Learning Technologies

Getting started with Turnitin

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:19:00 +0000

Last Friday I gave a workshop on Using Turnitin to Deter Plagiarism for academic staff at St Angela's College, Sligo. St Angela's is a college of NUI Galway and occupies a beautiful site on the shore of Lake Gill, just outside Sligo, and it is always a pleasure to visit there.

The workshop was aimed at teaching staff getting started with using Turnitin. As we went through the practicalities of setting up a Turnitin assignment in their VLE (moodle) and discussed strategies and options, I stressed a few points. These are the take-home messages that I think are key when starting to use Turnitin.

1. Focus on the teaching: the 12 people in the group were concerned teachers. The last thing they want or need to become is "plagiarism police", with a focus on plagiarism detection. Turnitin is best used as a teaching tool, so make sure that the strategy you use, and every option you choose, is based on improving the learning for your students.

2. Turnitin does not detect plagiarism, it highlights matching text. It is very good at what it does, but it cannot tell you that a student has plagiarised. You, as the teacher, are the one who decides if the matching text indicates a problem, or otherwise.

3. Turnitin can only be used to help detect plagiarism of text, or cut-and-paste copying. It doesn't identify plagiarism of ideas, and won't be of any use with ghost-written materials.

4. Originality reports have to be interpreted. You have to examine a report to understand what the coloured highlighting is telling you. There are many reasons why text might be highlighted: direct quotes, bibliographic references or just writing on a particular topic using the correct language for the discipline. Highlighted text could be an indication that the student has actually performed a good literature survey!

5. The similarity index should never be used as a measure of plagiarism. Do I really need to explain this?

6. You have to follow up, when you find a problem. This could be in the form of general feedback to a class group, where there are common issues across the class; or individual feedback to address a particular piece of writing. Where a serious problem exists, it will be necessary to use formal procedures. Feedback should come first though, see point (1).

7. Giving students access to originality reports can be a great learning tool, when they are learning academic writing. But it has to be in a supported environment, where they can understand how to interpret what they are seeing. See point (4).

For more on strategies for using Turnitin, see my presentation from the E-Assessment Scotland conference in Dundee last August.

Do you have any take-home messages for teachers starting off with Turnitin in the classroom? Please add to the list by writing a comment. Feedback on my list is also welcome.

Testing: Kaltura for Blackboard

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:06:00 +0000

I'm currently engaged in testing out Kaltura, a platform for video, as part of a 3 year extended pilot at NUI Galway. It has a rather nice integration with Blackboard, which we're hoping to launch within the next few weeks. If any members of staff are using or creating their own video and are interested in being part of an initial pilot study in the next few months, please get in contact with me.

For the moment, I'm testing the embed feature. So, here's a short video recorded during our guerilla video workshop with the participants in the PG Cert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

video platform video management video solutions video player

Using the VLE as a Trojan Horse

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:41:00 +0000

The Calman Learning Centre

Last week I travelled to Durham for the 2012 Blackboard Users' Conference. Coming immediately at the end of the Christmas/New Year break, it was a shock to the system, and a rude kick start to my brain. But I survived, and came away with my head buzzing. Now, if I can just get time to implement some of those ideas...

The two keynotes, in particular, got me thinking about training and support for our academic staff in their use of technologies for teaching and learning. The learning technology team at CELT aims to provide pedagogical support for staff in their use of technology, although often we end up dealing with queries about user accounts and basic support for our VLE, Blackboard. Our mantra is that we want to encourage each member of staff, from their current technology use, to do something a little more. We always keep in mind that the teaching/learning is key, and we're just using the technology to (better) support it.

With this in mind, Gráinne Conole's (@gconole) metaphor of the VLE as theTrojan Horse makes perfect sense to me. Since we went mainstream with Blackboard almost 5 years ago, the uptake by staff members has been very positive. Encouraged by automatic enrolment of students in the correct courses, the possibility of easy communication (announcements, email) and demand from students themselves, academics at NUI Galway have embraced the VLE, albeit (in some cases) with reluctance and/or trepidation.

We have a significant number of early-adopters, champions and people willing to experiment, and these people really keep us on our toes. But we also have a large group of staff who just use Blackboard as a repository, making minimal use of its functionality. Our challenge now is to use this as a basis to encourage them along and to try something new. Gráinne described the VLE as the "nursery slope" for academics: a safe and supported environment where they can learn the basics of technology for learning. But, how to do this when the average academic is already overworked and doesn't have time to even turn up for basic training?

The other image that I liked in Gráinne's keynote was the notion of the VLE+. It's no longer a case of the PLE vs VLE: we can extend our VLE with a myriad of extra functionality to support teaching and learning activities. This afternoon I met with our learning technologies team, to plan our activities for the next few months, and we discussed all of our Blackboard connectors which make up our VLE+. At the moment, the list includes: Campus Pack (Learning Objects); Turnitin; Echo360; QuestionMark; Kaltura. This all provides a seamless environment for staff and students - to the extent that all our support tickets say "Problem with Blackboard", when it's probably not a Blackboard issue at all.

Is this a bad thing? As raised by Nick Pearce (@drnickpearce) in his presentation Beyond Good and Evil, is "closed" necessarily evil?

