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Blended learning with webinars and web conferencing software
Web conferencing may be seen as just for distance learning or business, but there are many opportunities to exploit synchronous online communication for campus-based courses. With the overhead, and often cost, attached to enterprise-level systems, surely we should be exploring ways technologies such as Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate and others can be used, where appropriate,…
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Durbbu 2016: Creating failure opportunities
The Durham Blackboard User Conference (#durbbu) this year encouraged learning from failure and through this theme enabled a more critical discussion of what works and what doesn’t when using learning technologies in higher education. From the sessions I attended, skills development and the role of learning technologies for this stood out the most. My tweeting…
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Durbbu 2016 – Solution to Perennial Presentation Problems
This is a quick summary of a case study at Durham University presented by Elaine Tan at #durbbu 2016, utilising the institutional video platform to support formative feedback on student presentations. There is a common problem on degree programmes: the student presentation. It’s a problem because too often students are expected to undertake presentations without…
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Durbbu 2016 – Blackboard’s Journey
Comment on VLE provider Blackboard’s keynote at #durbbu 2016 presented by Alan Masson and ponderings over whether the ‘journey’ is about technology or about ourselves. Masson outlined Blackboard’s view of a journey shared by both institutions and the company to increase adoption and increase innovation. Whilst this is certainly a view that echoes with learning technologists, both objectives…
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Durbbu 2016 – Transition to HE and student partnerships
Using VLE sites to support student transition to higher education presented by Regent’s University London and Durham University at #durbbu 2016. Ideas around student partnership in site development and possible opportunities for adaptive inductions. At York we have a number of well-established pre-arrival sites across most departments on our institutional VLE. Recently, with the updating of…
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November 2015 – Work review
This month it’s flipping classrooms with a webinar on flipped learning pedagogy. I promoted the use of in-class technology to capture handwritten learning materials and create video learning resources. I also wrote up my top tips for creating videos for the flipped classroom teaching model. Flipping webinars I delivered the first of a two-part webinar…
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Three insights into student use of lecture capture supporting independent learning
This post summarises three conclusions arising from a mixed methods study of students’ use of lecture capture, drawing upon the detailed experiences of 12 students from the Department of Biology and the Department of Psychology. Participants provided diaries of how lecture capture was used to support private study, records of their use of the system…
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October 2015 – Work review
October is a traditionally busy time for me as the start of term kicks in. A lot of the project work gets put on hold as the support tickets fly in. This year was no exception and with a person down in the team, things were busier than usual. What was really pleasing to see…
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September 2015 – Work review
September’s highlight was the ALT-C conference where I presented an extended paper intended to challenge the uncritical acceptance of lecture capture. The rest of September involved preparation for the start of the new academic year. Cornock, M. (2015). Justifying lecture capture: the importance of student experiences in understanding the value of learning technologies. Extended paper, #867, ALT-C…
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August 2015 – Work review
August’s work review is a little late as the end of August and start of September has been busy. This month the York TEL Handbook launched, I’ve been getting my head round data tables and have been roaming the campus. And finally… I’e written and submitted my last piece of work for my MA. York TEL…
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Justifying lecture capture (ALT-C Paper)
I presented ‘Justifying lecture capture: the importance of student experiences in understanding the value of learning technologies’ at ALT-C on 9 September. My main argument was that we need to challenge superficial arguments that support lecture capture, such as ‘it is nice to have’ or ‘aids revision’ by exploring how and why students are incorporating the…
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July 2015 – Work review
This month I have been mostly writing a handbook for technology-enhanced learning practice, exploring use cases for Collaborate and meeting up with a range of people across campus. Learning design for synchronous online activities I’m pushing the use case for Collaborate, our supported webinar (online seminar) tool, at the moment as there is potential to…
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Learning designs with synchronous web conferencing
In this post we explore three ways Collaborate could form part of the learning design for a module and the way different learning experiences are offered by using synchronous online activity. Collaborate is an online seminar tool, and as such allows participants to use video, voice or text chat to communicate without needing to be in…
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June 2015 – Work Review
This month I have been mostly making videos and talking to people. With a bit of feedback collecting too. In-class technology Following up on interest from teaching staff in being able to capture hand-written content using Replay, I spent a little time this month putting together some videos on how to use visualisers (document cameras)…
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Learning Technologist – Oldest job around?
