Learning Technologies

Women in EdTech - a short reflection

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:36:00 +0000

I really should be concentrating on something else at the moment.

But two tweets from @femedtech have reminded me of an experience that I thought I'd share. It won't take long and then I can get back to what I'm supposed to be doing.

First tweet was

We're looking critically at ed tech tools this afternoon at #digped with @chris_friend and @Jessifer - Have you ever considered who runs/sits on the board of your favourite ed tech tools? Is there a gender balance? #femedtech
— femedtech (@femedtech) July 30, 2018

It immediately reminded me of an experience I had with a particular company - which I won't name. I didn't reply, but it's been on my mind. Then today I saw this:

We're looking at moments of vulnerability and embarrassment throughout our careers at #digped this morning. There are lots of stories of women feeling vulnerable, particularly when playing the 'expert' role. #femedtech
— femedtech (@femedtech) July 31, 2018

and I realised that I had to share my story.

Customer Advisory Board

So, a couple of years ago I was invited to be on the Customer Advisory Board for one of my favourite ed tech tools. It involved a number of webinar-type meetings and a major on-site meeting. It lasted about a year and I haven't heard anything in a while about it, so I don't know if it still exists (the CAB, not the tool) or if I just got dropped.

The on-site meeting took place in a city that is quite a distance from Galway - i.e. there was a lot of travelling involved. When I arrived, we were all (about 30 people) in a large board room, and I took my place at the long table. As an introvert, I don't work well in such situations, and there were a lot of loud people in the room who could easily talk and give their opinions. So I settled into my observer mode and watched.

"New table by Jonathan Baring" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by manhattanloftcorporation

An early observation was that there were a good number of women in the room, certainly more than 10. This was a positive sign - as a computer scientist I have often been the only woman in a room. But then I realised that all the women except 2 (me and one other) were employees of the company. So, of about 20 people on the CAB, just 2 were female. This, I thought, was reflected in the discourse at the meeting, with a focus on technical topics.

It wasn't all bad. The female employees included some very senior people in the company and some very senior developers. So, to answer the first tweet above - plenty of women on the board.

Embarrassing Moment

At an event later that evening (remember I had travelled a significant distance) hosted by the company, I was chatting to one of the senior women employees. I mentioned my observations at the meeting, regarding the imbalance on the CAB, and she agreed with me. We both then approached the most senior woman in the company and voiced my/our concerns. She completely dismissed them, in a way that made me feel almost petty for even saying something. She denied that gender was an issue at all. I was shocked and a little embarrassed (hence responding to the second tweet above).

Of course, replaying it in my mind (as an introvert often does) I can think of many ways I should or could have responded. But I didn't. I probably mumbled something and moved on. A missed opportunity!

CESI Conference 2018 - Shaping Tomorrow Today

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 15:35:00 +0000

As I have for many years now, I attended the annual CESI conference and TeachMeet this past weekend. This year differed in that the conference was postponed by a week thanks to Storm Emma. Despite the setback, things ran like clockwork, mostly thanks to a lot of behind the scenes work. On that note, I should also point out that I am a member of the CESI National Executive and part of the conference organising committee. Hence, I was keenly aware of the behind the scenes work going on!

The now traditional TeachMeet went ahead on the Friday evening before the conference. I was presenting on our new Digital Champions Engagement Toolkit that was published the following week as part of the All Aboard! Project. Though the resource was written for higher education, there seemed to be a keen interest from attendees to adapt it to their own needs in their own sectors.

The TeachMeet runs at a rapid pace, so it's usually best to Tweet or take notes to follow up on later. Presentations were ride ranging - from social justice, to computer science, and to slowing down. Follow the hashtag for more.

The conference theme was anchored heavily on the past and present, and CESI's role in shaping the use of technology in Irish education. The keynotes involved Richard Millwood as the leader of the CESI.CS Community of Practice, and Elizabeth Oldham as the CESI historian. The underlying debate came back to computers, in education or otherwise, being firmly about the people that use them.

Mantra in the early years ... Computers are about people. Still very valid today #cesicon pic.twitter.com/y28AiK6i3O
— Pam (@pamelaaobrien) March 10, 2018

The birth of @cesitweets from @eoldham at #cesicon this morning. pic.twitter.com/rsKVlBcemM
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) March 10, 2018

As things go with conference organising, I only really got to presentations that I chaired, which was useful as I'd chosen to chair them for a reason. Next up for me, was Bea de los Arcos talking about open textbooks.

Do we even like textbooks? Talking open textbooks and open pedagogy with @celTatis at #CESIcon. Let students act as co-creators of knowledge. #OER pic.twitter.com/lzPGauBebJ
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) March 10, 2018

Bea drew a crowd, and engaged the audience. The debate around open textbooks seemed to centre around quality, and that assumption was quickly quashed as we looked at the success and quality of other OERs.

Joanna Norton looked at 21st century learning and some of the obstacles we face, like the exams system, privilege, and social justice.

The elephant in the room in teacher development - exams system! Looking at 21st century learning with @joannapnorton at #cesicon pic.twitter.com/y24CDMOiGy
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) March 10, 2018

Orna Farrell from DCU shared an OER that she created called The History Lab for her distance learning students, and also the wider education community.

Looking at the #OER https://t.co/gf5lMgKw40 with @orna_farrell at #cesicon. Includes guide of resources, video tutorials, and student voices. pic.twitter.com/DgPmTjCQNp
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) March 10, 2018

My slides https://t.co/uDmANsLE3X on @thehistorylabie https://t.co/NWObwLuWmG #cesicon #edchatie
— Orna Farrell (@orna_farrell) March 14, 2018

From a higher education perspective, it was particularly interesting to see an open resource being showcased as a success, when so much of online learning in the sector takes place on pricey, private platforms. It seemed to be a nod back to Domain of One's Own, and as a bountiful resource, it should indeed be shared widely.

Stephen Howell finished the day with a capstone looking toward the future, and the human applications for the tools we're using.

@saorog , Academic Program Manager @Microsoftirl , on creative #coding #algorithmic art and using #data to make decisions in education- where do we build new schools? which schools are teaching? #computerscience #STEM #CESICon #edchatie pic.twitter.com/aKjtNoyKvK
— Sarah-Jayne Carey (@sjayc) March 10, 2018

As always, the CESI conference proved to be absolutely exhausting, and absolutely exhilarating. The CESI community is strong, and with the advent of Leaving Certificate Computer Science this year, only gaining momentum.

Getting Started with Teaching Blended or Online Modules

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 11:37:00 +0000

What is learning design?

Throughout the past academic year, I have been offering a workshop on learning design for online and blended learning environments. In the workshop, I facilitate a systematic, hands on approach to the design process. The process, which functions similarly to design thinking, facilitates users in sorting through pedagogical features, learner personas, digital skills, available technologies, and finally course mapping. Throughout the process, it is likely that a user might not even touch a keyboard, although they are more than welcome to access the soft copies of our materials and fill them out that way.

It can come as a surprise to some attendees that a workshop focusing on online learning and design is carried out without using technology, but there is a method to this madness. Jumping straight in to a new module in the VLE to design your course without planning isn't really good practice.

In this post, I want to share some reflections and some further reading and resources that will assist you in your planning. After all, there is only so much that can be covered in a short workshop!

Who does learning design benefit?

From what I've seen over the past year, the answer is everyone. Designing a module with all users' needs in mind can make learning more accessible and engaging. It can also make the instructor's experience less stressful and more rewarding.

What is the learning design process?

There are a variety of approaches, and I'd encourage you to do some further reading from the resources below. The approach I take in this workshop is as follows:

Course features: What are the pedagogical features necessary to deliver your course?
Personas: Who are your learners? What drives and motivates them?
Course maps: How can you align technology to facilitate learning based on the pedagogical features of your course and your learners' needs?

How can I apply this to my practice?

I don't expect anyone coming away from this workshop to sit down with a pack of pedagogical features cards every time they design a module, but I do expect that adopting a systematic process for thinking about course design will prove useful. Rather than jumping in, you can begin by thinking about pedagogy and your demographic. The tools are chosen only after consideration.

However, you could easily use the tools from this workshop to do some planning with colleagues, especially if you're working on a new module, course, or programme. Coming to a clear consensus as a team will provide for a more consistent student experience, even if you just adopt a similar style and format in your online learning environments.

Who is coming to the workshop, and why?

First of all, there were some common reasons for attending such a workshop that have prevailed:

Staff teaching online or blended modules, or planning to, and need some guidance to get started.
Staff that have taught online for a number of years, but are looking for a fresh approach.
New staff looking to begin teaching in an innovative way.

Most of our learning occupies a blended domain these days, even if the course isn't officially online or blended. If you are using the VLE for assessment, communication, or resources, then part of your module exists online. Good design practice can be applied in any case.

My students are digital natives, so they'll be confident learning online, right?

Sorry, but this concept has proven flaws. Our relationships with technology are much more complex, and thus your students might need a bit of support with their digital skills. We have some lessons for staff and students from the All Aboard! Digital Skills in Higher Education project that might be of use, and you can even add them to your module if you like. These include lessons on using the VLE, Learning Tools, Presentations Skills, and more! They are also open to staff, and might prove useful for creating better online learning materials. These include lessons on podcasts, video, and even design.

Further Resources

Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast: Blended Course Design with Katie Linder

Blended Course Design Workbook: A Practical Guide | Katie Linder | Checklists

The 7Cs of Learning Design Toolkit

Learning first, technology second | Learning with the 'e's | Steve Wheeler

Critical Digital Pedagogy and Design | Sean Michael Morris

Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast: Critical Instructional Design with Sean Michael Morris

Critical Instructional Design - A 14-Post Collection

All Aboard! Lessons

Training and Events

Please keep an eye on our calendar of events, and our Twitter feed, for upcoming workshops.

Workshop on Learning Design with Prof. Gráinne Conole

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 16:11:00 +0000

Beautiful morning here in Limerick for @gconole learning design workshop at @MICLimerick. ##LDConole pic.twitter.com/Cp15oqWeNp
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 20, 2017

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Mary Immaculate College for the first time. David Maloney from the Blended Learning Unit had organised a workshop on Learning Design with Professor Gráinne Conole, who is currently Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University.

The half day workshop aimed to empower participants to prepare courses for online and mobile environments. The premise for the workshop, and the design process, stems from Conole's 7 Cs of Learning Design framework:

Conceptualise
Capture
Create
Communicate
Collaborate
Combine
Consolidate

Before the crowded room got to any actual design, we were asked to discuss topics such as the challenges posed by technology and how to ruin a course. It was useful to hear the different angles with which users approached these somewhat loaded topics. I was seated with an educational developer and an academic, which proved to be quite the useful triad. The educational developer and I, as a learning technologist, were able to work with the academic's course content to complete the exercise like we might do in one of our own training sessions or workshops. Many of the academic staff spoke extensively about how students affect teaching and learning, while so much of the work we do from the support side focuses on how the teacher affects teaching and learning,

Next on the agenda was a pedagogical features sorting exercise that utilised materials from the Open University Learning Design Initiative (JISC-OULDI) project. Groups were tasked with analysing a course and determining which features were very important, somewhat important or not important. The cards were categorised as:

Orange = Guidance and Support
Blue = Content and Experience
Green = Communication and Collaboration
Purple = Reflection and Demonstration.

Participants were soon to realise that everything couldn't be labelled as 'very important'!

@gconole #ldconole everyone having a difficult time keeping the 'very important' column from spilling over 😀 @CTLMIC https://t.co/GpZ2G9X7Th
— Seona Stapleton (@seonastapleton) June 20, 2017

That's a bit tidier! #LDConole pic.twitter.com/uGjOBX6Cfx
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 20, 2017

It soon became clear to participants that there was a necessity to balancing the categories and choosing pedagogical features carefully in terms of the learning outcomes, course content, platform, and assessment.

In the next exercise, participants were asked to design a typical student that might be taking the course:

After our lunch break we're back to designing personas in our learning design workshop with @gconole at @MICLimerick #LDConole. pic.twitter.com/rIrHYqnLAg
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 20, 2017

Resources for this exercise can be found here. Overall, the personas were quite specific to the variety of courses on which we were working. In our case, we created a mature student working in early childhood education undertaking a blended learning course to advance their professional goals. We assessed our students' technical skills and motivations before moving on to the final portion of the afternoon, creating our course map.

Mapping courses now at #LDConole - focusing on the tools/resources and the corresponding responsibilities/relationships. pic.twitter.com/ma4PfQOWNO
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 20, 2017

In this exercise, we used the four colours/categories to decide which tools we would use, and what roles/responsibilities correspond to the use of each tool. I found this part of the day to be useful, as we had to triangulate the roles of teacher, learner and tool. A recurring theme in our group was modelling of tools by the instructor, both technically and in terms of best use. We found that communication tools such as discussion boards can often fall flat in terms of student engagement. This can occur as a result of a lack of exemplar content, rubrics, or modelling by the instructor. We decided that students needed to see for themselves how the tool could help them learn, and not just earn easy points for participation.

While this might have been a whirlwind session, there was much to take away in terms of the relationship between the course, pedagogy, learner, and tools. Events like this remind us to be cognizant of the many facets of learning design. We must think about processes, relationships, skills, and attitudes. Thank you again to David and his colleagues at Mary Immaculate College for hosting, and thank you to Prof. Conole for providing us with resources to use in the future.

ILTA EdTech 2017 Conference - TEL in an Age of Supercomplexity Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:30:00 +0000

As our own CELT Symposium looms at the end of the week, it seems fitting that I finally reflect on the last conference I attended.

This year's EdTech theme allowed us to pause and reflect about TEL in a complex age. Throughout the two day event, it was evident that we are indeed facing challenges, but also using those challenges to create strategies and opportunities.

The first keynote of day one was from Gráinne Conole, who is currently a visiting professor at DCU. She focused on the future of learning and harnessing technologies. Her presentation encompassed so much of the landscape and set the scene well for what was to come. In discussing the characteristics of the 21st century learner, necessary digital literacies, the integration of OERs, structures of MOOCS, and the benefits for students; she arrived at a heutagogical approach that allows students more affordances in the Web 2.0 landscape.

@gconole links heutagogical approach & autonomous learning via digital technologies, citing work of @LisaMBlaschke #iltaedtech17 @cesitweets
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 1, 2017

In summation, she called on us to rigorously approach learning design, to harness the power of analytics, and implement pedagogies that support the supercomplexity of the future. Her slides can be found here:

Keynote from @gconole at #iltaedtech17 available now. @cesitweets #edchatie https://t.co/aVFHTm8RzF
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 1, 2017

The next session that I attended, Assessment and Feedback in the Digital Age, was rife with ideas, but one in particular stood out to me. Mark Glynn from DCU posed a simple idea:

@glynnmark explains use of "learning portfolio" over "e-portfolio". Learning should be visible - tech invisible. #iltaedtech17 @cesitweets
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 1, 2017

I really appreciated how such a nuanced idea could sum up the whole TEL landscape so succinctly. It's clear that even in our terminology we can accidentally place the focus on the technology rather than the pedagogy.

The Global Challenges in Higher Education session was led by Lawrie Phipps and Donna Lanclos. The discussed Leading with Digital in an Age of Supercomplexity, and namely on the JISC Digital Leaders programme. As a bit of a fan, I get presumptuously excited that Donna was in Sligo, but I was to be disappointed.

So, I got really super excited that @DonnaLanclos might be at #iltaedtech17. I guess this will do! @cesitweets #edchatie pic.twitter.com/RoX6fsdL37
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 1, 2017

At the same time, I unfortunately missed Mary Loftus speaking about her work on learning analytics, but her slides are available here:

#iltaedtech17 My slides from yesterday's #LearningAnalytics stream https://t.co/sA9GJzjHNa … Thank you all for the hearty discussion :)
— Mary Loftus (@marloft) June 2, 2017

The second keynote from Professor Paul J. LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University. He discussed the success of competency based learning at SNHU. He also joked that Americans don't talk about MOOCs as much as the Irish do at an ed tech conference!

Competency Based Education with Dr Paul LeBlanc from Southern New Hampshire brilliant keynote #iltaedtech17 pic.twitter.com/B3tWNoYJVH
— Ken McCarthy (@kenmccarthy7) June 1, 2017

The Jennifer Burke award went to Antonio Calderón of UL for a fantastic project with initial teacher educators in PE. This project, #CoolPE, is definitely worth looking at, as it could be adapted across sectors and subject areas.

Congratulations to @acalderon_pe from @UL for being the 2017 recipient of the https://t.co/UDdliTbRBG #iltaedtech17 #CoolPE
— ILTA (@ILTAtweets) June 1, 2017

On a beautiful Friday morning, we launched into day two of the conference.

Day 2 of #iltaedtech17 kicking off here in sunny Sligo! @itsligo @cesitweets #edchatie pic.twitter.com/pPqkFnK3pR
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 2, 2017

Mark Glynn outlined Turning off Turnitin. This might sound like a frightening challenge, but Mark was open and candid about the process, and the difficulties they faced.

"Turning off TurnItIn" - Slides from #iltaedtech17 https://t.co/l2QrAiM9uN
— Mark Glynn (@glynnmark) June 2, 2017

Niall Watts from UCD, again quite candidly, discussed the creation and use of MOOCs in first year Geography to largely positive feedback from students. His slides can be accessed here.

@niallwatts presenting on developing #moocs at UCD at #iltaEdTech17 - 1st year Geog. student feedback largely positive. @cesitweets pic.twitter.com/qTn6ekBp42
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 2, 2017

I unfortunately missed our NUI Galway colleague, Bonnie Long, talk about the Flipping the Flipped Classroom:

Didn't get a chance to finish Prezi; here's the link to Flipping the Flipped Classroom presentation: https://t.co/03rQlsVH6E #iltaedtech17
— Bonnie Long (@BonnieTLong) June 2, 2017

One stand out presentation for me was from Sam Cogan of the National College of Ireland, who discussed dual delivery in his lectures. I've flagged this one for follow up, as he seems to be actively and progressively focused on changing the dynamics of the lecture hall.

Quick but really interesting overview of dual delivery in CS with @NciSam at #iltaedtech17. @cesitweets #heie #edchatie https://t.co/aqdelHgTUA
— Kate Molloy (@hey_km) June 2, 2017

Professor Meg Benke's keynote was refreshing in its reflective nature and its focus on scholarship through the work of Boyer. She discussed the importance of education, communities of practice, and new methodologies in the age of supercomplexity.

It was also announced that ILTA would co-sponsor ten people going forward for CMALT certification.

@ILTAtweets to co-sponsor 10 people for CMALT #iltaedtech17 @A_L_T
— Gavin Clinch (@gavinclinch) June 2, 2017

In closing, ILTA made a call for members to get involved in the coming year. It should also be noted that submissions are welcome for the Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning.

A call for other members and attendees to get involved in @ILTAtweets for the coming year #iltaedtech17 #openness Your community needs you!
— ILTA (@ILTAtweets) June 2, 2017

Reflecting on the two days, it's evident that in age where we as practitioners are faced with complex challenges, that we must remain vigilant and become involved, reflective, and active practitioners. The keynote speakers and presenters at this year's conference are working through challenges and planning for an uncertain future, while focusing on learning and success that is only enhanced through technology.

And on a final note, videos will be available soon!

All #iltaedtech17 presentations have been recorded and will be available on Youtube in the very near future @ILTAtweets
— Gavin Clinch (@gavinclinch) June 2, 2017

My #100CommonsDays Challenge

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 09 May 2017 16:34:00 +0000

Regular readers of this blog will know that I strongly support the use of Wikipedia (and Wikimedia generally) in teaching, and that I'm a member of Wikimedia Community Ireland. I'm still very nervous about editing, and until recently have only made very minor contributions to the online encyclopedia. It's one of my own development goals.

I am completely in awe of anybody who takes on the #100wikidays challenge - to write an article a day for 100 consecutive days. I first heard of this through our community member Rebecca O'Neill, who completed the challenge in 2015. Mourning my mother through a hundred days of Wikipedia editing is another, more recent, account of the challenge. Given that I've only written one article from scratch, I'm a long way from even contemplating the challenge.

However, earlier this year I saw that Rebecca had started the #100CommonsDays challenge - to upload an image to Wikimedia Commons every day for 100 days. I thought that sounded very much more manageable. I have contributed a small number of images before, mostly of the University, and have also been using the Commons as a gateway strategy for introducing academics to the notion of contributing content to Wikipedia.

And so, on 27th January I uploaded my first image of the challenge - an image of the diving board at Blackrock in Salthill, Galway.

Over the next 100 days, I added a new image every day. My final image of the challenge was uploaded on 6th May. They are mostly of buildings, or plaques, or statues, or places. They are all my own work, and are shared under the default Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This means that anybody is free to share or remix the images, but I (as the author) have to be attributed, and any use of the images must be shared under a similar license.

So, the images can be used to illustrate any of the articles on Wikipedia (in English or any other languages). But they can also be used for other purposes - making Wikimedia Commons a very useful resource for finding images for teaching purposes.

What did I learn from completing the #100CommonsDays challenge?

I had to be organised. While I like to take photos, not all of them are suitable for the Commons. I created a dropbox folder into which I dumped photos that might be useful. Each day, then, I had a source of images that could be uploaded.

Sharing helps. From day 1 I started to share my uploaded images with my friends and family on Facebook. This meant that if I missed a day, somebody would know! It helped to keep me on track, and also elicited some questions from friends about the Commons. So - another teaching opportunity!

I had to do my research. There's no point uploading an image if I can't remember exactly what it is of! Sometimes, I had taken a photo of a monument, but couldn't remember what monument it was. I just had a vague recollection of where I had been. Sometimes google maps was quite useful to do some detective work.

Categories matter. I quickly found out that the category structure is how files are organised and found on the Commons. Every file (image) should be associated with a category. Categories form hierarchies, and a file should be associated with the most specific category in the hierarchy. It will then also be associated with all parent categories. It took a number of edits of the categories of my files (mostly by bots) for me to figure this out!

Look for gaps. There's no point in adding yet another photo of the Empire State Building - somebody, with a better camera, has been there before me. Instead I had to do a little investigation before adding an image, to make sure the subject wasn't already well covered.

You can't upload just anything. I was careful to only contribute images that I had taken myself, and that meet copyright requirements, and that are suitable for the Commons (i.e. not my holiday snaps). Anything else may be speedily deleted!

I am still a new user. Having completed the challenge, and made some contributions previously, I now have 139 contributions - but I'm still classified as a new user and my uploads are actively monitored. A new user is anybody with fewer than 150 edits on Commons. Nearly there!

Uploading from a smartphone is a hassle. From the mobile site, although you can login, there is no option to upload an image. You have to force your browser to switch to the desktop version. There are rumours of an app, but if it still exists, it is not available on the app store in Ireland, at least.

Would I do it again?

Possibly, but not for a little while. I want to focus on my Wikipedia editing and build up to another article there.

Making Connections - Computers in Education Society of Ireland

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 17:41:00 +0000

On Saturday the 4th of March 2017, I had the good fortune to travel to the 2017 annual conference of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI) at the St. Patrick’s Campus of Dublin City University.

The theme of this year's event was on "Making Connections: Transformation through technology and teamwork", inspired in part from two recent policy documents. Firstly, the Department of Education and Skills have published their Digital Strategy for Schools 2015-2020 report, setting out a vision

clear vision that is focussed on realising the potential of digital technologies to transform the learning experiences of students b - See more at: http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Information-Communications-Technology-ICT-in-Schools/Digital-Strategy-for-Schools/#sthash.CQNqSJM7.dpuf

focussed on realising the potential of digital technologies to transform the learning experiences of students - See more at: http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Information-Communications-Technology-ICT-in-Schools/Digital-Strategy-for-Schools/#sthash.CQNqSJM7.dpuf

focused on realising the potential of digital technologies for enhancing student learning, and secondly, the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning’s Roadmap For Enhancement In A Digital World 2015-2017 that recommends:

“a multi-level approach to foster digital literacy, skills and confidence among students at all levels of education needs to be developed”.

Against this policy backdrop, the focus in two of the keynote sessions was on mainstreaming technology in education, with inspiring keynotes from Brendan Tangney, Bridge 21, Trinity College Dublin (see slides), and Anne Looney, Interim CEO of the Higher Education Authority in Dublin.

Both the venue, the organisers (including my colleague Kate Molloy), and the conference team conspired to showcase the best use of technology in action by streaming, captioning and tweeting events as they unfolded. The Youth Media Team interviewed several of conference speakers and have made podcast recordings available. Other slide resources were shared by the PDST on http://www.pdst.ie/cesi2017 and more individual links to follow up were also posted to Twitter (Iain MacLabhrainn's presentation on All Aboard included).

The flagship Lego® Education Innovation Studio (LEIS), was a particular highlight, with Deirdre Butler of DCU giving us a tour of the facilities, and the inspiration behind allowing students a space to create, make, and build.

Lego® Education Innovation Studio in DCU

In the sessions I attended, innovation was clearly evident - in using educational mobile apps, animations, minecraft, iPad coding, digital storytelling, and more. A summary Storify of tweets is here (note this isn't a comprehensive catalog of the conference hashtag tweets), and a link to all the conference abstracts is available online.


@Seomraranga - a whirlwind tour of the best educational apps


@michaeliteach using the iPad to make a drone fly

The All Aboard digital skills map on display (developed by colleagues in CELT)

Many presentations were informed by action research and displayed considered pedagogic reflection on their use. Several presenters were researching practice at masters or PhD level, whilst others were deeply involved in enhancing their classroom practice in a variety of educational contexts. It was the first CESI event I had the opportunity to attend, and look forward to connecting again in future.

Reflections on Visitors and Residents as CPD in Learning Technologies module

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 14:50:00 +0000

The metaphor of the Digital Native is still very much used in academic circles - perhaps because it is easy to understand. Many academic staff feel comfortable to describe themselves as digital dinosaurs (or immigrants), separated from their students' apparent ease with technology by a gulf so fundamental that it cannot be bridged. When pushed, they do accept that students are ill-prepared to use tech in their educational lives - unable to navigate the VLE, not aware of file types, completely fazed when faced with a zip file. But still, the Digital Natives narrative persists and is accepted as a truth, an excuse.

Read Donna Lanclos on The Death of the Digital Native.

At the outset of my module on Learning Technologies (#cel263 on Twitter) I ask my group of participants - all academic staff - to reflect on their comfort in using new technologies for teaching¹, by writing a group blog post. Despite including works by Donna Lanclos and David White in the readings for the module, still the Digital Native rears his head in these reflections, every year. This last month, a number of staff quite happily identified themselves as Digital Immigrants, describing their discomfort with technologies that are effortless for their students.

I think this is a good start. By explicitly articulating this in the group, in writing, it gives me a chance to gently challenge the position.

The Digital Visitors and Residents metaphor, approached through a 90 minute workshop derived from David White and Donna Lanclos excellent guidelines, allows my module participants to focus, not on the technology they use, but on how they use the technologies. By working through the mapping process, creating their own maps while working and discussing in small groups, they get to explore their own interactions and purposes. The maps themselves aren't so important, but rather the follow up questions "so what?" and "what next?" By reflecting on their own maps, each participant can take ownership of their own technology use, and purposely determine what they want to do with it.

How we did it

The guide produced by Donna and David is for a full day workshop, with a second day for more strategic use within an institution. Having participated in such a workshop, run by Donna and David last year, I found this a very valuable experience. But I only have 90 minutes, as part of the second workshop (of 7) in my module.

The first reflection, about comfort in using new technologies, is an outcome of workshop 1. And without any encouragement on my part, the Digital Natives narrative always comes up. Though commenting on the reflections, I can begin to suggest that the Natives theory doesn't work, and maybe there's an alternative.

Before the face-to-face 2nd workshop, I ask participants to watch David's short video explaining the V&R theory, as preparation. By the time I meet them, it's clear that at least some of them have watched it, and nobody admits otherwise. So, my intro can be short, referring to the video and also to their reflections. There is great hilarity as they Google each other - some definitely more discoverable than others - but everybody with a trace.

I spend some time working though the drawing of my own map, deliberately leaving out Wikipedia initially. This brings up various questions, which we discuss a little. But my intention is to get them working on their own maps as quickly as possible. They do this in small groups of just 2 or 3. Initially quiet, within 5 minutes the room is full of the sounds of discussion. I circulate, commenting and asking questions.

One observation is about whether somebody's name, in the case where it might be unusual or unique, might have an effect on how comfortably open they might be. Anything on the open web would be immediately associated with that person. Somebody with a common name might find it easier to hide.

Another group had quite a discussion around e-commerce apps and tools. While not discoverable, there was some anguish about online security of data.

