It has been almost eight years since we introduced the “YouTestTube” video sharing initiative to bioscience students at Ulster University. This paper describes how the project has developed over that time and is now an embedded feature of chemistry laboratory classes. The abstract follows:
This paper describes the construction and development of YouTestTube.com, a YouTube clone website to facilitate video-sharing, social networking, and reflections of chemistry laboratory classes for year one students within the School of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster University. The practice was first introduced in the 2008/09 academic year and has developed until the present time. We reflect on our findings with regard to the production and sharing of short student-generated video documentaries on laboratory experiments, and attendant social networking. We found that students enjoyed the process of viewing, rating, and commenting upon colleagues’ videos but that social networking did not happen spontaneously or organically. Students did find that learning and networking happened effectively when working in small groups to produce the final version of the video. The use of some of the videos as peer-generated learning objects was reported to be useful in helping engage year one, semester one students in their early days in tertiary education.
I have just implemented PeerWise again with my cohort of Biochemistry students this semester. For those not familiar with it PeerWise is a free-to-use online collaborative tool where students create and share multiple choice questions relevant to their course of study. Students may answer, rate and comment on questions set by peers and follow authors who make high quality contributions. As students interact with PeerWise they build up a reputation score and earn badges thus providing an incentive for engagement in the activity.
I used PeerWise for the first time in 2013/14 in a year one Biochemistry module with 195 students enrolled. By the end of the teaching period 2,411 questions had been created by 194 out of the 195 students on the module; 28,239 answers had been provided and 9,275 comments posted, evidencing a high level of engagement. Module feedback indicated that students appreciated PeerWise as a revision tool and some requested its use be extended to other modules of study. The Wordle above was derived from the free responses of students when asked in the module survey “What did you feel was particularly good about this module?”
In our hands PeerWise has proved to be an excellent tool for collaborative peer-learning and support on a relatively large module of study.
Dr Pedro Barra, Kingston University is thanked for assistance in implementing the PeerWise project at Ulster and for supplying user guides. He also obtained a grant from the Higher Education Academy to help with collaboration between Ulster and Kingston.
A short guide to getting started with screencast video feedback for students. Further resources are available at the following site, www.VideoFeedback.co.uk.
I recently took part in the Higher Education Academy STEM conference on 30th April 2014 in Edinburgh. Here is a screencast of the Pecha Kucha presentation I have on the day on screencast video feedback to students.
Student Engagement, Flexible Learning and Attendance
Date: 8 Mar 2013
Start Time: 10:00 am
Location/venue: Room 8K14 (Boardroom) Jordanstown Campus University of Ulster
This event is being hosted as part of the Higher Education Academy’s Workshop and Seminar Series 2012/2013
The use of information and communication technologies is increasingly adapted to support flexible learning in Higher Education institutions. The adaptation of more sophisticated technologies offers a broad range of facilities for communication and resource sharing, thereby creating a flexible learning environment that facilitates and even encourages students not to physically attend classes. However this emerging trend seems to contradict class attendance requirements within Universities, inevitably leading to a dilemma between amending traditional regulations and creating new policies for the higher education institutions.
This workshop will bring together educators, researchers and practitioners from the academic society to present the latest advances on technology enhanced learning and new methodologies of measuring student engagement in a technology enhanced learning environment.
It provides participants with a forum to discuss the impact of new technologies on flexible learning and debate the major issues arising from linking flexible learning with class attendance and attainments.
The workshop will contribute to understanding the impact of flexible leaning on attendance and attainments and provide quantitative evidence for determining regulation amendment and development of new policies in addition to addressing practical challenges in the wider deployment of new technology to support flexible learning.
Bookings
There is no charge to attend the seminar, but a place must be reserved.
To Register please email Thematic.Seminar@heacademy.ac.uk
30 places available on first-come, first-served basis.
Full details on the HEA Website. The text above is taken directly from the website linked above.