Ray Land (now Professor of Higher Education at Durham University and Director of Durham’s Centre for Learning Teaching and Research in Higher Education), in his keynote addressed exactly this point. Higher Education is historically closed - with teaching taking place behind closed doors. The newer, digital world, challenges this; it challenges the authority of the academic and breaks down barriers. While there are some that embrace the digital world, for many academics, this represents "troublesome knowledge", and requires a change of culture. The digital world is constantly changing and evolving. For learning technologies, this means a new tool every day (at least) that could be used in teaching and learning. It's difficult, even for those of us who work in the area, to keep track of developments. The VLE is a way to contain that volatility, and slow things down.

Footbridge, Durham

In the same way that teachers will always have a role in leading students through a new landscape (while not necessarily being the source of all knowledge), our learning technologies team will have a role to play in leading academics through the fast paced, digital world, using the VLE+ as the safe and supported environment.

Up next, when I get a chance, some thoughts on the panel session around threshold, minimum standards for VLE courses.

Welcome to the class of 2011

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:33:00 +0000

This afternoon I am meeting the new group of students on the Learning Technologies module, part of the PG Diploma in Academic Practice.

It looks like we have a great group of people and I look forward to working with them over the next couple of months, as they explore the use of technology in their teaching.

E-Assessment Scotland 2011 - my prezi

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:20:00 +0000

I was really pleased to be invited to give a presentation at the annual E-Assessment Scotland conference in Dundee last week. The conference itself is a free event, and attracted around 300 delegates, mostly from the UK. I'll write a blog post soon (when Blackboard is fixed) about the conference.

In the meantime, here's my presentation, which I prepared using Prezi. It was my first Prezi, and I learned a lot in putting it together - but that's another blog post.

Supporting Students' Writing Skills using Turnitin on Prezi

Blackboard 9.1 is coming

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:25:00 +0000

The upgrade of our Blackboard system to release 9.1 is progressing according to schedule. In the last few weeks, we’re received many enquiries about when the new system will be available and what changes staff can expect.

When will I have access to my courses?
It is intended that the new Blackboard system will be available for use during the week of 22nd August.

There will be a new URL to access the upgraded system, but otherwise you will log on using your username and password as before.

You will have access to all your courses for the academic year 2011-12. So, if you are an instructor on a Blackboard course currently, or if you requested access to a course within the last few weeks, you will have access to that new course on the new system.

In keeping with existing policy, the new courses will be created as empty shells, ready for you to develop as you wish.

What about the teaching materials in my current course? How can I get it into my new course?
To facilitate the re-use of teaching materials, the new Blackboard system will also have courses for the academic year 2010-11, to which you will have access. These are not full courses, and will not include student enrolments, so cannot be used for teaching purposes. However, much of your content from the current Blackboard system is being migrated into this area, so that you can import it, or copy components of it, into your new Blackboard course for 2011-12.

Can I still access the old site?
The old Blackboard site will continue to be available until October 2011. This is to facilitate any courses that are active over the summer period, and to facilitate access to 2010-2011 materials and student work.

What benefits are there to the upgrade?
There are many benefits that you will experience with the new Blackboard, many of which will become clear as you use the system. Just some immediate advantages are:

Improved Interface

There is a new drag-and-drop interface making it easier to navigate the system and complete tasks with less clicks.
The OK confirmation button (which displayed when creating content in Blackboard 8) has been removed.
The course control panel is located on the main page of the course for easier editing.
A new “edit mode” makes editing your course easier and gives you a (95%) student view of your course.

Course Statistics

The course statistics function will be fully operational.

Improved Group features

The new group features allow instructors to create any number of groups at once.
Students can be randomly assigned to groups, manually assigned to groups, or asked to sign-up for groups themselves.

User Information Sessions: What’s New in Blackboard 9.1?
In preparation for the new release, CELT is facilitating User Information Sessions. During the session we’ll go through the main changes in BB 9.1 (working on the test server) and we’ll provide you with your own sandpit Blackboard test module which you’ll be able to access during and beyond the drop-in session.

A list of upcoming CELT events, including these Information Sessions, can be found on our CELT events site.

CELT will announce a full programme of training sessions. These will be a combination of short “What’s new in 9.1” for experienced Blackboard users as well as a new version of our popular “Introduction to Blackboard” workshops for new users.

We will also arrange a number of drop-in sessions to coincide with the start of teaching, for hands-on support and advice.

We are currently working on some on-line resources and will update our own Blackboard Support site in time for the new system.

Ken Robinson keynote at BbWorld 2011

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:21:00 +0000

In CELT, we are busy preparing for the introduction of Blackboard 9.1 in NUI Galway. More information about the new system will become available over the next couple of weeks and you can expect a full schedule of information sessions and training opportunities.

In the meantime, here is a recording of a keynote given by Sir Ken Robinson at Blackboard World 2011 two weeks ago.

The #nairtl11 backchannel

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:16:00 +0000

Last week we hosted the joint Galway Symposium/NAIRTL conference at NUIG, with the title Engaging Minds: Active learning, participation and collaboration in Higher education. Iain has already blogged about the event and the recordings of the keynotes will be available in the near future.

As part of the local organisation, and having participated in a number of very active conference backchannels in the last year (for example #pelc11), we wanted to ensure an active twitter experience. This was particularly important because one of our keynotes, Derek Bruff from Vanderbilt University, has already written about Encouraging a Conference Backchannel on Twitter.

The strategy we used was based on Derek’s guide. Here’s what we did:

Hashtag: obviously, nothing can happen without a hashtag. It has to be short and easily remembered. With a joint conference, this can be tricky! So, I just proposed using #nairtl11, which was accepted, and it worked a treat! We started using this a couple of weeks before the conference, to build up awareness. We also made sure it was included on the conference programme, so nobody could be in doubt.