After a while, we stop and discuss a little. I draw Wikipedia onto my map, still a little to the Visitors side of the axis. We talk, in general, about the clustering or spread of activities on the maps, and what it might mean. We talk about a third dimension, which some have identified, and how they have use colours or shapes to represent this on their two dimensional grid. They spend another few minutes considering the So What?

In the last 15 minutes of the workshop we start to think about What Next? I explain my relationship with Wikipedia as a fledgling editor and how I am deliberately trying to move that block to the right of the V&R axis. I leave them contemplating the What Next question on their maps. Before they leave the room, we have a quick gallery walk.

In the 2 weeks between each workshop, each member of the class writes a workshop report as a post on the group blog. This week the report is to include an image of the map with some explanation and a consideration of the So What? question. It takes some time for these posts to start appearing - which may be a good sign. Either they are still reflecting, or just too busy to get around to the report.

Suddenly, a week after our workshop, there is a deluge of reports. Almost everybody indicates that the activity was of value and that they have learned something new about themselves and their technology use. Each person has identified some direction they want to take, either by eliminating some aspects or changing others.

With a group of academics who are now more self-aware and purposeful, I now have a solid base to begin exploring the use of technology in teaching and learning. I look forward to the many discussions over the next 5 workshops.

Some Participant Comments

I have asked my group if I might share some of the comments from their workshop reports. None of the participants are identifiable from the comments.

"In order to construct the V&R map, I had a think about where I go online – and one thought usually led to another, and there's certainly some things I've left off."

"This activity was extremely useful to me in relation to getting an accurate idea of my use of online tools."

"I wasn't aware that I was consistently using so many tools and I also underestimated my visibility online."

"Upon first consideration, I foolishly thought there should be a clear divide between my personal and institutional online activities. However, as I started to give it some attention, I found that while some activities were clearly separated into different categories, there was more overlap between groups than I had expected."

"In the first report, I wrote that I consider myself a beginner in terms of using technologies in teaching. After creating the map last Friday and after a few days contemplation since then I am not so sure any longer."

"By using David White’s system of mapping ones online activities, I have been able to clearly see how I interact with the web, and the roles that my online activities play in both my personal and work life. That brings me to the stage of thinking how I might be able to use the web in more effective ways."

"I was surprised by the way this exercise helped me to articulate my feelings towards email. It is by far the biggest influence on my life and it has become almost uniquely work-related."

[1] The prompt for the first reflection is:

Write a short report (no more than 3 paragraphs) answering the following question:
How would you describe your level of confidence in using and learning new computer based technologies?

Demonstrating the power of twitter

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 16:44:00 +0000

Every year, for the last 6 or 7 years, I've started teaching my module on Learning Technologies, aimed at members of academic staff, by introducing them to twitter. We then use twitter as a tool throughout the module, sharing information and developing a community.

Each year there are always one or two participants who are already twitter users, some people who have dabbled or lurk, and always a few who have never used twitter before. It can be a challenge to convince people to give twitter a try, because the value of twitter to an academic is only realised after a period of time spent engaging. Even building up a network takes time, and often it's not clear to the academic that the time invested now will pay any dividends.

To that end, I was helped enormously this year by a short presentation from Jane Walsh (@DrJaneWalsh) who gave an engaging, often amusing and very persuasive talk on the value of twitter in her own research and teaching. Jane was a participant herself on the module 4 years ago, and I claim full credit for her twitter success to date.

#cel263 @DrJaneWalsh says not to get precious about number of Twitter followers - we are not Beyoncé. pic.twitter.com/urVcQyaqyK
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) September 23, 2016

Asking the Twitterverse for help

Something I've always done in the past, and I see others doing from time to time, is to put out a call on twitter for help. This usually results in at least a few responses to welcome the new group to twitter, and these are often geographically dispersed, which can be quite impressive.

This year, though, I really wasn't sure what response I would get. I see fewer of this type of call, and I wondered if people might be less likely to respond. Anyway, I live in hope, so on the morning of the workshop I put out a general call:

This afternoon I'll be talking with academics about twitter. Pls say hi, where you are, and why you use twitter. Use #cel263.
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) September 23, 2016

Not feeling very confident, I also tweeted to specific people (former students in the module) to tweet a welcome.

I was pleasantly surprised to get responses, not only from former participants, but also a few from people around Ireland (Dublin and Donegal/Monaghan) and one from Melbourne, Australia. A good start! In addition, a couple of people "liked" the tweet, but didn't bother responding - hmmm.

Just before the workshop, I again sent out a call:

Demonstrating Twitter to academics. Pls say hi, where you are, and why you use Twitter. Use #cel263
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) September 23, 2016

This time I was completely inundated with responses. It was amazing. As well as tweets from around Ireland and the UK, people also responded from France, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland and Israel. There was a great response from across the Atlantic - from Kentucky, Florida, Michigan, Boston and Delaware. There was even a tweet from Brazil.

To see the full collection of tweets received, you can take a look at them on Storify.

I've been a little bit quieter on twitter in the last few months, so it was really amazing to see such support from my PLN. Thank you to everyone who responded and really gave an impressive demonstration of the power of twitter.

Guest Post: Vene Vidi Recordari

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 13:03:00 +0000

My last blog post - on the Etiquette for Tweeting at Conferences - got quite a bit of attention, and a number of comments. One person who commented is Dr Andrew Flaus (@andrewflaus) who sent me a long email including a discussion on etiquette for students in lectures. I invited him to contribute a blog post on the topic.

Crayons

My wife is an early childhood teacher so people sometimes ask her what she teaches to 3-4 year olds: “Everything”. Children who are new to the school environment start by learning etiquette of the classroom: How to wait in turn to answer, how to respect the efforts of others, how to share crayons.

The recent post about twitter at conferences reminded me how fresh we and our students are to the use of technology in our lecture theatres.

Whether they are “digital natives” or not, most students reflexively use smartphone technology for a variety of activities. If a student can see or hear something they have the technology to record it in their hand. They are also very savvy about the usefulness of this recording, yet many seem to be naive or oblivious to the etiquette of this copying.

Last month I presented a secondary school outreach activity in a PC Suite. Our computing support has professional security practices so I dutifully obtained temporary user IDs and passwords then distributed these to the students on a sheet of paper. Several students simply photographed the sheet and handed it on.

Very resourceful and not a big deal, but the concept of etiquette when dealing with security credentials clearly does not occur to the students.

(flickr photo by Dominique Godbout https://flickr.com/photos/dominiquegodbout/5157516276 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license)

Assume every teaching activity might be recorded

Sit at the back of any undergraduate student lecture and you will see lots of smartphones on desks. Look carefully at the direction of those phones: At least a few will have the bottom (microphone end) facing the lecturer. If you watch as the lecture begins you might even see students turning on their audio recording apps.

I don’t have a problem with being recorded. I’ve given up caring. Anything that reduces the rate of despairing exam answers is ok with me. But I’m not sure every lecturer thinks that way. I also doubt the students are too worried about what we think.

It’s hard enough work to be interesting about protein structure and function, let alone controversial, so I doubt there is a back catalogue of Andrew’s Best Bits. And I’m not deluding myself about competing with Kanye West or Taylor Swift on my student’s smartphones. OK, I admit I’d like to be ahead of Justin Bieber ...

Who knows how the illicit audio of our lectures is subsequently shared. While I don’t mind being recorded in general, I would like to be confident that this is for personal study and revision only. Nothing else.

A handful of years ago when disabilities support issued voice recorders there was an etiquette of students asking before recording lectures, but I can’t recall anyone actually asking me this in recent years.

Be explicit about etiquette for invited speakers.

As a research-led university we should be exposing our advanced undergraduate students to “real research”. For example, we have final year students write short summaries on a selection of departmental research talks given by invited speakers.

But real research is harder than predigested lectures, and it’s often delivered by people from research-led research institutes that have no idea about learning objectives. This places extra temptation for students to capture a recording of these research talks from invited speakers.

Recently we had a very interesting human clinical genetics speaker. I noticed one eager and ambitious student front and centre taking smartphone snaps of slides, including unpublished data and clinical cases. In fairness the cases were appropriately anonymized, but I doubt the student understood this or had thought about the sensitivity of clinical research. He had definitely not asked permission.

A couple of years ago I even saw a student bring a laptop into a research talk, dim the screen, turn it round and use the webcam to record the talk as a video.

In the days when we had smaller advanced undergraduate classes our students were more directly mentored and we could expect them to imbibe our etiquette implicitly. In the heady days before massification it wasn’t possible to record things anyway. What came on tour with the visiting speaker’s film slides stayed on tour.

Nowdays, what goes on tour ends up on Facebook.

Whose crayons are they?

Our wonderful classroom full of learning technologies gives new and unique ways for students to engage with information to develop their understanding.

However, it’s important for them to understand that recording data inappropriately is just as improper as reproducing it inappropriately. Are we helping them to appreciate that everything they see and hear is not fair game for recording and publishing?

I came and I saw, not I went and I copied.

Etiquette for tweeting at conferences - an honest question

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 14:43:00 +0000

I've been using twitter for more than seven years, as many of my readers will already know. One of the most useful aspects of twitter, for me, involves tweeting at conferences - whether I am at the conference, or following a conference hashtag. As well as being part of the general conference discussion and backchannel, it also offers insight to an event beyond the traditional boundaries of location.

How I use twitter at conferences

If I am (physically) attending a conference, my usual style is to tweet key ideas, references, links, and photos of the speaker and his/her slides. More recently, since I'm trying to make written notes (yes - on paper) I will also tweet an image of my notes. I converse with other twitter users, who may be co-located at the conference, or not. I use my own twitter feed as a record of event, along with my notes. I often use storify to collate and share a record of all the event tweets.

In particular, I use the photographs to remember useful information that has been presented on a slide, rather than having to note it down somewhere.

As an example, see my report from the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference in January.

If I am presenting at an event, I make sure to include my twitter handle on the first slide, and will check the hashtag afterwards to see what people have tweeted. I would be most disappointed if there were no tweets!

Occasionally, and quite rarely, a speaker will ask that photographs of the presentation are not shared, perhaps because they contain sensitive information. In that case I will always respect the wishes of the speaker.

I would never take a video recording of any speaker without their permission.

Rules for Twitter Etiquette

flickr photo by duncan https://flickr.com/photos/duncan/13742043253 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

This morning, I followed a tweet related to the Dublin eLearning Summer School #elss16 taking place over the next 3 days related to Social Media Etiquette. The link contains some really good advice about tweeting at conferences - and could be adapted for other events - such as keeping phones on silent, using the hashtag, being respectful of speakers.

I will be ignoring this piece of advice - as I get older my eyesight is getting worse and I'll continue to sit in the front third of the room. But I am generally quite careful not to be distracting with my many devices.

If you are tweeting or blogging during a session, please consider sitting near the back of the room to avoid distracting presenters or other participants.

This one did surprise me though. Under DO NOT:

Photograph presenter’s slides and share them on social media without their permission.

My Dilemma

I do this all the time! I have assumed that, unless the speaker explicitly says not to share, then it's ok to share. As a speaker, and perhaps in aspiring to be a more open educator, I've always assumed that sharing is going to happen, if what I'm saying is interesting enough. But now it has been put to me that

presenters don't realise sometimes that pictures are being shared beyond the safe space in the physical room

So, I'm bothered! As a self-confessed introvert who abhors rudeness, I would hate to think that I've been defying etiquette for the last 7 years. Is this a social blunder that I've been completely unaware of?

Or, might it depend on the context of the conference or event itself - whether an event is ( perhaps by its own nature, or by reason of the intended audience) more open or not? For example, in our own CELT conferences, the advice to the twitter team includes:

You’re encouraged to tweet some photos of the conference. Having some photos in the Twitter steam makes the conference experience more concrete for folks not there.

So, I'm asking you - dear readers - what do you think? Answers in the comments, or via Twitter, would be greatly appreciated.

#BbTLC16 Report - Blackboard product updates

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 19 May 2016 16:05:00 +0000

I've been very remiss in my reports from #BbTLC16, which happened at the beginning of April. But I still have my notes from the sessions, intending to write them up.

On Tuesday I sat in on the Blackboard International Product Update Webinar - which covered similar ground to the product update sessions at #BbTLC16 - so I thought I'd take the opportunity to put a few sentences together.

The webinar covered three main products: Blackboard Learn, Collaborate Ultra, and mobile solutions Bb Student and Bb Instructor.

Blackboard Learn

Wade Weichel gave a presentation (at both #BbTLC16 and on the webinar) about the roadmap for the classic VLE. Apparently the focus is to make the learner's experience "more delightful".

flickr photo by Pleuntje https://flickr.com/photos/pleuntje/3456892561 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

Blackboard are moving to a regular update schedule, with two major releases each year, and cumulative updates in-between. Q2 2016 was released last month, and brings increased stability to the system - which is good news. There was a lot of talk about infrastructure and authentication, which went over my head, but one piece of advice is to test all (non Blackboard) building blocks (for example, Turnitin), on a test environment, to ensure that they work properly, prior to upgrade on a production environment.

The old chat and virtual classrooms are being discontinued - although we disabled these on our system some time ago. Otherwise, there are some accessibility improvements and a reply capability on emails.

The Ultra experience for Learn, which was touted at BbWorld in 2014 and again at the Education on Tour event in Dublin that year, was not mentioned at all. Instead we heard about a new theme for 9.1, which would include some responsive design features. Last month I wondered if this would be ready in time to test and apply before our new academic year (starting in early September). However, from today's webinar it seems that this is still in development, and updates will be provided in future webinars.

Finally, admin-level course activity overview reports, which sound really useful, are also still in development.

Collaborate Ultra

Like many institutions, we are currently running both versions of Collaborate (classic and Ultra), but haven't made the switch to Ultra from within the VLE yet. This is because the functionality within Ultra does not yet match that of the classic version (see my notes on this from #durbbu). However, it's clear that Collab Ultra is being developed quickly, with updates being released regularly.

A view of Collab Ultra, taken at #BbTLC16

Carl Marelli gave an update on Collaborate Ultra. The biggest advantage of Ultra is the lack of a Java download - anybody can participate directly in the browser (preferably Chrome). Ultra is described as "delightful and modern". Other features that have been recently added include:

the maximum number of participants has increased to 100, and will further increase to 250;
uploaded files (powerpoint, pdf etc) now persist within a Collab room
increased video and audio quality
accessibility features
MP4 recordings
integration with Bb student

Coming soon will be breakout groups and group chats, while polling features are still in development.

An improved integration with Learn is also being developed, so that instructors can choose whether to switch to Ultra or stay with the classic version (depending on their use case).

Mobile

Dan Loury gave an update on the mobile strategy for Blackboard. The original mobile app, Blackboard Mobile Learn, is being replaced by two persona driven apps - one for students and one for instructors. Bb Student was launched in the UK and Ireland in January, and I wrote about it at the time. We've since had some limited feedback from students on the app, but for the most part I suspect students at NUIG are still using Mobile Learn.

Since January, development has continued on the app, and it now includes notifications - which is a feature much in demand from students.

Future releases will include discussion boards and the ability to join a Collaborate Ultra session from the app - these features are currently in beta. In development is the ability for app-to-app launches, which will mean that we can embed Bb Student in our NUIG Mosaic app.

A little further away is the launch of a Bb Instructor app, which will replace the current Bb Grader. This will be available for tablets only, initially.

Keeping Informed

It is good to see Blackboard continue to develop the various tools, but sometimes important new features become available without us being aware of them. The events can be useful to find out about these, but often we are too caught up in the general day-to-day activities to realise that there is something new to think about.

The webinars are good opportunities for a quick overview of developments. One tip is to always sign up for the webinar; even if you can't make it at the time, you will receive a link to the recording.

Another relatively new initiative is the Innovate&Educate monthly newsletter, for which you can sign up here.

Video Solutions at NUIG

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 03 May 2016 17:08:00 +0000

We were excited today to see that NUI Galway features in the April edition of Tech & Learning UK (pages 27 and 28). Based on the talk I gave at the Kaltura Education Summit last year, the article describes our deployment and use of the Kaltura building block in our Blackboard VLE, and how staff and students are making good use of video for learning.

Thanks to Lisa Bennett of Kaltura Marketing for putting the article together.

LIT's #ictedu 2016 - "Students as Co-Creators"

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 16:50:00 +0000

On Saturday the 23rd of April I attended the #ictedu conference at Limerick Institute of Technology, Tipperary for the first time. I had booked the conference before, but it had always fallen at such a stressful time in the secondary school year that by the time that Saturday rolled around, I didn't have enough steam left in me. This year left me with a bit more freedom to attend, so naturally I signed up.

A sunny April morning in Thurles

The conference theme hinged upon the student as co-creator and attendees stemmed from across the sectors. I knew many faces on a professional basis and from CESI events, so it was useful to be at a more intimate conference where there was time to catch up properly.

The event began with a keynote by Steve Wheeler from Plymouth University. I've seen Steve give a keynote before and followed him for a long time online, so I was excited to hear him again as I've found his work to be both insightful and practical. His presentation, "Digital Learning Futures: Learners as co-creators of knowledge", set the tone for the entire conference. Steve steered clear over the over-used and disproved "digital native" theory in order to focus on the digital visitor and resident:

There are no digital natives, it's a more complex paradigm involving residents and visitors. #ictedu @timbuckteeth pic.twitter.com/SeFv2RpPof
— Katie Molloy (@hey_km) April 23, 2016

Steve also highlighted the benefits of using rhizomatic tools like Wikipedia in order to foster the concept of community and creativity in students, and even hone their digital literacy skills.

@timbuckteeth praising #Wikipedia as a rhizomatic learning tool. Utilise - don't disparage. #ictedu @sharonlflynn pic.twitter.com/PMoxSmBox6
— Katie Molloy (@hey_km) April 23, 2016

Steve Wheeler discussing "desire lines"

As always, Steve highlighted the intrinsic nature of students to pave their own path toward learning and the necessity for us to give them the freedom, and tools, to do so. In this slide, he illustrates the concept of "desire lines" and how it applies to the student experience.

Dr. Barry Ryan assesses the digital skills present
and acquired throughout the project

The next presentation relevant to this blog came from Dr. Barry Ryan from DIT. His presentation, "Doing it for themselves (and others): Students producing reusable learning resources for peers and community partners" followed the trajectory of his plan to implement a video project in his second year Biochemistry module in lieu of the traditional essay. The aim was not only to engage the students, but also to use the created content to teach each other and a community partner. The feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive, and they also indicated that they learned some digital skills along the way. Students became researchers of the content, peer reviewers and ultimately creators. Students were happy to engage more effectively with the content and learn throughout the process. During a shoot, a group of students somehow crossed paths with Brendan Gleeson on a movie set, and he actually shot some footage for them. However, his digital skills were left to be desired as the focus was blurry throughout the scene!

The capstone talk, "Stepping in. Stepping out. Standing back. The student as co-creator", came from NUI Galway's own Mary Carty, the Executive Director of the new new Blackstone Launchpad here on campus. I look forward to getting to know Mary, not only because we are just across the concourse from each other, but also because of her impassioned speech about her previous project, the Outbox Incubator. The project is available to young women interested in STEM and its tagline is: "6 weeks, 45 girls at a time, all under 1 roof". Mary spoke with vigor about how the project raised opportunities for the girls that participated, but changed their outlook as women in STEM. Mary believes that ideas can turn into realities. I have no doubt that Mary's passion will resonate with young people at NUI Galway.

