Portsmouth Business SchoolLearning Support

PBS Learning NewsAchieving the right blend!

Virtual Space...the Final Frontier?

Modern schools have extensive computing facilities and software that facilitates increased use of technology in learning. However, evidence shows that these same children have often been over-assessed in school, and have learnt to cope with the workload by adopting a ‘live to pass’ mentality. Having had little time between assessments at school and gaming at home, some children have failed to learn how to reflect on a topic to find deeper meanings. Reflection is a key part of learning, but modern kids often appear to use the internet as a source of knowledge. They search for information in short intense bursts, and rely on Facebook and other software for their view on what’s important to their lives. As educators, we need to adapt to this new reality, and use technology to interact with students in worlds that are real for them, if we are to help them reflect and learn.

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Contact the team:eteam@port.ac.ukhttp://pedagoria.blogspot.com/http://www.twitter.com/eteamnews

Issue 8 – Summer 2010

PROGRAMME: LEARNING & TEACHING CONFERENCE 2010: PBS + CCI + TECHNOLOGY

Time LT2 LT3 RB0.10 RB0.11 RB2.01 RB2.09 RB2.02

08.30 Registration & Breakfast Dennis Sciama (The Hub): Tea, Coffee, Hot Croissants & Fruit Platter

09.00 Welcome (Richmond LT1): Charlotte Gladstone-Millar AD(A), PBS

09.15Keynote: Professor Steve Wheeler (University of Plymouth, Faculty of Education): (Richmond LT1)

Lifelong Learning in a Digital Age: Inspiration and Innovation through Social Media

Stream HE Challenges Employability Research Assessment eLearning Open Stream EngagementChair V. Anderson Richard Tonge Joe Cox B. Haward Jane Chandler Tineke Fitch Phil Verrill

10.15

D. StarkeyTriage is this way: first aid for Learning & Teaching

J. HughesAll graduates get good jobs: myth or reality?

A GegovPutting undergraduate students at the forefront of academic research

R. WilliamsM. McCabeFine tuning assessment for teaching and learning

R. ShortJ. ChandlerDevelopment of a PBS Virtual Placements Centre (Second Life)

M. MalikExam revision using Examopedia Wiki and Google Talk

L. FarrellyE. MaciejewskiThe new Learning Landscape for the digital native

11.00 to

11.45Chilled juice

cartonsIn the

Richmond Atrium at 11.00

F. Forsythe(Univ. of Ulster: courtesy of theHEA Economics Subject Centre)Giving students a role in the learning game (through Problem Based Learning)

C. WillettM. YarrWin-Win-Win: providing business services to charities

C. Etherington-WrightA student run conference: the student research experience

G. TewkesburyChester/SandersEvaluation of approaches for producing mathematics question banks and the automatic creation of numerical calc’n. questions in Questionmark Perception using Macros in Excel.

R. Greene(IBM UK)Do more in this life using Second Life:Corporate events, staff training, and internal networking are some of the ways SL is used to further IBM’s goals.

S. SteinerHEA’s Engineering Subject Centre: Open educational resources and other initiatives

C. JacobsPreparing Students for HE Learning

11.45 Refreshments Richmond Atrium: Tea, Coffee, Biscuits, Fruit, & Muffins

12.05

S.GilmoreR.ShepherdFeeling the love: lessons from the service sector

I. BoatengEnhancing students’ learning experience and developing employability through community engagement

T. CollinsonG. FriggensJ. StamenkovicLibrary as Laboratory (or the Library Lab): creative experimentation for student engagement at the Library

D. StarkeyHigher learning, lower stress: ‘Start – Stop – Submit’

E. Duke-WilliamsG. JudgeS. BrookesTwispering in Class

M. Weller(The OU)Academic output as collateral damage

K. CurtisC. WattsNarrative + Rich Media + Students = Engagement

12.50to

13.35

M. Yarr C. WillettD. OsmanA. GrahamA qualitative and quantitative exploration of the drivers of poor performance in BME students on the undergraduate accounting pathways

A. TymonEmployability: the student perspective

C. AdamsImproving research quality on final year project

C. SangerFormative Aspects of Summative Assessment

S. Milton(CEO, Blue Orange Consulting, and an Associate Lecturer at the OU)Reaching Students through Social Media...(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Camtasia Studio and Jing)

T. Hirst (The OU)Making the most of Google

C. StrevensBlended Learning and the Expert Witness

13.35 Thanks & Close (LT1) Speaker: Barbara Haward AD(S), Technology (Fill in Feedback Form)

14.00Lunch, Networking, and Poster Sessions: Dennis Sciama (The Hub)

A cold buffet with warm potatoes and vegetarian options, served in the student side of the Hub.

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Need advice on teaching online?

PBS Learning Support for Your Teaching

Success with Wimba Classroom

Wimba Collaboration Suite: User Views

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Examples of how other institutions view the Wimba Suite Rachel Short: Educational Technologist

Rachel leads the Learning Support team based in RB1.07. She can help you to create course portals that include a variety of media and interactive learning objects, podcasts and screencasts. She is the Project Manager for our adoption of Second Life in PBS, which has led to the creation of the PBS Virtual Student Placements Centre.

David Starkey: Learning & Teaching Coordinator

David can advise you on ways to use technology to enhance your teaching, without over reliance on it. For example, Camtasia Relay was introduced to allow you to provide lectures as pre-briefings, so that face to face teaching could be more interactive. Want to learn about project-based learning and how to introduce it? David can help!

Mandy McCartney: Online Course Developer

Mandy assists Rachel in supporting a range of unit sites and course portals in our VLE. She can advise academic colleagues on the use of VLE tools - including formative quizzes, assignments, discussion boards and group management – and extract formatted web pages from Word using Wimba Create, or set up a Wimba Classroom.

Anthony Harrison: Media Producer

Ant can help you make use of media in your teaching. If you want to use video in assessment, or to produce short documentaries about a subject you teach, or need to know how to capture sessions using Camtasia Relay, Ant can help you to achieve this. If you need to call him, telephone: 07912 755571.

Sarah Gilmore: Learning & Teaching Coordinator

Sarah is research active, and can advise you on new pedagogical ideas and techniques. If you’d like to adopt a new way of teaching, or see a need to form a coordinated group showcasing educational research in an area that interests you, then Sarah can facilitate that.

Advantages of Using Wimba

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http://www.twitter.com/eteamnews

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Start..Stop..Submit! Auto Session Capture

Launch of Camtasia Relay & PBS Media SupporteTechnology Focus: http://www.wimba.com

Kevin Papworth: Wimba Ltd

Wimba is proud to work with more than half of all UK HEIs, helping them to tackle many of the big challenges that the sector faces today. Many recognise the central role that collaboration plays in key areas, enabling universities to grow, to diversify, and to provide a quality learning experience to students, irrespective of their location. Please feel free to discuss Wimba uses with me at the Joint Learning & Teaching Conference on June 24th 2010.

Setting New Standards in Collaboration

Focused exclusively on education, Wimba’s solutions and services are used by hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, and administrators at schools and universities around the world every day throughout the student lifecycle.

Student Engagement

From enhancing distance programs, to expanding options for blended learners, to supplementing traditional classrooms with guest lectures, language labs, or recording lectures, dynamic and lively interaction using the Wimba Collaboration Suite can engage students and improve outcomes and retention.

Critical Business Initiatives

For increasing revenue and enrolment, improving the student experience and retention rates, supporting green efforts and disaster preparedness planning, collaboration using the Wimba Collaboration Suite is mission critical in meeting the many challenges of education today.

Cost and Time Saving Efficiencies

By offering online academic services, delivering professional development or IT training, or running department, faculty, committee or student meetings, entire learning communities save time and money through the convenience of using the Wimba Collaboration Suite. This suite of tools has recently been awarded the 2010 “Best Collaboration Solution” CODiE Award by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

Relay & New Media Support

PBS has installed this system to permit academic colleagues to record their lectures, seminars, or sessions where they want to record a voice over screen content like PowerPoint slides, and deliver it as a video. Relay makes recording easy, and will send you a link to the video when it has published it. You can mail the link to your students, post it on Victory or Twitter, without having to edit the video or ask someone else to do it. So the next time you are too ill to teach on campus but need to make a lecture available, or want to share ideas with others from home, or just can’t get into work due to snow, let Camtasia Relay do it via the web!

Other learning support guides available:

Media Delivery at the University of Portsmouth

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Portsmouth Business School Second Life Developments

PBS Virtual Student Placements Centre iTunesU: Yes!....iTunesUs: Maybe!

iTunesU for Portsmouth?

Shown here is the Stanford University iTunesU presence, although one could illustrate the use of iTunesU at many other universities – but not Portsmouth!

The Creative & Cultural Industries faculty has published podcasts via its iTunes site for some time, but there is no coordinated iTunesU presence showing learning and teaching to potential and current students.

There should be, and at the next ELSG meeting, a cross-faculty pitch for one to be created will be made via a short video.

