Look back impact components in digital learning fields

Recently I read the JISC Digital Transformation materials and unintentionally started to recap when and what components were noticed by me. What their maturity levels are at present in my practice. Hence I make a snapshot of my thoughts. The maturity levels are offerred as three levels from the Famework for digital transoformation in higher education:

• Emerging to established
• Established to enhanced, and
• Enhanced to mature.

These components are my personal takens and they can be from the key themes of Technology, Teaching and Learning development, Digital and physical infrastructure, Organisational culture, and Operation and execution. A sense of their maturity levels at present is highly related to my work environment and my cognition.

Year	Attention-grabbing components in my field	Maturity Levels at present (2024)
2024	Digital transformation Employability Education 4.0	Digital transformation – Emerging to established Employability – Established to enhanced Education 4.0 – Emerging to established
2023	Artificial Intelligence (AI) Digital leadership Learning Analytics to improve retention	AI – Emerging to established Digital leadership – Emerging to established Learning Analytics – Established to enhanced
2022	Reducing Digital Shock Multi-factor authentication (MFA) Cyber security	Digital shock – Emerging to established MFA – Enhanced to mature Cyber security – Established to enhanced
2021	Closing Digital Poverty & Digital Divide (DP&DD) Hybrid Working Hybrid Learning	DP&DD – Established to enhanced Hybrid Working – Enhanced to enhanced Hybrid Learning – Established to enhanced
2020	Digital Wellbeing Gamification Microlearning	Digital Wellbeing – Established to enhanced Gamification – Established to enhanced Microlearning – Established to enhanced
2019	Digital Citizenship & Digital Etiqutte (DC&DE) Student Voice & Students as Partners (SV&SaP) Software as a service & Cloud services (SaaS&CS)	DC&DE – Established to enhanced SV&SaP – Established to enhanced SaaS&CS – Enhanced to mature
2018	Digital Capability Big Data Blockchain Collaboration & Collabrotive Learning	Digital Capability – Established to enhanced Big Data – Established to enhanced Blockchain – Established to enhanced Collaboration & Collabrotive Learning – Established to enhanced
2017	Digital Accessbility Digital learning spaces & Inclusive environment Blended Learning Business Intelligence & Data Analytics (BI&DI) Universal design & Inclusive Design (UX&ID)	Digital Accessibility – Established to enhanced Digital learning spaces – Established to enhanced Blended Learning – Established to mature BI&DI – Established to enhanced UX&ID – Established to enhanced
2016	Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)	EDI – Established to enhanced GDPR – Enhanced to mature
2015	E-learning benchmarking Digital Security	E-learning banchmarking – Established to enhanced Digital Security – Established to enhanced
2014	Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality (VR&AR)  e-Assessment Bring your own device (BYOD) Personalised Learning Agile methologogy & change management Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)	VR&AR – Established to enhanced e-Assessment – Established to mature BYOD – Established to mature Personalised Learning – Established to enhanced Agile – Established to enhanced MOOCs – Established to mature
2013	Open Education Resources (OER) Flipped Learning Virtual Classroom 3D printing	OER – Enhanced to mature Flipped Learning – Enhanced to mature Virtual Classroom – Enhanced to mature 3D printing – Enhanced to mature
2012	Creative Commons (CC)	CC – Enhanced to mature
2011	Mobile Learning (M-Learning) Digital Literacy Digital Natives	M-Learning – Enhanced to mature Digital Literacy – Established to enhanced
2010	QR Code Various content creation tools Web 3.0 / Semantic Web	QR Code – Enhanced to mature Content creation tools – Enhanced to mature Web 3.0 – Established to enhanced
2009	Social Networking	Social Networking – Enhanced to mature
2008	Learning management system (LMS)/ E-learning system / Virtual learning environment (VLE) Community of Practice (CoP)	VLE – Enhanced to mature CoP – Enhanced to mature
2007	Information Storage and Retrieval (IS&R) Information Literacy	IS&R – Enhanced to mature Information Literacy – Enhanced to mature
2006	Web 2.0 Open Source Content Management Systems (CRM)	Web 2.0 – Enhanced to mature Open Source – Enhanced to mature CRM – Established to mature
2005	Social Media Social Learning	Social Media – Enhanced to mature Social Learning – Enhanced to mature
2004	Knowledge Management (KM) Organisational Learning (OL) Competitive Intelligence (CI) Intellectual Property (IP)	KM – Enhanced to mature OL – Enhanced to mature CI – Enhanced to mature IP – Enhanced to mature
2003	E-Publishing Web-based systems	E-Publishing- Enhanced to mature Web-based systems – Enhanced to mature

Notes from BbWorld21 (online)

One of the benefits we have since pandemic last year is many conferences/events that were used to be fewer chances for us to attend due to budget have become free for attending online. #BbWorld21 is one of them. I want to express my gratefulness and appreciation for these organisers. They have made a lot of effort on supporting wide communities, and provided opportunities for us to carry on knowing the latest research, new development, use cases, challenges, solutions, trend, and take time to rethink our own practice. Indeed great thanks to the presenters too.

