the handbooks.
Learntech have been examining the world of free online polling tools this week in response to a number of requests. While there are several alternatives with different strengths an weaknesses, Polldaddy stands out as a flexible tool to use in a variety of situations – as a brief informal piece of formative assessment, a survey/poll or just feedback on a piece of content or activity. These items embed very well within NILE. There is a fuller description of Polldaddy on the NILE External Tools blog.
It requires an email registration on the WordPress.com site, with which it is also tightly integrated.
Although Staff have access to Panopto to record their presentations, students have had to do things like embedding audio into PowerPoint to create multimedia presentations until now.
SlidesLive can work in a very similar way to Panopto – download the recording software (for Mac and Windows), record the presentation, upload it and make some editing changes. It is slightly different in that it converts each slide to an image, the advantage being that it’s possible to replace or remove a slide using the online editor. It’s also possible to add a second ‘stream’ by using a video clip from YouTube that can be viewed alongside the slide images – the viewer can adjust the relative sizes of those two pictures.
There’s nothing to stop you adding a YouTube video directly in the online editor, then adding a number of images (these could be captions or even a transcript) which you can synchronise to the video. You’re not obliged to just capture PowerPoint, the recording of the slides is just a screen capture, so you can use other presentation software or just capture a screen (just one screen if you have two).
In its simplest form, most students would have very little difficulty in creating a basic presentation. The down side is that although uploaded presentations can be made unlisted, they cannot be downloaded so are unsuitable for summative assessments. However, presentations can be made public, perhaps as part of a portfolio or an online CV. The slide/video combination also opens up the possibility of more creative uses – critiquing someone’s video presentation or interpreting the content. 
You can find a video/slides example here. SlidesLive does require users to register using a simple email – as ever, we’d suggest avoiding the Facebook login option.
In 2003, Richard Winter wrote a piece for the Guardian in which he listed some problems than can occur when essays are the primary tool used to assess what, and how much, students have learned. Winter claimed that the essays students write often show evidence only of surface learning, rather than deep learning, and that the use of essays for assessment was partly to blame for this. Personally speaking, I really like the essay. I find it stimulating, challenging, and an opportunity to examine and learn in great detail and depth. However, regardless of how much one might like the essay, sometimes it could be useful to provide students with a friendly way in to academic writing, especially for first-year undergraduates or those returning to education after a break, and this is where patchwork text assessment comes in.
The basic idea is that rather than choosing one or two major points of assessment, the students submit multiple short pieces of writing on a regular basis (perhaps in the form of an academic blog or journal) which are then ‘stitched together’ with a final summary, evaluation or reflective commentary. The learning outcomes remain the same, the word count is not altered, and the final submission deadline stays as it is: the difference is that the writing is built up over a longer period of time, in which the students complete many short, directed writing tasks. The writing tasks could be similar or varied, and could be shared for peer-review or kept private. Tutors could review the writing tasks at one or two specific intervals in order to provide formative feedback, or could simply mark everything at the end of the process.
Dr. Craig Staff (Senior Lecturer in Fine Art) and Rob Farmer (Learning Designer) are currently conducting research into patchwork text assessment with students in the School of The Arts. The purpose of the research is to study the attitudes of students to this type of assessment, to look at the quality of the writing they produce, and to determine the staff workload implications when assessing the patchwork texts. The project is due to run over three academic years (2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16), and will involve around 300 students from levels four to six. Interim findings from the students who undertook the patchwork assessments in 2013/14 clearly showed that it would be worthwhile continuing with the project.
Find out more …
Read Richard Winter’s 2003 Guardian article ‘Alternative to the Essay’
Visit the patchwork text pages of Richard Winter’s website
Visit the Digitally-enhanced Patchwork Text Assessment (DePTA) JISC project website
Thursday the 23rd of October saw the appearance of the Follow Northampton app in the App Store. The app is a freely available interactive guide to Northampton, and it offers a fresh perspective on Northampton’s rich historical, architectural and cultural heritage. The app, and the associated website, were created and developed by staff and students at the University of Northampton and members of the wider Northampton community. The project leads were Dr. Drew Gray, Senior Lecturer in History, and Sabine Coady Schaebitz, Director of the Collaborative Centre for the Built Environment. Technical support and advice was provided by Rob Farmer from the Learning Technology Team, and the app was built by Chris Collinge from wedoApps. Content was developed by BA History students (Roseanne Belcher, Gabrielle Cairns, Jasdeep Dhillon and Steve Robinson), photographs were provided by a BA Photography student (Peter Holmes), and audio recordings were made of a number of (actual and honorary) Northamptonians, particularly Peter Aiers, Andy Clarke, Peter James Norman, Professor Nick Petford, and Dr. Toby Purser.
The app and website were made possible by the award of a Learning Enhancement & Innovation Grant from the University of Northampton. And the great news is that work on the app and the website is set to continue, as a second Learning Enhancement & Innovation Grant was recently given, and this will allow the project to cover more locations, and will allow the inclusion of extra features into the app. We are hoping to launch a second version of the app in March 2015, which will include full offline access to the locations, improved navigation, and additional locations. A third version is planned for July 2015 which will include design and layout updates, the addition of social media sharing options, and even more locations. In the longer term, we hope to add videos, iBeacons, and augmented reality, and to make an Android version of the app.
