eLearning

This is a reminder that Bob [Guinn] will be in the Faculty Office, TC308 on Monday 15th March for a Blackboard drop-in session between 1:30 and 4:00 (earlier than previously announced).

He could cover:
·         Making a course available
·         Setting your course to allow self-enrolment
·         Using Discussion Boards
·         Sending text messages
·         Sending email
·         Blogs and Wikis - an overview
·         Adding a Course Blog
·         Using a Blog as a Reflective Journal
·         Adding a Wiki
·         Managing course members
·         The course design
·         Modifying your course menu
·         Adding materials to content areas
·         Moving or copying course materials
·         Uploading web pages
·         Using images in Blackboard
·         Creating and publishing podcasts
·         The Content Collection
·         Blackboard Tests
·         Creating questions offline
·         Sharing questions between courses
·         The Grade Centre
·         Using Turnitin with Blackboard

Bob Guinn has offered to provide some Blackboard training drop-in sessions between 2.30 – 5.30 on:

Monday  1st March (next Monday)
Monday  15th March
Monday 29th March

He will be based in TC308 and anyone is welcome.

Training could involve: Setting up Blogs, Using the Grade Center, Turnitin, Multiple Choice quizzes, copying content, using the content collection… etc, etc…

What is ‘MoLeTV’?

MoLeTV is a media-on-demand service primarily for staff and students in post-16 education colleges in England, although we welcome all organisations involved in education, and schools. MoLeTV has been built by the e-learning development team at The Manchester College. …

There are many different media formats and these can cause problems for those who want to incorporate media into e-learning activities. By using ‘MoLeTV’ you can upload your media in most of the common formats - AVI, MP4, MP3, Windows Media, Quicktime and FLV. Your uploaded media will convert to Adobe Flash Video for streaming, Windows Media, MP4 and 3GP. Note that FLV uploads do NOT convert to other formats. You can download the MP4 file format to play on PSP and iPOD.

MoLeTV utilises Flash Media Server so your media ‘streams’ resulting in clear, flowing media without ‘stalling’. MP4 and WMV non-streaming players are also available.

Works with iPod and iPhone too! Arts, Media and Publishing resources available here.

Thanks to Andy Turner for the link.

Workshops run by LIS (as part of the INSTIL staff development programme) take place this year on three dates at the beginning of each semester. Full details are available on the TVU Online Help Pages.

Paul Ramshaw from LCM  attended the Technology Supported Learning in the 21st Century Conference at Staffordshire University on 01 June 2009. He presented a poster entitled “Social Communities and Repositories for Collaborative Creative Practice” (click image for large view of poster). He also produced this report:

I recently attended and presented at the conference at Staffordshire University entitled ‘Technology Supported Learning in the 21st Century: Issues and Paradigms in Transformative Tertiary Education 2009′

The conference themes covered a broad range of approaches to teaching and learning but all included examination of the utility, benefits, issues surrounding and problems incurred when using or considering using technology to facilitate learning.

The main ‘takeaway’ that I got from the conference was that those attending were passionate about the learning experience and making it as interesting as possible so as to inculcate a culture of  discovery and scholarship within todays student bodies.

The corollary message to this was that in order to succeed universities need to be creatively responsive in innovative ways to the demands of the customer student. This means being inclusive, flexible, learner centered and sustainable in their endeavors. The downside to these aims was that universities are not usually any of the above. The first keynote speaker Professor Mark Stiles seemed to accurately capture the general themes and feeling of the conference in his presentation. Prof. Stiles noted that universities typically are not fit for purpose in terms of business processes, are driven by backward-looking or mainstream viewpoints, fail to have a common ‘big picture’ and control what doesn’t need to be controlled. Additionally they create internal competition that is unhelpful with conflicting cultures, badly managed resources and finally (!) fail to sustain or diffuse innovation. One poignant moment in his presentation was a discussion on an ‘adapt or die’ theme for todays universities.

For my part, my presentation was of the ‘poster’ type. This is a large format A1 poster with large headings and visual representations of the concepts themes and technologies that the presenter wishes to publish to the conference attendees whom circulate around the various poster sessions in an informal non-seated set of presentations that may also include the odd deep fried prawn in hand from the nearby buffet lunch.

My poster session was called ‘Social Networks, Collaborative Creative Practice and Blended Learning’. It outlined my current work on an online collaborative learning and social networks that also overlaps with virtual research environments. This work builds on work that I did that formed a JISC bid submitted in February this year.

My headings included ‘facilitating the student experience with web 2.0′, ‘applied solutions’, a ‘collaborative social network shopping list’ and tracking users learning and interaction’.  Visual aspects included images of a working environment that permits learners to collaborate on group projects in the creative arts in a web 2.0 environment with built in PDP and pedagogic measurement tools.

This work will now be extended in the 2009-10 academic year with a pilot study within FoTA that will aim to facilitate the work based learning goals of the University.

Anne Marie Dalton, University Secretary & Registrar, recently circulated these useful common sense guidelines to the use of email:

The University’s involvement in a recent legal case has prompted me to write this e-mail to all colleagues as the University’s legal officer.
May I draw your attention to the following?