Twitter Team: About a week before the conference, I assembled my twitter team. This included a number of people who I know are active on twitter and have participated in backchannels before. Their role was to “keep the backchannel going” and to encourage others to join in. Recruits were @catherinecronin, @marloft, @kellycoate, @thecosmicfrog. We also let @iainmacl join in, though it took him a few attempts to get the hashtag right! A couple of days before the event, I pointed them to Derek’s Instructions to the Twitter Team

Twitter Display: During down time at the conference, before keynotes and at breaks, we displayed the twitter stream in the main venue and in the breakout rooms. We used Visible Tweets, and the rotation animation style, which I’d seen used at #pecl11 to great effect. This display had a number of positive effects:

It alerted participants to the existence of the backchannel and encouraged them to take part;
It illustrated the participation of people who were not at the conference at all, but were engaging with our reports;
It ensured that those tweeting were being polite, knowing that what they said could be projected in big letters on screen.

The backchannel conversation was very effective, with over 800 tweets generated, mostly over the two days of the conference. As well as tweeting what was happening and key points being made, there was a rich conversation going on as well. We got a good following from outside the conference location, including colleagues in DIT who couldn’t attend because of exam board meetings (@muireannok, @m_crehan) as well as contributions from tweeters outside Ireland, including the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand.

I used the Archivist to analyse the #nairtl11 tweets. It gives some pretty graphs to show, for example, tweet volume over time and top tweeters.

Echo360 Community Conference Europe

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 30 May 2011 16:04:00 +0000

The Echo360 Community Conference Europe event, entitled Education Unconfined, took place last Wednesday at the London School of Economics. I went along, with Labhaoise Ni Dhonnchadha, to find out about the new release (version 4.0) and to network with other users.

We have been piloting Echo360 for lecture capture at NUI Galway for the last couple of years, with 5 installations in lecture theatres and seminar rooms.

We were very impressed with the venue, the New Academic Building (NAB) at the LSE. It is bright and airy, with lots of space. The view from the 8th floor was stunning.

The event itself was successful, with lots of exciting new features in version 4.0. We especially like the contextual collaboration for students, along with usage trend reports for instructors. The delegated admin capability is also very important for us, as we contemplate scaling up.

There was an excellent session from Jeremy Speller and Andrea Sella from University College London, where there are 20 lecture theatres equipped with Echo360. I liked Andrea's image of lecture capture as a time machine - offering the possibility for students to go back and revisit those parts of a lecture that were unclear. He made it particularly clear that students do not see recordings as a replacement for a lecture. His talk finished up with some interesting questions on how/where lecture capture can make an impact: performance, attendance or experience? And how can we measure this effect?

Inspired by Doug Belshaw and his use of Storify to document conference attendance, I've put together a small story myself, using my tweets from the conference and a couple of photos I took.

EdTech2011 Early Bird Registration iPod Touch Draw on Monday 23 May

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:36:00 +0000

This year's EdTech conference Innovation, Technologies and Practice: Show me the Learning! is being held from 1-2 June 2011 Waterford Institute of Technology.

As usual, there is a wonderful representation from NUIG covering the following innovative areas:

Bonnie Long 'Implemention of Digital Storytelling with Pre-Service Teachers - Challenges and Lessons Learned'
Anne Egan 'Podcasting as a Novice an a Legal Environment'
Catherine Cronin 'Re-thinking the Lecture - Audio Podcasts and Telling Stories'
Paul Gormley and Anne Walsh 'The Quick Win Meets the Trojan Horse: Formative 2.0 Assessments and the Adult Blended Learners Experience'
A number of CELT staff are also involved in the EdTech Organising Committee, which gives us an inspiring overview of the learning technolgy landscape in Ireland.

For those presenters or potential delegates, registration is now open. For a chance to win an iPod touch please register before lunchtime on Monday 23rd May

You can register for the conference and you preferred free workshops via the EdTech2011 online registration system.

The draw will take place on Monday afternoon!

Best of luck!

Blackboard Student Survey 2011

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:54:00 +0000

Photo: Sharon and Lindsay at the iPod Touch prizegiving

Over 2,500 NUI Galway students completed the annual Blackboard Student Survey in April of this year. We hope to publish the findings shortly, but are very heartened that so many of students took the time to share their thoughts and suggestions about their experiences of using Blackboard as a student, at NUI Galway.

Congrats also to Lindsay (pictured above), the lucky winner of the draw for an iPod Touch!

Call for NDLR LInCS (Learning Innovation Community Support) Project Funding 2011

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:16:00 +0000

The call for applications to fund projects supporting the development of learning resources /materials for the NDLR Users is open. All material pertaining to the call is available from http://www.ndlr.ie/view/view.php?id=171

The deadline for applications is Friday 20th May 2011

We are issuing funds from 17th June to:
(a) Support projects that will create learning resources and
(b) Generate use and activity around these learning resources and the repository and portal.

The outputs of these projects will be showcased at the next NDLR FEST event in March 2012

Bids should focus on short, practical projects with clear identifiable outputs (i.e. resources and examples of use and reuse). The outputs of these projects should aim to actively progress and support the realisation of the new and dynamic streamlined SMART CoP model ( new CoPs and/or mergers between existing CoPs) over the next ten months.

Reviewers Rubrics and a screencast with details for completing these forms will be available on the NDLR portal ( http://www.ndlr.ie/view/view.php?id=171) over the coming days. If you have any queries about the application form or the process for completion, please do not hesitate to contact the NDLR team at helpdesk@ndlr.ie

Infection, Prevention and Control

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:32:00 +0000

I would like to highlight a fantastic project, titled Infection Prevention and Control, which was led by Liz Kingston, Nursing and Midwifery, University of Limerick in collaboration with NUI Galway and HSE West.

The project was supported by the NDLR and is a really brilliant reusable learning resource.

NDLR - Liz Kingston from NDLR on Vimeo.

Open Source doesn't just equal Moodle

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:49:00 +0000

I'm sure by now most of you will have heard of the new LMS/VLE (call it what you prefer) that is both offered as a cloud-based service or in an Open Source release that aims to challenge Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai and Desire2Learn. It's called Canvas and I took it for a 'test drive' (to use the cliche much loved of technology magazines!) recently and I have to admit that there is something pleasing about the simple, plain design. It cheered me up a little since I'd been seriously disappointed in the over-hyped but really naff Moodle 2.o. Indeed, plenty of others have commented that they have a cheek using '2.0' for software that looks as if it was designed in the 1990s. Maybe I expected too much.

Not that we have any plans to move from our official Blackboard system, but we always have kept an eye on other systems and have run test implementations of Moodle and Sakai. Moodle is also used for courses that span multiple institutions or other work that doesn't meet with Blackboard licensing requirements (ie with external organisations).

Canvas is very new and it may well get a good real world testing in Utah (where the company is based) where it has been adopted as the state-wide LMS. It has as you might expect of a new entity very basic features (and certainly nowhere near the capabilities of Blackboard in terms of assessment for example, etc), but if it can grow via Open Source, things will no doubt improve, though it does need progammers with some penchant for Ruby (Google it if this makes no sense!).

Anyway, you too can have a free course set up on their website and see what you think.

Module in Learning Technologies - Project Symposium (Part 2)

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:22:00 +0000

Last Monday (31st Jan) we hosted the second Project Symposium associate with our PG Diploma module in Learning Technologies. In my last post, I gave the background to the module and the expectations around the project. As before, we were treated to a range of projects, at various stages of development.

Gary (@GaryGillanders) spoke about how he is developing video material to supplement laboratory manuals in Physics. He is using short video clips, accessible via the VLE (Blackboard) to replicate in-lab demonstrations of equipment, software and procedures. So far, he has used Jing for screencasts of software demonstrations, and also recorded some equipment demos and put them up on blip.tv. Although it is still too early to evaluate the usefulness of the videos, initial feedback from students in positive.

Anne (@annecegan) told us of her plans to use podcasts to support students of Family Law. She has a plan to match short podcasts with tutorial topics, summarising materials and pointing to additional reading. She has some concerns over the possibility of excluding some part-time, mature students.

Martina (@mkellygsac) spoke about using wikis for supporting first year programming students. She is hoping to promote active learning, improved collaboration and to improve the first year experience.

Mark (@MarkKelly7) gave a very entertaining talk called "..distracted from distraction by distraction.." (quoted from T.S. Elliot) where he describes his investigation of the contribution of various web 2.0 technologies to the learning space. He has been using podcasts for providing feedback on student work; he has developed a blog specifically for the module; students will be asked to blog as part of the assessment and Mark is developing a rubric for evaluating these; and an accompanying twitter account has been set up. Initial results are positive.

Finally, Una (@unafitz) described her development of a module on Scientific Writing for postgraduate students. She has started to use screencasts and described her frustrations around learning to use Camtasia to produce short videos. Ultimately, the module will be particularly useful as a shared resource, available to a range of postgraduate programmes via the VLE.

Now that our participants have presented their work to peers, and received some encouragement and feedback, I am looking forward to watching their projects develop. Project reports are due in now and, together with recordings from the presentations, will provide a fantastic record of the development of the use of learning technologies in Teaching and Learning at NUI Galway.

Module in Learning Technologies - Project Symposium (Part 1)

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:01:00 +0000

At NUI Galway, I co-ordinate a module in Learning Technologies (cel263) which is offered as part of our Postgraduate Diploma in Academic Practice. The module is taken by academic staff as part of a professional qualification in Teaching and Learning, mostly in NUIG but open to staff from other institutions. This year the module had 9 participants from across an array of disciplines in NUIG and three participants from the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT).

Now in its third year, participants in the module have a range of experience with using technology in teaching, from "very little" to "vast". Some need a lot of support and encouragement, while others are willing to try anything. The module is organised as a series of 7 stand-alone workshops, each based on a particular technology, including guest lecturers, online resources, demonstrations, practical sessions, discussion, research and reflection. We try to focus on teaching & learning, showing how a technology might support these activities, rather than on the technology itself.

Each participant carries out a project as part of the module assessment, which should be integrated into their own teaching context. Our aim for the project is to move each staff member beyond the comfort zone, to try something new in their teaching in a supported environment. In the short time available, it is challenging to scope, plan, implement and evaluate a new initiative, on top of the busy hours already worked by this group of people.

I was very proud, therefore, to sit in at the first of a project symposium event yesterday, where six of our class presented on their project work. Each person has taken up the challenge and has moved beyond the comfort zone. Many of the initiatives are in early phases of development, but all have clear goals and plans for improving the learning experience through the use of technology in teaching.

Vincent (@VincentNUIG) shared his plans for using a social network in preparing students for a year abroad in the Erasmus programme. Students already abroad will share their experiences; students preparing students for the year abroad. He made a nice link between stepping out of his comfort zone (in technology) and helping students about to step out of theirs (by moving to another country).

