Update on making Word and PowerPoint accessible: By Professor Richard Mitchell

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Preamble

Earlier in the year, Laura Bennett and I wrote a blog on making Word and PowerPoint accessible, which reflected our experience of implementing the University’s policy on Inclusive Practice in T&L, which is available here.

Since that blog was written, the University has included Ally into Blackboard, which provides academics with a view on how accessible our documents are and step-by-step guidance on how to make them accessible. In this blog I reflect on Ally and other developments, including the part of the recent Accessibility Audit Report from JISC which covered one of my courses.

Ally in Blackboard

As is explained on the TEL Support Site, Ally is an add on to Blackboard which allows students to download your teaching material in alternative formats (such as in HTML for view on mobile phone, electronic braille, etc) and it provides an accessibility score on your material  as well as feedback and guidance to enable you to make the material more accessible. Instructors can see a colour coded dial with a percentage

 

 

 

 

If low, the file is deemed not accessible and needs immediate attention; if medium it is somewhat accessible and could use improvement; if high it is accessible but could be improved; and occasionally the file is judged perfect.

If you click on the icon, you are presented with a screen with the score, and an option to see all the issues. You can then see what you need to do, and how the score can be increased – though so far there is guidance on only some of the issues.

I then go back to the original Word or PowerPoint file, make the appropriate changes, and re upload them to Blackboard. I can then get a new assessment by Ally, though I tend to have to wait for it.

The percentages given can seem harshly low – I had a document with two images which I had not added Alt Text to (one being the University crest), and the score was about 50%. The file became perfect when I added suitable text to those images. I gather that Ally considers the lack of Alt Text as a more pressing issue, which accounts for the scoring.

It should be noted that Word and PowerPoint’s built in checker is satisfied if you enter a Title or Description to any Alt Text, but Ally is happy only if there is a description – so is there any point in adding a title?

I am told that Alt-Text is read by screen readers, which explains why Ally considers it important – whereas a Title can be what is shown when a mouse hovers over the figure.

Ally can’t assess how useful your Alt Text is, just that it is there – so you should use your judgement.

As we noted in the original blog, you don’t have to be perfect – most of my PowerPoint documents are rated as High, with a score of 99% – the concern being about contrast issues, but as of writing there is no guidance on where the issue occurs. I am occasionally judged as Perfect which is nice! However, this may be more of a judgement call, as it is usually obvious when viewed on the screen. Blackboard suggests downloading this tool to fix contrast issues.

One issue Ally flags is untagged PDF files. If, say, your source document is a Word file, and you correctly use styles such as Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, Normal, etc. and then decide to produce a PDF, I recommend that you do so by saving the document as PDF, but just before saving, press the Options button in the dialog box, and ensure the Document Tags for Accessibility option is ticked.

I have come to the conclusion, however, that it is better to upload Word or PowerPoint documents, rather than PDFs to Blackboard. Students can readily download such documents (in whatever format) and can change them as they require – such as adding notes to PowerPoint slides, for instance.

Using notes in PowerPoint

In 2017, I attended one of the public lectures I help to organise for the local IET on the Internet of Insecure Things. It was a very engaging lecture, comprising slides mainly composed of pictures, which the speaker in effect used as prompts. In contrast, if a slide comprises text which the speaker reads, albeit with some embellishments, a lecture can be dull.

However, from an accessibility point of view, such an approach does not provide much support. A solution to this is to use the notes section in PowerPoint. In fact, there is brief guidance in a few web sites which recommend that it is good practice if slides are decluttered and detail put in the notes section, though not specifically from an accessibility point of view.

I therefore experimented with one of my modules in the Spring term, where I simplified the text on slides, moving and embellishing some of the text into the notes section. The slides are less cluttered, and the students have access to the notes as they can download the PowerPoint from Blackboard, and they can add more detail if they want. That module went much better.

In 2018, JISC did an accessibility audit of some of the university pages and systems, and two courses in Blackboard, one of which being my second year Neural Networks module. It was noted that my lecture notes did not utilise the notes section, but that did not matter as sufficient information was there, and there were other resources on the module. However, I took it as affirmation that decluttering slides and using the notes section were good from an accessibility point of view.