• All e-mails are discoverable for a number of years - they are not an informal or temporary form of communication.
• E-mail has the same authority as any other communication to or from our University.
• E-mail should be regarded as “published information”.
• As a public body we are obliged to comply with the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act - therefore a scenario could arise whereby you could find yourself trying to defend the substance of an e-mail written and sent today some years later, perhaps as part of a court case.
• E-mails are not confidential and can be read by anyone given sufficient levels of expertise.
• Binding contracts can inadvertently be created via e-mail.
• Defamation of colleagues or other parties (deliberate or otherwise) may occur.
• Abrupt, inappropriate and inconsiderate use of language can lead to a bullying tone and possible offence to others, for example capital letters are often interpreted as shouting.
• Intensive use of e-mail and unnecessarily wide broadcasting can lead to information overload and stress colleagues who are trying to keep up with the number of e-mails received.

It is critical that the University is able to conduct business without undue constraints however consider a phone call or a face to face discussion which may be a better way of discussing a complex or confidential matter.  I will not try to provide a comprehensive statement of e-mail etiquette however you may find the following suggestions helpful:

• Avoid conducting any kind of argument or dispute via e-mail.
• Do not send messages when angry or upset as this can agitate an already difficult situation.
• Do not assume that every e-mail you send will be read or responded to.

Avoid issuing important decisions via e-mail alone thus assuming that e-mail is an adequate replacement for meaningful interaction and communication.

Twitter in Plain English is another of those great lo-fi animations from Common Craft. To find out more about Twitter what it is and how it works click on the image (opens in a new window).

Thanks to Alan Rolfe for this link.

Why pay for a VLE when you can just use Facebook? Via andy Turner, Online Systems Manager,

To create a learning organization where knowledge is passed from experts
to newcomers and where personal growth is encouraged, you need to create
a social learning network. You can impose your own and hope they’ll
participate, or you can leverage the one they already use. Chances are
many of your people are already signed up!

Don’t fight technology, Leverage it!

Our applications can turn existing social networks such as Facebook.
Into a powerful Learning Management System, (LMS, LCMS) and retain all
the rich communication and scheduling tools that these applications
offer.

Better yet, there’s no upfront investment in either infrastructure or
software licensing. You can be up and running tomorrow in the interface
your learners already know and use.

Social Networks as Learning Management Systems

UPDATE:

The Summer Showcase website now features a slideshow of images of student work on the Gallery page.
plus the programme and running order for the Live Show on Tuesday evening.
The site is constantly being updated with new posts and work visit often, bookmark the home page or grab the RSS feed.
There is a Twitter feed of updates too.
You can also point your browser at Visible Tweets to see the comment stream.
Contributions and post comments most welcome. Mail to me.

Alan Rolfe (Faculty Professional Development Coordinator) and I are running a workshop on using Endnote bibliographic software on Tuesday 23 June 10:00-13:00 in Grove House. We currently have several places available on a first-come first-served basis. If you would like to join in please let know asap.

What is Endnote: (from the Endnote website):

Millions of authors, researchers, students and librarians use EndNote to search online bibliographic databases, organise their references and images, and create instant bibliographies. EndNote not only simplifies more of your research, writing and manuscript preparation needs, but also gives you the power to create new types of bibliographies.
Endnote saves you hours of time locating the literature references you need. No more laborious typing and formatting of bibliographies, or maintaining old-fashioned card indexes of your references - EndNote does it all automatically! Whether you’re writing an essay or a dissertation, a research paper or a book, a technical proposal or a CV, you’ll find EndNote is the essential add-on to your word processor.
EndNote makes it easy to connect to Internet-based libraries of reference data (there are many free-access databases in addition to those that your organisation or institution subscribes to) and locate exactly the references you need to cite in your work. EndNote makes it easy to store, catalogue and index these references in your own custom reference databases, together with images, figures, files and links that you want to include or cite. And EndNote integrates into your word processor to make it easy to insert citations and create bibliographies and figure lists, with every entry automatically and consistently formatted in the style you, or your publishers, prefer.

Andy Lapham

From Alan Rolfe (Faculty Professional Development Coordinator)

As part of the faculty’s commitment to increasing our presence on Blackboard, I’m willing and hopefully able to offer one-to-one assistance to anyone wanting to improve their Blackboard skills. Even if you feel a complete novice, on an individual basis no-one need know about your technophobia (I won’t tell anyone if you don’t!)

At the other end of the scale, if you are already an enthusiastic user and want to extend your knowledge, I might also be able to help you.

Some of the things I may be able to help you with are:

• Setting up a blog
• Setting up a discussion board
• Preparing an online test
• Adding content in HTML format
• Using the Grade Centre
• Using Turnitin inside Blackboard (plagiarism testing)
• Using the digital drop-box
• Adding and removing students (and staff) from modules
• Setting up groups
• Adding a banner to a module front page
• Customising the menu buttons

Contact Alan if you would like to take up this offer: alan.rolfe@tvu.ac.uk

Wed 29 April 9:00-16:30 Paragon Room 706. No need to book just drop-in. Full details of activities.