Brendan (@brendanmflynn) launched his academic blog on Environmental policy + EU policies + other stuff, explaining why he blogs and how it can help to combine his teaching and research interests.

Mel (@MelOBoland), using a pecha kucha style for his presentation, talked about bilingual blogging with his students in a translation module, and how this might support collaborative learning. Although just introduced with his students, already it is proving popular with some positive initial outcomes.

Maureen (@maureenjmaloney) spoke about using social media to develop graduate networks. She spoke about her goals and some thoughts around using LinkenIn for graduates and Facebook for current and future students. Some nice examples already in her College are the School of Law (which I blogged about previously) and the J.E. Cairns School of Business and Economics facebook pages.

Noreen (@noreenhenry) discussed her ventures into podcasting, to deepen understanding and learning, and to link theory, case study and team project for her students. She has already produced 8 podcasts of about 5-6 minutes in length, and has made them available to students. Though take-up is low so far, she anticipates that students will make more use in the coming months as they start their projects. She made the interesting point that mature students in technology-based subjects may be less receptive to the introduction of technology in teaching, perhaps because there is less of a novelty factor for them.

Dara (@DaraCannon) has also started producing podcasts in a MSc programme, for giving individual feedback (audio) and also preparing demonstration videos. She is already noticing some advantages, adding her tone of voice and personality to individual feedback, as well as providing a useful record. But she wonders if it will actually save her time?

I really enjoyed the presentation yesterday and look forward to seeing these initiatives develop over time. Six more students present their work next week.

One final point that came up yesterday is that, in future, academics may have less time to embark on initiatives like this. Despite the potential enhancements to the student learning experience, activities of this nature aren't always seen to tick boxes on the academic workload model and are often unrecognised as productive use of time.

Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning 2011

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:33:00 +0000

The Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning has been awarded annually by the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) and Dublin City University (DCU) since 2009. The award recognises and rewards innovative practice in teaching and learning in Ireland.

Previous award winners are John O'Connor (DIT) for his work on the module "Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?" in 2010, and the Bridge to College Initiative from TCD in 2009.

Nominations are now invited for the 2011 Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, for an innovative idea which must have been implemented. Nominations should be submitted before Monday 7th February. Further details are available at the awards site.

NUI Galway School of Law on Facebook

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:40:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I had a coffee with Michael Coyne (@MichealCoyne on twitter) of the NUI Galway School of Law. I was interested in finding out a little bit more about the School's presence on Facebook. The site currently has more than 400 fans and is a very nice example of using facebook to enhance the student experience.

Michael made some interesting points.

The site is mainly aimed at final year undergraduate students, but also targets recent graduates and prospective students. It offers some useful course-related information such as timetables and announcements, more general information about upcoming seminars and career advice and whatever is considered newsworthy or of interest to law students, past and present.

It’s also a good platform for current PhD students who actively blog on human rights and disability issues to highlight their work and perhaps make contact with like-minded people.

This is seen as a good way to reach students. Michael's perception is that just 60% of students read their university email on a regular basis, but they do use Facebook. Although no formal evaluation has taken place, anecdotal evidence shows improved interaction and an increase in seminar attendance.

This raises some issues around how Facebook can be used to replace/supplement use of the VLE (Blackboard 8 at NUI Galway). Blackboard also offers the facility of making announcements and providing information. Michael points out that Blackboard is not used consistently by staff in the Law School, a fact which might contribute to the popularity of the Facebook site.

One critical aspect to keeping the Facebook page current is that it must be updated and monitored regularly, there must be somebody responsible for the administration of the site. He particularly acknowledges the support of admin staff in the College of Business, Public Policy and Law.

The page is open to anyone, so it also serves as a useful marketing tool, particularly to potential students of Law. There is a deliberate attempt to include lots of pictures and videos, and the site is seen as a way of improving the web profile of the School.

Reflections on attending the JISC online conference

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:38:00 +0000

Last week, November 23-26, I "attended" the JISC online conference Innovating E-Learning 2010, Bringing innovation to life: from adversity comes opportunity.

This was the 5th JISC online conference, attracting 475 delegates from 11 countries. For a registration fee of about €60, I had access to a number of excellent keynote presentations and invited speakers, using Elluminate, discussion areas and other resources.

I didn't manage to get to all the sessions, which were arranged in two themes: Realising the Potential and Realising the Value. I participated in the following live sessions:

Theme 1
Learning to Live in Interesting Times - What are Educational Institutions for? Keri Facer
Transforming Assessment for Learning in a Digital Age David Boud
What do students really want? Usman Ali

Theme 2
Is the Future Mobile? Graham Browne-Martin
Sustaining OER Innovation through Collaboration and Partnership Simon Thomson and Andy Beggan

I missed a few sessions, but the great thing about the online conference is that these Elluminate sessions were recorded and I can go back and look at them any time. In fact, all the recordings will be publicly available on the JISC website sometime in 2011. A couple of people have already blogged about the sessions, including Doug Belshaw and Cath Marlowe. James Clay was the official conference blogger, but his excellent conference blog is not available to non-delegates.

All the live sessions took place within the Elluminate environment and were followed up with discussion opportunities on the conference site boards. During the live sessions, participants could use the interactive features within Elluminate, including chat and voting options. There was also a healthy twitter backchannel using the #jiscel10 hashtag.

So, what (for me) are the attractions of attending an online conference, and what are the disadvantages?

The main advantage is convenience. I get access to wonderful speakers without having to travel, without leaving my family for a couple of days, without having to stay in some horrible hotel in a city I don't know. I can still discuss themes with an international peer group, although the medium is different.

