Trinity Saint David Building Capacity Project

Gwella CAMEL Report

TBCP Admin — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:14:14 +0000

I was invited to attend and give a presentation at the Gwella CAMEL event which was held in Cardiff University yesterday (10th November) on the topic of Learning Environment Reviews.

CAMEL (pdf) (Collaborative Approaches to Management of eLearning) was a project originally funded by HEFCE in 2006 through their Leadership, Governance and Management Programme (LGM), led by JISC InfoNet in partnership with JISC, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the Higher Education Academy.

This was the last Gwella CAMEL in a series of 4 which were held between August and November this year – funded by a modest grant from the HEA to enable a small group of people involved in TEL from all the Welsh HEIs to get together physically for a day of discussion and sharing of experiences.

The University of Glamorgan arranged and organised all these events and the topics were:

Social media – hosted by University of Wales, Trinity Saint David in August
ePortfolios – hosted by Aberystwyth University in August
Online Assessment – hosted by University of Glamorgan in October
Learning Environment Review – hosted by Cardiff University in November

It was not possible for us all of us involved in TEL to attend every event personally, but we are disseminating our findings on a Gwella Ning site that we have set up and are hoping to arrange a Gwella CAMEL Season 2 next year with a small grant from ELESIG. (Evaluation of Learners’ Experiences of eLearning Special Interest Group). The money is simply used to fund transport and refreshments for delegates to each event – in order not to impinge on individual HEI budgets – and therefore does not need to be particularly large.

Nonetheless, these CAMELs have proved to be very successful – not least because they have enabled those of us working in eLearning in Wales HEIs to build an on and offline Community of Practice where we learn from, help and support each other on a regular basis and not just at annual TEL conferences.

Our next Gwella event is to be held next week at Aberystwyth University when a small group of us are meeting to plan the development of a shared online eLearning support materials repository with all Welsh HEIs being invited to participate.

A snapshot of Trinity Saint David TEL activities Jan – Oct 2010

TBCP Admin — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 14:08:25 +0000

This post contains a summary of a range of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) related events and activities that took place between January and October 2010. It covers conference reports from:

JISC RSC Wales Roadshows: Jan – April 2010
Blackboard Northern Europe Teaching and Learning Conference April 2010
SALT Conference: May 2010
The JISC Innovation Forum: July 2010
The Gwella CAMEL series: Aug – Nov 2010

……and a brief look forward to forthcoming events during the new academic year 2010/2011

Conference Reports:

RSC Wales Roadshows: January – April 2010
Background Information:

“RSC Wales is going on the road in 2010 bringing a series of free, cross-sectoral, hands-on ‘roadshows’ to a venue near you. We will be covering a number of themes including learner experience, inclusion, personalisation and quality. Our objective is to bring people together to focus in a practical way on how technology can support educators to address the issues associated with these themes. Our roadshows aim to provide an enjoyable and effective experience that will benefit learners, staff and the organisation in a variety of ways”

Feedback:

Julia Ault, Alison Harding and Ellen Harris from the LRC attended this series of events held in the Village Hotel, Swansea:

Barrier Busters: to identify and discuss barriers to increased accessibility and inclusion and how these could be broken down or ‘busted’. Access Apps, the JISC TechDIS service and making your documents and resources more accessible were all covered during the day.

Learner Voice, Learner Choice: to identify and discuss methods of understanding learner experience and to investigate ways of empowering learners to express themselves and manage information. We explored a range of technologies including mobile and handheld, mind-mapping, online collaboration using a text wall, wikis, eportfolios and http://typewith.me/ which allows you to collaborate seamlessly online in real time with colleagues/students etc

Small Steps, Great Strides: This particular event was aimed at Managers and focussed on how the innovative use of technology can change an organisation for the better in line with greater expectations from both learners and policy makers. Some of the technologies used in the previous session were again deployed but this time with the aim of Management and Team collaboration as well as interaction with learners. eSafety, conducting a training needs analysis and evaluating the effectiveness of your change management methods were all covered during this event which also offered the opportunity for hands-on practice with some useful tools and resources as well as timely and sensible advice.

