Month: May 2018

The Design & Management of Learning Environments –The Student Experience

#LearnEnvConf Thursday 17 May 2018  https://workplacetrends.co/learning-environments-2/ Held at Kings College London, this event looked at the key topic of how a modern and diverse learning environment can attract, engage and retain its students and staff. 1.Sue Holmes, Director. of Estates at Oxford Brookes University and AUDE member. Sue was the first speaker. Her talk called “JellyBean…Continue Reading The Design & Management of Learning Environments –The Student Experience

Is It Time To Ban Laptops In Meeting Rooms? Part of a Bigger Picture

A recent article from software developer Trello, suggests that from learning space to conference hall, the bottom line is that there is a difference between multitasking and “task switching.” The distractible mind…a few thoughts from Clerkenwell Design Week #CDW18. Worth a read for students and us, especially as academics, ‘engagers’ and supporters of learning The creative director of a UK…Continue Reading Is It Time To Ban Laptops In Meeting Rooms? Part of a Bigger Picture

Moodle 3.4: Module design improvements

Moodle icon

While the focus of this year’s Moodle update is on redesigning Moodle, there are welcome changes to core Moodle and custom developments to improve your experience of using the system. This post outlines the improvements to help you design and manage your Moodle modules. Sections Moodle uses sections to help academic staff to structure and…Continue Reading Moodle 3.4: Module design improvements

Moodle 3.4: What we’re working on

Moodle icon

The focus of this year’s Moodle update is on redesigning Moodle. We outlined our approach to the redesign in our New Look for City’s Moodle blog post. Our Moodle Partner, Synergy Learning conducted user interviews with staff and students from all schools across the university to get feedback on our initial concept and we are…Continue Reading Moodle 3.4: What we’re working on

Phasing Out Turning Point Clickers

TP Clickers

Turning Point Clickers have performed a faithful student response system service for many years across the University, being borrowed and returned in locations near and far, and this was an excellent system to prove how valuable response systems are for Teaching and Learning. However, like polaroids, yellow pages and casette tapes  the clickers system has…Continue Reading Phasing Out Turning Point Clickers

How to prime your blog posts for SEO (search engine optimization)

The SEO Pyramid - a. content, b. keywords, c. links, d. social media

You’ve taken time to write your blog post. Now, how can you make sure it gets read by the maximum number of readers? Make it search engine friendly. Here are a few SEO tips to get your blog noticed. Use keywords What is your blog post about? What keywords are other people using on this…Continue Reading How to prime your blog posts for SEO (search engine optimization)

Guidelines for students on the use of a commercial proofreader

In the Academic Learning Support (ALS) team, we help students to develop their study skills and become effective independent learners.  We don’t offer a proofreading service, but students quite often ask us for advice on the use of a commercial proofreader.  We consider a commercial proofreader to be a professional text editor who will work in an ethical manner to suggest changes to spelling, punctuation…Continue Reading Guidelines for students on the use of a commercial proofreader

Getting Better: Interrogating the Smart Campus (2/2)

Chris Pearce speaking at smart campus panel event

(watch the full session above) Over the past couple of years, I’ve been following developments in the area increasingly being defined as the ‘smart campus’ with great interest. It’s a concept that means different things to different people, but to me, it’s largely about the convergence of several trends and emerging technologies across the whole…Continue Reading Getting Better: Interrogating the Smart Campus (2/2)