In fact, on day one of the conference, I was at home - sick with flu. I couldn't have gone to work, and I certainly couldn't have travelled anywhere. But I was able to "attend" three very worthwhile conference sessions, in my pyjamas, hot flu-busting drink beside me, and go back to bed in between! If the wifi had worked sufficiently well in the bedroom, I wouldn't even have had to leave my bed.

The second advantage, for me, is that I am much more likely to interact with other delegates in the online environment. In a face-to-face setting, I'm quite shy and likely to stand around at coffee breaks pretending to be very busy checking email on my Blackberry, unless there are people that I know. Online, I am still self-conscious, but no longer a lurker.

Despite comments by Graham Brown-Martin (@grahamBM) in his talk, I really liked the Elluminate platform and thought it worked quite well in the context of the conference. Academics at NUI Galway have used Elluminate in the past for teaching students in Clinical Education.

However, despite much investigation and complaining, I still cannot access Elluminate on my office machine over the fixed network. I have no problem at home, and no problem on the campus wifi network. So, I had to do a little forward planning and ensure I had a laptop set up in my office for the duration of the conference. Working on two machines side by side is not something that I find easy.

The other issue with an online conference is that you have to be very organised to participate fully. If you are travelling to a conference, you make time from your day-t0-day work and will not be distracted by phone calls, unimportant email and calls for coffee. To really participate, I should have stayed at home all week, away from the distractions in my office.

However, I did get a lot from the experience. I enjoyed the talks and will make time to follow up on the ones I missed (just not from my office desktop). Value for money? Certainly, especially when you factor in travel and accommodation expenses!

PAISAGE: plurilingualism and cultural awareness in language learning

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:24:00 +0000

On Monday afternoon, the European Day of Languages, we were invited along to the launch of PAISAGE, an Irish/Spanish project for the teaching and learning of both languages. PAISAGE stands for Portal Audiovisual Intercultural sobre el Aprendizaje de Gaélico y Espanol. It is a NAIRTL-funded project aimed at linking linguistic and cultural learning in Irish and Spanish, carried out by Dorothy Ní Uigín (Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge) and Pilar Aldarete (Spanish), both academic staff members at NUI Galway.

Dorothy and Pilar have developed a range of resources including videos in both languages showing aspects of NUI Galway and its surrounds; interviews with Spanish students living in Ireland and Irish students living in Spain; interviews with professionals working in both languages and cultures; grammar explanations contrasting both languages; grammar exercises to accompany the videos. All resources are linked to the levels in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

The videos are being made available on YouTube under the gaeilgespainnis channel. More videos are to be added, pending permission from the interviewees. The accompanying exercises are hosted on google docs, and you can contact Dorothy or Pilar for access to these.

In this video (level A1) Universidad de Galway, Pilar voices over a video showing the NUI Galway campus.

Blogtalk Galway 2010 (Day 2)

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:35:00 +0000

It has now been 2 weeks since the second day of Blogtalk 2010, but some of the themes have been mulling around in my brain since then, even though I haven't had time to write about them. As before, most of my comments will be from a teaching and learning in Higher Education perspective.

Unfortunately, I missed a lot of day 2. But I was lucky to be present at the first keynote of the day, given by Stowe Boyd. This was the highlight of the conference for me.

Stowe Boyd (keynote) Social media blur: blogs, networks, streams
Stowe Boyd talked about the development of blogging and social media over the last 10 years and also gave us a glimpse of a possible future. The blog culture has changed and people are not blogging as much any more. How many blogs do you know where the most recent entry is 3 or 4 months ago and the message is "I must get back to blogging"? People like the immediacy of social networking and social conversations such as twitter. Where people are blogging, they are linking this into their "streams", directing people to blog posts. Boyd also pointed out that comments on blogs are not social conversations, but people are using social streams (like twitter) to comment on blogs.

I found this interesting from my own work perspective in two ways. First, my blogging habits have definitely slowed. When I do write, my posts are more thoughtful. Quick links and pointers I leave to my twitter persona.

My second observation, though, is that the use of social media in teaching and learning is a long way behind the trend indicated in Stowe Boyd's talk. In supporting academic staff use of learning technologies, we are still moving people along from discussion boards, to using student blogs for reflection and wikis for collaboration. For the majority of staff, these are new and exciting ways to engage students. The use of facebook or twitter in teaching and learning, while happening, is still unproven for the majority of teaching staff.

As for the future, I was relieved to hear that it is not facebook. In the future, the "like" button will be part of the operating system. The next generation of operating system will contain social interactions as primitive; users will take this as a given.

I missed most of the rest of the day, including the keynote by Deanna Lee from the New York Public Library. (Deanna Lee keynote) However, I did manage to get back in time for the afternoon panel session.

Panel Session on The rise of location-based media sharing and social networks
This was chaired by Mark Cahill (Social Bits), and involved Laurent Walter Goix (Telecom Italia), Fergus Hurley (Clixtr) and Ronan Skehill (Cauwill Technologies).

I'll be honest, I don't get location-based social networking. Maybe I'm too old - I'm certainly older than Fergus Hurley's sister! I hate to think of people being able to track my every movement. So, this was an interesting session for me. Mark Cahill gave a good case from the marketing point of view, but I don't want to be such an easy target.

