The GRASS (Generating Resources and Access to Screen capture Software) project aims to enable, enhance and support access to screen capture technology across the University. It is a Teaching and Learning Development Fund (TLDF) maxi-project which will run for two years and, although the official launch is in September, we are already excited by what is happening. We have produced this newsletter to give you an idea of how things are likely to develop…watch this space! GRASS newsletter pdf #1 June 2014
Group work: sure, but what about assessment? By Heike Bruton (a TLDF project)
Group work has many well-documented benefits for students, but it also provides considerable challenges. A frequent complaint from students is that differences in contributions are not recognised when everyone in the group receives the same mark – the free loader issue. However, when students are working unsupervised, it is very difficult for the tutor to gauge who contributed to what extent. This is where peer assessment of group work can be a key part of the assessment framework.
What’s this project all about?
Cathy Hughes from Real Estate & Planning has developed and implemented her own online system of peer assessment of group work, and has given presentations about it at various T&L events. With the help of an award from the Teaching and Learning Development Fund, Cathy appointed me as Research Assistant. Our hope is to find a sustainable system for those colleagues who wish to use it. This may mean developing Cathy’s system further, or possibly adopting a different system.
What peer assessment systems are staff currently using?
The first step of the project was to find out what peer assessment (PA) of group work tutors at the University of Reading are currently using. We conducted a number of interviews with colleagues who are currently using such systems, and we found a variety of systems in use (both paper-based and digital). Most systems seem to work well in increasing student satisfaction through the perception of fairer marking, and encourage reflection. However, all such systems require quite a lot of effort by those administering them. While lecturers are unanimous in their estimation that peer assessment of group should be done for pedagogic reasons, unsurprisingly they also say that a less labour-intensive system than they are currently using would be highly desirable.
What peer assessment systems are out there?
Cathy and I investigated available peer assessment systems. After examining several digital tools, we identified one system which seems to tick all the boxes on the wish list for peer assessment of group work. This system is called WebPA. WebPA is an open source online peer assessment system which measures contribution to group work. It can be used via Blackboard and seems to be very flexible.
Where to go from here?
You can try out a stand-alone demo version here: http://webpaos.lboro.ac.uk/login.php. This site also contains links leading to further information about WebPA. We are currently putting our findings together in a report, and we will disseminate the results throughout the University.
Engaging large student lecture groups using Facebook by Dr Alastair Culham
Facebook can be a distraction to learning but it can also be an aid. I believe strongly that lecturers should do their best to make their subject interesting to students. It can be an uphill battle. However, this year’s experiment in using Facebook as a student engagement technology with a first year Photosynthesis class of 300 was a great success (measured by student response) and this is how I did it.
1) Set up a closed and secret Facebook group
For this you need a Facebook account and a Facebook friend who is willing to be signed up to the group. Log in to Facebook, select ‘Groups’ and then click the +Create Group button. Choose a sensible name for the group. You will need to add one friend to allow the group to be created.
2) Add some content
To help the students understand what is needed add a short welcome message – “This closed Facebook group is to allow me to run quick quizzes during the photosynthesis teaching. Sign up now but there is nothing you need to do in this group until the lectures are due.”
3) Invite the class the join
You can invite students by inputting their email addresses: click on the ‘Invite by email’ link then paste in the comma separated list of addresses. You can also email the link to the group via Blackboard and ask them to request to join. It is important in the covering email to explain the purpose of the request and that you are not asking, or needing, them to become a Facebook ‘friend’. Many students use Facebook for their private lives and it’s not appropriate for staff to have access to that in most circumstances. Also ask that they bring an internet enabled device to the lecture – phone, tablet or portable – it doesn’t matter which.
4) Monitor the joining requests
Make sure you add people quickly once they have requested to join. You should check at least once per day. If the proportion of the class joining is small to start with you will need to send a reminder round, however once some people are signed up it’s likely their classmates will get on with it. Don’t expect to get 100% sign up – some students don’t have a Facebook account.
5) Prepare your question and answer set
Think carefully about which points are important in your lecture, which are amenable to simple question and answer, and which issues can be chosen to give a spread of questions over the whole 50 minutes. Facebook surveys allow a question and then any number of answers but it’s best to keep the choice simple – anything from 2-6 works well. Don’t put the questions in Facebook yet – once they are there they are visible to the students and they can start answering them. Prepare a simple text document (I use Notepad but any text editor will do) and save the question and the answer set.
6) One day before the lecture
Remind students to bring internet devices. Explain to those without them that you will use a show of hands for them when voting is happening. Remind them that there is still time to join the group if they haven’t yet got round to it.
7) The lecture begins
Welcome the students, put Facebook on the screen and post a simple question related to the lecture topic. This gives those signed up a chance to vote and also encourages those that haven’t joined to join. This also gets the students used to the idea they are going to be interacting with you and the information you provide.
8) Question breaks
Over a double lecture period I posted 5 series of questions, roughly one set every 15-20 minutes. Interspersing the standard lecture delivery with these short changes of style and a request to think about what has been taught helps all the students to keep up and gives chance for peer learning via the Q&A exercises. In a class of almost 300 students it took 2-5 minutes to deal with each Facebook question and the accompanying discussion. While those with IT chose their answers I did a show of hands for the rest of the class. If you have only a maximum of 50 hands to cope with out of a class of 300 it’s quicker and easier to count.
9) After the lecture
The Facebook group is set up so students can use it for post lecture Q&A. Do let them know how long you will monitor it on a regular basis. If you are a regular Facebook user you will see if there have been any new posts. If you are using Facebook just for this, do make sure you log in periodically in case any questions crop up. Any questions that come up can be dealt with and the record is there for all students to see again at revision time.
Is it a good idea to encourage students to log on to Facebook during a lecture?
There is an obvious risk that encouraging students to log in to Facebook will simply distract them into checking their timeline. However, if the student has bothered to turn up for the lecture there is the opportunity to keep them engaged with the content through the mini lectures followed by highly interactive Q&A sessions. Experience this year suggests to me that the students find the approach engaging and highly educational. Certainly the module feedback from several students picked out this lecture from the rest of term as a successful approach to teaching.
Large first year classes can be difficult to engage during lectures. Students are new to University, often unwilling to stand out from the crowd and feel hidden amongst a large group. This is challenging for the lecturer who is trying to judge whether their lecture message is hitting home, whether they have paced their lecture at the right speed and whether the content of the lecture complements the background knowledge of the students. It is also challenging for the students who will become bored if the teaching material is pitched at the wrong level, delivered at the wrong pace or just find the content irrelevant. Interaction with the Facebook quizzes allowed the students to see the answers their peers were giving, allowed me to identify and discuss areas of misunderstanding and even to challenge the depth and confidence of understanding by setting the occasional question with no correct, or multiple correct, answers. In the case of no correct answers the students could query the options and offer a correct one. In the case of multiple correct answers the class could soon see that it was split over more than one option.
![At approximately 6 million tonnes The Great Pyramid is often cited as the heaviest man-made object. [By Nina (Nina) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons]](http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/engage-in-teaching-and-learning/files/2014/02/Pyramid-Feb-2014.jpg)
It’s quick, easy and free to set up. I realise it’s not for everyone and will not suit all styles of lecture however there’s little lost by trying this approach once, it may suit your teaching and deepen student engagement.
Making American Government a social experience by Mark Shanahan
Getting young people to engage in the political process appears to be a problem all across western democracies. Politics and politicians seem remote from the young and the gap between the Baby Boomers and Generation X figures holding the reins of power and the Millennials now making their way through university appears ever wider.
This year, I’m convening a second year undergraduate module introducing the system, processes and key themes of American Government to a group of 71 Politics and International Relations students – with a sprinkling of historians, and language students. This could be particularly dry: there are any number of books and learned papers on the theory and practice of politics in the US of A and this could easily become just another module where students stand on the shoulders of scholarly giants regurgitating the same arguments that have held sway for decades.
Luckily my predecessor had already opened the door to some new methods of teaching – her lectures featured plenty of small snippets from US TV, while the seminars have been set up to be highly interactive and built around core themes in the American psyche – issues such as gun control, religion and the media. That works for me since it’s the world I’ve come from (the media, that is – not so much the other two…). I’m a late entrant to the world of HE teaching, having spent more than two decades in journalism and, latterly, corporate communications. In my working world, it has been my practice to seek out my subjects and talk to them – not to read about them in academic literature. I’ve tried to bring a little of this into the lecture theatre and seminar room.
The American system of government, from local, through State to national level, and then focused on the triumvirate of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary is complex and could be quite daunting. So my focus has been to bring it to life by focusing on interesting people and ‘live’ events. We spent a session looking at Cory Booker’s recent Senatorial election, focusing on how he – a rising star of the Democrats – engaged with the media throughout his campaign. It raised questions around the role of broadcast media; the cost of getting elected and the interest groups that largely met that cost. But towards the end of the Autumn term we stepped up that engagement in the political process in action by engaging – albeit vicariously – in a race for a Congressional seat in Massachusetts.
For one seminar, I split my groups of 18 or so students into two teams – Republican and Democrat. I gave each a sheet with a few details of Massachusetts District 5 where there was a special election brought about by the sitting Representative winning a seat in the Senate that had been vacated by John Kerry when he was appointed Secretary of State. Each sheet had the bare social media details of the competing candidates – their Facebook page; Twitter and You Tube links plus the email address of their campaign headquarters. The goal for our teams was to find out about and build a profile of their respective candidates: Katherine Clark for the Democrats and Frank Addivinola for the Republicans; to find out what were the burning issues for Mass District 5 and to formulate questions that young voters in the District would want answers to. Nothing particularly new at this stage. But then I asked my students to use their social communication tools to engage directly with the campaign: to follow the candidates on Twitter; to like their Facebook page and to start posing some of the questions raised in class themselves.
The real breakthrough – the real eureka moment that directly connected the students to what American elections are all about – came when Frank Addivinola tweeted back in the middle of the seminar. The twitter feed was up on screen so everyone saw it. It was immediately galvanising, adding new energy to the session. Suddenly this wasn’t about books and theory. Instead, the students were communicating directly with a real politician in a real race that really mattered.
Over the subsequent four weeks up to the special election, we’ve kept up with the race and have had sporadic feedback from the candidates. We’ve learned that they will comment on postings to their Facebook pages and will answer individual questions raised in Tweets. Despite promises to the contrary, neither candidate responded to the batch of questions collated by the seminar groups that we emailed to their campaign HQs. We’ve learned that the race was one-sided from the start and even to win the equivalent of a UK MP’s seat in, effectively, a one-horse contest, the winning candidate, Katherine Clark, had to raise and invest over $1 million. We’ve learned, by following and engaging with a couple of Boston political journalists,that the race garnered little conventional media interest, but that both candidates were active in social media, often bypassing the traditional outlets to get their points of view out to a demographic largely engaging with the process online.
The fact that my students, digital natives all, and for whom my life events such as the end of the Cold War, are just history, are growing up in an age where social communication is the norm, made it easy to engage them in the political process using social tools.
It has been a learning experience for me too. I had no idea if the candidates would take any notice of a group of students who were thousands of miles away and wouldn’t be voting in the election. But social media brings immediacy to communication and shrinks distances rapidly. I certainly plan to use it more in future modules dealing with contemporary issues. 140-character messages are a powerful means to engage.
Creating a campus biodiversity recording app by Dr Alice Mauchline
There is an on-going multi-disciplinary, student-led project at the University of Reading to create an app for recording biodiversity sightings on the Whiteknights campus. This project was funded by the Teaching & Learning Development Fund and is currently engaging students, staff and external natural history groups alongside design and technology experts to create and customise an app for data collection on smartphones and other mobile devices in the field.
The biodiversity data records will be stored in a central database which students and staff can analyse to e.g. monitor long-term changes in the local environment. It is anticipated that this dataset will develop over time and that the app will be used to support curriculum teaching and other research projects at the University including those that are coordinated through the Whiteknights Biodiversity blog: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/whiteknightsbiodiversity/.
One of the main aims of this project is to ‘engage students in research and enquiry in the curriculum’ which is one of the University’s T&L key strategic priorities. The multi-disciplinary team of students will have first-hand experience of developing a data collection tool that can be used for research projects in the curriculum across several Schools. The future availability of this app has already prompted both staff and students to think of ways that it could be used in teaching and research and it is hoped that it will help to ‘evolve our approaches to teaching and learning’ – a second T&L priority – and to support Technology-Enhanced Learning in fieldwork.
The team comprises six student champions: Liz White (Biological Sciences), Liam Basford (Typography & Graphic Communication), Mark Wells & Stephen Birch (Systems Engineering), Jonathan Tanner (Geography & Environmental Science) and Phillippa Oppenheimer (Agriculture). They are supported by a member of staff in each of these Schools; Alastair Culham, Alison Black, Karsten Lundqvist, Hazel McGoff & Alice Mauchline. The student champions are currently working together to gather information from staff in the relevant Schools about how this app could be useful in their teaching. They are also scoping other external projects and mobile recording apps to provide a basis for our design. The name, logo and branding of the project is also in development and the team held a recent Hack Day to decide on the basic functions for the user-centred app.
The team will soon have a prototype app for trialling and testing on campus and the student champions will be recruiting volunteers to help test the app for collecting biodiversity records. So keep an eye out for them and there will be further updates on this blog as the project progresses.
Please get in touch if you would like further information as we’d like to involve as many people in this project as possible! a.l.mauchline@reading.ac.uk
Making Screencasts: It’s enormously fun and rewarding! by Dr Emma Mayhew
Have you ever wondered if students actually read their handbooks? Many probably don’t get all the way to the end and miss out on crucial information. If handbooks aren’t always delivering then how can we communicate with our students in a more engaging, captivating and accessible way?
One solution is video. It’s much, much, easier to make your own videos now than it was even five years ago. A whole range of software has been developed and made absolutely free on the internet.
So I started to use this software. And I had a lot of fun. I made 10 short screencast videos using really eye-catching graphics where the viewer zooms around a full body x-ray, a huge wave, a gigantic iceberg and a row of coconut macaroons. Viewers hear my voice talking them through the extenuating circumstances process, sources of pastoral and academic support, wellbeing within my School, the Student Charter, how to write a great essay, essay marking criteria, plagiarism and referencing, pre-arrival information for first year undergraduates, a rough guide for MA students and dissertation writing within the department. They all sit together in a prominent section of the department’s webpage and have been widely publicised to all of our students.
I’m not just blandly repeating information that’s already accessible. I’m adding to it-my highly detailed ‘How to write a great essay’ is a good example. But I’m also responding to new issue areas. The clarity of essay marking criteria was highlighted by the National Student Survey so now we have a five-minute screencast where we zoom around the human body outlining the 5 key criteria we’re looking for when we mark and detailing exactly what a high first looks like, a low first, a high 2.1 and so on.
Students can watch these screencasts exactly when they need them. They can access ‘How to write a great essay’ when they are actually writing their essay. They can access ‘Extenuating circumstances within the School’ when they are ill at 2 a.m. the night before an exam. They can watch ‘Student wellbeing’ if they are experiencing a crisis on a Sunday afternoon. Students can pause, rewind, watch again and click on embedded links within the screencasts for more information. And they are watching-the screencasts have recorded over 700 views over the last few weeks.
This is great but I didn’t stop there. I started to use screencasts in other ways. I sent out a ‘lecturer update pack’ to all politics staff in September. As colleagues zoomed around the world in this screencast I updated them on feedback turnaround times, NSS results, TURNITIN and our T & L priorities. ‘Unravelling the mysteries of the personal tutorial system’ allowed new staff to tumble around a giant Crystal ball covering key aspects of the role. No narration this time-they simply enjoyed a mystical soundtrack instead.
But I didn’t stop there. I made a 2 minute promotional screencast in 2 hours in September for use at our Open Day talks. I used more captivating graphics to highlight all the things we do well as a department and this is all set to rather catchy ukulele music.
I’m now using the same screen capture software to record video feedback on Part 3 essays. My students don’t get an A4 feedback sheet. They get an MP4 file via the Blackboard. They see my face, hear me speaking and watch me scroll through their essays in real-time, circling areas that I want to draw their attention to. The feedback from this has been fantastic.