Mary Carty speaking about Outbox Incubator and Blackstone Launchpad

Having known the organizers of this conference for some time, I feel like my attendance was well overdue. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and I was able to take away some very positive conversations with like minded people. Many thanks to Pamela O'Brien, Conor Galvin and Bernie Goldbach for a wonderful conference.

Gamification at #BbTLC16

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 21:04:00 +0000

Earlier this month I was at #BbTLC16 - the annual Blackboard Teaching & Learning conference, which took place in Groningen this year. I've been meaning to write a couple of blog posts about it, and what I learned there, but have been so busy since I got back! That's the downside of being at a conference, work just piles up and waits for you to return.

One of the interesting features of the conference this year was the use of the mobile app, which we were encouraged to download prior to the event.

As well as easy access to the programme, and the ability to build up a personal agenda, there were a couple of other features that added to conference experience (positive and negative) and ultimately had an affect on my behaviour as part of the backchannel, as well as others.

Mobile Agenda

There was (initially) no printed programme available at the conference. The online programme was a little tricky to navigate, with up to 6 parallel sessions each day, and I certainly didn't pay it much attention before travelling. So it was extremely useful to be able to browse the programme using the app. Each session had a very short description, or you could browse by speaker, and add talks of interest to a personal agenda. If you allowed notifications, you would even get a reminder when a particular talk was about to start. With my increasing reliance on online calendars, this proved to be a very useful feature.

This is where the gamification starts. Once in a particular session, you then had an option to "check-in", allowing you to collect points. When a session finished, you were presented with an option to rate (out of 5) and make comments on the talk. Each of these activities allowed you to collect further points. It's not entirely clear where the ratings and comments went - but presumably the conference organisers are using them in some way. As a speaker, I certainly have not seen any feedback on our presentation.

Community

On first accessing the app, I was encouraged to create a profile, linking it to my LinkedIn, twitter and/or Facebook accounts. I used the opportunity to link to LinkedIn and twitter, but my Facebook activity is much more personal.

Within the app, it was possible to browse all Attendees (and separately all Speakers), including Blackboard personel and other sponsors, thus finding out a little more about them, and also see what networks they had shared. This was very useful for following up on new acquaintances, leading to some new LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers.

Activity

Now things start getting interesting! One of the main features, once the conference started, was the activity feed. Like a conference twitter feed, users of the app could post updates, with links, pictures and videos. We could also "like" posts and even comment on them. Before long, we realised that we could earn badges by posting, commenting, rating, checking-in. I managed to get 22 out of 27 possible badges!

Posting to the activity feed became an obsession. While it should have been possible to send everything to Twitter as well, this didn't really happen. I had no success posting to Twitter at all, while photos were missing from other people's tweets. This meant that the (public) activity using the #BbTLC16 hashtag was not particularly active. For my part, I did try to tweet some of the announcements that were made, but it was awkward to keep the activity going in two places, as well as trying to take notes. The very active backchannel that was happening around the conference was enclosed within the app, behind closed doors.

As with most conference backchannels, it was very useful to find out what was going on in another parallel session. Images, updates and comments, especially those from particular individuals, could really give a sense of what was being discussed, and it was possible to join in a conversation from another room, or to follow up with particular speakers or attendees during the networking breaks.

The LeaderBoard

While we were all very busy earning badges, posting pictures of the same powerpoint slide from different angles and distances, we were also earning points. Every activity had an associated point value, though exactly how these were calculated is not clear. Moreover, it was possible to check out the LeaderBoard from within the app. Initially, some of the attendees of DevCon (a pre-conference for developers) were at the top of the board, but before long some of the more competitive types (myself included) started making our way up the board.

It was all a bit of fun. Wasn't it? Until we realised that the activity of "Liking" posts clearly resulted in more points - even Liking your own posts! Something was clearly amiss here. You could barely post anything before it received half a dozen "likes".

At this stage I will state very clearly - I did not start Liking my own updates. Competitition was fierce, though, and it soon became clear that it would not be possible to catch up with the frontrunners.

In the end, I finished a respectable 5th, and I'd like to give a shout out for the two leaders Klazine and Marja who played a very strong game - they left us behind for dust. Kudos also to Pete, Alicia and Sandra - the latter sneaked ahead of me on the last day. What does it say that 13 of the top 20 positions were taken by women?

Final Comments

Certainly the app was useful and fun, and the gamification brought a new community experience to the conference - though possibly not what was intended. It was a shame that the backchannel was closed, but I think this could be easily remedied by improving the ability to publish to twitter at the same time.

The gamification was interesting. How points were allocated is not clear, but it seems that the allocation needs to be rebalanced a little bit, to encourage more activity with added value.

Lauching into the deep

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 14:36:00 +0000

The School of Nursing and Midwifery at NUI Galway are always up to good things when it comes to prioritising the student learning experience. Recently, we spoke to John Quinlivan about a key initiative they undertook to help incoming students. Each year, new students face major challenges in getting to grips with the abundance of information available online relating to their studies. The School of Nursing and Midwifery thought long and hard, and came up with the idea of creating a Student Launchpad - a central resource to find out about referencing, timetables, course resources, online services, and more.

In this short interview, John Quinlivan discusses the benefits of the Student Launchpad. It was designed with a first year student in mind but also aimed to be useful to all students for the duration of their studies. The team encompassed Block 5 Design, and faculty of the School of Nursing and Midwifery including Dr. Adeline Cooney, Damien Devane, Prof. Declan Devane and John Quinlivan.

The team spent many long hours story boarding the concept, and they identified the tools and information essential for Nursing & Midwifery students. The site acted as a one-stop shop for students across the school, where they could access key, relevant information. Thankfully their efforts with the site has proven a huge success, with regular visits of between one and four hundred unique accesses a day during term. Students report on the importance of being able to easily find everything they need in one location, and improved communication within the school.

Preparing for #BbTLC16

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 20:45:00 +0000

Tomorrow I am heading over to Groningen, in The Netherlands, for the annual Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference. I was last at this conference in Dublin in 2014, when I presented with two students who were developing the NUIG campus app. We won best paper at the event, and went on to present at the Blackboard World Conference in Las Vegas. I have no such ambitions this year - one visit to Las Vegas is more than enough for me!

This year I am travelling a day early, so that I can go along to the Academic Adoption Day on Tuesday, led by Alan Masson. I'm not really sure what to expect, but will blog my experiences.

At the main conference, I'll be presenting, along with Caroline Horan (IT Services at NUIG) about our current Online Results Entry (ORE) project using the Blackboard Grades Journey Tool. For a sneak preview, our prezi is available, though still in development.

The conference programme is big, with many parallel sessions. I haven't decided which ones to go to, yet. But I will be interested in some of the roadmap talks, and also to meet the new Blackboard CEO Bill Ballhaus. There is a Mobile User Group meeting, also on Thursday. Mostly I'll be interested in finding out about others' use of Blackboard, and picking up some new ideas.

And, of course, I'm looking forward to seeing Groningen, the city, which I've never visited before. The University, where the conference is located, was established in 1614, is part of the Coimbra Group (along with NUI Galway) and graduated Aletta Jacobs the first female to officially attend a Dutch university.

Blogging as a form of Digital Scholarship

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 09:24:00 +0000

Last year we spoke with Dr. Eilís Ní Dhúill about the Thesis Talk (https://thesistalk.wordpress.com) blog at NUI Galway. The blog is written by PhD candidates from the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies. Chronicling the varying experiences of the College's research students, it provides a platform to describe and share PhD experiences, research, feedback from conferences attended, and to ask the community questions or give tips and advice.

Her account of Thesis Talk is well worth a listen. She outlines how openness and sharing of knowledge are manifested through scholarly blogging. The benefits include connecting with a community of peers, developing writing skills, and engaging in open knowledge production and sharing.

Call for abstracts | EDTECH 2016: ReConstituting TEL - Rising to the Challenge

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 16:24:00 +0000

Date: 26 – 27 May 2016
Venue: Law Society of Ireland, Education Centre, Blackhall Place, Dublin, Ireland

The events of Easter 1916 are of seminal importance in Irish history. What began as a small uprising in the centre of Dublin on Easter Monday set in motion a series of developments which ultimately led to Irish independence in 1922. The Government of Ireland has launched national and international program of events to reflect on the past 100 years, and to re-imagine our future under the following themes: remembering the past; reconciling and respecting all traditions; presenting Ireland to the world; imagining our future; and celebrating our achievements (www.ireland.ie).

The EdTech2016 theme ‘ReConstituting TEL: Rising to the Challenge’ affords us the opportunity to: reflect on the current state of TEL in Ireland in 2016; celebrate our achievements to this point; and consider the opportunities and challenges presented within an increasingly globalised, and uncertain world.

We invite you to contribute to this discourse from a range of local and international perspectives - pedagogical, research, innovation, policy and organisational - at EdTech2016 on May 26-27 at the Law Society of Ireland, Dublin (http://ilta.ie/edtech/edtech-2016).

Closing date for abstracts

11th April 2016 to http://edtech2016.exordo.com/

Conference topics

Submission of abstracts are accepted at http://edtech2016.exordo.com/ for inclusion within 3 presentation formats (i) Research (ii) Practitioner and (iii) *Gasta (brief rapid-fire micro presentations). Conference topics include the following:

Online Education (teaching, learning & assessment)
Blended Learning
Further Education and Training
Digital Literacies for All Stakeholders – students, staff, institutions and governments
Evaluation for impact - contributing to the evidence-base
Learning trends & technologies
Digital & identities, competencies & literacies
Digital Identity
Data Analytics

To submit an abstract

Visit https://edtech2016.exordo.com/
Create an account / login by entering your email, name and a password
Click submit paper
Follow the steps as prompted.

