At the beginning of October 2016, LEaD loaned a touchscreen tablet and stylus to Professor Keith Pullen to enable him to provide hand-written notations and feedback on online assignment submissions. Keith is a Professor of Energy Systems, who teaches Part 4 Design for Mechanical Engineering students. The students on the course are required to produce…Continue Reading Marking electronic submissions with a touchscreen
Six colleagues from Learning Success and Student Counselling and Mental Health Services were the first to participate in a series of free Assistive Technology (AT) roadshows provided by TechEd Marketing. In anticipation of imminent changes (i.e. reductions) to Disabled Students Allowance, we have been (1) exploring ways to make better use of AT to promote…Continue Reading Assistive Technology Training: from specialised support to inclusive practice
Why apply for HEA Fellowship? Becoming a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy is an opportunity to reflect on your work and demonstrate your experience to others in the HE community. In common with many other HE institutions, City is keen to see many of its staff gain this recognition. What is HEA Fellowship? There…Continue Reading How to claim your HEA Fellowship via City’s RISES scheme
Some City students have said that they find it hard to attend the Academic Learning Support workshops, which are normally run at lunchtime. A number of these students were part-time or distance learners. Whilst we do use Lecture Capture to record sessions for students to view at a later date, this service is not currently…Continue Reading Reaching out to distance learners: using Adobe Connect to broadcast a workshop online
What is DALI? The Designing Active Learning Initiative (DALI) is a collaboration between City’s schools and professional services (Information Services, Learning enhancement and development and Property and Facilities) which began in January 2015. Funding has been secured to initiate the redesign and renewal of technology in City’s learning spaces. In the summer of 2016 a…Continue Reading DALI – a collaborative approach to learning space design – for Higher Education
September will see the start of the LLB In Legal Practice. This is a new degree which has a number of specific features to it and opens up some opportunities for the School. The programme is to be run in conjunction with CILEX Law School (CxLS) on a distance learning basis. CxLS have extensive experience…Continue Reading City Law School’s new distance learning course (LLB in Legal Practice)
On 8 February I attended the inaugural Poll Everywhere User Group meeting at Regent’s University. The group was set up by Matt.Lingard@uwl.ac.uk and Anna.Armstrong@uwl.ac.uk of the University of West London, “for educational users of Poll Everywhere in the UK…. primarily for staff in FE & HE”*. Matt had shown me Poll Everywhere when he worked…Continue Reading Poll Everywhere User Group, meeting #1
Last week, I attended the Higher Education Academy ‘Inspire’ Conference for the Social Sciences in Manchester. My free passport to this great conference was as a member of the “BlogSquad” to live-tweet and blog about the event. I will first say just how valuable it is to attend the occasional conference or talk that is…Continue Reading Down the Rabbit Hole: HEA Social Sciences Conference 2015
This year I have been using Poll Everywhere in my teaching. Poll Everywhere is an audience response system which allows students to answer a variety of questions in class using their own phones, tablets or laptops, via the web using a data or wifi connection, or via twitter or text message. Here I describe…Continue Reading Audience response using Poll Everywhere
As an academic skills tutor, I’m often faced with a student clutching a set of assessment criteria containing the phrase “critically analyse”, or a synonym of that instruction. In my experience, many students understand the broad concept of critical analysis (e.g. being sceptical, not taking information on face value, evaluating evidence, etc), but have difficulty…Continue Reading Two meanings of “critically analyse”