What successes have you had in using educational technology this year? What has held you back from engaging with educational technologies? What educational technologies and learning spaces have you used and would you like to use?
City University London staff are invited to participate in LEaD‘s annual Educational Technology and Learning Spaces survey https://goo.gl/3vCpgT. This is your opportunity to feedback on and ultimately influence how educational technology and learning spaces are supported and implemented at City.
Our aim is to find out more about the City staff experience of using educational technology and enhancements that may be required. The survey has four short sections: educational technology support, staff experience of using Moodle, use of learning spaces and use of multimedia. It will take around 15-20 minutes to complete.
The results of the 2014-15 survey have given the Educational Technology Team (ETT) and Education Research and Enterprise Services in Information Services greater insight into the staff experience and requirements. As a result we have made a number of changes and used these findings to guide our planning.
Here are some examples of how your input to last year’s survey impacted on our work:
Educational Technology Support Improvements
The Educational Technology Team (ETT) has significantly enhanced the support offered to schools through building strong relationships, enhancing communications such as launching school based newsletters, attending committee meetings and events, and gathering school requirements. This has included providing 74 workshops and 170 one-to-one sessions for academics and administrators this year on a variety of educational technology themes.
Service Now was identified as an area of concern and this prompted a separate Service Now specific evaluation. How LEaD uses Service Now has been developed and suggestions and feedback have been passed to IS, which manages the Service Now system.
Moodle Improvements
ETT have extended guidance and developed a checklist to support academic staff when developing summative quizzes on Moodle. As part of this checklist; staff can request a member of ETT to check their settings for summative quizzes before they go live to ensure settings are correct.
This year the City Course Format was introduced using recommendations from user testing undertaken with our students by the City Human Computer Interaction Design (HCID) Interaction Lab. This change has improved usability, consistency, signposting and styling. This year we will be focusing on staff usability testing and we are inviting staff to participate.
Learning Spaces Improvements
Feedback from staff has fed into the DALI (Designing Active Learning Initiative) project which will bring about a transformational change by re-designing the technology offered in learning spaces at City.
Raising awareness of what learning spaces at City has been a priority. Amongst a range of activities and promotion undertaken this year, this short film highlights some of the features of City’s flexible learning spaces and encourages staff to consider the affordances of these rooms when thinking about where they will teach ready for this academic year.
Multimedia improvements
There has been a focus on improving the visibility, accessibility and profile of the services and facilities available to staff via the Multimedia theme team and the MILL. The Educational Multimedia Group was created to help share knowledge and build a community of practice for academic and professional staff .
A series of multimedia training sessions and initiatives were offered to staff and a programme of central workshops introducing academic staff to multimedia tools launches next term. Introduction to Mediaspace presentations are running throughout November and December, go to https://forms.city.ac.uk/forms/47940 to book a place. This academic year, a more tailored approach will be offered to schools and programmes.
The full survey report is available on request. For more information please do contact the Educational Technology Team.
Please note that the Educational Technology & Learning Spaces Survey https://goo.gl/3vCpgT is only available to City University London staff.
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