Assessment and Feedback for Learning Conference

Today I am presenting on MP3 audio feedback to students at the University of Ulster’s Assessment and Feedback for Learning Conference. There are a range of presentations and keynotes throughout the day. Further details about the conference are provided here.

I will be reporting on some work underway within the School of Biomedical Sciences on the recording and delivery of MP3 audio feedback to students. The project is funded by the Centre for Higher Education Practice at Ulster and I am presenting some of the results to date. My slides for the event are embedded below.

Tweets etc from the event are under the hashtag #UlsAFL12 and are archived here.

Distinguished Teaching Fellowship

Celebrating with sons Matthew and Joel

In 2007 I was delighted to receive a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship (Team Award) from the University of Ulster. The award was mainly for our support of year one students taking introductory chemistry. This year I was the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship (Individual Award) from Ulster. Further details are here.

Today I’m Off to Talk about Text Messaging

Today I am off to the University of Edinburgh to present at a TxtTools event on our use of text messaging for student communication, rapid feedback and voting. The event draws users from the public and private sectors so it looks to be a very interesting day! Agenda is here.

Update on 10th November 2011
The event was excellent and a lot of good practice presented. A number of tweets came from the event at these are archived here.

HUCBMS Conference

Last Friday I took part in the Heads of University Centres of Biomedical Science (HUCBMS) Conference 2011 held at the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster. I was presenting on Using Mobile Technologies and Video Sharing to Engage Students in the final session on Innovation in Teaching and Learning. This turned out to be a very interactive session and I am grateful to the delegates for the many questions and comments received during and after the presentation.

My slides from the event are provided here as a PDF.

Image credit.

Playing with Prezi – Thoughts & Tips

I had a go at using Prezi for my presentation at the Effective Learning in the Biosciences in Conference in Edinburgh last week.  This was the first time I had used Prezi outside my own Institution and I provide below some of my reflections and thoughts on its use as a presentation tool, especially in the educational context.

1. To use Prezi you need to visit the Prezi website and register for an account which is free for educational use.  You may author your presentations online and then download the entire presentation when you are ready to show it to your audience.  A paid option allows you to download a desktop version of the authoring software, but my experience to date has been with the free version.

2.  With Prezi you can use text, upload images, video and incorporate You Tube video in your presentation.  Note of caution, when showing your Prezi you must be connected to the internet if you have used You Tube video otherwise it will not work.  A workaround is to to upload video in avi or wmv format as this is then  embedded in the final presentation.

3.  Elements in your presentation can be made larger or smaller depending on the importance you want to give to each one.  You then link the elements together using the “path” function so that the presentation flows in the order you want.  The best way to see this is action is to use the tutorials or example presentations on the Prezi site.

4.  The “sea sick” factor.  I was concerned when I was constructing my presentation that I might need to distribute Stugeron (or similar medication) to my audience in advance.  The zoom-in-and-out functions of Prezi provide some attraction and can be attention grabbing, but used too much can become a distraction and may make your audience feel queasy.

5.  For me the jury is still out on just how I will use Prezi, especially in the teaching context.  I think that it would be valuable if used sparingly to explain concepts where you wanted to firstly show the “big picture” and then to zoom in on the detail of constituent parts.  One example on the Prezi site uses this in the context of anatomy of the human body etc.

6.  Reusing PowerPoint.  For my presentation I exported some PowerPoint slides as jpeg’s and used these linking them with relatively short paths and with not a lot of zoomng in and out.  This is therefore a halfway house between PowerPoint and Prezi (PreziPoint??).

A link to my Prezi is given below; just click on the image.  Any feedback would be gratefully received.

OUP / UK Centre for Bioscience Teacher of the Year Awards 2011

The Bioscience Teacher of the Year Award is a great way to recognise and reward teaching excellence in the biosciences.  Details of the short listed finalists and the overall winner of the 2011 award, Jon Scott is available on the UK Centre for Bioscience website.

The award is now run in conjunction with Oxford University Press and this year a short video compilation of each of the finalists in action is also available from their website, and is  included below.

Festival of Innovative Practice 2011 #CHEP11

Today I will be at the University of Ulster’s Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP) second “Festival of Innovative Practice”. The event website states the following:

“The purpose of this event is to showcase and celebrate the wide range of innovative work undertaken by funded CHEP and TFL projects during 2010-2011, and some ongoing work from projects funded in previous years. In addition, and importantly, it aims to allow all participants to share and learn from each other’s practice.

The Festival will be opened by the Vice Chancellor and will include a keynote address by the Centre’s Visiting Professor, David Boud, on the importance of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The day provides an opportunity to hear snapshot presentations of the outcomes and progress of a number of CHEP Development Fund and Technology Facilitated Learning projects. Project posters and stands will also be available to view in an interactive exhibition hall. The range of topics will include:

• technology-enhanced learning
• creative approaches to teaching and learning
• curricula developments
• pedagogic research
• assessment and feedback

After lunch, Dr David Adams, Director, UK Centre for Bioscience, HEA will facilitate an interactive workshop on Creativity and Innovation.”

I will be chairing one of the parallel sessions but also in my role as rep for the UK Centre for Bioscience I will be “manning” a stand with useful materials from the Centre.

As time permits I will also post a few tweets using the #CHEP11 hashtag.

The programme for the day, as taken from the Festival website, is included below.

