Welcome to the March LDC blog. In the blog this month:
- New Learning Development Project Awardees announced
- Update on the Learning at City Conference: Call for Abstracts
- Research Symposium: Call for Abstracts
- Good Morning City – February: Creating Effective, Interactive Handouts
- Good Morning City – March: How twittering 140 characters can support student learning
- Stop and check the SLE Roadmap
- Update from the Ensemble Project
- Learn about the eReflect Project
- The LDC Congratulates Nigel Duncan and Jason Dykes
- Dates for your diary
Learning Development Projects – 
December 2010 to August 2011
The next round of Learning Development Projects have now been awarded. There are a total of 18 projects being run this time around representing every school and the central services.
Learning Development Projects are for academics or members of support staff who would like further time, space and resources to complete a project looking at learning development. These projects aim to benefit the student learning experience; develop teaching and learning materials or strategies and benefit teaching and learning practice.
The LDC would like to congratulate all those who have been awarded a Learning Development Project, and you can view the full list below. If you’re interested in learning more about the initiative, further information is available on our website, or you can e-mail us at awards@city.ac.uk
| Project Holder | Project Focus | School |
| Laudan Nooshin, Debbie Dickinson, Vicky Wollard | Enhancing the Student Experience: Developing Placement Opportunities and Employability in CPE | Arts |
| Steve Schifferes and Marjorie Deane | Improving Numeracy Among Journalism Students | Arts |
| Jonathan Hewett | Screencasting to enhance student learning | Arts |
| Veronica Hope Hailey, Roy Batchelor | Generating City/Cass Teaching Case Studies for the Gulf | Cass |
| Namita Sharma | Class Gifts Programme | Cass |
| Eleni Antoniou | Work-shadowing Scheme | Central Services |
| Emily Allbon | You’ve got the law | Law |
| James Toner, Marcus Soanes | Programme Overview Browser (POB) Evaluation | Law |
| Madeline Cruice | Capturing student learning and progression: Clinical skills development and reflective practice | SCHS |
| Gill Craig, Emma-Jane Berridge | Addressing the academic and personal support needs of international, taught postgraduate students through the development of technology-enhanced learning support | SCHS |
| Maud De Visscher | Integration of personal and professional development activities in Mathematics programmes. | SEMS |
| Brett Mckinley | Can advanced structural analysis software be used to teach the fundamentals of structural engineering? | SEMS |
| Sebastian Gaigg and Kielan Yarrow | ‘Programming for Data Collection’: A new Module for Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students | Social Sciences |
| Helen Scott | Improving perceptions of feedback for BSc Psychology students | Social Sciences |
| Kate Reader | A guide to feedback for Undergraduate Psychology Students | Social Sciences |
| Ian Glover, Shane Wohlers, Raj Muttikrishnan and Chris Marshall | Standardised, Customisable Online Feedback System (SCOFS) for SEMS | SOI |
| Chris Smart | ‘Academic Support: The Students’ Perspective’ | SOI |
| Dr Sara Jones | ‘Exploring the Potential of Digitally Augmented Spaces to Enhance Students’ Experience of Problem-Based Learning in Design’ | SOI |
If you’d like to see some early results from one of the projects, you can watch the video on Namita Sharma’s Class Gifts Programme below –
3rd Annual Learning at City Conference: Engaging Students in Learning
Call for Abstracts
Thursday 23rd June 2011 – City University London
The LDC will be holding its third annual Learning at City Conference on Thursday 23rd June 2011. The emphasis for this conference is on engaging students in learning. We want you to share your learning, teaching and assessment practice, innovation and research that focuses on engaging students. This is an opportunity to share with others good practice and explore transferability to different disciplines.
We are inviting proposals for papers/workshops and for posters which both showcase innovation and research, and share good practice across the University. The theme for the conference is engaging students in learning and your paper should focus on one or more of the following sub themes: learning; teaching; assessment; curriculum design. Discussion papers/ workshop sessions will last 40 minutes, whilst posters will be on display all day with two 15 minute slots allocated for discussion of the poster during the day.
Proposals should be submitted electronically to LDC, using the proposal form, by Thursday 31st March 2011. For more information please see our website at: http://www.city.ac.uk/ldc/events/Call.html.
Opportunities for PhD researchers: Submit an abstract for the Researchers’ Symposium.
PhD researchers are invited to participate in the Researcher’s Symposium on Wednesday 22nd June by submittin
g an abstract for a presentation or a poster.
Why present a paper or a poster?