Mark asked the questions "Why do people check-in? What is the value of a check-in?" I can see the use if you are a stranger in a foreign land looking for recommendations of where to go and what to do. There was some discussion about whether people would check-in (clock-in?) at work, or if it is because people want to be "seen" in a particular location. The consensus seemed to be that you check-in if there is some benefit for you, and Foursquare has not (yet) found the right application.

So, I'm wondering, what would entice a student to check-in to a lecture? We're having this discussion at the moment as we support the launch of a College of Science PRS "clicker" initiative. The focus of the initiative is to engage students, but there is a fear (among students) that the devices will be used to track attendance. Maybe we can introduce a reward scheme for lecture attendance, such as "Mayor of the O'Flaherty Theatre", or it could show up in their twitter feed "I'm at the Kirwan Theatre w/300 others". I don't think so.

I also got to hear talks from Gabriela Avram and Brian O'Donovan, Who am I: social identity in enterprise social networking, and Ted Vickey, Social media and LinkedIn for business. Both of these were interesting and enjoyable, though probably less relevant for T&L in HE.

Blogtalk Galway 2010 (Day 1)

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:02:00 +0000

Last Thursday and Friday I attended some of Blogtalk 2010, taking place on the campus here at NUI Galway. Of course, attending a conference on campus means that you get called away to meetings and try to keep up with email and issues as they arise during the day. So, I didn't get to as many sessions as I'd have liked. But I did very much enjoy those sessions I did see.

The conference was very well organised by John Breslin, leader of the Social Software unit at DERI, co-founder of boards.ie and member of staff in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering discipline at NUI Galway.

Unlike some of the other bloggers who have written about the conference (Mark Cahill, Emer Lawn), I was there very much from a teaching and learning in Higher Education perspective. So any of my comments will be from that angle.

DAY 1

Darragh Doyle (boards.ie) who we are, what we do, where we are going
This was a great talk from Darragh Doyle about boards.ie which is quite unique, there is nothing else like it in Ireland or the UK. It is the most popular forum in Ireland and Darragh suggested that it has replaced the town hall in the community. What I find interesting is the social networking going on in the NUIG forum, with students asking questions about their courses and college life before they even arrive on campus. Everyone is welcome and every question is answered, sometimes helpfully, and other times with a large dose of mis-information. It's a lesson for those of us who spend so much time trying to get accurate information out to students.
Anyway, Darragh's talk has inspired me to actually register with boards.ie, though I haven't posted anything yet, I'm doing a bit of lurking.

After the first talk, I had to attend meetings and follow up on a couple of small crises before they got any bigger. So I didn't get back to the conference until lunchtime.

Dan Gillmor (Keynote) A new kind of media literacy
Dan Gillmor is director at the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and a respected American technology writer. He raised some interesting points around the question "what is journalism" in this world where everybody can easily report on what is happening around them. I was particularly interested in his point that consumers need skills in judging the credibility of news. They need a "credibility scale", which should include negative points. Of course, this is something that we've been aware of for a long time in HE, with many major initiatives around information literacy for students. Wikipedia is the least of our worries.
Gillmor wants to persuade consumers to be "active media users", to be sceptical of everything. This is an extremely important life skill, which should be addressed not just in higher education, but also at first and second level.
Finally, Gillmor spoke about principles for journalists (accuracy, thoroughness, fairness, transparency, independence). He asked why there isn't a revision history for journalism; at least with wikipedia we can trace where the information came from.

Charles Dowd (Facebook) The Facebook Platform
Charles Dowd has the "best job in Europe", as manager of platform operations in Europe. He described how popular facebook has become, particularly in Ireland where there are 1.4 million monthly active users (and I am one). He spoke about the "like" button and how it works - just 5 "friends" liking something is a magic number.
After this, though, things got scary, as Dowd spoke about the facebook future and the ways that applications will be able to interface with our data. I know I wasn't the only person in the room with concerns, but probably among the minority. Sure, we can set our own privacy levels, but there are also social norms involved and I'm not sure that these are being considered.

Panel Session on Social networks versus conversational networks
This was chaired by Ade Oshineye (Google) and involved Charles Dowd (Facebook), Blaine Cook (Osmosoft) and Darragh Doyle (boards.ie).
Ade presented a nice social network spectrum with social at one end (Facebook) and conversational at the other (Twitter). The classification was interesting, and reflects my own use of the tools, but is an oversimplification. The lines are definitely becoming blurred and, as Darragh Doyle put it, what about social conversation?
There was an interesting conversation about authenticity. Apparently Facebook supports authentic identities and connections, reflecting the real world. Hmmm.

At this point, I had to get back to work and so missed the final keynote of the day from Bill Liao. By all accounts it was excellent, so I'm looking forward to seeing the recording when it becomes available.
(Update: here it is Bill Liao Keynote)

Post about DAY 2 to follow....

My iPad: An Obituary

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:08:00 +0000

On Saturday 31st July, encouraged by reports from @vonprond, @klillington, @catherinecronin and @jamesclay, I went out and bought myself an iPad. I knew more about it than the sales guy in Curry's, Galway. I took it home and from the first moment I held it in my arms and connected it to iTunes, it was love.

I should explain that I never, ever, have done anything like this before. I don't buy expensive gadgets for myself. This was a completely irrational move for me. Even my trusty iPod, now 4 years old, was bought as a present by my husband, after much hinting.

For the next week, I proudly showed off my new purchase to family, friends and colleagues. I spent time considering apps, reading reviews, thinking about how I could use it for teaching and work, as well as having a bit of fun. I installed not one but four twitter apps: twitterific (good), tweetdeck (not great), osfoora (very nice) and flipboard (fantastic). I started to use it for reading (iBooks and Kindle) and was looking forward to my first train journey. I bought productivity apps Keynote and Pages, and started thinking about how to use them. I even began playing with iNow and enjoying the little emails telling me how much I'd got done during the day.

