On Tuesday 2nd September, 2014 at the Association of Learning Technology gala dinner, the Northampton LearnTech team won the award for “Team of the Year 2014”.
The Award’s overall purpose is to celebrate and reward excellent practice and outstanding achievement in the learning technology field and is open to individuals and teams based anywhere in the world.
LearnTech Team - July 2014
Front 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.
This award recognised the incredible work and progress made by the team over the past few years and the contribution which they have made to the environment within Northampton in addition to advancing the Learning Technology field more generally.
As part of the application process a group of key staff with in the University of Northampton had to talk about the impact which the team had made on their own particular area.
In addition, the team have also had to make a film about the work which they do:
In accepting the award, Rob Howe (Head of Learning Technology) stated that:
“Northampton’s Learning Technology Team is a major force for positive change within the University, its academic partners and the sector. Its institutional role far exceeds supporting colleagues in the use of learning technology: the team fulfils an enabling role, critical to capacity building and scaling up Northampton’s excellent provision. It collaborates with academics and course teams to identify pedagogic needs that appropriate learning technologies can help them address. Through such collaborations, the team embarks on transformational projects leading to innovative and successful experiences across different disciplines and modes of study, as well as research outputs. This is a great achievement not only for the LearnTech team and for Library and Learning Services, but also for the University as a whole.”
LearnTech has a new resource to help instructors to find resources that exist outside NILE that would improve the student experience. The NILEX blog site contains reviews of external tools and examples of how they might be used. Each tool is tagged to make it easier to find when trying to meet a particular need: displaying maps; asynchronous communication; portfolios; curation; and many others. There is also a full text search facility. We hope that CAIeRO participants will find this a particularly useful resource when they are trying to translate their ideas into activities.
Each tool has been tested in relation to NILE and any integration issues are discussed, along with any registration requirement for staff or students. All the tools are free and licensed to use in education – applications with a ‘paid premium’ element are only included where the free version is of significant use.
For instructors interested in the integration of data and data services into their NILE sites (creating ‘mash-ups’ or data for infographics would be examples), a separate module – Data Services for Learners – is included which explains some of the possibilities and includes ideas and examples.
We hope these ideas will help you create new and interesting material that will engage students, as well as new ways for students to collect and present material. New ideas or tools that you think might be included would be very welcome, along with feedback on the content. As external tools often change in their nature and capabilities we do expect them to require updating.
You can subscribe to the content as an RSS feed for Feedly or Feedburner using the link below.
We have updated the service updates link on the NILE welcome page – if you have issues out of hours with NILE this should highlight any problems.
For entries containing the word ‘Link’, the check is a very basic one – does the URL respond with an ‘OK’ status? For all the others an attempt is made to read data from the provider’s service status and give a little more detail. As these vary and this application is new, errors are possible (likely!). There are links to the provider’s feed if this application fails.
If you have any more systems you’d like to be included in a link or better check, please let us know.
NILE was upgraded over the weekend of 16th & 17th August to version 9.1 April 2014. This introduced several new features, the highlights of which are below:
Student Preview
Student Preview
The new Student Preview feature provides Tutors with the capability to see the course exactly how a student would by easily transitioning into and out of a new preview feature.
A new Student Preview button appears in the top right-hand corner of the breadcrumb bar next to the Course Themes and Edit Mode buttons, shaped like an eye.
While in Student Preview mode tutors can interact with the course as if they were a student, including taking quizzes/tests, submitting assignments, posting to forums, posting to blogs, etc.
Upon returning back to the Tutor view any results created while in the preview mode can be retained to allow you to see results– or deleted straight away.
Read more about the Student Preview
Groups Management
Groups Management
Creating groups within NILE, whether small or large, and managing them is now easier. You can choose the students you want to add to a group as well as distinguish among them by viewing their picture and Profile Card. Once a group is created, adding and removing members is just as easy.
Read more about Groups management
Grade Centre Smart Views
Grade Centre Smart Views
When you create a group, you can now simply click a button to create a Smart View in the Grade Centre that corresponds to that group. A Smart View is a focused look at the Grade Centre that is saved for continued use. You can also create and access a group’s Smart View directly from the “All Groups” management page.
Read more about Grade Centre Smart Views
My Grades
My Grades
The My Grades area where students view their results and feedback has been updated with a new look.
- The presentation of results can be organised – by last activity or due date.
- The “All,” “Graded,” “Upcoming,” and “Submitted” filters allowing students to narrow down the number of rows they see
- The text size and row spacing have been reduced so more information is displayed on the page
- Feedback is included in-line, so students don’t need to click away to view it.