Information and Resources from all 3 conferences and other RSC events can be accessed on the RSC Wales Moodle site – under Event Resources and more information on all JISC services can be found on the JISC Advance website.

Blackboard Northern Europe Teaching and Learning Conference: April 2010
This conference was held at Swansea University from 12th – 14th April (the first time a full Blackboard Conference has been held in the UK) and was attended by Julia Ault for the full 3 days and Sally Wilkinson on 13th April.

Blackboard launched the latest version of their VLE (virtual learning environment) Blackboard Learn Release 9.1 at this event and we were able to attend several sessions where information and training was provided on the changes, increased functionality and improvements to the interface. I have also since attended further meetings in Swansea University with Blackboard staff to discuss this in more detail.

This updated version will be particularly useful to us in Trinity Saint David because a fully supported Cymraeg Language pack is now included at no extra cost and the addition of a lower level of ‘sub-tabs’ or pages will enable us to provide an ‘easily switchable’ bilingual interface for our users without the clutter and confusion of multiple navigation ‘tabs’ stretching across the screen.

The SWWHEP eLearning Team gave a presentation on the SWWHEP eLearning Project as a whole at this event and I was able to highlight our innovative bilingual portal in my section of the presentation. Other notable improvements include a drag and drop facility for modules, a notification dashboard which can be customised so that students can see assignment hand in dates, announcements, important information and so forth at a glance, a more intuitive control panel for instructors and fully integrated rich media tools such as YouTube, Flickr and SlideShare – known as ‘Mashups’.

We upgraded to this new version in Trinity Saint David during the summer break 2010 and the initial response from staff has seemed positive and enthusiastic. More information on Blackboard 9.1 can be found on the Blackboard website.

It proved to be a very enjoyable and informative conference generally, affording us the opportunity to network with colleagues from all over the globe and hear about eLearning (TEL) in places as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Ormskirk, Alberta, Galway and the Netherlands! Interestingly, despite the obvious differences in location, the same issues/problems re user training and support seem to arise wherever you are.

The sessions on Mobile Learn – which is being developed by students at Stanford University, California – (Blackboard bought their company for their talents and expertise) – were particularly fascinating and were demonstrated on an iPad simulator on a Macbook which was very realistic and exciting.

SALT (Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching) Conference: May 12th 2010
Julia Ault and Jeni Williams from the Faculty of Arts attended the second annual Excellence in Learning and Teaching Conference at Swansea University.This event was very engaging and interesting, but also rather thought-provoking too. A recurring theme began to emerge throughout the day as many of the presenters recounted the difficulties they had encountered – not so much in the initial set-up of a new project or idea – but in retention of participation after the initial enthusiasm had died away.

‘If you build it, they will come’ was generally held to be true if the project is suitably marketed to the intended participants, but ‘getting them to stay’ is often quite another matter. It was also agreed that encouraging voluntary participation in collaborative activities in particular was something of a challenge and that an incentive – often taking the form of setting collaborative tasks as part of compulsory module assessment – needed to be offered for such activities to be deemed successful.

This may be something that we need to take onboard ourselves and prepare for when planning our own technology enhanced learning projects within the university.
Gwella CAMEL Project Aug – Nov 2010
The University of Glamorgan CELT (Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching) – together with colleagues from other Gwella member institutions – has established four CAMELS focussing upon sharing Best Practice with respect to four major themes which have emerged as part of Gwella: the Learning Environment Review, Online Assessment, Social Software and ePortfolios/PDP.The JISC Collaborative Approaches to the Management of eLearning (CAMEL) model will be used to build a community of practice and each CAMEL will be hosted by a different member Institution.

The CAMELS will be about showcasing and sharing both positive and negative elements identified during the Gwella programme in an open and honest environment.Each event will be arranged by a member of the Glamorgan CELT staff in collaboration with the host institution. Follow-up events could be arranged if desired and a record will be kept via photographs, twitter feeds and blog entries made by the participating institutions. As the institution organising all the events, an overall evaluation will be completed by Glamorgan and presented to the HEA.

Trinity Saint David was invited to host one of the events on the Trinity Carmarthen Campus – the Social Software strand – with a team of Gwella colleagues including Julia Ault (Trinity) Chris Hall (Swansea University) Allen and Geraint (Newport) Mary Jacob (Aberystwyth) and Steve Woodward and Jacqui (Glamorgan).

This CAMEL was the first in the series and took place in Y Cwad in early August. It was judged to be a great success by all who attended and it was felt that it set the right positive and enthusiastic tone for the series. We were joined over lunch by Chris Cardew from Swansea University for a chat about Pebblepad which whetted colleagues appetites for the second CAMEL which was held later that month in Aberystwyth University on ePortfolios.

Julia Ault will also be attending the Learning Environment Review CAMEL at Cardiff University in November.
Gwella Shared User Support Online Resources Repository
Following on from recent discussions in the Blackboard Wales User Group about sharing user support resources, colleagues in Aberystwyth University intend to use the £1000 Gwella collaboration fund to further this project. They have agreement in principle from the PVC for Learning and Teaching and HEA Critical Friend for a day in Aberystwyth to plan the organisation of an online repository for resources and actually start the process of putting in content. Gwella would be used to pay expenses for one representative from each interested institution. Julia Ault will be attending from Trinity Saint David.
JISC Innovation Forum July 2010
This was held at the Royal Holloway (University of London), Egham, Surrey.The purpose of the JISC Innovation Forum 2010 (JIF2010) was to bring together over 200 JISC funded projects for a networking, sharing and learning event. JIF2010 provided a forum for projects and programmes to meet, engage, share ideas and form useful relationships.

Trinity Saint David was invited to participate in this event because it is currently engaged in a JISC Building Capacity Project.

Julia Ault attended on behalf of Trinity Saint David. Again, this was a most enjoyable event, offering many opportunities for networking, making new friends and learning more about a diverse range of JISC Projects being undertaken across the UK.

Forthcoming Events:

Gwella Conference at Gregynog Oct 2010
Julia Ault, Kathryn James and Kevin Matherick will be attending this event ( Gwella Agenda Oct 2010 ) as the Trinity Saint David Gwella Team this year and we look forward to a stimulating round up of Gwella activities throughout Wales over the past 3 years plus a hopefully optimistic look forward to an uncertain but undoubtedly challenging, future in Higher Education in Wales over the coming few years.
Trinity Saint David TEL Dissemination Conference Jan/Feb 2011
The new University of Wales: Trinity Saint David was formed on 1st September 2010 and our Learning and Teaching Strategy focuses on providing a supportive environment that maximises learning opportunities for all our students.

The development of technology enhanced learning (TEL) is seen as a vital element underpinning our strategy – both within the university itself and in collaboration with regional partners – and therefore a full one day TEL Dissemination Conference – including lunch and refreshments – will be held at Y Llwyfan on the Trinity Campus in late January / early February 2011 – final date to be confirmed.

This will be an ideal opportunity for colleagues from both campuses to come together with like-minded people from other institutions across the UK and others for what we hope will prove to be an interesting and engaging event that will ‘whet the collective appetite’ for a program of TEL – themed staff development activities planned for current and future academic years.

There will be a varied programme of presenters from Higher Education Institutions across the UK – plus a number of exhibitors showcasing new technologies – who will discuss a range of approaches to learning, teaching and online collaboration through the imaginative and effective use of technology.

The full programme of workshops/exhibits will be circulated nearer the date and we envisage that topics are likely to include the following and more:

* eAssessment* iTunesU – University of Glamorgan are the first university in Wales to have a presence on iTunesU providing podcasts of learning materials to subscribe to and download

* eCopyright – Data Protection and Copyright Manager, Aberystwyth University

* Developing a bilingual VLE – Bangor University, Y Porth

* SALT – Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching – discussing the conference in SU on May 11th and their aspirations etc

* JISC RSC Wales Roadshow – Accessibility and Inclusion – Learner Voice / Learner Choice – Small Steps / Great Strides….

* Learning Objects Campus Pack – personal learning spaces and more

* Elluminate – desktop web conferencing and virtual classrooms

* Gwella – eLearning fund, online learning, resources portal, lecture capture (Panopto) Aberystwyth University, University of Glamorgan

* SWWHEP – a look back at the eLearning Project 2008 – 2010

* Learning Resources at Trinity Saint David – what we can offer you and your students – focusing particularly on new technologies

Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference : JISC

TBCP Admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:33:23 +0000

This theme showcases practice from universities and colleges and shows how they are responding to the key drivers for change and embedding innovative practice across their institutions. It will explore:

How are innovations adopted and embedded?

How are mobile and handheld devices changing learning and teaching? How are they impacting on educational practices and what are the implications in terms of cost-benefits?

Maintaining innovation: what does it take to create future-focused learning? How can innovation in curriculum delivery be maintained in a climate of economic restraint?

How we can harness the power of partnerships and new ways of working to sustain innovation? What are the structures and processes that can support this at institutional level and the barriers, enablers and critical success factors that contribute to maintaining successful long-term partnerships?

How we can use collaborative technology to enhance and shape an educational future that is effective and financially achievable?

via jisc.ac.uk

Using Twitter as a PLN: Part 1 Building the toolbox

TBCP Admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:58:51 +0000

via slideshare.net

iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

TBCP Admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:42:39 +0000

Jakob Nielsen‘s Alertbox, July 2, 2010:

iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds

Summary:
A study of people reading long-form text on tablets finds higher reading speeds than in the past, but they’re still slower than reading print.

Many companies are betting big that electronic book readers will be one of the main ways people read long-form text in the future. However, such products will succeed only if the reading experience is much better than the misery of reading from PC monitors.

Various types of tablets ought to do better than desktop computers because they offer higher-resolution screens and a more comfy reading posture. But are tablets as good as printed books?

To find out, we conducted a readability study of people reading fiction on the two highest-profile tablets: Apple’s iPad (first-generation) and Amazon’s Kindle 2.

In contrast to our previous study of iPad application usability, we didn’t study a range of user interfaces. Instead, we tested only the default iBook app. Testing a single iPad reader let us more easily compare it with the Kindle, which has only one user interface.

Also, in contrast to our previous analysis of Kindle content usability, we didn’t consider non-linear content, such as Web pages or newspapers. Instead, we specifically focused on testing linear, narrative content because it’s the primary use case for e-book readers.

Finally, we didn’t test the many issues related to choosing and installing reading software, nor did we test the reading UI’s learnability. We taught participants how to use the readers before we started measuring their reading speeds.

Method

We ran a within-subjects study, testing each user on all 4 reading conditions — printed book, PC, iPad, and Kindle — rotating the sequence in which we exposed users to each device.
In usability research, it’s often better to use a between-subjects study, in which each person tests different conditions to avoid the transfer of learning from one system to the next. But in this reading study, we didn’t test learnability to begin with, and users definitely had substantial previous experience with the main skill we tested: that of reading. One major benefit of within-subjects testing is that it minimizes the effect of individual variability among the test participants.

On each device, we asked each user to read a short story by Ernest Hemingway. We picked Hemingway because his work is pleasant and engaging to read, and yet not so complicated that it would be above the heads of users.

On average, the stories took 17 minutes and 20 seconds to read. This is obviously less time than people might spend reading a novel or a college textbook, but it’s much longer than the abrupt reading that characterizes Web browsing. Asking users to read 17 minutes or more is enough to get them immersed in the story. It’s also representative for many other formats of interest, such as whitepapers and reports.

After users read each story, we gave them a brief comprehension questionnaire to test their understanding of the story. Our test participants got almost all the questions right, regardless of device, so we won’t analyze this data further here. The exam’s main purpose was to ensure that people would take the reading task seriously because they knew they’d be tested on it.

We didn’t ask participants to think out loud, so we were able to use multiple-user simultaneous testing (MUST) and test several users at once. Participants simply sat quietly and read, the way most people do at home. We provided comfortable easy chairs to emulate the typical reading experience with a tablet. (We also tested users reading from a PC monitor at a test station arranged like a normal office, with the computer on a desk and the user seated in an office chair.)