Then, on Tuesday evening, 10th August, a mere 10 days after the iPad entered my life, disaster struck. While showing my mother-in-law our holiday photographs (all 477 of them) the screen froze. I can't even blame my mil, I was closely supervising her at the time. After some time, the "connect to iTunes" screen appeared and, like a concerned parent when her child is ill, I immediately followed instructions.

iTunes told me it had "detected an iPad in recovery mode" and that the poor darling needed to be restored. Ok, I've only had it 10 days, it's not a big hassle. But then, during the restore process, I got the dreaded error 1611 and was directed to a page full of diagnostics. I sat up until well after midnight, restarting the machine, trying different usb ports, even creating a new user on the pc to get a clean iTunes profile. No improvement.

After a fretful night, I contacted Apple Technical Support during lunchtime on Wednesday. A brusque chap named William, who sounded straight out of the US military, and kept calling me Ma'am, told me I'd done a good job with the diagnostics, but that I had omitted to un-install my anti-virus software! Not likely to happen while on the university network, but I said I'd give it a go at home. He also talked me through some complicated holding down of buttons while connecting to iTunes, but none of this solved the problem.

That evening I again rang support, this time talking to a young lady whose name I didn't catch. She wasn't much help at all and seemed incapable of reading the notes left by William. She suggested that I un-install iTunes, and all its associated programmes, then re-install and try again. She then hung up. I did all this (it took an hour) but still no improvement.

Finally, yesterday morning, I got through to a very understanding young man named Peter. He very gently told me that we'd tried everything, but we couldn't restore the iPad. He explained that he would send a courier to take my iPad away in a box, and that I would receive a new one within a few days. He also asked if I'd dropped it, but I explained that it had been (almost literally) wrapped in cotton wool since the day I brought it home.

So, here I am, waiting for the courier to call. The darling device is back in its original box and I'm feeling a hole in my life.

Update (19th August, 3.30pm): My replacement iPad has just been delivered. Oh joy!

CELT supports the Rahoon Youth Project Multimedia Camp

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:55:00 +0000

Fiona Concannon and I were delighted to participate in the Rahoon Youth Project Multimedia Camp which was held in NUIG Galway from July 19 - 23.

Coordinator Kerry E'lyn Larkin kindly asked if we could facilitate a Web 2.0 session as part of an action-packed schedule incorporating audio, video, digital literacy and safety, as well as working with NUIG's Flirt FM.

The 13-15 year-old students were amazingly talented and motivated (thanks to the programme and support offered by Kerry and her team), and we were delighted provide the students with a chance to use clickers, flip cameras and post to a private blog online. We also gave them a whistle-stop tour of the CELT recording and production facilities to add a bit of 'wow' factor to the proceedings.

Well done to one and all involved. We are looking forward to next year's Multimedia Camp already!

Using Turnitin with large classes to support student writing

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:48:00 +0000

Back in June I gave a presentation at the 4th International Plagiarism Conference on using Turnitin with large classes to support student writing. The full paper and the powerpoint presentation are now available on the conference website.

The paper describes a pilot study in 2008-2009 involving 3 case studies with large undergraduate student groups, from 120 to 600 students, and addresses the use of Turnitin to support student writing and offer formative feedback, rather than focus purely on plagiarism detection.

Using Turnitin with such large student groups (in 2009-2010 we successfully used it with a class of 950 students) really requires that Turnitin be integrated into the VLE, allowing the students self-submit their work. At NUI Galway, we are using Blackboard, which in turn is integrated with our student records system, thus reducing the administrative overload for staff.

We found that Turnitin can be used to support academic staff in their teaching and assessment. Some of the initial motivation for using Turnitin was that staff were concerned about perceived levels of cut-and-paste plagiarism and collusion within the student groups. With multiple tutorial groups and large numbers of postgraduate tutors, this can be difficult to manage across large cohorts of students. The case studies found that, using Turnitin, tutors were able to identify problems with referencing, to support plagiarism detection, to identify excellent work, and to raise issues generally around student writing. For course co-ordinators there was better visibility into the student group as a whole.

In one (first year) student group, where students were given access to their originality reports for draft submissions and could use them to improve the final versions of submitted work, Turnitin was found to be particularly useful to highlight the importance of originality, and as a way of helping students understand what is expected of them at University level.

The role of the teaching team in each of the case studies was vital to the success of the intervention. Each case-study was academic-driven, brought into the classroom as part of the assessment practice, and not treated as an add-on to teach literacy skills. In each case, teaching teams were brought together to agree a consistent approach to dealing with academic integrity within the discipline. In this way academic honesty became a shared value across the teaching team, giving a consistent message to students.

We found that the best results followed where Turnitin was not being used purely for plagiarism detection. In fact, contrary to our initial expectations, there was little evidence to suggest that its use was a successful deterrent. Rather, it supported the discourse around good writing skills and gave an opportunity to raise awareness of academic writing within the classroom.

I am now interviewing academic staff who used Turnitin in 2009-2010, in the second year of the study. Some of these were involved in the original case studies, and it is interesting to get their perspectives after a second year.

I'm hoping to update the case studies and also describe how Grademark has been used within the discipline of English to facilitate online grading of student work. Cath Ellis has written a very good post of her experiences with Grademark. Her observations certainly match with our experiences here.