More information on all of the new features
Northampton was previously on Blackboard 9.1 service pack 13 and was upgraded to the April 2014 release. This version moved us two releases above our previous point. (SP14 and April 2014 releases). You can see all the new features which were 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.
We hope that you appreciate the new and improved functionality.
An old problem that we hadn’t seen for a long time resurfaced on a couple of course sites last week and – as it is the season for NILE site preparation – may come back to haunt lecturers.
When re-organising your menu on the left of the site, menu items (including dividers and subheadings) begin to refuse to stay where they have been moved to. The symptoms are sometimes not immediately obvious if only one menu item is changed, but as soon as the screen is refreshed the problem is clear.
It appears that the Blackboard system can end up with duplicate identifying numbers for menu items when items have been moved around and this can’t be corrected using the drag and drop editor.
The solution is right in front of our eyes, but rarely used. There is an ‘up/down arrow’ icon at the top of the menu when in edit mode – this is the accessible method of re-ordering items. Select the item you want to move and use the arrows to position it. If you alter the ‘bad’ items, this appears to fix the identifying number duplication so you may be able to revert to drag and drop once you’ve used this tool.
On the 4th August Turnitin updated their iPad app to version 1.3.0
The main change that could affect users at Northampton is the ability to force the version of the submission on the server to overwrite that on the iPad. It is unlikely that this will be needed often – perhaps when a submission has been marked using a web browser at the same time that it is being marked on an iPad, or a restored submission needs to be ‘pushed’ to an iPad. A ‘long hold’ on the submission in the iPad brings up a dialog box. Clearly, if you initiate this in error, please cancel to avoid losing any marking you have recently done on your iPad.
This update also mentions ‘grading forms’, a cut down rubric. We don’t recommend these as part of the SaGE process, but there is more information here.
Written by Rebecca Heaton
On 10th July an art and ICT Teach Meet event /art exhibition was held at the Northampton Contemporary Art Gallery showcasing the work of students and local school teachers who have been influenced by the universities Innovation fund projects Stem to SteAm and Technology Outdoors, supported by the School of Education, colleagues from UCEE and the LearnTech team.
The event took the form of an artistic ‘happening’ bringing the outside inside to celebrate a year’s worth of work surrounding the projects. Everyone involved had an enjoyable evening, participants could take part in a number of workshops: light-trails, animation and batik whilst artist Emma Davis created collaborative work in response to the event. To explore and share the evening take a look at the storify created.
Prizes were awarded to many teachers at the event with Bridgewater school winning a set of resources to support iPad use in the curriculum donated by Rising Stars. The school developed a whole school project ‘Bridgecraft’ aligned with the Stem to SteAm agenda. The teachers presenting praised how the university supported and inspired developments in their practice by providing project websites, CPD network groups and media days as part of the innovation projects.
The latest roundup of LearnTech news is now available
You might already know that the University has plans to extend our portfolio of high quality blended and online courses. These plans aim to help us meet market demand for flexible, scalable study options, as well as allowing us to bring the campus experience into the 21st century, helping students and staff make the most of valuable contact time. The plans are outlined in more detail in this paper on The University of Northampton’s future online and blended offering, which was approved earlier this year.
In the past few weeks, a key element of this has been put in place with the appointment of Learning Designers, a new role with a remit to help programme teams design effective courses for online and blended learning. The new team is based in Library and Learning Services, working closely with Learning Technologists and CfAP as well as the Institute of Learning and Teaching. Watch this short video to find out more about their role:
(or access the transcript here)
There are three Learning Designers in the new team: Rob Farmer, Rachel Maxwell and Julie Usher. The team will offer a range of design support services, including team CAIeROs and one-to-one support.
Each of the six Schools have nominated priority courses for (re)development, and the team will focus primarily on these in the first instance. If you’d like to find out how the team could support your programme or module, or you have some good practice or learning designs to share, please send initial enquiries to Rob Howe, Head of Learning Technology (rob.howe@northampton.ac.uk).
LearnTech are actively managing the space allocated to us by Blackboard for the NILE system to avoid any unnecessary subscription charges. As we have material on the system which dates back several years, we have archived sites that are no longer being actively used. The sites chosen to archived have creation dates prior to 1st April 2010.
There may be files that tutors and staff still wish to retain or sites that are still in use, so a list of courses concerned are linked to the bottom of this post. The file should open with Acrobat reader, which is installed on all PCs. You should should use ‘Ctrl-F’ and search for your course ID (e.g. 3DD1047)
We would like to emphasize that we are archiving, not deleting, so sites and files can be recovered at a later date if necessary. Any sites which were requested to be exempted from the process in 2013 will be unaffected – instructors on these sites will be asked to review them again in 2015 for possible inclusion in next year’s archiving process.
Instructor / Course list for sites scheduled for archiving:
