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:

[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.

• *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!)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordjerome/127381557/

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.

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.

Gamification is an unwieldy term but it refers to something that most of us will already have experienced – adding the concepts of games to a ‘mundane’ activity to increase motivation. This doesn’t mean that we should necessarily be using computer games to teach students (though this is a legitimate topic in itself and is sometimes known as Serious Games, or Game-based Learning), instead, there are aspects of games that can be readily applied to learning processes to help increase motivation. The main aspects that I identified are: Goal-focused activity, Reward Mechanisms, and Progress Tracking, and you are probably already using them; however, used in appropriate combinations there is great potential for motivating students.

Goal-focused Activity: Most games have rules that must be complied with, and immediate and longer-term objectives to complete to ‘win’. Learning activities can also be structured in this way, with smaller objectives feeding into larger ones by using the work from earlier activities in the later ones. The objectives should be easily understood and framed in language that makes obvious the links to the overall module and course aims (e.g. learning outcomes).

Reward Mechanisms: Games use different reward mechanisms depending on the specific game mechanics employed, but they should all be something that is desirable to the participants and obtainable with effort. Three common ones are leaderboards which allow players to show how good they are compared to their peers, prizes which offer interesting new abilities or ways of playing such as being able to knock holes in walls to create shortcuts, and achievements which can be shared with peers or on social networks (this fits particularly well with the Open Badges investigation that I am currently undertaking). Leaderboards and achievements can easily be transferred to learning situations, but the prizes aspect would require greater thought to ensure that the prize is appropriate to the cohort – on example might be that the ‘winner’ gets to pick the topic of an assignment.

Progress Tracking: Many games provide statistics on what has been completed, how long it has taken and how much there is left to do. Some of this information can be inferred from the reward mechanisms, for example tracking changing positions on a leaderboard or tallying the achievements acquired by a student, but we also track progress explicitly through assignment marks and feedback which could also be integrated in order to obtain an overview of a student’s progress. Combine this with the ‘learner analytics’ work which is currently gaining interest and it should become increasingly easy to get a good, holistic, real-time profile of a student’s progress.

These concepts have been around in education for a long time, but are only recently becoming formally recognised. I remember a poster on the wall in primary school with gold stars for good work – that is essentially a leaderboard. However, one objection to the principle has been that it encourages competition, rather than co-operation, however this can be negated by selecting co-operative goals and activities and rewarding these traits instead of competitive ones. In fact, gamification can be a good way of promoting and reinforcing positive behaviours and suppressing undesirable ones.

Gamification has become an area of significant interest to marketing companies as it con be a very cheap way of altering consumer behaviour. For example, Foursquare gives points for ‘checking in’ at locations, with the person with the most points being named ‘Mayor’ and being offered exclusive discounts as a result. It has also been used as a technique for motivating people to excercise (FitBit), or doing housework (ChoreWars).

There some very valid criticisms of Gamification that need to be considered before deciding whether it is suitable for your needs. The main one is a psychological effect called ‘Over-justification‘ which occurs when a person who is already well-motivated (‘intrinsic motivation’) to do something actually has this motivation reduced by the offer of a prize or reward (‘extrinsic motivation’). If this is likely to be the case with most of the students, then gamification in this context should be avoided. The other major criticism is that some people will cheat, so if you are automatically awarding points for posting to a message board, they will post irrelevant messages in order to boost their score. Careful consideration of how the points are awarded, perhaps by ratings from other forum members, would mitigate against this type of cheating.

In summary, gamification is worth investigating in situations where there is low motivation amongst students and where the game concepts can be logically applied. However, it is not suitable for every situation and could actually be detrimental in some. The full paper has more background information, discussion of the topic and a set of questions to consider when thinking about gamifying a learning process and I will add a link to the paper once it has been formally published; however, send me an email in the meantime if you are interested in reading it and I will send you a copy.

