Technology & Educational Development
TED team blog for SEMS/SoI at City University London
No Talking at the Back
May 15th
Announcing a new workshop on using Twitter at conferences for ‘backchannel communication’, as part of the run-up to June’s Learning @ City 2013 conference.
In the run-up to the university’s teaching & learning conference on 6th June I’m running 2 pre-conference workshops:
No Talking at the Back: An Introduction to using Twitter to participate in ‘backchannel communication’ during live events such as conferences.
Online communication around live events such as conferences is on the increase. It is known as backchannel communication and involves both delegates and non-delegates using tools such as Twitter for reporting, commenting, questioning, sharing resources, chatting and so on. Participating in a conference backchannel can be a rewarding experience that enhances conference attendance.
The workshops on May 30th & June 5th are aimed at Learning @ City 2013 conference delegates so if you want to come along you’ll need to sign-up for the conference – highly recommended!
About Learning @ City 2013
The conference is organised by the Learning Development Centre:
…This is the 5th annual higher education conference to be held at City University London, and the emphasis for this conference is on innovation and creativity in higher education.
City University London colleagues from across the University will be sharing their research, innovation and practice in this area. This is an opportunity to listen and share with others good practice and explore transferability to different disciplines.
- Further information & booking: Learning @ City 2013
Conference Keynote
The keynote will be given by Prof. Diana Laurillard, London Knowledge Lab. Diana’s conference preview:
Lecture Less
Mar 7th
We’re looking for staff who want to do less lecturing next term. If you’re now reading hoping this is an offer to reduce your teaching hours then look away. It’s not.
[inverted] Northern Elephant Seal by mikebaird
In the university context it builds on a couple of methodologies from the 1990s (I think): Just-in-time-teaching (JiTT) & Peer Instruction (PI):
- JiTT – Not about preparing PPT slides at 5-to-9… it’s about students completing out-of-class activities including an assessment, the results of which, are used to inform the direction of subsequent teaching sessions. At LSE a large-cohort Economics used this very effectively with incorrect answers to problem sets (submitted as online quizzes) informing the focus of the next problem set class.
- PI – developed & robustly road-tested by Eric Mazur, a Harvard prof teaching Physics, PI is an in-class methodology developed to promote student discussion and learning in lectures, based on discussions around conceptual questions posed by the instructor. Read more about Mazur, PI and how it relates to the City University Learning Spaces project on the LDC’s blog: Creating flexible learning spaces and the flipped lecture
The inverted teaching or flipped approach is enabled by technology: for example, videos & screencasts for pre-class instructional material, online activities such as forum posts & quizzes to complement these resources & enable JiTT, in-class voting tools as part of the re-purposed, more discursive, ‘lecture’ time.
Flipping Examples
In addition to Mazur above, I can recommend a look at The inverted classroom in a large enrolment introductory physics course: a case study (PDF) which is based on Mazur but a little closer to home (University of Edinburgh). The authors of that case study spoke at a recent HEA STEM event that I wish I’d be able to get to. Only the slides from the sessions are available (but I intend to follow-up on some). See HEA STEM: Lectures without Lecturing. I’ve also been keeping an eye on UCL’s Carl Gombrich’s flipping adventures… see Flipping lectures – reflections on a term of learning for a review of Autumn 2012.
Fancy Flipping & Lecturing Less in 2013/4?
Please get in touch and we can work together to flip some elements of your course next year.
Using TV & Radio Recordings in the Classroom
Jan 29th
The university pays for a licence (ERA+) which enables recordings of certain live broadcasts to be used in the classroom and made available to students.
- *Update* (5th February): the university now has a subscription to Box of Broadcasts (bob) which provides a huge archive of TV/Radio programmes & a recording service allowing you request future recordings. The information below is still correct if you want to obtain a DVD of a recording but for web-based access to recordings bob is the better service.
What? Recordings of live broadcasts from BBC, ITV, Channel 4, E4, 5 Television & S4C
How? Send requests to the library (Peter Williams p.williams@city.ac.uk) who will arrange for a DVD to be created for use in the classroom
Some (ERA+) Limitations
- Only the above channels
- Educational use & audience only, ie University Staff & Students
- Extracts are OK but no ‘adapting’, including subtitles
- Full Licence details: http://bit.ly/eraplus (PDF) & Copyright & Video overview
The ERA+ licence allows for online delivery of the recordings. Unfortunately this isn’t yet possible here as the licence requires viewing to be restricted to the UK and the university doesn’t have a solution in place for this. It is hoped that the current SLE Multimedia project will enable this later this year.
This information was shared with SEMS staff at the recent Using Video in Education seminar organised by TED. You can watch a 3-min recording (but, to be honest, you won’t learn much more than is written above!)
Screen Recordings as Teaching Resources
Jan 25th
Video of a short presentation by Anton Cox explaining how he has created screen recordings as introductory material & problem solutions for his first year Programming course.
The presentation was part of the recent SEMS seminar, Using Videos in Education.
Video Quality – the video was filmed on a Flip from the second row and an awkard angle to capture both Anton & the board, hence the poor lighting, but audio is reasonable considering the Flip has a built in mic. The video was trimmed with the Flip software, exported and uploaded to Vimeo (similar to YouTube).
Anton Cox, Screencasts for Teaching Programming from TED Team, SEMS/SoI, City Uni on Vimeo.