Therefore, as I had planned, for this year I have reduced the amount of material on the slides for all my courses, and utilised the notes section. For this to be effective in the lecture room, the lecturer needs to use Presenter mode, where the students see the full slide, but the presenter on their screen sees, the slide, the next slide, and the notes section.

I asked IT for guidance on how this is achieved, as searches I did online did not help, and was told the following:

The reason presenter mode doesn’t work in the lecture theatres is that, although there are 2 physical screens, the system behaves as if there is only 1, it duplicates the first across all others.

This can be changed by holding the windows button + P. Then you can switch from ‘duplicate’ to ‘extend’ screens with the keyboard directional arrows + enter.

Once you have set the screen to extend, the PC will recognise 2 separate windows to operate with, and so presenter mode will work.

Please reset the room to the way you found it whenever you use this function, by pressing windows button + P and reselecting ‘duplicate’.

I have found that this works in some rooms – but not all, though I am lobbying.

What I can say is that I feel the lectures are going better, are more engaging, but it works best when the notes are visible (and hence provide some prompts) to the presenter.

Summary

From my experience, Ally is a useful tool for accessibility, though I do not have experience of students downloading material in alternative formats. There are some discrepancies between the assessment of accessibility between Ally and Word and PowerPoint, such as in the use of Alt Text. The score given by Ally seems disproportionate and it is a shame that you don’t get an immediate reassessment when you upload a changed version. It will be better when there is more guidance on addressing issues.

I also recommend the use of the notes section in PowerPoint, and believe it to be good practice in general and for accessibility. I hope that Presenter view will be working in all lecture theatres.

The EMA Symposium: Sharing Knowledge, Good Practice, and Cake

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Dr Madeleine Davies and Dr Emma Mayhew

On Tuesday 22nd May 2018, over 150 colleagues from across the university gathered in the Meadow Suite to hear a series of presentations and to engage in conversations about the work that the EMA Programme has been doing to prepare for roll-out of online assessment and feedback. Colleagues from the majority of Schools and units across the university were represented and staff from academic Schools, Support Centres, and CQSD shared experience and good practice. An active Twitter feed provided live commentary on the presentations and activities (120 tweets and re-tweets) and reflected an atmosphere that was informative and wholly positive.

The event was organised by Dr Emma Mayhew (EMA Academic Director) and Dr Madeleine Davies (EMA Academic Partner) and was introduced by Professor Gavin Brooks, the Programme’s sponsor. The Vice-Chancellor attended for the first hour of the event which was supported throughout by colleagues from TEL. As well as seven panels involving presentations given by 21 colleagues, the day of activities included a Q&A session, a roundtable, a Menti quiz, a talk about Learning Analytics, and a demonstration of online marking for beginners: the result was a permanent movement between learning and dialogue. Piles of EMA cup-cakes and biscuits retained energy levels throughout the day.

The Symposium was designed to offer events for colleagues new to online assessment as well as to those with more experience. Colleagues attending the Symposium provided information about their level of technological confidence: of 40 surveyed participants, 5% rated themselves as having low levels of confidence with technology, 45% rated themselves as having average levels of confidence, and 48% rated themselves as having advanced confidence. The Symposium offered talks and events for all levels.

Presentations from the Early Adopter Schools discussed the process of change and offered advice about successfully implementing online assessment in departments; a panel was also convened where ‘nervous adopters’ who had already transitioned to online marking spoke about the training and tactics that had worked for them. For more experienced users the Symposium offered presentations on the use of rubrics and QuickMarks, explaining the several ‘hidden’ benefits of online marking and demonstrating the potential of previously unidentified buttons.

Throughout the day, the emphasis remained on student experience and marking quality: several presentations commented on ways in which online assessment could enhance feedback and release a range of marking options that had not been available previously. At the same time, presentations emphasised that ‘good marking is still good marking’, as Rob Hosfield stated: the change to a new delivery model does not alter the fact that it is the usability of feedback that matters most in relation to teaching and learning.

Participants also heard presentations from the Support Centres and their experience of change: Luisa Ciampi’s presentation explained how online assessment benefits our colleagues in the Support Centres and Marguerite Gascoine spoke of the process of change. Advice about managing the potential impact of increased screen-time was given in a session led by Dr Eileen Hyder, and a presentation by Dr Calvin Smith demonstrated how new screens in RISIS support the move towards the Academic Tutoring System (Calvin was the winner of the ‘Best Title’ Menti Prize for ‘Spotting Crisis in RISIS’).