There is a real potential here to use free, user-friendly technology to enhance the way that we deliver information to students, staff and prospective undergraduates. This is really fun, we can be really creative and we will be pushing forward technology enhanced learning.
Moving forward with Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Reading… by Vicki Holmes
The Digital Development Forum in July was an ideal opportunity to begin sharing some of the thinking and planning around Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) that has been happening over the last 6 months.
In January 2013 the TEL Strategy Group was established, chaired by Professor Gavin Brooks and with representation from across the University. The Strategy Group has met 4 times to date. In addition, Professor Julian Park (Associate Dean Teaching and Learning for Faculty of Life Sciences), Kara Swift (VP Academic Affairs 2012-2013) and myself have been part of the ‘Changing the Learning Landscape’ programme, a national initiative to help universities develop their thinking and practice around TEL. This has involved participating in a series of workshops, and meeting and sharing practice with colleagues from other HEIs.
So what has been the output from this?
We have identified 3 strands of activity that we feel are crucial to Reading’s TEL development:
- To further embed existing technologies, underpinned by expectations of use – we want to ensure that our current technologies are fit for purpose and being used to the full
- To develop and explore new areas of TEL activity and other technologies – we want to look to the future and ensure that we keep pace and, at times, lead the way
- To embed and support the above with foundational and cross-cutting initiatives – we want to ensure that all TEL initiatives are appropriately supported and underpinned
Within each strand, we have identified 2 priority areas and created projects to take these forward. All 6 projects will have a nominated lead; the lead will then involve other staff to support and progress the project. Some projects are well underway, while others are in the early stages.
In addition, an audit has also been undertaken (drawing on the Digitally Ready project, as well as interviews with other universities and national surveys) to help understand our current position.
So what next?
In the Autumn term there will be some formal communications to the whole University from the PVC Teaching and Learning about the TEL vision and activity.
With respect to the 6 projects, expect to hear more as they gather pace. We will be inviting you to get involved – your input will be crucial in informing the direction and ensuring that TEL meets your and your students’ needs.
My presentation from the event is available on Yammer
Supporting Postgraduate Study by Dr Cathy Tissot and Dr Carol Fuller
At an away day prior to our Periodic Review, staff had an opportunity to have some creative dialogue around how we can better support our postgraduate students. This came up as a response from some thought provoking feedback from our current students when asked how we can improve. International students, students with English as an additional language, and particularly part-time students who are in full time employment were the ones we were particularly keen to support in more flexible ways. The part-time students in particular are taught outside of traditional teaching hours and often live at a distance to UoR so it is not easy for these to access library and student study support services. Students new to postgraduate study can often lack confidence in their writing skills, for example, and this group voiced interest in having support mechanisms that were accessible and readily available to them outside of traditional hours.
What’s the solution? Discussions lead us to conclude that we could make better use of Blackboard and Mediasite (this is video capture platform that allows you to view a PowerPoint while simultaneously watching the recorded presentation). Drawing on feedback from students plus ideas based on experience of common issues, staff drew up a list of ideas for short, bespoke video clips. The idea was that these could be included on Blackboard, across all courses, and in a folder special designated ‘study support’. Students can access these whenever they need or refresh their skills at particular times, for example, when writing an assignment. This way the resource is available when students need it, not when we can timetable to deliver it. It is therefore very much a student led resource. All the videos were also transcribed to make them fully accessible to all students.
The videos are short, focused and specially filmed. Here is a flavour of some of the areas we covered:
- APA Referencing
- Using Endnote
- Making a complaint
- Writing a literature review
- Doing a presentation
- Avoiding plagiarism
- Word for academic purposes, plus many more!
Here is a link to an example of one of these (you will need your username and password to login – which is in the top, right hand corner. The videos can be found in the Internal Folder – the Institute of Education – Student Study Support, near the bottom of the list) and if you have any ideas as to what else we could cover (or want to volunteer to do one) we would love to hear from you!
QGIS: A new option for GIS teaching by Dr Alan Howard
The use of the free open source GIS package “Quantum GIS (QGIS)” is increasing slowly but steadily and for many purposes provides a viable alternative to commercially produced software like MapInfo and ArcGIS. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License.