Users

We tested a total of 32 users: 5 for a few rounds of pilot testing and 27 for the main study. Unfortunately, we had to discard the measurement data from 3 users due to measurement flaws, so our reading-speed statistics are based on the remaining 24 users.
We recruited participants who like reading and frequently read books. This is obviously a biased sample compared with the entire population, but we felt that narrowing the target audience was reasonable for a study of e-readers.

At the beginning of each session, we quickly assessed the study participants’ reading skills by administering the REALM literacy test. (This test asks people to read words of varying difficulty and scores them based on the number they mispronounce. In our study, most users got all the words right; 2 people failed on one word, which indicates at least a high-school literacy level.)

We deliberately didn’t include any lower-literacy users in this study. Again, this was because we wanted to focus on the people most likely to actually read long texts on tablets.

Results: Books Faster Than Tablets

The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability.
Thus, the only fair conclusion is that we can’t say for sure which device offers the fastest reading speed. In any case, the difference would be so small that it wouldn’t be a reason to buy one over the other.

But we can say that tablets still haven’t beaten the printed book: the difference between Kindle and the book was significant at the p<.01 level, and the difference between iPad and the book was marginally significant at p=.06.

User Satisfaction: iPad Loved, PCs Hated

After using each device, we asked users to rate their satisfaction on a 1–7 scale, with 7 being the best score.
iPad, Kindle, and the printed book all scored fairly high at 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6, respectively. The PC, however, scored an abysmal 3.6.

Most of the users’ free-form comments were predictable. For example, they disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp gray-on-gray letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad (actually, the iBook app) indicated the amount of text left in a chapter.

Less predictable comments: Users felt that reading the printed book was more relaxing than using electronic devices. And they felt uncomfortable with the PC because it reminded them of work.

This study is promising for the future of e-readers and tablet computers. We can expect higher-quality screens in the future, as indicated by the recent release of the iPhone 4 with a 326 dpi display. But even the current generation is almost as good as print in formal performance metrics — and actually scores slightly higher in user satisfaction.

More on Reading and Tablets

The qualitative findings on users’ reactions to reading from screens are presented in our 2-day seminar on Writing for the Web at the annual Usability Week conference.
The conference also has a full-day seminar on designing touch-screen user interfaces, including mobile phones and tablets.

via useit.com

Interesting and useful study.

Posted via email from SWW TEL Picks

BigBlueButton Web Conferencing Software for HE

TBCP Admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:21:25 +0000

via bigbluebutton.org

An Open Source alternative to Elluminate for web conferencing in Higher Education.

Posted via email from SWW TEL Picks

Learning communities: Case studies: Twitter for Learning

TBCP Admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:31:25 +0000

Case Studies: Twitter for Learning

via helenwhitehead.com

Excellent post by Helen Whitehead (@helenrf) with useful information on case studies where Twitter has been used in Academia in a formal or semi-formal way.

eXe, The eLearning XHTML editor – WikiEducator

TBCP Admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:31:12 +0000

via wikieducator.org

Posted via web from SWW TEL Picks

Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning book – chapter visualisations

TBCP Admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:15:16 +0000

via elearning.heacademy.ac.uk

Posted via web from SWW TEL Picks

Trinity Building Capacity Project

TBCP Admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:05:00 +0000

The Trinity Building Capacity Wales Project (undertaken in partnership with UWL) is a JISC funded project focussing on the greater embedding of technology enhanced learning within the institution under the Building capacity program which will “enhance the application of JISC outputs and outcomes in the Higher Education Sector. The programme will work with senior change agents in HEIs (Pro Vice-Chancellors or equivalent) to create senior management led change in a number of key strategic concerns that are facing that institution”.

In addition to reporting on the project in depth as it progresses over the coming months, other blog posts and pages will highlight:

Conferences, events and activities within the sector related to technology enhanced learning
JISC Projects of specific relevance to the needs of the institution
Research Projects and Papers published by institution staff and sector colleagues
New software and resources that may be of interest to teaching and support staff – free and/or open source whenever possible
Developments in social media with reference to how they impact upon education generally and to the university specifically where appropriate