The feedback that was collected at the end of the afternoon was overwhelmingly positive:

39/40 colleagues rated the event as good or excellent and 38/40 said that the event would impact positively on their teaching and learning provision. Colleagues commented positively on the benefit of hearing the experience of a wide range of colleagues, the broad range of topics covered, and the advice on good practice. The feedback also noted how useful it had been to bring academic and professional staff together to discuss experiences, and several colleagues mentioned how they had enjoyed putting faces to the names of Support Centre colleagues. Also praised was the emphasis on how new data can be used, sessions on the practical use of marking tools, and hearing the experiences of Early Adopter schools. There was a great deal of positive feedback on a talk given by Dr Alex Knox on Learning Analytics.

As the organisers of the Symposium, we were delighted by colleagues’ positivity, collegiality, and eagerness to share online assessment experience. We hope that our colleagues will be able to join us again in September when the Programme is hosting a conference in association with the the Advance HE’s (formerly HEA) Assessment and Feedback Community of Practice. In the meantime, screencasts of key presentations will be posted on the EMA website together with a collection of helpful links and information.

Thank you to all our colleagues who attended the Symposium to share experience and to listen to that of others. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of staff who contributed their time and expertise to the event, and by the goodwill of our colleagues who attended.

How pre-sessional English has develop the use of Turnitin, submission, marking and feedback to support students’ essay and exam writing.

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Jonathan Smith is the School Director for Technology Enhanced Learning in ISLI (International Study and Language Institute). He is also a PSE (Pre-sessional English) Course Director and teacher of English.

The Pre-sessional English programme accepts around 600 to 800 students each year. Their students develop English skills in academic writing, reading, speaking and listening.

In the area of academic writing Jonathan Smith and his team have been exploring the use of Turnitin (Tii) GradeMark to facilitate electronic marking and feedback via:

. E-submission of written essays.

. E-marking and e-feedback via GradeMark using QuickMarks and text comments.

. Student engagement with feedback in subsequent production of written work.

About five or six years ago, before the use of GradeMark was adopted in the university, a group of pre-sessional staff attended a conference in Southampton in which colleagues of other universities presented how they were using GradeMark. It seemed a tool that could not only save time producing feedback but produce feedback of a more consistent quality. A couple of years later PSE started exploring its use with our cohorts of English academic writing students.

Listen to Jonathan’s experience on how he got involved with electronic submission, marking and feedback via Tii in this podcast.

Jonathan Smith, provides all PSE teachers with a one-hour workshop on how to use Turnitin and Grademark. Part of the training involves the use of the PSE ‘QuickMarks’ for e-feedback. These QuickMarks focus on common student errors with explanations and links to relevant sources – and can be used to provide in-text feedback. ‘QuickMarks’ are based not only on common grammar and lexical errors but also on the complexity of the language structures used and coherence and cohesion in the texts. Students are also assessed on content, use of references and other areas of relevance to academic essay writing.

After the training session, tutors set up submission points for formative work, in this manner students grow accustomed to submit work, access feedback, see and compare their own progress.

Students receive feedback almost immediately and they can work on the feedback either to bring it to the next class or towards their next assignments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the teachers’ perspective it was noticed that it was quicker to note common student errors in-text using QuickMarks. It was possible to see colleagues’ feedback comments which facilitated new tutors becoming familiar with marking and feedback across the cohorts.


 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the big advantages is that Turnitin is a one stop shop for both checking similarity and producing and receiving feedback. Students upload their essays, they can see their similarity reports and have the opportunity to take action and re-submit. There are a few technical issues around doing that, but the pre-sessional programme is committed to students seeing their similarity reports and using them to get a better idea of the quality and acceptability of their work.

Visit the EMA programme site to find out more case studies and updates http://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/ema/ema-news.aspx

THE BENEFITS OF NEW MARKS AVAILABILITY ON RISIS FOR PERSONAL TUTORING: By Dr Madeline Davies, EMA Academic, and Kat Lee (External)

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The EMA Programme has delivered a new function within RISIS that allows colleagues to see their students’ sub modular marks on the Tutor Card. We have all had access to the Tutor Card for some time and it has provided an invaluable snapshot of a student’s degree history, particularly useful for writing references and for monitoring attendance. However, in terms of sub modular marks, it has always functioned retrospectively: prior to the start of the new academic year, our students’ updated assessment records from the previous session are available on the Card but they have never been available during the academic session.