Key Dates

14^th March 2016
Call for abstracts - http://edtech2016.exordo.com/
Conference registration open - http://edtech2016.exordo.com/

11th April 2016
Closing date for abstract submissions

22^nd April 2016
Notification of Authors

29^th April 2016
Early bird offer closes

6^th May 2015
Final versions of accepted abstracts accepted for inclusion to Conference Programme

25th May 2015
Closing date for presentation submissioms

26th – 27th May 2015
EdTech 2016 Conference, Law Society of Ireland

CEL263 Learning Technologies Symposium 2016

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 17:06:00 +0000

The annual CEL263 symposium for 2016 took place almost 2 weeks ago on Monday 29th February. This year, seven participants from the PG Dip Learning Technologies module gave short presentations on their project for the module.

The project brief is:

You are asked to identify and complete a project, based on the material covered in the module, to incorporate Learning Technologies in your teaching.You are given free scope in identifying a technology or technologies and what you want to achieve. The technology does not have to be something that we are covering during the module, and could be something specific to your discipline.

The participants were asked to give a 10 minute presentation to the group (which included module participants and members of CELT) on their project, whether it's complete, in early stages, or halfway through.

As in previous years, I took notes by tweeting. The following is a collection of tweets from the event, using Storify.

"Our Digital Strategy - making IT matter" at #cesicon 2016

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 17:31:00 +0000

I have attended the annual CESI conference for the past five years and it's now become an integral part of my personal CPD. As someone that spent ten years teaching at second level, the event helped me to build my personal learning network (PLN) at a level only matched by participating in CESI's #edchatie Twitter chat session on Monday evenings. Having moved on to NUI Galway, I did ponder how the event I had grown so accustomed to might feel different for me this year. As more of an observer than a participant, I further shook things up by submitting a presentation.

The conference theme was rooted upon the new "Digital Strategy for Schools 2015 - 2020" document released by the Department of Education. The document aims to "embed ICT more deeply across the system to enhance the overall quality of Irish education". This is essentially the same ethos that fuels CESI. Though I've only skimmed the document at this stage, but I can see parallels between it and the National Forum's "Teaching and Learning in Irish Higher Education: A Roadmap for Enhancement in a Digital World 2015-2017".

Professor Mark Brown kick started the morning at DCU with a keynote insisting that we continue to make change and expressing exasperation at the stunted progress on technological innovation in education. One can only hope the new strategy will address these issues. He also received resounding applause when he called for coding to become a Leaving Certificate subject.

Professor Mark Brown's Keynote Address

Next up was a presentation by Colman Noctor entitled "Why do we share what we share?" that focused on the purpose of disclosure on social networking sites. Colman's talk provided food for thought in terms of how young people are affected by the digital world they live in and the expectations of living up to our ideal (online) selves.

Colman Noctor made us reflect on our online identities

After addressing some technical issues I was having, it was on to Leigh Graves Wolf's spotlight session on Design Thinking. Some might know Leigh from her participation in #edchatie and annual GREAT conference at NUI Galway with the Masters in Educational Technology (MAET) at Michigan State University. Leigh has recently moved into the role of Assistant Director of the MSU Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology. Leigh's workshop aligned Our Digital Strategy to Design Thinking and had participants brainstorm and tweet/share their thoughts on questions that followed the first two steps of Design Thinking - empathize and define. If one of the theory's aims is to "make the invisible, visible", then there is no better place to trial it than in front of large group of engaged educators eager to ensure the success of a new Digital Strategy. If we are to ensure the success of such a strategy, we must carefully implement it from the theoretical stages to the beta stages through to the finalized product. In a whirlwind session, Leigh was able to pique participant interest in Design Thinking as well as facilitate a vibrant discussion on the new Digital Strategy.

Leigh Graves Wolf discusses the TPACK model

After lunch it was my turn to present on "Bridging the Gap - Preparing Students for the Expectations of Higher Education". Like Leigh, I was focusing on current strategies and policies in second level and third level education and aligning the technologies available (and popular) in both sectors that could facilitate an easier transition between the sectors. In hindsight, it might have been too large a topic for the twenty five minute session, but it certainly helped me to reflect more carefully on an area that I have a vested interest in.

After presenting, I took the time to reconnect with CESI friends from over the years and didn't attend anything else until the National Executive meeting. The most refreshing aspect of CESIcon is the camaraderie and collaboration between the sectors. It proves that new innovations are adaptable in any educational setting if you maintain an open mind. If you are interested at all in CESI, I would strongly advise following the #edchatie hashtag on Twitter. Over time, it's easy to build up a strong personal learning network, and you might even be enticed to meet them in person at next year's CESIcon.

You can read about our experience at CESIcon last year on the blog as well.

PebblePad Irish Users’ Group Meeting Notes

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 15:51:00 +0000

Overview

The first PebblePad Irish User Group meeting took place in the RCSI on Wednesday 10 February. It was hosted by John Couperthwaite and Debbie Holmes from PebblePad, and featured colleagues from TCD, DCU, UCC, GMIT, WIT, and NUIG; some of which are currently using PebblePad alongside others looking to keep a watching brief on ePortfolio developments and uses in higher education.

NUI Galway Context

Following the cessation of the Learning Objects suite of tools in NUIG, a number of professional-based functions (e.g. Nursing and Midwifery, Engineering, Adult Education) have spoken to me about their interest in pan-programme ePorfolio solutions; and specifically those with post-graduate access options. We do not have access to BB-native portfolios as this requires the Community System which comes with a considerable price tag. I attended this session to gauge the current state of play from PebblePad and the wider user group and found it extremely useful.

Key Features of PebblePad

This ePortfolio solution is branded as an ‘Award-winning ePortfolio, assessment and metering technology’
It is being widely used in the UK and is gaining some traction in Ireland (see below)
PebblePad is utilised primarily with:
Applied curricula such as Medicine, Nursing and Midwifery, Teacher Education (i.e. those with work placement requirements);
Competency-based domains (i.e. those with professional body dual accreditation requirements such as Accountancy and Pharmacology); and
For wider institutional functions such as careers, alumni and disability services
It is a cloud-based service and can be used as a stand-alone system or integrated through VLEs via a building block (e.g. BB, Moodle, Canvas etc)
The building block allows institutions to nominate the specific modules where the ePorfolio can be deployed. This means that it is possible to arrange a licensing model for 100 users which can be administered locally.
The building block facilitates single sign-on via VLE
In line with other learning technologies (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate) PebblePad is moving away from Flash and Java-based infrastructure(V3 of PebblePad) towards HTML5-based technology (V5 of PebblePad) which will facilitate an improved use experience on a range of devices.
USABILITY: it is easy to populate ePortfolios through drag and drop and it looks very professional (different themes etc)
PRIVACY: students manage their own assets and permissions (which allows them to invite/disseminate their ePortfolios - full or partial - to specific internal or external audiences)
CONTINUOUS/POST-GRADUATE ACCESS:
(1) PebblePad access across an entire programme cycle allows students and instructors continuous access to all students’ work, thereby circumventing VLE annual roll-over restrictions.
(2) Graduate students have lifelong access to their assets (e.g. workbooks,ePortfolios)
MOBILE: Pebblepad has an app for IoS and Android devices
SUPPORT: Individual users commented on the high quality of PebblePad initial training and suppo

User Group Presentations

NOREEN HENRY GMIT CASTLEBAR

Programme Coordinator and Lecturer
Noreen described how GMIT were using PebblePad with a group of BSc Digital Media and Society students. The first rollout of the BSc was in 2013 with the final 4th year being delivered in 2016-17.
The use of PebblePad has developed over the first three years from digital asset creation/management, towards submission of portfolios for academic assessment (using templates with pre-populated questions), and now onto student industry placement. The year 4 emphasis will be towards developing projects that can be showcased to multiple audiences during both the programme schedule and following graduation from the BSc programme.

EILEEN O’LEARY UCC

Lecturer in Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry
UCC, UL, TCD, UCD, IT Tralee and NUIG are part of the ePrePP consortium, an eLearning Platform in Preparation for Professional Practice. This initiative is partly funded by the National Forum.
The focus of Eileen’s presentation was how UCC used PebblePad to mimic the 147 professional competencies required by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland Core competencies framework IIoP. The competencies had to be mimicked due to copyright restrictions of the actual framework. They used PebblePad as a CPD tracking system by exposing all students to the same resources (i.e. they had better control via the PebblePad rather than through a range of modules in Blackboard).
Eileen and her team were drawn to PebblePad due to (1) the inbuilt tracking (i.e. student activity is date/time stamped therefore UCC can track activity hours and run learning analytics); and (2) the reporting outputs that they could use for professional accreditation/certification. They use workbooks (customised for assessment/placement etc) which are employed as a competency self assessment tool.

KIERAN LEWIS, TCD

Occupational Therapist, TCD Disability Services
Kieran works on the TCD Career Pathways Project (transition to employment project for students with disabilities) as part of their Student Ambassador Programme.
This project is run directly with PebblePad, rather via the VLE. Disability services work closely with the 74 students to develop their portfolios towards career progression and have created a wide range of ‘template’-type activities for students to complete.

Further Information

There are a number of National Forum seminars looking at ePorfolios in Feb-March. See: http://www.teachingandlearning.ie/events/

Learning from Failure at #durbbu

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 22:49:00 +0000

Earlier this month I made my annual pilgrimmage to Durham to attend the 16th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference. I've been attending this event every January for the last number of years and can honestly say that it's a highlight in my calendar. Even better that it's at the very, very start of the year, meaning I'm not missing too much activity at work, and I can focus my mind completely on the theme of the conference.