Changing the Learning Landscape – The Use of Social Media in Science & Technology Teaching and Learning.
Date: 13 Mar 2013
Start Time: 09:30 am
Location/venue: The Royal Society of Chemistry Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, , W1J 0BA
Changing the Learning Landscape (CLL) involves a series of activities to enable those involved in higher education to embed learning technologies in their learning and teaching practice.
One strand of activity involves discipline-focused workshops aimed at lecturers, module leaders and programme leads who are either new to, or have some knowledge of, learning technologies and would like to find out more.
‘The Use of Social Media in Science & Technology’ workshop offers an opportunity for those involved in teaching, or directly managing degree programmes, to find out more about the role social media can play in enhancing the student and tutor experience. Through a series of presentations, activities and discussions, led by academics from the science and technology disciplines, participants will be introduced to new social media approaches and see discipline-focused exemplars of social media applied in practice.
Topics will cover:
an introduction to teaching with social media;
encouraging student social networking in laboratory practical sessions;
enhancing fieldwork learning through social media technologies;
social media and lecture capture;
accessibility aspects of social media;
student perspectives on the use of social media in science and technology teaching and learning.
These topics will be delivered by practitioners from the science and technology disciplines.
There is no charge for the workshop but places are limited and you are advised to apply early using the booking form.
Please note that a similar workshop ‘The Use of Social Media in Engineering & Mathematics’ will be held on 22 May 2013 at a venue in Manchester. Details of, and registration for, this workshop will follow in due course.
For general enquiries about this workshop please email Alex Fenlon; alex.fenlon@heacademy.ac.uk
Over the past year myself and three colleagues in the School of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster (Alison Gallagher, Kay Hack and Paul Hagan) have been exploring the use of audio feedback to students. We used a number of methods to record and deliver audio feedback to students and the findings of the project will be disseminated at:
A Pecha Kucha presentation was delivered at the Ulster event. A screencast video of this is posted below:
The project investigated various modes of recording audio files such as desk-based microphones, headsets, and hand-held voice recorders and interfacing with software such as Audacity.
Modes of delivery of MP3 files were also investigated such as feedback podcasts, emailing audio files or delivery via the institutional VLE. A feedback podcast was developed for a large (n=140) year one module to provide comments on student performance in a laboratory context. This utilised Feedburner to manage the podcast and to track usage. The feedback provided was generic in nature and summarised comments provided to students verbally in class.
In their evaluation a number of students stated that they preferred to receive verbal feedback in class or to receive written feedback. Some students commented that they did not use iTunes (or similar software) and were not familiar with subscribing to podcasts despite being given a brief instruction on how to do this. This therefore represents a technological hurdle that needs to be addressed if this technology is to be used in the future. Finally both staff and student perceptions of using this mode of feedback alongside more traditional modes of feedback such as written comments on student work or verbal feedback provided in class were explored.
Getting Started
We have found one of the most straightforward ways to get started with audio feedback is to use the Wimba Voice Tools available within our own VLE, Blackboard Learn. This requires that the user have a headset and microphone, but all other aspects from recording the audio to delivery via email is taken care of. One downside is that emails are sent off immediately and cannot be queued up for delivery in a batch. If individual students are receiving feedback it will reach them at different times. There is also limited opportunity to edit the files before they are sent out. However, these are only a minor drawbacks considering how straightforward the tools are to use. In addition, the files are archived within Blackboard learn for accessing at a later time.
Other Recording Tools
In a previous post I mentioned that for a while now I have been sending feedback on some student work as MP3 audio files. I have used the free program Audacity which gives a greater level of flexibility in recording, editing and outputting the finalised audio file. A short article in the Bioscience Education E-Journal describes how we have configured Audacity to work for us.
Some colleagues had been asking about the process of providing feedback in this manner and so I have prepared a short screenr video on how to use Audacity.