The sub modular mark screens accessible via the Tutor Card mean that we will no longer have to wait until the end of the academic year to have access to our students’ assessment information and this creates a range of benefits for personal tutors in particular. Easy access to the sub modular marks will provide an early indication of any problems that our students may be having and this will allow us to address these issues in a timely manner.

The information becoming available is significantly more extensive than a list of marks alone: a series of codes is used to flag up, for example, a result involving academic misconduct or extenuating circumstances requests (scroll down the page to translate the codes via the key), and a hover function under ‘Notes’ provides submission details so that personal tutors can tell when a ‘late’ penalty has been applied or when there has been another change to a mark (see image). Any one of these situations would require personal tutor intervention but, until now, this information has not been available to us unless our tutees have chosen to disclose it in personal tutor meetings.

The new screens are, then, particularly significant for our work as personal tutors: the wealth of information made available gives tutors the means to identify and support students who are struggling before they find themselves in crisis. Proactive and early intervention is always more effective than reactive response, and the additional access to information during the year that has been made available by EMA allows us to ensure that no student falls behind without us realising it.

The new screens also connect with the University’s inclusivity agenda in that students coming to us from non-traditional educational backgrounds can need extra support in their first months with us. The screens will alert us to situations where Study Advice, or Counselling and Wellbeing, need to be consulted.

In addition, students who may be of concern in academic engagement and/or Fitness to Study processes, can be checked at every assessment point, and this will allow Senior Tutors and SDTLs the opportunity to assess a student’s ability to cope with the pressure of assessment deadlines. This in turn facilitates early intervention in problematic cases and provides an easily available record of performance in cases requiring escalation.

The role of the personal tutor primarily involves offering tutees academic advice in response to their marks, feedback and more general concerns. The addition to the Tutor Card of sub modular marks and notes during the course of the year underpins this work and creates the opportunity for meaningful discussions with our tutees. New access to this information allows us to respond to student issues ‘in real time’, thus allowing personal tutors to act as effective academic advisors, and to engage in crucial developmental dialogue with the students in our care.

To view a screencast that shows you how to navigate the sub modular mark screens on the tutor card, click https://www.screencast.com/t/sKCH4czjJ

To view a screencast that shows you how to navigate the Module Convenor Screens that are now also live, click http://www.screencast.com/t/MjCxE6UxfM

For further information on the EMA Programme, please click http://www.reading.ac.uk/ema/

Forecasting, Feedback and Self-reflection by Dr Peter Inness

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Overview:

Each year a group of part 2 students from Meteorology make their way across campus to the Minghella Building to film weather forecasts in the professional “green screen” studio. As well as improving their forecasting ability this module also helps students to improve their presentation skills – a key employability attribute in many careers.

Objectives:

During the module students will;

  • make short video weather forecasts in a professional studio
  • receive feedback on performance in order to improve on the quality of the work
  • give peer feedback to fellow students in order to develop this useful life skill
  • reflect on their performance and consider how they can use the feedback to improve future performances.

Context:

Presentation skills are a crucial aspect of many jobs, whether it be in front of a camera or face to face with an audience. Lecturers in Meteorology may not always be the best people to coach these skills so we draw on experience in a School where performance and presentation is at the heart of everything they do.
Students spend 4 sessions in the TV studio, working up to the filming of a “live” TV weather forecast. After each rehearsal, students receive detailed feedback on their performance from staff and also from their fellow students. Crucially they are also asked to reflect on their own performance and how they might improve it. This self- reflection aspect is something we would like to encourage across the Meteorology department as it is a skill which perhaps doesn’t come naturally to a scientific discipline in the same way as it does in a performance related discipline such as film and theatre.

Impact:

Students are very appreciative of the high level of feedback on performance in this module, as evidenced in module evaluation questionnaires. The feedback also has a massive impact on improving the students’ performances across the module, resulting in some near professional standard performances by the end.

It is obvious that the encouragement to reflect and take on board feedback is a major driver of improved student performance in this module.

Reflections:

Working in an environment in which feedback and self-reflection are built into the activities has made me as a module convenor in a science department realise that this is something we can use more effectively across many of our other modules, not just those which involve presentation.