P.S. I would recommend the MAAP course to anyone wanting to gain a greater insight into learning and the practice of education; As a reader of this blog, you might be interested in the Technology Enabled Academic Practice specialism available. It is always useful to be a student and see the things we do from their perspective – I found myself slipping into my own student-mode a little and procrastinating over assignments…

P.P.S. I still can’t stand the term ‘Gamification’!

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:

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.org/). Further info & Booking

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.

The items in the preview that are expected t be adopted over the next 2-3 years are of little surprise to anyone who has followed the Educational Technology field lately:

• Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are something that has been mentioned before on this blog.
• Tablet Computing is becoming increasingly common as the use of iPads and Android devices takes off and, as well as the technical work being undertaken in the field, many institutions are developing formal policies for supporting this increasingly varied technological landscape – these projects are commonly termed Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives.
• Big Data and Learning Analytics are areas that have really taken off recently following major commercial players in these fields making their platforms available for outside use, notably Google. Some of the same data-mining and visualisation tools that are used to monitor accesses to web pages, etc. can be readily re-purposed to analyse student marks, attendance, interaction with online resources, etc. and create a statistically-informed profile of each student which can then be used for predicting grades, personalising learning materials, identifying flagging students, etc. Of course, there are still ethical issues that may need to be worked out before the full power of this technology can be utilised.
• Game-based Learning is something that I have been looking into recently for a Master’s dissertation and there is evidence that there could be motivational benefits to applying the concepts, but there are some fairly serious limitations that would need to be addressed first. I have only been looking at the idea of integrating games concepts into existing learning experiences, but the Horizon Report also includes educational computer games (a.k.a. Serious Games) into this category – something which I didn’t look at because it is a much more mature area, certainly in the education of children. I am currently waiting to hear whether a paper I wrote on the topic has been accepted for presentation and publication, if it is accepted I will write a more in-depth post on the topic.

However, it is the technologies that are likely to take 4-5 years to be adopted that are the most interesting, both from the point of view that they are more ‘Enabling’ technologies than the ‘finished products’ usually selected in the Horizon Report and they are likely to be of significant interest and use within the STEM subjects we cover in SEMS and SOI:

• 3D Printing is a technology that is becoming increasingly practical and useful. It is essentially a method creating physical objects using a device like a printer to build up layers of materialuntil the final object is completed. In a domestic environment, a 3D printer could be used to quickly create a replacement for a broken part of some device, but in a university it could be used to enable students to quickly create inexpensive prototypes beforehaving an expensive, precision engineered item machined – as high quality 3D printers are available today for less than £2000, several could be made available to students and so take the burden off some of the higher demand manufacturing equipment. The RepRap was one of the first low-cost 3D printers and is said to be able to ‘self-replicate’ because it can produce many of its own parts. Advances in this technology could mean that one day, instead of waiting for an online purchase to be delivered, you could just download the plans and start printing it at home – similar to how we can now download books, music, films, etc. to enjoy instantly rather than wait for the hard-copy to arrive in the post. Combine a 3D printer with low-cost, high resolution 3D scanners that are also being developed and you could even create a system that would allow you to make perfect forgeries of Ancient Roman statues (provided the Romans made sculptures out of plastic, of course).
• Wearable Technology integrates a large range of disciplines, from computer science to engineering and even clothes design. It makes use of the increasing power of consumer electronics along with a reduction in manufacturing costs and improvements in size, power requirements, etc. It ties in with the idea of a Body Area Network (BAN) that has been around for a while and which means that all your devices integrate with each other when you are carrying them in different pockets and bags. The key advances have been in the creation of conductive thread that is as hard-wearing and flexible as any other material in your clothes. Commercial products are already available and, though they are still relatively crude, they are still capable of getting amazed reactions – and you don’t need to take my word for it, Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby from ITV’s ‘This Morning’ would probably agree:

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:

1. formal dialogue with supervisors
2. informal interactions with peers and supervisors
3. documentation (authoring, storing, exchanging)
4. space for reflection
5. engaging with the community
6. 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.

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