Moreover, the annual Durham event is one of the best organised, consistently enjoyable and useful, and the friendliest Ed Tech conference. If Carlsberg did conferences! This is mostly down to the amazing team behind it all, including Malcolm Murray, Julie Mulvey and the Learning Technologies Team at Durham University.

If you are a Blackboard customer in the UK or Ireland (or considering becoming one), you should not miss this annual event. Because it's a Users' conference, it does not have the corporate feel of, say, the Blackboard Teaching and Learning conference. Instead you have the opportunity to hear about and share the real-life experience of fellow Blackboard customers, warts and all. There is also a good representation of staff from Blackboard, giving you great access to raise issues, ask questions and find out about new developments.

Learning from Failure

This year's conference theme was Learning from Failure. It was an excellent theme because this is how most of us learn. It's normal for our efforts to go wrong, but the important thing is to learn from that failure and try again. Even better if we can learn from others' failure, and avoid making the same mistakes ourselves.

We don't often talk about our failures, so I felt privileged to hear about how other people have overcome problems to achieve goals in the use of technologies for teaching and learning.

#durbbu Failure should be our teacher pic.twitter.com/zCWKv04TIo
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) January 7, 2016

My notes from the conference extend to several pages. Here I just describe some of the more relevant learnings for me. I did also create a storify from all the tweets from the event, using hastag #durbbu. Some other attendees have written excellent blog posts from the event, which I list at the end of this post.

Bb Student app

I was particularly interested in the launch, in the UK and Ireland, of the new Bb Student mobile app. This is because we've had some particular problems with the current Blackboard Learn mobile app, related to a current (major) project concerning release of grades. The new app, which I write about here, is slicker and more student focused, but unfortunately doesn't solve our problems. This was good for me to learn, if not entirely satisfying.

Collaborate Ultra

We've been hearing about the new Collaborate Ultra product, which will eventually replace the current Collaborate, with the dreaded java download. We have done some testing at NUI Galway, but haven't made the switch, due to limitations in functionality.

However, I was very lucky to hear from Kelly Hall of Edinburgh University about Stepping into the unknown with Collaborate Ultra. Kelly gave a very engaging and informative presentation where she described how 3 groups at Edinburgh have piloted the new system. She was able to identify exactly the limitations and difficulties experienced, but concluded that the groups were overall very happy with Collab Ultra. The main loss of functionality is the ability to create break-out groups, but Blackboard is working on this.

#durbbu Feedback on Ultra pilot pic.twitter.com/uHlphtYlcv
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) January 7, 2016

Based on the experience of the pilot, Edinburgh is looking to rollout to Ultra during the summer of 2016. She suggested that case studies, based on the pilot groups, are being compiled and may be made available to those interested.

Enterprise Surveys

I've never really considered Blackboard Enterprise Surveys functionality, because I was under the impression that it was only available as part of the Community System licence. It turns out - I was wrong! After putting the question to twitter, I soon got the response that it is available in the basic, vanilla Learn licence - though clearly turned off in ours.

A presentation from Chris Slack and Adam Tuncay described how they have deployed module quality surveys using different approaches: OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) forms, Blackboard tests, and finally Enterprise Surveys. While there are clearly a lot of challenges in using the Enterprise Survey tool (59 known issues, 3 critical issues) the increase in response rates and the reduction in labour costs were particularly impressive.

Moving to enterprise survey has saved Leeds £8752 and 443 hours of staff time each year. #durbbu
— Graeme Boxwell (@GraemeBoxwell) January 7, 2016

Hearing about this project (and its many set-backs) has encouraged me to take a look at Enterprise Surveys on our own environment, some day in the future when I have a bit of time!

Blackboard Updates

The Durham conference always includes a keynote from Blackboard itself, where we can learn something about the current direction and future roadmap for the company. This year, Alan Masson (Head of International Customer Success) gave an engaging keynote reflecting on our shared journey (Blackboard + customers) and what has been learned along the way.

Just two days before the conference, Blackboard had announced that Bill Ballhaus was to succeed Jay Bhatt as CEO.With a new CEO, the focus of the company is likely to shift, so Alan couldn't really say anything about current direction. However, he did speak about some upcoming Roadmap Webinars for the International market. These webinars are a good opportunity to find out more about product strategy, developments and releases.

Alan also pointed us to a new Technology Adoption Guide - 6 Characteristics To Increase Technology Adoption.

#durbbu If these are in place - successful implementation pic.twitter.com/tho2pYTZm2
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) January 8, 2016

Grades Journey Tool

We are currently, at NUI Galway, in the middle of a major institutional project which involves the use of Blackboard's new Grades Journey tool. At the time of the conference, we were on the cusp of rolling out, using a big-bang approach, new grade centre columns to all modules, in all Schools and Colleges, across the University. So, I was particularly interested to hear from Jim Emery from Glasgow Caledonian about his experience of the Grades Journey tool.

Glasgow Caledonian's context is slightly different from ours, albeit with similar goals ultimately. Perhaps very sensibly, GCU is about to commence a pilot of the system, rather than our all-or-nothing approach. His description of the endeavour as a "series of small battles rather than a long war" rang true for me, although I currently feel like I'm involved in a very long war!

Jim's presentation was very honest, as he described his learnings from the project so far. We also spent some time comparing notes on our experiences, which was extremely valuable for me. Jim has written about Marks Integration, framing it in the context of the Digital University.

Digital Badges

I enjoyed Graham Redshaw-Boxwell's talk about digital badges at Newcastle University and beyond. I think there are plenty of links with the All Aboard project in Ireland, especially the digital badges component of this.

Conclusion

I realise that I'm writing this post three weeks after the conference took place, and I've focused only on those talks that made the most impression on me, in terms of my own learning. I also very much enjoyed Eric Stoller's keynote, about academics and social media.

Why Educators Can’t Live Without Social Media - my keynote slides from @Durham_Uni #DURBBU https://t.co/ASSmhxBlFj pic.twitter.com/ynttSqoN2p
— Eric Stoller (@EricStoller) January 7, 2016

Unusually for a conference, any of the talks I went to were of high quality, and I learned something new in each one.

Other blog posts about this event include (apologies if I missed any - let me know in the comments):

Learning from Failure – The 16th Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference- Rosie Hare
Reflections on Day 2 of the Blackboard Users’ Conference- Richard Walker

Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference 2016: A Few Reflections - Danny Ball
Learning from Failure…- Maria Tannant
Durbbu - multiple posts by Matt Cornock

Campus Create - A daily dose of creative challenges at NUI Galway

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:23:00 +0000

In December, a PhD student, Sally McHugh, called into my office to tell me that she had successfully received Explore funding for a project called Campus Create, with Dr. Tony Hall in Education. The idea was to promote and encourage creativity in all its forms, including within digital media. Sally and I had talked before about Digital Storytelling DS106 from the University of Mary Washington, and the work of Jim Groom, Alan Levine and colleagues. They had been working for many years, encouraging people to make art, to create, share and remix, in an open way, cognisant of copyright and domain ownership. Our heroes.

http://campuscreate.eu/

Before Christmas, Tony, Sally and I met to talk about how we might explore and enact these ideas at NUI Galway within the Campus Create project. We came up with the notion of having twelve weeks of themes, to correspond to the first twelve weeks of semester 2, and to post daily create challenges, similar to projects like the Daily Create, the Daily Post, and the 12 Apps of Christmas.

Things progressed further, and after a furious effort in the first week of January with collaborators (including support from Alan Levine) and developing the technical infrastructure, the experiment began.

It's now week 2. The theme is Sound. Well, the jury is still out on whether that's a literal statement or not, as yet. Getting the daily create prompt together for the website and cross posting on Facebook and Twitter has been become a daily (and late night and weekend) challenge for us too.

Thanks to the good work of John Caulfield and Connell Cunningham, users' contributions have visibility on the large video wall in the library and on display screens around the campus. This is a display of the latest moderated user posts via six or seven social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, etc.), once the weekly hashtag is used within a contribution on any social media platform. These are also accessible live on the website on http://campuscreate.eu/category/your-creations/ No mean feat.

So, Campus Create is off to a promising start. The warm encouragement and strong participation from many around campus has heated our frozen winter feet. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and seeing how it all unfolds.

Check out the next creative daily prompt on http://campuscreate.eu/ (and register if you want to receive the weekly email). I hope to see your 'creates' join the conversation.

Flipping great.

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:46:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we had the good fortune of catching up with Dr. Bryan McCabe, a lecturer in Civil Engineering at NUI Galway. Bryan has been re-configuring his pedagogic approach, by giving students exposure to lecture materials out of class through lecture videos and quizzes. He then uses lecture time to problem-solve, discuss and debate. More popularly known as "the flipped classroom", this learning model has been growing in popularity in recent times, due to its emphasis on active student engagement (Chen, Wang, Kinshuk & Chen, 2014).

In this short video with Bryan, he discusses his approach, and the feedback he has received from students on allowing them to take more responsibility for their learning, and engage collaboratively in the practice of engineering.

Further Reading:
Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Kinshuk & Chen, N.S. (2014). Is FLIP enough? Or should we use the FLIPPED model instead? Computers & Education, 79, 16-27.

Straw S., Quinlan, O., Harland, J. & Walker, M. (2014). Flipped Learning: Using Online Video to Transform Learning. Nesta Report. Accessed from http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/flipped-learning-using-online-video-transform-learning

Check out two NUI Galway Library Books:
Bergmann J, & Sams A. (2012)Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

Bergmann, J. & Sams, A.(2014). Flipped learning Gateway to Student Engagement, Learning & Learning with Technology.