Self-reflection and peer feedback have a clear impact on performance in this module and we need to find ways to incorporate more of these activities into the rest of our taught modules.

I am now actively looking at ways that we can make reflection an integral part of how our students approach their learning.

 

AN ‘APPY CHRISTMAS IN AGRICULTURE: SHARING OUR TEACHING AND LEARNING EXPERIENCES By Dr Alice Mauchline & Prof Julian Park

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During December 2016, we had the chance to share our teaching and learning experiences here at the University of Reading with thousands of other educators around the world by providing a case study for a seasonal online course called ‘The 12 apps of Christmas’.

The free, open, short, online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course was run for the third time by the Dublin Institute of Technology. The programme released ‘an app a day’ for the first 12 weekdays in December and over 3,000 participants logged in to get quick outlines of different ways in which they could integrate mobile learning into their teaching and learning practices. The aim was to raise awareness of the benefits of mobile apps and technologies, to provide upskilling for educators and to help expand their personal learning networks. The course was a collaborative effort with case studies from Ireland, UK and the USA and now that it has finished, the site has been left online as an open resource for all to use. It is available here: https://the12appsofchristmas2016.wordpress.com/

The case study was produced in collaboration with colleagues at the Universities of Sheffield and Chester as a dissemination activity for the Enhancing Fieldwork Learning (EFL) project.  The EFL team have been working together to research and share innovations in field teaching and learning with a particular focus on the use of mobile technologies.

The app we focused on for the case study was ‘Geospike’; this app allows instant location recording using the internal GPS of a mobile device, to which photos, videos and field notes can be attached. This functionality means the app can be used as a georeferenced field notebook. The pedagogic case study we wrote described how we used the app to log field sampling sites in Iceland with Final year undergraduates from the University of Reading and the University of Akureyri, Iceland on a joint Microbiology field-based module led by Prof Rob Jackson (School of Biological Sciences).

Photos from the Iceland fieldtrip showing students using the iPads to log their sampling locations in GeoSpike (we gratefully acknowledge the Annual Fund for their support in purchasing a set of iPads to support field learning at Reading)

The experience of sharing our pedagogic innovations through the 12 apps of Christmas provided us with the opportunity to interact with educators, students, librarians and learning technologists across the globe. The cohort included people with a multitude of different subject backgrounds and experiences which led to very interesting conversations through Twitter and exchanges of comments on the website.

Frances Boylan @boylanfm A map of #12appsDIT followers (https://twitter.com/boylanfm/status/808324692109119488)

Several other apps with similar functionality to Geospike were discussed along with many suggestions of alternative, innovative uses of this kind of app in teaching and learning activities. Our favourite feedback was on Twitter from @LeithaD “#12appsDIT Really love the case study for GeoSpike. A nifty app is one thing, but a well-constructed learning activity is even better!”

Learn more:

Enhancing Fieldwork Learning https://enhancingfieldwork.org.uk/

12 Apps of Christmas https://the12appsofchristmas2016.wordpress.com/

Take part:

DIT aren’t running the 12 Apps of Christmas in 2017 but there are a couple of others to try this year:

Five ideas on how to use Chromebooks in the Classroom By Daniela Standen FHEA

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As part of my quest to encourage students to learn broadly as well as encouraging them to engage with Italian deeply (J. Biggs, 2003), I have experimented with using the Chromebooks, which have been recently purchased by ISLI (International Study and Language Institute), in the classroom. Chromebooks are a great tool: they are quick to set up, instinctive to use and create an immediate buzz in the class.  If you don’t have Chromebooks available, these activities can also be done by asking students to bring their own laptops.

I have been using them with my IWLP Italian stage 3 class (students transitioning from A2 to B1 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) and my stage 1 (complete beginner class).

I found that through this work students were pushed to explore language away from their comfort zone and to apply language to practical purposes. More generally though, students worked collaboratively and reflected on own and fellow students’ work.

Read on for 5 suggestions on in-class activities with Chrome books. They are specific for language learning but could be adapted easily. Most are quick to prepare as it is the students that do the work, others require more preparation:  for example the creation of a class google account.

