(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…
BETT 2017 -The potential and challenges of technology enhanced learning
Recently, I was lucky enough to attend the annual BETT exhibition . This was my third visit to BETT since 2010 and my first with an HE hat on. It continues to grow in size and frankly the quantity of stuff on display boggles the mind. Here are a few of my key impressions of the…
#appventcityunilead – an experiment before Christmas
Inspired by the various 12 Apps for Christmas twitter initatives from other universities, where an app is posted on a blog post every day, I decided to try and engage with our twitter followers and the wider higher education community before Christmas, using the hashtag #appventcityunilead (appvent a play on the word advent, but with…
19th Annual SEDA Conference 2014 – Opportunities and challenges for academic development in a post-digital age Nottingham
This conference focused on both the challenges and opportunities created by the changes that technologies have brought about over the last few years. The sessions covered both tools that people were using and views on the benefits of these and how to enhance them as well as reflecting on where all this might be leading…
‘The One Minute Paper’ – end of Lecture Activity in City’s Learning Spaces
The One Minute Paper is an end of lecture activity that encourages students to work collaboratively to clarify their understanding of course content and reflect on different peer perspectives. It gives the lecturer the feedback about what the students understood and helps them to amend their next lecture. Take a look at the group work suggestions…
Group Work in City’s Learning Spaces: using mobile learning and flexible spaces to promote reflection and discussion
Why? Think-Group-Share creates an engaging moment in lesson that capitalises on discussion and reflection and has a positive impact on student understanding and performance (Habel and Stubbs, 2014). Technique This activity is a modified version of Think-Pair-Share and explores the use of technology enriched learning. It goes beyond getting an answer “right” and focuses…
Creative Large Group Teaching – the aftermath
Thank you to all those that attended and participated in our workshop session at the Learning at City Conference. In our session we introduced a number of techniques and technologies that could be used to enable creative large group teaching. We talked about how education is changing and our learning spaces need to reflect these…
Creative large group teaching
Around a fifth of all teaching at City occurs in rooms that fit 80 or more students. Lecture theatres with more than 150 seats and more than 200 seats currently report almost back to back teaching according to timetabling. Is teaching in large groups the best way for students to learn? What are the alternatives…
Social Media for Training Review
I attended the UCISA Social Media for Training Conference and here are my take-away points. Ideas for online tools to develop more effective meetings At the LDC, we’ve been thinking of more effective ways of managing meetings and I got some ideas from Joe Nicholls who presented on a staff development workshop which look at…