Centre for Higher Education Practice

“Festival of Innovative Practice”

June 16^th 2011, Jordanstown Campus (21C05)

Draft programme

09.15 – Tea/Coffee and Registration

Photographs of Student Competition Winners

09.45 – Welcome and Introduction – Vice Chancellor

“What Makes a Class Un-Missable?”  Presentation to Student Competition Winners -

PG winner: Eoin Costello, Ulster Business School, Business Development and Innovation;

UG winner: Amy McCabe, Life and Health Sciences, Dietetics;

UG runner up: Christopher McAuley, Computing & Engineering, Interactive Multimedia Design;

UG runner up (and alternative format): Farhaanah Ali, Social Sciences, Law.

10.00 – Keynote Address:

‘The Importance of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’ – Professor David Boud, Visiting Professor to the Centre for Higher Education Practice

10.45 – Parallel Sessions A, B, C & D: Project ‘Snapshots’

11.45 – Tea/Coffee

12.15 – Parallel Sessions E, F, G & H: Project ‘Snapshots’

13.15 – Poster Exhibition and Buffet Lunch

14.00 – Interactive Workshop:

‘Creativity in Teaching’ – Facilitated by Dr David Adams, Director, UK  Centre for Bioscience, HEA

15.00 – Plenary – Professor David Boud

15.20 – End

When You Need to Call Tech Support

It seems that with the majority of new technical innovations a helping hand is needed for new adopters.  The video below summaries this nicely!

UK Centre for Bioscience – Responses to: Conservation, Consolidation or Creativity?

I was asked to respond to Kevan Gartland’s piece in the UK Centre for Bioscience Bulletin 32, Spring 2011  “Enhancing the Bioscience Community: Condervation, Consolidation or Creativity?” on the demise of the HEA Bioscience Subject Centre. I have reproduced my response below.  Kevan’s piece and a further response by Julian Park are available in the online version of the bulletin.

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There is no doubt that the UK Centre for Bioscience has done much to raise the profile of excellence in teaching and learning with many in the Bioscience community having benefited from its hallmark, high quality resources and supportive networking events. Despite its many positive attributes decisions taken in recent times appear to herald an untimely end for the Centre. So what can be done to prevent the good work of the Centre slowly drifting off the radar?

I agree with Kevan that some degree of conservation and consolidation of
resources must take place; the electronic environment can allow that to happen
easily. But one of the greatest spin-outs from the work of the Centre has to be the strong network of like-minded colleagues drawn together through its events such as the many and varied workshops, conferences and the excellent Reps
Forum.  How can this unique resource be conserved and augmented? I suggest
that in the absence of any other stimulus, social network sites and Web 2.0 tools
such as Twitter may be one means of helping colleagues band together; with
occasional blog posts and sharing of papers and ideas helping to keep the conversation going. In fact this in silico networking has already happened to some degree within the bioscience education community and may be the catalyst for the organisation of face-to-face networking opportunities organised around specific themes that emerge in the future.  Could the facilitation of such events be handled by the new structure at the new HEA?

In its myriad of functions the UK Centre for Bioscience has performed a very important role that lies close to home for each dedicated teaching practitioner in the Biosciences.  It has added a level of credence to excellent teaching practices that may sometimes be overlooked in research intensive environments. It therefore has helped to raise the profile of teaching and learning within institutions thus removing the feeling of isolation that can sometimes exist for teaching-focused colleagues. This aspect of its support will be sadly missed.

It is my hope that in the post-UK Centre for Bioscience era we who have benefited much will continue to sustain the current network, share resources, encourage and mentor junior colleagues and collectively raise the standard of excellence in teaching and learning in the biosciences. But in this regard the ball is firmly in our court.

Social Networking with Students

Last week I was involved in a University of Ulster Centre for Higher Education discussion forum on social networking with students.  The event was held by video-conference across three campuses and attracted a good deal of interest from staff.  It was useful to hear short accounts from colleagues using social networking with students and to consider some of the issues in getting started in this area.

For some staff there was the feeling that the technology can sometimes be daunting especially if bespoke tools are used that need server set-up and some level of configuring.  However some scenarios were described where Facebook groups had been used to successfully to engage students especially as a number were already au fait with this social networking tool and using it regularly.

Some tips that came out of the discussion and from my own experience are given below.

1. Why do you want to use social networking with students; is it just a nice tool that we shoe-horn into a pedagogic purpose?
2. Are tasks on social networking clearly defined?  Students will not just network for the sake of it!
3. Can students “see the point” in what we are trying to achieve, how do we get them to buy-in to the exercise?
4. Choice of networking tool.  Are we intruding on their social space by using tools that students consider their private areas?  We need to clearly define the boundaries and use social networking in a context that does not compromise accepted professional standards.
5. Manage expectations.  How will academics interact with students online; will we be available 9 to 5 or 24/7?  Students need to know!
6. Don’t ask students to do something you are not prepared to do yourself.  Do you want your students to blog?  Do you blog?  If the answer is “no” it will very soon become apparent to the student group that you are only a by-stander.
7. Social networking should augment existing communication channels with students therefore important course information should not be communicated by this method alone.
8. Social networking should help to increase inclusivity within a group.  However, ensure that the chosen exercises do not alienate some within the class who may be uncomfortable using the technology.

Image credit.