Really good learning came out of these activities and students found them interesting and engaging. I’d be interested to hear from you if you decide to try/adapt some of these activities in your classes d.standen@reading.ac.uk

Activity 1: Working together / Peer learning

Topic:    Preparing a set of common questions for an interview

Procedure:         Students develop a common set of questions to interview native speakers individually.  Students share the results of interviews and draw conclusions. In pairs, working from the class google account, students work on a different aspect of the interview. Students then read through the questions written by the other pairs and give each other feedback on accuracy and content.  A final set of question is agreed.

Learning outcomes:        Formulating questions, proof reading, giving and receiving peer feedback.

Activity 2: Using Tutor Feedback to improve writing skills

Topic:    Replying to a question on an on-line forum

Procedure:         Decide on the question you want to ask. Students work individually. Using Chrome books and the class google account.  Students start working on their answer, the teacher also logs into the account from the main computer. The teacher can access each student’s piece of work and using the ‘suggesting tool’ can make suggestions onto the student document in real time.  Work can be flashed on the smartboard to highlight common errors or share good work.  Students continue working on their piece from home and demonstrate how they have used the feedback to improve it. Students have access to each other’s documents and can also learn from looking at each other’s work.

Learning outcomes:        Writing (replying to a forum), improving work following feedback 

Activity 3: Using software in a foreign language

Topic:    Advertising an event

Procedure:         Decide on the type of event.  Students work in groups to gather information and make decisions. Using Chrome books and the class google account, which had been set up to be in Italian students create a poster using ‘google slides’ student create a poster.  All the commands within google are in Italian and students have to navigate the software in the target language.  While working on the poster, students compile a glossary of the various commands and create a Quizlet set. As the students are creating the posters, the teacher also logs into the google account and can flash the posters on the Smart board suggesting corrections and showing good examples of work. Students present their poster to the class.

Learning outcomes:        Developing vocabulary relating to operating software, agreeing and disagreeing, expressing a point of view, IT literacy and employability 

Activity 4:  Fact finding

Topic:    Music.

Procedure:         Before working on a song give the Chrome books to the students, and ask them to work in pairs to find some specific information about the song and the singer. Suggest a couple of websites but leave them free to choose other sources so long as they are in the target language.  Students share with the class the information they have found.

Learning outcomes:        Reading to find specific information, summarise, speaking, peer learning 

Activity 5: Fact finding

Topic:    Applying for a volunteering position.

Procedure:         Find a website with volunteering opportunities. Give the Chromebooks out and ask the students to find an opportunity they would like to apply for.  Students discuss why they have chosen that opportunity; complete an application form; and role play interviewing for the role.

Learning outcomes:        Reading skimming and finding specific information, talking about interests and their own abilities, completing forms, development of pragmatic skills, employability

 Presented at the ISLI Technology Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group 14th March 2017

 

Collaborating across the country (and beyond) with Collaborate by Dr Mark Shanahan

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10 Days before the US election, almost 40 students and four academics from across England came together to debate the Trump v Clinton fight for the White House, using Blackboard’s Collaborate platform, writes Politics & IR Director of Teaching & Learning, Mark Shanahan. I’d first come across collaborate at a TEL Showcase event, and had discussed its potential use with colleagues from other universities at the British International Studies Association’s Teaching and Learning conference at Newcastle University in September. When the university was looking for innovative Week 6 events, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to land on the political theme of the day and get students and lecturers from a range of universities talking – all without the need for anyone to book a room or a coach…or even (in theory) get out of bed.  

The benefit of using Blackboard’s Collaborate tool was the relative ease with which we could bring academics from Reading, Manchester, De Montfort and Huddersfield Universities together both with their students and a US-based journalist for 90 minutes’ discussion of the US elections. The sound and picture quality wasn’t always perfect – but that was probably more down to user equipment than the tool itself.

Allied to the video content, we had a live chat stream which was incredibly popular. There was a constant flow of questions from students for the academic participants and comments and responses between the students themselves. There was actually so much chat going on that it wasn’t always able to quite keep up with the flow and bring it into our video/audio. We started early with a pre-chat, and ended up running well past our planned hour. We learned a lot. Between myself and Senior TEL advisor, Adam Bailey, we agreed it would have been great to capture both all the chat for future use (we got some), and more so to use screen capture technology to keep a record of the event. We also realised early on that we needed a chair/moderator to keep the event in shape – and I fell into that role.

