Currently viewing the tag: "NILE"
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.
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.
As in previous years, LearnTech have been working with colleagues in Curriculum and IT on the creation of new NILE course (programme) and module sites for the forthcoming academic year, only this year with a twist: instead of routinely copying over all teaching materials from earlier site iterations, we are taking this opportunity to review and ‘spring clean’ legacy content, particularly with a nod to the course evaluation and redesign coming out of recent CAiEROs.
NILE 2016-17 module template
The updated and fresh NILE template, proposed at (and tweaked on the back of consultations with) the SEC (Student Experience Committee) on 24th February and with the Learning and Teaching Forum, has resulted in the creation of 4,251 ‘clean’ sites, now ready and already receiving content.
Following the updated minimum NILE standards, LearnTech and Academic Librarians have so far worked with colleagues from the Schools of Education and Health running a total of 11 sessions covering changes to the template; reviewing and copying relevant content; checking curriculum data and reading lists and populating sites ready for the new student intake.
The Team is now working on the roll-out to the Business School and is in contact with subject leads from the Schools of Social Sciences, Arts and SciTech, identifying local support needs, creating online resources to help guide site population and working with colleagues from other University support teams to ensure everything is set up and in place for the new academic year – where possible, before the summer vacation strikes!
NILE is integrated into the learning and teaching process at The University of Northampton and we need to ensure that it is being used effectively by staff in order to provide a quality student experience.
Building on the guidance which was initially produced in January 2012, the framework has now been updated to cover the minimum standards which are expected on a NILE site. This was approved at University SEC on 20th April, 2016 and subsequently used as the basis for the new NILE templates which were developed for the 2016/17 academic year.
As noted at SEC on the 24th February, it was proposed to enhance the provision of NILE sites for students in four key areas during 2016/17:
- To respond to on-going staff and student feedback to enhance sites to reduce queries. Colour schemes and other features to enhance accessibility will be addressed where possible.
- To use external data where available to reduce manual setup / checking. Staff will be automatically added to sites where possible based on data from the previous year. Prompts to set up assignments in the “Submit your work” area will provide information sourced from the Curriculum system.
- To provide clean sites and work in central teams to work in partnership with tutors to only copy over required information. This will reduce storage needs and also reduce chance of displaying old information on sites. Specific days will be provided for academic teams to work with Learntech to copy content from the previous year and look at ways to enhance existing and new materials.
- Use of Learntech, CfAP, Academic Librarians, Curriculum and Records teams to work with tutors to ensure sites are ready for 16/17 delivery. Sites will be merged where feasible to reduce the total number of sites viewed by tutors and ensure that students are not left on sites which are not being used for delivery.
When working with NILE sites tutors are guided to review some of the comments made by students as part of the STAR awards. This demonstrates some of the key items which students are looking for when working within NILE.
On 17th March, 2016, Roy Wallace (Senior Lecturer in Media Production – School of the Arts) was presented with the Best NILE Site Award as part of the Student Teaching and Representation (STAR) Awards evening.
(left to right) Roy Wallace collecting his award from Rob Howe (Head of Learning Technology)
.
The full report on the event produced by Student Union President, Victor Agboola noted that NILE is now an ‘essential part of the student online experience’. he went on to note that ‘…a prominent theme found in the nominations was that students recognised the value in a regularly updating NILE sites. Students praised the lecturers who upload the lecture content before the lecture even takes place, and having the sites well-organised throughout the year. It was found that students then had the opportunity to do some wider research which then allows them to contribute more in both lecturers and seminars.’ Some of the student comments on each of the nominees is also available
The other tutors who were highly commended within this category were:
- Anoop Bhogal Nair – Northampton Business School
- Tony Smith Howell – School of Education
- Claire Allen – School of the Arts
- Greg Spellman – School of Science & Technology
- Simon Sneddon – School of Social Science
[Posted on behalf of Elizabeth Palmer]
When starting to make online activities for blended learning there is a temptation to take content that is currently being delivered face-to-face in lectures (through software such as Powerpoint) and moving that content into an online format where the students are ‘digitally page turning’ through material: read or watch x, y and z before class.