Now available via an iPhone app. See the Blackboard Sync website for further details.

Also available for Facebook.

Turnitin now features anonymous marking. Staff should be able to see it as an option when creating a Turnitin assignment.
A .pdf guide to anonymous marking with Turnitin is available from the Staff User Guides section of Blackboard help, or directly from plagiarismadvice.org via the link below:
Anonymous marking with Turnitin

As part of an IT security audit, LIS are tightening up the information provided on publicly-accessible websites about student usernames and default passwords.

Email

On the TVU website, where there’s information about how to access student email, no detail is now provided about the default password. Note that default password formats are unchanged.

Blackboard

Similarly, the very explicit information on default Blackboard passwords has been removed from the help site. Note that default password formats are unchanged.

Consequences
Andy Turner, Head of Online Systems LIS, writes:

Looking at some of the calls which come in to Blackboard Help, it’s obvious that a lot of students never read the information about default passwords which has up till now been available on the web. We’ve never been able to give out usernames or passwords to people who contact us on the phone, or from private email addresses, but we have till now been able to point these students to the web to find out how to log in.

From now on the whole system is going to rely much more heavily on students accessing their TVU email account (which is, after all, something we want to encourage). If students can access their TVU email,
they should be able to use “Forgot Your Password” to generate a new password; and if that doesn’t work they can email the helpdesk and we’ll sort out a new password for them.

The system is also going to rely on new students being provided with adequate induction at the start of their course. The Induction Packs on the Staff Intranet contain guides from LIS for email and Blackboard. These are designed to be printed off and included in the packs provided to students at induction. These guides are only available electronically on the Staff Intranet, so continue to contain explicit details of the default password format. They are updated every summer. I will endeavour to ensure that staff at IT / Library helpdesks have copies of these guides which they can hand out to students.

[It would be helpful if teaching colleagues were  persuaded] to include the IT guides in induction packs [in order to] help students. And it would be especially helpful if colleagues dealing with distance learners or students on franchised courses make sure that this info reaches them.

Andy Turner, Head of Online Systems LIS, forwards this reminder about the use of Turnitin with franchise partners.

[Turnitin] would like to remind all of [their] customers that the terms of the Turnitin licence agreement state, only staff members who are registered with an institution are permitted to use the institutions Turnitin Licence. This also apply to students. Only students who are registered under the institutions FTE count will be registered to use the Turnitin system.

Whilst students on franchised courses are registered with TVU, the staff delivering those courses typically have no contractual relationship with the University, so are not covered by our Turnitin licence.

Thus staff at external institutions can only make use of Turnitin via TVU Online if their institution also has a Turnitin licence.

Andy Lapham presented his thinkpiece / review paper “Creativity Through e-Learning: Engendering Collaborative Creativity Through Folksonomy” at a Faculty of Professional Studies elearning workshop on Thursday 12 Feb 2009. The paper was previously presented at the European Conference on e-Learning in Copenhagen, autumn 2007.

The paper and PowerPoint presentation can be downloaded via these links (be aware that the PP presentation is large c.15Mb):
Paper (.pdf)
Presentation (.ppt)

Please use the following reference if you want to cite the paper: Lapham, A. C. (2007). Creativity Through e-Learning: Engendering collaborative creativity through folksonomy. In D. Remenyi (Ed.), Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on e-Learning, Copenhagen, Denmark (pp. 379-389). Reading, UK: Academic Conferences International.

Any comments on either the paper or the presentation would be welcome. Feel free to add a comment to this post.

PlagiarismAdvice.org have been providing resources, training, advice and guidance to the education sector since 2002 when the service was founded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) as the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service to help address growing concerns about plagiarism within the UK HE and FE sectors. [They] currently offer the following services to the education sector:

• A wide range of good practice examples, which have been sourced and developed by the academic community, including downloadable tip sheets.
• An international conference which showcases innovative practice in this area. Our fourth biennial conference will take place in 2010.
• Onsite and online training and guidance sessions.
• A UK user group whichs meets regularly to share good practice and discuss use and implementation of TurnitinUK and associated issues.

PlagiarismAdvice.org well worth a look.

Using Technology to Enhance Student Learning workshop
Organised by colleagues in the Faculty of Professional Studies
Thursday 12 February 2009
11.00 - 13.00
Learning Innovations room (TC32)

This workshop, takes a look at some web tools and technologies, and explores their possible uses and potential in supporting our students’ learning.

The workshop will include sessions on
* Web technologies and learning - Teresa Burton
* What is a Learning Object and how can you reuse one? - Lyn Greaves
* Social Networking - Andy Lapham

Everyone is welcome!

Forthcoming introductory sessions are planned for this year as follows:

Tue 10th February Slough A124 10.30 – 12.30

Monday 11th May Ealing C336 (Library block) 2.00 – 4.00

Interested? Places are limited so please contact andy.turner@tvu.ac.uk asap.