The response from both students and academic participants after the event was very positive. All the students who responded to a brief Surveymonkey questionnaire after the event want to do more of these link-ups via Collaborate – and want them to be longer. Equally, my colleagues Pete Woodcock, Head of Politics at Huddersfield, Alison Statham a Senior Lecturer in Politics from de Montfort and Howell Williams who’s at Manchester are all keen to get in front of a webcam again – perhaps to pick over the bones of the US election, and definitely to look at other politics subjects where we can share our views and expose our students to opinions beyond their own institutions.

 

Open Access to Languages (OpAL) presented at The Twenty-second International Conference on Learning in Madrid by Enza Siciliano Verrucio and María Pilar Gray Carlos

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The Twenty-second International Conference on Learning was held in Madrid on 9th-11th July 2015. It attracted over 300 delegates from the academic and professional arena across the world: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, United Arab Emirates and USA.

The theme for this year’s conference was “What counts as learning? Big data, little data, Evidence & Assessment”, a title that covered 10 different themes: Pedagogy and Curriculum; Assessment and Evaluation; Education Organization and Leadership; Early Childhood Learning; Learning in Higher Education; Adult, Community, and Professional Learning; Learner Diversity and Identities; Technologies in Learning; Literacies Learning; Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning.

Under such a variety of themes, presentations offered a multifaceted, multicultural and multidisciplinary view on the latest projects and research undertaken around the world. The University of Reading was represented at this year’s conference by a project led by Dtt. Enza Siciliano Verruccio (Department of Modern Languages and European Studies) and Ms. Maria Pilar Gray Carlos (Institution Wide Language Programme).

The theme Technologies in Learning focused on exploring the influence and impact of technology on areas such as “human values: learning through and about technology”; “access to learning in, and about, the digital world”; “new tools for learning: online digitally mediated learning”; “ubiquitous learning”. This formed the perfect platform for Enza and Pilar to present their project on “OpAL: Open Access to Learning”, a project that commenced towards the end of 2013. The project was partly funded by Routes into Languages, the Teaching and Learning Development Fund from The University of Reading, the International Study and Language Centre and Partnership in Learning and Teaching also from the University of Reading.

 

Why OpAL?

The aim of OpAL is to break down barriers to learning modern foreign languages. In order to achieve that aim we count on involving our students actively in the creation of materials. The materials created will be in turn available to the student community in the form of OERs (Open Educational Materials). The idea of the project came as a response not just to the language tutors’ experiences in language teaching in the higher education classroom, but to a clearly perceived difficulty of learning a second language by the students. These perceptions are evident in a national survey shown below which was carried out by The Guardian on 1001 students aged 14 to24 years old across the UK.

T&L Blog - Pilar

 

 

 

 

 

(http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/07/-sp-do-young-people-care-about-learning-foreign-languages-data).

OpAL intends to encourage change in the UK language learner. It is inspired by two essential pillars of adult learning. The first is David Kolb’s learning theory (1984) on experiential learning or learning by doing. Our students explore areas of language on which they work to produce and test materials that at a later stage will be offered via the Web as OERs. The second is Alexander Astin’s and George Kuh’s work on Student Involvement (Astin, 1984; Kuh, 2009), that explores and explains how the involvement of students in co-curricular activities has a positive impact on student satisfaction and retention.

By engaging students in the OpAL project, they not only gain a deep learning of the subject studied, but they also become change agents in dispersing the fears and taboos related to language learning and, project an outward image that the higher education institutions are eager to portray: that of constructive change in the culture and nature of the relationship between students and the academic community within which they learn.

For further information on this year’s conference please visit http://thelearner.com/the-conference-2015/program-and-events/schedule-of-sessions.

If you are interested in attending or presenting at the Twenty-third International Conference on Learning, under the very suggestive theme of “Education in the Age of the Anthropocene” please visit http://thelearner.com/the-conference.

 

The PLanT Project and ‘Core Issues in English Language Teaching’ by Jess Fullam, Emily King, Daria Pominova and Megumi Kuranaka

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

PLanT stands for Partners in Learning and Teaching. The project allows students and teachers to work together in order to improve a module using a small pot of money to fund meetings, focus groups and equipment. As a small group four of us (Jess, Emily, Daria and Meg) worked with our lecturer Clare Wright in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics to make some improvements to the module ‘Core Issues in English Language Teaching’.