I don’t write many ‘musing’ posts, but in this one I’ve flung together a few thoughts on the way we all learn to adapt to use technology in our own specific contexts. Defining the learning technologist role There are many definitions of the role, all painting slightly different pictures of what a learning technologist does…
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May 2015 – Work Review
Lecture capture features highly on my agenda again, but this month I’ve also had time to co-deliver a PGCAP session on technology-enhanced learning, provide some advice for students revising and complete my penultimate MA assignment. The impact of lecture capture at York With a lot of data now to hand, I am keen to share…
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April 2015 – Work review
Online seminars, web-conferences, webinars, call them what you will… this month I started off with a comparison of the big three apps. This is April 2015’s work review. Web-conferencing recommendations At the start of the month I posted a review of Google Hangouts, Skype and Blackboard Collaborate as web-conferencing tools for the higher education sector.…
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March 2015 – Work review
As more of my work gets written up on the E-Learning Development Team blog these days, I thought it would be worth providing a monthly summary of my activities here. Screen-casting comparison Prompted by a number of requests, I wrote a comparison between Screencast-o-matic (online screen recorder), Echo360 Personal Capture (our supported program) and Camtasia 8…
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February 2015 – Work review
Back-filling, this is February’s work review summarising some of my key activities from this month. Advising Departments on Programme Sites Before I joined the E-Learning Development Team I revamped the Programme Sites within SPSW, working with the programme leaders to introduce more content that supports students’ progression through their degree programme. I also included a…
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CMALT advice: Core Area 3 – The Wider Context
I recently offered some insights as a CMALT assessor to learning technologists at the University of Sheffield who were writing their CMALT portfolio. One of my interests is in the role of policy and legal frameworks applied to supporting learning using technology, for example copyright, accessibility, intellectual property rights, institutional learning and teaching strategies and VLE…
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Researching lecture capture impact – going beyond change in grade
Following on from my posts on the E-learning Development Team blog, I wanted to share my thoughts on my approach to researching the impact of lecture capture provision amongst our students. There are a number of papers and research projects out there which are looking for experimental evidence to support, or not, the use of…
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Lecture Capture and Webinars
It’s been a busy term… which is a poor excuse for a lack of updates to this site. However, over the next few weeks I’ll try to back fill my blog with all the exciting things that have gone through my head, buzzed around in there for a bit, and flown out through the other…
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The paperless student: reading on screen
Digital capabilities, specifically those for effective use of digital devices for reading documents, are incorrectly assumed to be part of students’ skills set. Whilst digital devices are prevalent, this does not mean that all their features are known or that the most appropriate software is installed on them. Students may be familiar with what they…
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Capture things visually and they’ll have an impact
Two lessons: the most important page of your VLE site is the first one; never underestimate the usefulness of a camera. Pretty much common sense, right? Here’s how these lessons worked in practice for me.
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Onwards with a new role
On Monday I start a new role in the Elearning Development Team at the University of York as Lecture Capture Coordinator and Elearning Advisor. As such, my last day within the Department of Social Policy and Social Work as their Web & VLE Coordinator was yesterday and by happy coincidence this was the same day…
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Book recommendations: recommended reading – elearning, web usability and development
There are many books out there on elearning, higher education teaching, web usability, accessibility (and all the other things I’m interested in). Though the list below is by no means comprehensive, it will provide you with a good starting point for your office library.
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Accessibility essentials mini-lecture
This post presents a 15-minute mini-lecture on accessibility, designed to be useful for anyone creating websites or online resources, including virtual learning environments. The lecture is not exhaustive, but introduces some of the considerations about disabled users’ experiences of the web and how you can create accessible web resources. Full accessibility guidance, including further advice…
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How to make sure your PDFs are accessible
Making your documents accessible to all students regardless of impairment is an essential skill for all educators to learn. We frequently make PDF documents available to our students, but we have a responsibility to make sure these are accessible to disabled students. There is an added advantage to this, in that making a PDF document…