This is an ideal opportunity for students who have undertaken some data collection and analysis and would value some feedback as well as an opportunity to present in a conference environment. Presenters will gain experience in the process of presenting at a conference in a supportive environment, and will have the opportunity to receive feedback from the research community here at City University London.
Submitting an abstract
We are now open for submissions, and the deadline is Thursday 31st March 2011. Abstracts should either be for a poster or for a presentation, and you must provide a rationale for this choice.
Submit online via: www.tinyurl.com/ResearchSymposium
Good Morning City: Creating Effective, Interactive Handouts 
Patrick Baughan and Steve McCombe led on this session
Good or bad, handouts are here to stay as they are seen as an easy to use resource for staff, and are expected by students. The handout forms a significant part of the teaching and learning process that can make a real difference to student learning. The handout can be regarded as no more than a few sheets of paper distributed to students at the end of a lecture, but a handout can achieve rather more than these humble and rather staid purposes.
We should advocate for handouts being used in a positive way. Firstly, by emphasising that it should complement and add extra value to the teaching. Secondly, handouts should not spoon-feed students and should offer guidance without explaining exactly what they should do. Try to individualise the handout format, and make links to the handout during the lecture. Handouts are useful for flagging the structure of the topic, and structure may be lost in a lecture. One thing to avoid is providing very long handouts, which encourage spoon-feeding and may reduce attendance. Ideas on making the handout dynamic and learner centred include considering the handout as a reusable learning object (RLO). This can be developed in conjunction with a range of technologies, such as Adobe Presenter and Prezi, as well as through the use of video. Reusable learning objects can include a number of areas including interactive games and can really enhance student engagement.
You can also view the Prezi presentation associated with this event.
Good Morning City: How twittering 140 characters can support student learning.
The next Good Morning City session will look at the different ways in which staff can use Twitter to support the learning of their students. The session will be hosted by the LDC’s Ajmal Sultany and Professor Susannah Quinsee as they explore the value of this cutting-edge medium.
A ll colleagues at City are warmly invited to attend this session, which takes place between 8.30am-9.30am, on Wednesday 23 March, in Room E201 (The MILL). Breakfast will be provided.
If you would like to join us, please email ldc@city.ac.uk. Similarly, if you have any questions or ideas that you would like to make us aware of before the seminar, please email using the above address. We hope to see plenty of you there.
Strategic Learning Environment (SLE) Roadmap Summary
Work on the Strategic Learning Environment, which primarily focused on the implementation of Moodle last year, is now being driven by the SLE roadmap. The SLE Roadmap is the umbrella term for a collection of projects running this year and beyond that serve as critical success factors for phase 3 of implementation of the SLE. The roadmap is at the heart of the work completed by the Educational Technology Community (ETC), a network of professionals from schools and central services enabling the implementation of learning technologies across the institution. Example projects are the launch of iTunes U, evaluation of the classroom pods, online marking and feedback, and use of Flip cameras.
What is the purpose of the roadmap?
The purpose of this roadmap is two-pronged. Firstly, to monitor, communicate and progress a variety of SLE projects and developments across the institution and secondly to indicate the strategic direction of the wider project. The roadmap projects also encourage cross-school collaboration and awareness of innovation.
What is in the roadmap?
The projects aim to meet student needs and offer opportunities for enrichment within five education themes:
- Assessment & Feedback
- Collaboration & Communication
- Learning & Research Assets
- Learning Environment
- Curriculum Design (including PDP)
This work is underpinned by projects in two further enabler themes:
- Professional Development for Staff
- Infrastructure & Development
We will continue to disseminate progress on the SLE project including work on these themes over the coming months.