The software Anton used was Camtasia. Please contact us if you would like to try it out.
Gamification overview
Jan 23rd
Achievement for reading this post.
(based on WordPress logo, created using Tagxedo)
While I’ve been working at City I’ve also been studying on the MA in Academic Practice (MAAP) programme run by the Learning Development Centre and I am now on the final ‘dissertation’ module. I wasn’t looking forward to writing another dissertation and thankfully there is a publication option that requires a conference presentation and published paper instead, and, having chosen this route, I decided to look at an area that has attracted some interest recently but that I hadn’t had a reason to investigate – Gamification in Education. I have just received confirmation of my paper being accepted for presentation, and thought it was a good excuse to put something up on this blog about it.
Recording Presentations
Jan 17th
This is follow-up to Monday’s SEMS Seminar: Using Video in Education. As there wasn’t time for my final slot ‘Recording Presentations’ here it is a Screencast* Further blog posts reporting on the Seminar to follow.
Links mentioned in the above screencast (new windows):
- Screenr (the free screen recording tool I used for this)
- City University’s Media & Innovation Learning Lab (MILL)
- Echo360 – The system we are using for lecture capture
- Lecture capture: evidence from other Institutions (Mo Pamplin, SASS)
- Two more papers:
- Lecture capture: making the most of face-to-face learning (UG Engineering, Leeds)
- Evaluating the use and impact of lecture recording in undergraduates (2013)
- Lecture Capture Pilot Report (City University)
*What is a screencast?
A screencast is a recording of audio & your computer screen. There are many screen recording tools, including Echo 360 Personal Capture. This video I made while working at LSE explains both:
Teaching Engineering? 2 Workshops for You
Jan 4th
The following Engineering Teaching workshops are both in London in the coming months
HEA STEM (Engineering): Workshop for postgraduate students who teach
- Date: 15 Feb 2013
- Start Time: 11:00 am
- Location/venue: UCL Engineering, London
The day will focus on four areas: Assessment and Feedback, Teaching for Diversity, Small Group Teaching, & Professional Development and the HEA. Further info & Booking
HEA STEM (Engineering): Using Everyday Examples in the Engineering Classroom to Improve Learning and Student Retention
- Date: 18 Apr 2013
- Start Time: 10:30 am
- Location/venue: University College London, London
This workshop will present research-based strategies focused on relating engineering concepts to everyday examples when teaching engineering students, developed and successfully implemented to improve the engagement (and hence retention) of Engineering students as part of the ‘ENGAGE: Engaging Students in Engineering’ project (http://www.engageengineering.
Horizon Report Preview
Jan 2nd
Creating Mathematical ‘Objects’ through 3D Printing
(© 2012 – The Simons Foundation )
Since 2002, the New Media Consortium (NMC) has been undertaking the Horizon Project. This involves soliciting the views of a wide range of influential people in the educational technology community (and beyond) on technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on education over the next 5 years. Each February reports are published which provide an overview of the chosen technologies, their significance to specific domains and the timescale over which it is expected adoption will take place. In advance of the main report the NMC also publishes the shortlist and a preview of the main report and the 2013 Higher Education preview is now available. What follows are some of my thoughts on the items selected for the Report.
Social Media for Researchers
Dec 7th
Last month I gave a presentation on Social Media for students, teachers, researchers & job-hunters to staff & students at the School of Engineering at the University of Greenwich. The talk was organised by the Greenwich Student branch of IEEE who were great hosts. There is a recording of the talk on their IEEE branch website. It’s a bit of a messy talk because of the mixed audience I was trying to reach and it suffers for that.
New Handbook on Social Media
A Handbook of Social Media for researchers and supervisors was recently published by Vitae. It’s a mammoth (140-page!!), comprehensive guide. If you want to dip in I’d suggest start by reading chapters 2 & 3 which highlight the research findings. I’ll try to summarise them here too.
The handbook is based on research including surveys of 105 researchers & 45 supervisors as well as a detailed literature review. Their findings show that researchers are using social media tools for research discourse related to six functions:
- formal dialogue with supervisors
- informal interactions with peers and supervisors
- documentation (authoring, storing, exchanging)
- space for reflection
- engaging with the community
- keeping themselves informed
The handbook also reports:
- Firstly the traditional: Face-to-face interactions with supervisors and peers are key in research dialogues; Email is the most important tool; Preference for traditional mailing lists
- But: Wide scale adoption of social media tools; Advantages of participating in and interacting with social media tools such as bringing dispersed researchers together; Experimenting with different combinations of tools, evaluating them and giving up some of them
- Relationships: Researchers introduce each other to technologies; Sometimes supervisors block the adoption of technologies; Researchers choose technologies and adapt as per their supervisors’ preferences
- Concerns include: Intellectual property, the time spent on social media tools, Maintaining professional and personal boundaries, storing files in the cloud.
Developing Writing in STEM Disciplines
Dec 7th
Special edition of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education on Writing in the STEM Disciplines
The special issue of JLDHE, Developing Writing in STEM Disciplines was prompted by the National HE STEM Programme Project of the same name. Articles include:
- Enhancing the quality of Final Year Projects in Computing through weekly written tasks
- Who wants to be able to do references properly and be unemployed? STEM student writing and employer needs
- The development of, and response to, an academic writing module for electrical engineers at the University of Bath
The journal is open access and all the articles are available as PDFs