Why we decided to take part:

Jess

The PLanT project was a brilliant opportunity for me to put into practice what we had learnt in the module “Core Issues in ELT” as some aspects directly related to the thinking behind the improvements we formulated for the module. It has been a really interesting experience and I’m delighted to be able to make a lasting difference to benefit more students at the university.

Emily

I decided to take part in the PLanT project because after learning about teaching practices in the Core Issues module I was keen to put my learning into practice in a real setting and see how we could improve what was already a brilliant module.

Daria (from Germany)

I decided to take part in PLANT project after taking the course “Core Issues in ELT” and learning about different approaches to language teaching. As an exchange student from a country where a very different approach to teaching foreign languages is taken, I became interested in the modern techniques and methods of ELT and took the opportunity of putting them into practice straight away by introducing some changes to the CIELT module as part of the PLANT project. While participating in the project, I also learned a lot about the use of IT in a language classroom.

Meg (from Japan)

What made me enthusiastic about this project was that it can provide me with the precious opportunity to integrate different ideas to come up with a new curriculum. Taking one module about English language teaching before my joining the project, I was amazed by my professor and other students because they were interpreting the same subject in a totally different way. I imagined if those who had different backgrounds and opinions could cope with each other and combine their thoughts, a brilliant curriculum must be brought which would be reasonable for all students. In addition, the project can contribute to not only improving a module curriculum but also developing ourselves. During the project, I was always inspired and excited to hear other members’ voices which I really appreciated. What is more, considering what can be done to enhance students’ motivations and autonomies in the language class should make what we learnt in the module more realistic and progress my career. Through the project, I experienced what are required as a prospective English teacher and how enjoyable to engage myself in the language education.

The PLanT Process:                        

We met up on several occasions to discuss what we had enjoyed about the module and how we thought we could improve it. The course aims to provide a summary of the main teaching practices and how these are affected by different factors as well as discussing the role of the teachers and learners. The course itself ran with one lecture and a seminar where the lecture material was discussed and activities took place based on the previous learning.

To begin with we found it very difficult to think of a way to improve the module as we felt in many ways it was already excellent. We had all participated in the course and had really enjoyed the seminars and felt that the level of interaction planned in the seminar tasks could be really good, as it meant that we could really get involved and enhance our knowledge. The class itself was reasonably large and a mix of part 2s and 3s, and we could see that not everyone engaged fully with the tasks. So we wanted to find a way to check everyone’s learning progression that was engaging for everyone to enhance engagement and help students to build their skills. We concluded that by integrating more technology into the seminars, we could really improve interaction between the students and help them learn about how to include technology into presentations, vlogs or quizzes to provide them with the skills that employers are looking for.  So Clare introduced us to the TEL team, part of Reading University’s enhanced IT support initiatives, which have been working with staff to include more IT in their teaching, to see what we could do for students.

Some of our original suggestions in this area included multiple choice tests with clickers in the seminars or small presentations using platforms like Camtasia (one of several platforms suggested to us by the TEL team). We also revised the structure of the module according to the relevance and importance of the topics. New tasks and types of group work were introduced in order to ensure active participation of the students and more interaction between them. The division of tasks between Part 2 and Part 3 students taking the course was discussed and how they could be encouraged to interact more in class. We held a focus group part way through the process in order to see how students felt about the changes we might make, and they were well received by all which allowed us to steam ahead with confidence to putting our plans into action.

In March we presented our work at the RUSU awards and received a very positive response from other members of staff and students. After this presentation we continued to have a further meeting with the TEL team to discuss other ways to integrate technology whilst having a bit of fun in seminars. Some of these suggestions included platforms like ‘Kahoot’ and ‘Nearpod’. The latter allows students to interact to questions on the board using their mobile phones or other mobile devices. We found that this was a fun and innovative option as a replacement for multiple choice clickers which had the potential to be expensive as well as technically difficult with regard to matching the software with what the university already has set up.

Therefore, after this experience we all felt that we have learnt volumes about ways to enhance teaching in the classroom with technology in a fun but informative manner and we are very grateful to the TEL team for that.  We have all really enjoyed working towards this and are incredibly proud of what we have achieved and hope that at least some of our ideas about using IT in seminars will be well received by next year’s cohort of students.