TED team blog for SEMS/SoI at City University London
Posts tagged SEMS
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.
Negative Marking in Moodle 1.9 Quizzes: Our Workaround
Nov 12th
In the School of Informatics there is a common requirement for quizzes to use negative marks, so a student will lose marks if they select the wrong answer. Unfortunately the version of Moodle that we currently use at City, 1.9, doesn’t make it easy to do this, so a workaround was needed.After a little bit of head-scratching I came up with a method suitable for the majority of cases we have encountered and I am going to show you how it works here.
This student receives a mark of -6 for their quiz because they answered some questions incorrectly.
The actual quiz is next to it.
Educational software recommender tool ‘launched’ today
Nov 6th
Today saw the unveiling of an online tool to help teachers and learning technologists to identify software to support particular pedagogic approaches, or to highlight the pedagogic uses of specific software. It currently has only 40 or so entries, but we will be working on it to add more and to include other features, such as case studies and help guides. There are several ways to filter the list of applications according to specific requirements, and we will be adding new categories as time goes on. We also have plans to create similar pages for hardware and Moodle functionality in the near future.
The tool was developed by me and two other City colleagues, James Toner (City Law School) and Farzana Latif (School of Health Sciences). You can find it at http://www.cityunihealth.co.uk/appsSimile/web2tools.html. We hope that this will become a resource that people can use to get ideas and share feedback about how specific software can help support pedgogic activities, we would be very interested in any comments, feedback or tool suggestions you may have.
Exploiting Google Scholar to Raise Profile and Keep Up-to-date
Oct 10th
Google Scholar is a service that I really like and find extremely useful, and for the last 12 months or so there has been a little used feature that allows anyone publishing research to get much more from it – Author Profiles.
SCOF – now with added LaTeX!
Sep 27th
It is a red-letter day for all of you mathematically-minded SCOF-watchers!
In response to a request from the Mathematics department, a new version of SCOF now features support for mathematical equations. These equations can be entered using the LaTeX mathematical typesetting language, or through clicking buttons on a graphical editor. This update should make SCOF much more useful for numerate subjects, but other updates to the system are planned and beign worked on.
Below is an example of SCOF being used with equations. These are added by click the ‘fx’ button on the bottom row of the text editor. It uses the free editor from Code Cogs.
SCOF – with LaTeX equations
Network Graphs in Excel with NodeXL
Sep 17th
A simple network graph
Last week I was at the annual conference for the Association for Learning Technology (ALT-C) and, while I’ll write a more detailed summary of the event (including my two presentations) soon, there was a keynote by Natasa Milic-Frayling from Microsoft Research, Cambridge that showed a very interesting Open Source add-on to Excel that is worth having its own post.
Network graphs are a method of showing the links between things (a.k.a. Nodes), typically people or computers, which can be analysed to extract data about relationships between Nodes that may not be explicitly visible elsewhere. Earlier in the summer I posted about a tool that can automatically create network graphs from Moodle discussions, and at ALT-C we heard a keynote presentation about an Open Source template for Excel which can help automate the creation of network graphs, NodeXL.
By filling out the spreadsheet, it is possible to create many different types of network graph automatically, but the big selling point is that NodeXL supports automatically importing data from Social Networks, such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, which can then be graphed and analysed. This is could be a very useful tool for staff and students in Mathematics (the tool has been used to help teach students about graph theory) and for staff and students conducting research into online Social Networks. If you are interested in these topics then I would recommend taking a look at NodeXL (and the SNAPP tool from my earlier post).
Augmented Reality in Education event
Aug 29th
Google’s Glasses AR concept
Augmented Reality (AR) refers to overlaying artificial information over the real world, such as in a Heads-Up Display for fighter pilots (and some high-end cars) or a surgeon using a surgical procedure guide projected onto glasses/goggles. It is distinct from Virtual Reality in that it allows interaction with the real-world, rather than being totally immersed in a computer generated world. It is a fast developing area and we can expect usable AR tools to become available in the next few years – perhaps glasses that allow engine parts to be inspected visually and any flaws being highlighted for the user, or glasses that use face-recognition to remind you of a person’s details when engaging in small talk – with my poor memory, I’m definitely hoping that one appears soon!
Farzana Latif, Learning Technologist at the School of Health Sciences, has been working on a JISC funded project to see how AR could be applied to nurse’s education. As part of this project, she is arranging a small free event at City on 19th October to explore uses of AR in education and help kickstart its use. It looks to be an interesting and forward-thinking event and, with strictly limited tickets available, anyone interested should look at the event page and book their place. The event is intended for people who already have an idea about what AR is and are looking for ways to make use of it – if you are interested, but don’t have this level of knowledge then please get in touch with me (Ian) and I will help you get up-to-speed.
Self- and Peer Assessment using Turnitin in SEMS
Aug 2nd
Guest Post by Christopher Wiley on SEMS’ Cengiz Turkoglu’s use of Turnitin for self- & peer assessment. Originally published on Educational Vignettes
Cengiz Turkoglu principally teaches final-year undergraduate students and one of the MSc Aviation Management modules, with class sizes usually not exceeding 20 students. Each of his modules uses a similar assessment pattern comprising one coursework plus an examination. For the coursework component, he utilizes the self-review and peer review functions of Turnitin as part of the assessment.
The coursework has an initial deadline of a minimum of 6-8 weeks into the module to allow sufficient time for students to conduct research and write their essays. Once the students have submitted their paper, Turnitin’s PeerMark assignment function allows them to be either paired or randomly allocated another paper, which they are then required to peer-review. Given that there is always a range of standards represented by the students and their papers, one dilemma that Cengiz has faced concerns whether to pair the students randomly or to attempt to group them according to their standard. He never pairs them such that two students are asked to review one another’s papers.
Sustainable Engineering Resources
Jun 26th
I’m currently at a conference and have seen something that might interest staff in SEMS. Autodesk have been creating some extremely slick and engaging videos on Sustainable Engineering topics. These include videos, slides and other resources which can be freely used for education.
The resources are available at sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com and are well worth a look.
TED Projects 2012 – Applications open
May 18th
Each year TED plans to support projects in SEMS & SoI that enable staff to introduce new practice into their teaching that makes use of educational technologies. Projects can benefit from a small amount of resourcing, in addition to our usual (high!) level of commitment & support. See TED Projects & Funds 2012 for full details & the online application form.
Your commitment – you will be required, in conjunction with TED, to disseminate the outcomes of your project.
Some indicative examples of potential projects:
- Annotating module coursework electronically using PDFs & graphics tablets
The graphics tablets could be funded - Collecting in-class feedback from large-classes using the Polleverywhere service
Funding could be used to cover the service subscription - Producing videos demonstrating processes
TED could provide x hours of a student assistant to film &/or edit the videos
If you have any ideas you’d like to discuss before applying please contact us.