Recorded Delivery
Once captured the files need to be sent to students. If you are not using the Wimba Voice Tools on the VLE then you will probably send these by email. This is no major problem if you are sending files to a handful of students or generic feedback to a large group; but what if you have recoded individual files for a large group of students? For that you will need to use mail-merged email that allows you to attach the individual file for the relevant student. This can be done using Pegasus Mail and a full tutorial is provided here: www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol12/beej-12-c1.aspx. An alternative approach is to use Microsoft Office running macros and a tutorials is available here: word.mvps.org/faqs/mailmerge/mergewithattachments.htm. Both scenarios do require some time spent in configuring the system.
Sounding Off
Colleagues offered various perspectives as evidenced in the poster above. Some brief conclusions are: Individualised and formative feedback by this mode can be very effective. It may be extended to offer ‘whole group’ feedback for large classes, though this does not seem to be very effective in all cases. Colleagues agree that audio feedback does not necessarily mean that it will take a shorter time than written feedback, but that in most cases it has a greater impact with students.
First, Glasgow Caledonian University….
I seem to have been talking about SMS texting a bit over the last while. Last week I was invited by Kevan Gartland to Glasgow Caledonian University to participate in an event on Feedback Enhancement in the Biological Sciences. This was one in a series of seminars on this subject organised by Glasgow Caledonian University in association with the Higher Education Academy. I outlined our use of text messaging (as described previously) especially in assisting with peer marking and rapid communication of results following a written class test for around 100+ students.
Also presenting at the event was Jamie McDermott from GCU who was demonstrating his use of www.textwall.co.uk especially in an inter-professional context in a session with some 500 students. This has proved most successful in engaging students in this large lecture context with many asking questions by text message were they would normally have been reluctant to pose a question verbally during the session.
….next, Antwerp in Belgium…
Then this week I was off to Antwerp in Belgium for the 2012 BlackBoard Teaching and Learning Conference. This time I was invited by Travis Sowders of BlackBoard Connect to be involved in a panel discussion on the use of SMS text messaging in the classroom. Travis chaired the session and there were contributions by Jo Spiller from University of Edinburgh and myself on our three uses of texting at Ulster; communication, feedback and voting.
**Update on Friday 1st June 2012. Slides from our session at Antwerp are now embedded below:**
…. in other parts of the conference…
For me one of the highlights of the conference was the keynote address by Kayvon Beykpour, general manager of Blackboard Mobile. He described the work that had been done to introduce push notifications in BlackBoard meaning that students can receive up-to-date information straight to their handheld device. This was well received by conference delegates. However, it was the second part of his presentation that appealed to me most where he described the new developments in mobile-enabled class tests / examinations. Tests set up in the mobile environment can be made available to users of an array of mobile devices, but they can still be accessed in the traditional way via a computer connected to the VLE. This new feature opens the possibility of running multiple choice and short answer tests for large groups of students, each accessing the test from the familiar platform of their preferred mobile device.
I was also most impressed with a demo of Kaltura video sharing software for Blackboard. This facilitates a You Tube type environment where video may be shared in a number of different ways to different user groups. For me this represents an opportunity to consider upgrading the platform for our YouTestTube video sharing project adding mobile functionality and making the site much more accessible.
There were a number of Tweeters at the event and the tweets from the #BbTLC2012 hashtag have been archived at the following address: bit.ly/ImS3zs
Not surprisingly, WiFi access throughout the conference venues was excellent and worked flawlessly. Antwerp is also a charming city to visit.
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.
Stephen McClean is a Professor of Bioscience Education at Ulster University, Coleraine, N.Ireland with interests in introductory chemistry, mass spectrometry and novel peptide discovery. This blog will host mainly thoughts and comments on teaching and learning in higher education.
Disclaimer: This is a personal blog therefore the opinions expressed here represent my own views and not those of my employer. Any comments on posts represent the opinions of visitors.
I have just implemented PeerWise again with my cohort of Biochemistry students this semester. For those not familiar with it 
In a 
PlanetChemistry's Blog 