Susannah Quinsee (s.quinsee@city.ac.uk) and Anise Bullimore (anise@city.ac.uk)
Propagating semantic technologies at City with Ensemble
Last week, Katy Jordan, of the Ensemble research team, gave a lunchtime seminar on ‘An introduction to the Semantic Web and Semantic Technologies for Learning and Teaching’. It was attended by people from across the spectrum of schools in the university. Katy plans to create a Moodle site to build a supportive community for anyone at City who is interested in applying semantic technologies in their discipline. A screencast of the seminar can be viewed online at: http://www.katyjordan.com/OnlineSeminarPresentation/
This week, she has been following up on opportunities from the seminar, which has focused so far on dissertation databases. Katy has been liaising with Jeanette Danzer and Lynda Bryant to create an online tool to view and explore their database of dissertations from the School of Arts. Dr Ian Glover is working to further develop an online library of dissertations from the School of Informatics, using the Simile toolkit. This builds upon and enhances an existing searchable list of dissertations from the School; semantic technologies were chosen as they offered greater flexibility for searching across the database. Ian has also created a novel addition to the database via the addition of ‘QR codes’, which allow students to download selected dissertations direct to their mobile devices. Ian’s tool is being developed with a view to embedding it into Moodle for students to use in the coming academic year, and developing a similar tool for SEMS; a sneak preview can be found at: http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~sbbf700/simile/2/dissertations2.html
The Ensemble Project will be hosting a ‘Show and Tell’ event showcasing its work on semantic technologies and case-based learning. This will take place at City on March 17th, from 12.30 to 2pm. Lunch will be provided. If you would like to attend, please register online at: http://tinyurl.com/ensembleshowandtell
eReflect Assessment and Feedback Project
Assessment and feedback are both high on the educational agenda at City, both because of the importance of this in the National Student Survey (NSS) and because it is one of the Strategic Learning Environment (SLE) project themes. However some lecturers would argue that they do provide lots of feedback to students, yet students seem only interested in the mark and don’t seem to read or act on the feedback that is given to them (Crisp, 2007; Higgins et al, 2002; Poulos & Mahony, 2008). There is also evidence to suggest that students often do not understand feedback they are given and are thus unable to act on it (Channock 2000, & Hyland, 2000).
What it is
eReflect, developed by Westminster uses simple technology to encourage students to think about and make use of the feedback they receive on their coursework. eReflect is tightly linked to a personal tutorial system and exploits technology in order to enhance the face to face meetings that occur between tutor and tutee.
The interesting aspect of the eReflect process is that it encourages students to carry out some reflection on the feedback they receive, and as observed at Westminster, students will carry out this activity in the knowledge that their personal tutor will be reading their reflections and discussing them at the next tutorial.
The benefits
eReflect promotes a ‘feedforward’ process, enabling students to learn from the feedback they receive for assessment they will undertake in the future.
Improving student retention is also a key priority at City and we further hypothesise that eReflect might help in this respect because it draws together two critical success factors for retention: ongoing (formative) feedback (Yorke, 2001) and the role of the personal tutor (Laycock, 2009).
Where to next
The LDC staff; Rae Karimjee & Sian Lindsay are piloting this tool with one of the programmes in the School of Arts & Social Sciences at City and hope to provide an evaluation in the new year for other programmes.
Congratulations from the LDC!
Jason Dykes wins award at IEEE VisWeek Conference
In October 2010, the Informatics School’s Jason Dykes won an award for ‘Best Panel’ at IEEE VisWeek, the world’s primary visualization conference which included more than 800 delegates. This is quite a prestigious annual event and Jason’s award recognised his contribution, along with his colleagues from the US and Canada, to a panel on ‘Perspectives on Teaching Data Visualization’.
There were various panels on diverse subjects – see here for more details http://vis.computer.org/VisWeek2010/session/panels.html – but the ‘Teaching’ panel beat stiff competition to claim the ‘Best Panel’ award.
Congratulations to Jason and his colleagues from all at the LDC!
If you would like to learn more about VisWeek, you can find more information here : http://vis.computer.org/VisWeek2010/
Nigel Duncan Receives Professorship
Nigel Duncan has been appointed Professor of Legal Education in the City Law School. He is a University Teaching Fellow at the Learning Development Centre and, since 2004 a National Teaching Fellow. He is the university’s Academic Lead on Assessment. At City Law School he teaches on professional and postgraduate academic programmes, where he has developed experiential learning approaches and innovative assessments. For example, he runs an option on the Bar course whereby students gain academic credit for the quality of their work representing real clients in the employment tribunals.
Nigel’s main research and writing interests focus on pedagogy and legal ethics. He regularly publishes articles and book chapters and contributes to conferences in these fields. He is the editor of the Law Teacher, the main UK academic journal concerned with legal education. He is co-author of Clinical Legal Education (Blackstone, 1998) and editor and co-author of Employment Law in Practice (9th ed., OUP, 2010).
His recent work has concentrated on the development of ethical professional lawyers. He is developing an interactive website to act as a resource and forum for those interested in the teaching of legal ethics and professionalism (http://www.teachinglegalethics.org/).
Within City University Nigel has recently convened the Good Academic Practice Group and the Assessment Group. He is currently participating in the Assessment and Feedback Working Group.
Congratulations to Nigel on this deserved recognition from all at the LDC!
Dates for your Diary
Ensemble Project Show & Tell – 17th March
Good Morning City: Birds of a Feather — How to use Twitter to enable learning — 23rd March
Research Symposium & Learning at City Conference: Asbtract Submission Deadlines – 31st March
Researcher’s Development Day – 5th April
Good Morning City: Neighbours – How to support international students — 20th April