The learning and teaching plan for blended learning is that we are creating interactive activities that support students towards developing their own knowledge, understanding and creating outputs that can then be used in class. In other words we are trying to flip the focus away from tutor created content that the student must passively absorb, to student-led interactive and created content.
Any content provided to students should be done in an interactive, discovery based way i.e. rather than telling them the answer we allow them to discover the answer through questioning, testing, trialling, problem solving etc. online and then reinforce and develop this face to face. If you are trying out e-tivities for the first time Xerte can be a useful package to start this process. Have a look at these two examples of using Xerte to make interactive activities on academic skills: here and here. Whilst they are not necessarily perfect, they demonstrate how you can use Xerte’s functionality to create knowledge checking, interactive exercises that you could then build on in class or use as a basis for students to undertake a more complex task.
Between Saturday 19th December 10:30pm GMT and Sunday 20th December 10:30am GMT , NILE will be upgraded to the latest stable version. It will be unavailable between these times.
Northampton is currently on Blackboard April 2014 and will be upgraded to the October 2014 release. This version jumps one release above our current point and will ensure that we remain within contracted support. There are no new significant features but there will be security updates.
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 security updates to 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.
[Posted on behalf of Anne Misselbrook – Content Developer]
Dr Michael Curran PhD, MBA, MPhil is an Associate Professor (Podiatry) and module leader for research methods in Podiatry at the University of Northampton.
One of the research methods modules taught over three years of the BSc Hons Podiatry course is inferential statistics. Mike was keen to increase the blend of this material between face to face delivery and online activity, and this resulted in the Statistics Knowledge Check. He has completed the cycle of transferring content online and students provided feedback using a survey included in the Statistics Knowledge Check.
Podiatry Statistics Knowledge Check
One of the Podiatry students noted:
“I found tackling the Knowledge Check in 4 separate stages hugely useful and much more manageable than being exposed to a larger test. I found the separate stages less intimidating”.
Dr Curran reflected on the experience:
“It is interesting to me how to blend the concept of e packages with actual face to face teaching. I guess it is the future.
On reflection I think we have hit the middle ground of evaluation with no very favourable student comment, but equally no very unfavourable comment. Considering this is teaching statistics that is probably pretty good!!
My reason for doing this is to try and look at alternative ways of delivering a potentially dry subject, with ability for the students to reflect on the statistics at a future date.
I would consider repeating this approach for other areas of my teaching”.
To read the full blog article please click here. Using an online Gamification approach to teaching inferential statistics
To find out how to use the Adaptive Release feature in NILE please click on the link here
Learn more from Blackboard Help click here
The honest answer to this question is, ‘it depends’. A good NILE site will de different depending on your subject, mode of delivery, level of delivery, and various other factors. As you’d expect, as much as possible we like to avoid the idea that a one-size-fits-all approach is possible to learning design. However, what is sometimes useful when trying to come up with ideas for things to do in NILE is to look at what other people have been doing. To make this easier, we have collected together a few sites which we feel are quite interesting, and have made them available as self-enrol (and self-unenrol) NILE organisations.
If you’d like to have a look at any of these sites, just do the following:
1. Log in to NILE
2. Click on the ‘Sites and Organisations’ tab
3. Search in the ‘Organisation Search’ box for either, LTC, SSAS, PSAS, CRIT101
4. Enrol on the site
Currently there are four NILE sites available as self-enrol organisations. These are:
• Let’s Teach Computing (LTC)
• Study Skills for Academic Success (SSAS)
• Postgraduate Skills for Academic Success (PSAS)
• Critical Thinking – A Practical Introduction (CRIT101)
If you’ve got a good NILE site and would like to make it available as a self-enrol organisation please get in touch with us at: LD@northampton.ac.uk
And finally, if you think that you’ve got a great NILE site, you might like to enter it for a Blackboard Exemplary Course Award: http://blackboard.com/ecp