Rachel Short: Educational TechnologistFor a period of 6 months, I have been working on a project to investigate the potential for PBS to use the virtual world ‘Second Life’ as a student support mechanism. In collaboration with a subject matter expert from the School of Computing/CCI, we have designed, tested and implemented a Virtual Student Placements Centre (VSPC). This is a parcel on the existing UoP Island. It consists of a small campus where students can play videos, and access websites/resources. Students can meet with potential employers/supervisors, attend virtual classes and meet informally.

Increasing Student EngagementThe creation of the VSPC posed a relatively low risk area for building SL expertise, whilst looking at how students might interact in a 3D environment. 49 respondents to a pre-build and 16 to a post-implementation questionnaire. 69% agreed that they would be willing to use SL in HE with 49% stating that this would enhance their learning experience. More than 300 universities around the world use SL for research/teaching.

Further Information

The project will be the subject of a presentation at the L&T Conference on 24th June 2010. If you are unable to make it to the session, I can provide you with information concerning the initial findings and recommendations for PBS: eteam@port.ac.uk.

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Mobile Learning and Virtual Learning Environments

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Problem Based Learning (PBL)

VLE MattersPBL at Ulster University

What is Problem Based Learning? David Starkey: L & T CoordinatorOur current VLE is WebCT Vista, called ‘Victory’ internally. This will not be supported by Blackboard after 2013, and an expert advisory group has been set up to look at alternatives. At the next UoP eLearning Steering Group meeting on July 15th, two representatives of Blackboard Mobile will present the Bb mobile offering, which in conjunction with Blackboard Learn can provide virtual learning via Apple iPads and iPhones. I will report back on how good this was after the meeting. Here’s a flavour of it…

Houston: We have a Problem!

Teaching using PBL alone can have some detrimental consequences for student learning. Apart from the cost of running full PBL units, where students undertake only seminars in small groups (no lectures), PBL can lead to a reduction in the ability of a student to make decisions on their own, and insufficient breadth of learning. However, a combination of conventional and problem-based units provides for all the benefits of subject coverage and the acquisition of transferable skills for optimal student learning.

PBL has been used in the teaching of Economics at Ulster University for fourteen years, and it has been found to enhance learning and employability significantly. This will be explored at the L&T Conference on June 24th by Mr. Frank Forsythe: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/frank-forsythe/16/608/88b

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Using Cue Cards The eHive Blog & eTeam Services

PBS Learning Support: New Online Help Facilities

What are ‘Cue Cards’ and how are they used?

If students are not preparing well for seminars, the quality of debate in seminars may be poor, leading to a downward spiral of preparation. Even the most enthusiastic students begin to feel that it is not worth taking time to prepare.

To overcome this, students can be asked to submit a cue card with information on a particular topic during each seminar (with submissions accepted at no other time). At the end of the module, they are handed back to the students at the start of the exam.

10% of their marks for the module are then made up of the number of cue cards submitted, with the percentage allocated to the exam part of the assessment being reduced accordingly – say from 50% to 40%. For example if a student hands in half the possible number of cards, he/she would receive 5% rather than 10%.

The cue card system can help to improve the preparations for seminars and lead to better discussions. It can also raise the awareness of current issues and the different text books available. Where it has been adopted, students commented that the cue card system had helped to improve their confidence, and had been extremely helpful to those who suffer from exam nerves, or for whom English is not their first language.

For units where an awareness of current market trends or legal cases is important, cue cards enable students to record this activity as they discover it in the media, thus enriching their answers. Cue cards also enable staff to expect a higher level of discussion and analysis in exam answers than might otherwise be expected. Simple regurgitation of cue card records is not rewarded. Care must be taken when writing exam questions to take this into account.

As the changes required by Curriculum 2012 pick up speed, cue cards may empower students, while cutting down tests of memory alone. Perhaps they are worth a look?

Increasing Student Engagement, Enriching Learning

You can find the eHive blog at: http://pedagoria.blogspot.com/

David Starkey: L & T CoordinatorIn an ideal world, students would attend seminars because they were filled with a spirit of enquiry and the joy of learning. In practice, they have other calls on their time, such as having to work to pay for their studies, and they may need extra encouragement to attend discussions that bring out the learning the tutor intended. ‘Cue cards’ can be a powerful motivation to attend class, can improve student preparation and reading prior to seminars, and aid exam revision.

The new eHive blog will provide information and video tutorials describing how to do things in our VLE, make use of screencasting technologies, and use Web 2.0 tools like Facebook, Twitter, Jing etc. It also provides guidance on how to initiate an eTeam project after June 24th.