Data indicates that interest in QGIS, as measured by the relative number of Google searches, overtook MapInfo this year while ArcGIS maintains a dominant market position. The French Ministry of Environment has investigated the feasibility of migrating from MapInfo to QGIS and some universities, such as Harvard, offer GIS classes using QGIS. There is strong and expanding online support for QGIS users and a growing collection of materials and tutorials licensed for free T&L use.
I currently use QGIS in preference to ArcGIS for personal research and I propose introducing a Part 1 “basics” course in GIS using QGIS from 2014. At present ArcGIS remains the primary teaching package in Geography and the Part 2 module GG2SDA Spatial Data in the Digital Age convened by Geoffrey Griffiths attracts students from other programmes in Science/Life Sciences. However instructors report that many students do not spend enough time out of class working with the software in order to acquire sufficient experience to develop confidence and expertise in GIS. This may in part be due to perceived difficulty in accessing ArcGIS out of the classroom. Although students may license ArcGIS for free use on their personal equipment few tend to go through the ITS registration process to facilitate this. It is hoped that by using QGIS at Part 1, which is easy to download and install from the Internet, more students will be motivated to engage with the material and software “out of hours”.
July 2013 sees the launch of the first MOOC utilising ArcGIS (“Maps and the Geospatial Revolution”) produced by Pennsylvania State University. GIS training is likely to become increasingly open, accessible and free and QGIS may work well in this developing model.
MOOCs and quality – a report from a day conference in London by Dr Matthew Nicholls
I recently attended this QAA event on MOOCS in London for the University. Speakers included David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, and Sir Timothy O’Shea, Vice Chancellor of Edinburgh University which has been running 6 MOOCs for the last year (including very popular courses on philosophy and on equine health).
The guiding topic for the day was the incorporation of quality assurance into the products and ‘ecosystem’ around MOOCs, especially as they begin to move from being free-to-all offerings to involving elements of cost and/or accreditation, which seems a likely next step.
The room, naturally, was full of people who believe in MOOCs – but the level of enthusiasm and belief that this really does mark a significant departure point in HE was impressive. This suggests that Reading has done well to get in among the early adopters of this in the UK, because the impression was that the pace of change and accumulation of market-place prestige is likely to be rapid, and that early providers are being promoted by FutureLearn as an elite – there are plenty of institutions outside this initial group who are getting interested in providing MOOCs, so our early engagement brings both opportunity and some pressure to deliver.
Here are some of the observations that seemed to me key messages from the day’s discussions and presentations:
- MOOCs seem to be accepted as useful as a good shop window for recruitment – that’s a major quid pro quo at this stage.
- Completion of courses is not the main or only goal – tasters etc count as success, rather than the percentage of people finishing a course.
- Entering the MOOC market properly requires serious engagement and up-front investment: it’s a prominent platform on which to fail.
- It has developed a momentum that is finally realizing long-anticipated radical change in the sector, as technologies converge into something workable – it does seem to justify the hype.
- Education analytics that come out of MOOCs have the power to be transformative.
- The future, regarding accreditation and paid-for enhancements, is fairly close but not yet clearly defined.
- At the same time, there is a distinction between informal, for-free, MOOC learning and fee-paying, formal, accredited learning, which the OU sees as important to maintain.
- The pace of change is such that institutions are having to make commitments, with no extra resource and with no clear picture of where this might be heading. But it is better at this stage to be part of the process than to be left behind.
- The undergraduate campus experience is not seriously threatened by this (yet), but for enrichment, and esp. part-time, postgraduate, and specialist vocational material, the MOOC has the potential to be seriously disruptive.
- Student panelists seemed enthusiastic – they showed no resistance at all to the idea of MOOCs being used within their own courses as a supplement (though nor did they acknowledge that without separate funding MOOC creation and administration are likely to be competing for resources of e.g staff time with campus teaching).
- There was also no student resistance to universities giving away course content for free that other students are paying £9k for – students see the wider University experience as what they are paying for.
Finally, I asked Sir Timothy and others what success in a MOOC would look like and how it could be measured. There was no very clear answer as we are at such an early stage – which is interesting in itself – but it was suggested that for the entry cost to the MOOC marketplace it would be hard to buy an equivalent amount of positive press coverage, interaction with potential applicants, and teaching innovation.