Get the iOS app: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/follow-northampton/id919466161?mt=8
Visit the website: http://www.follownorthampton.co.uk
For anyone who doesn’t know, Blackboard is the software which powers NILE. We produce lots of our own Help guides and support materials and keep them under the NILE Help tab, but Blackboard also produce a lot of support which staff will find helpful. Right now, there is a YouTube playlist full of useful videos which you might want to take a look at. Some of the videos will be of more interest than others but there’s fifty-five of them so there’s sure to be some worth a peek at.
Click here to view the video playlist
If you want a suggestion then I’d point you towards the bottom of the list to Student Preview, which is a new feature on NILE. In fact, while you’re down there you could also look at how to upload Test questions to NILE using an Excel spreadsheet as it’ll make the process of setting up a Test on NILE much easier.
Have a look and get in touch with the team if you need any support from a real person.
learntech@northampton.ac.uk
Al
“Changemaking is simply where someone spots a social problem and does something about it.”
The Changemaker Certificate has been created and implemented by Fr Tim Curtis in the School of Health as a way of encouraging all staff and students across the University to explore what it means to be a Changemaker and also to award engagement with Changemaking through the completion of a Social Venture Canvas (SVC) that would be capable of attracting financial support.
The Certificate sits in two places at present: (1) tied to academic modules offered from the School of Health – SWK1051 and SWK3025; and (2) as an extra-curricular award not tied to academic credit. The route taken will depend on whether or not the academic modules are offered as part of individual programmes, with the idea being that anyone across the University can therefore participate.
Through a series of coursework activities that all feed in to and contribute towards attainment of each section, participants prepare a draft proposal for an SVC that will be both self- and peer-assessed. Work is assessed using a newly-designed ‘CM Assessment Rubric‘ that draws on and modifies a number of identified 21st Century Skills. Achievement comes either through attaining the Certificate in isolation at either bronze, silver or gold level; or, for students on SWK1051, the rubric provides clear links to either the gold, silver or bronze certificates, but uses submission deadlines and the standard UMF scores to determine achievement levels. While it may depend on the social venture being addressed and the work carried out by the student, students completing SWK1051 are most likely to attain the bronze certificate (which is around concepts of thinking and exploring a social venture idea), with some credit at silver. The final venture canvas would still require to be submitted to the Changemaker Certificate system however.
- For more on the Changemaker Certificate case study, please see Changemaker assessment final.
- To enrol on the Changemaker Certificate for yourself, please click here.
A number of staff are designing e-tivities (online learning activities) that require students to undertake some independent research and then share a link to the online resource with peers who can then click on the link and view the article for themselves.
If the article has been found and accessed through NELSON and the link shared with students who are not already authenticated through the University systems then they will be faced with either a dead link or an ‘Access Denied’ message.
In this situation the solution is as follows:
- Ask students to include the full reference for the journal so that potential viewers can access the article themselves via the Library ‘Find My Reference’ tool. By using this route, students will be prompted to login with their University login in order to get access to the article.
If this applies to you, please change your e-tivity instructions to ask for articles to be shared using the University of Northampton Harvard referencing style. Include this link to a Skills Hub video that shows quickly how to use the ‘Find My Reference’ tool. You might also want to include an example of how to reference a journal using the Harvard journal – guidance is available from the Help Tab in NILE.
The added bonus for the students, of course, is practice in Harvard referencing!
With thanks to Hannah Rose, Academic Librarian for helping us with the solution
Student perceptions of their learning and engagement in response to the use of a continuous e-assessment in an undergraduate module.
Naomi Holmes, School of Science and Technology
Dr. Naomi Holmes (School of Science and Technology) undertook the use of low-stakes continuous weekly summative e-assessment with a cohort of level 5 (2nd year) students. Biggs and Tang (2011) state that it is assessment and not the curriculum that determines how and what students learn. Learning needs to be aligned with assessment as much as possible to increase engagement, even if the result is that the student is “learning for the assessment”, and therefore accreditation. With this in mind the use of low-stakes weekly assessments was undertaken to help support learning (formative), and lead to accreditation (summative). Results show that both physical and virtual engagement with this (optional) module, and students’ learning and understanding of the subject increased because of this method of assessment.
The LearnTech team are:
Rob Howe – Head of Learning Technology
Rachel Maxwell / Rob Farmer / Julie Usher – Learning Designers
Rachel McCart – NILE Administrator
Adel Gordon – Learning Technologist (Science and Technology)
Geraldine Murphy – Learning Technologist (NBS)
Belinda Green – Learning Technologist (Education)
Iain Griffin – Learning Technologist – 0.8 (Health)
Al Holloway – Learning Technologist (Arts and Education)
Simon Thompson – Learning Technologist (Social Sciences)
Andy Stenhouse – Learning Technologist (Health)
Kieran McGovern – Learning Technologist 0.2 (No school alignment)
LearnTech Team - July 2014Front row (l-r) Rachel Maxwell, Geraldine Murphy, Belinda Green, Rachel McCart. Middle row (l-r) Adel Gordon, Julie Usher, Iain Griffin, Al Holloway, Andy Stenhouse. Back row (l-r) Rob Farmer, Rob Howe, Simon Thompson. Kieran McGovern - not available for photo.