BbWorld 2021 was taken on 13-15 and 20-22 July. Because of different time-zones, most sessions were at afternoons and in evenings in BST. I realised that I have already accumulated a list of need-to-watch-later recordings from different resources, so I attended a few sessions that I thought would be the most useful for and relevant to my work in hand, and gave up most sessions that were of my interest. This is one of tips I learned and made changes of – to use my time more efficient and live a mindset of not feeling that I have missed important information. As I know that selected sessions and content will be available in the event platform in the next 30 days, and later will be available in the Blackboard Community site.

My first focus was the Roadmap sessions as they provided the latest updates from the supplier. It’s vital for us to learn if any expected functionalities will be delivered and we can feed them into our own action plan. I like the plan of development was presented by time ranges: current available, 1-3 months, 3-6 months, and 6 months above. However, I have to check back roadmap recordings later if I want to find some specific development information. I was thinking if Blackboard could provide an online active Roadmap version (something like this), it might be even better for all customers to have an overview and find a plan of a specific functionality when they want to. I’m sure internally Blackboard has such methods of developing products.

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I attended three sessions in this topic of Accessibility and Ally, from Michael Shaw (University of Lincoln), Fiona MacNeill (University of Brighton) and a group of Accessibility Champions (Adam Elce, Claire Gardener, Kristen McCartney-Bulmer and Ben Watson) who shared their views/experiences.

The University of Lincoln developed an Accessibility Toolkit, which is for supporting digital content accessibilities. I have seen some universities have provided such support resources. I think in my institution, I developed a guide as a tech guide to Ally which is for VLE content, rather than for wider digital content. Our web team developed some guide to accessibility for web content. What my institution needs to improve is to combine materials created by different support teams together, redesign and make them as an institutional accessibility support source.

Seems many universities have provide Accessibility mandatory training as a staff CPD course. This is a good way to make staff be aware of why and how to improve accessibility quickly. I think there are some well-developed Accessibility training courses that universities can adopt or introduce to their staff if they haven’t had developed their own Accessibility training courses.

• Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society (University of Southampton)
• Designing Usable and Accessible Technologies (University of Southampton)
• Courses provided by Blackboard Academy
• Inclusive Teaching and Learning Strategies (LexDis 2.0 by researchers in the ECS Accessibility Team (University of Southampton)
• Mobile Accessibility (LexDis 2.0 by researchers in the ECS Accessibility Team (University of Southampton)

UX design is not new, however it seems that people have talked about it increasingly since last year. I first learned it from one of my courses – Interaction Design in 2003, which made me realised cognitive and social issues. In the Ally European User Group meeting of March 2021, Fiona MacNeill presented her experience of supporting Blackboard Ally adoption in the University of Brighton. She shared more in the #BbWorld21 too. I have learned from her presentations:

• An Information Architecture-led Approach she adopted from the book <<How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built>> (Stewart Brand, 1995) to design a service for Ally. If the book is unavailable immediately, probably watching the Stewart Brand’s BBC TV series will help to get an idea.
• A stakeholder analysis method – Customer value chain (a.k.a. ecosystem map) from the book <<Mapping Experiences: A Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams>> (James Kalbach, 2016)
• Project planning template and interactive whiteboard tool – Mural template.
• Engaging activities – using escape rooms to bring learners into the accessibility learning journey.

If you are interested in UX design and interaction design, the UDL Guidelines and IDEO may be helpful as a start.

Other popular topics include Application integration, Data Analytics and Blackboard Ultra courses.

I haven’t used the Developer Documentation site yet, it is definitely very useful for people who support integration between systems and understand how to use Blackboard data and reports. Blackboard provides regular training webinars, and supporting courses via the Blackboard Academy for people to learn the Ultra course. They are good resources if your institution does not provide training. I do recommend people register Blackboard Community and the #BbWorld21 to check any topics that are of interest to you.

Becoming accessibility over a year

Since last year, there have been rapid increasing opportunities for us to participate in online conferences and activities in relation to eLearning. This kind of free availability never happened before the Pandemic outbreak. The good is that I have many upcoming options of learning opportunities, such as to learn the latest good research results, practice cases, recent issues/trend/concerns/discussions. I take them as CPD opportunities. The bad is to hugely challenge efficiency and productivity regarding my time and workload. Considering my time, energy and wellbeing, I have given up some. I was off twitter for about 7 months although I use Twitter as a rich learning resource. I had to tell myself it’s ok to miss some resources from there.

Looked back my calendar, and noticed that I have attended at least one conference/event that has included the topic of accessibility monthly since January. There are more forthcoming.

• January – Cardiff University IT Staff Conference 2021
• February –
  • Tech for All: our online accessibility conference (UAL)
  • Digitally Enhanced Education webinars (University of Kent)
  • Cardiff University Coaching Skills CPD workshop
  • HE/Public Sector webinar: How Cardiff Metropolitan University meets accessibility targets
  • Cardiff Science Festival
• March –
  • JISC Digifest 2021, Xerte Conference 2021
  • ALT ELESIG The Student Voice on Active Blended Learning webinar
• April –
  • Cardiff University Online CPD Spring School webinars
  • Blackboard Digital Teaching Symposium
  • ALN Global Festival of Active Learning
• May –
  • Cardiff University IT Technology Revue
  • Global Accessibility Awareness Day
  • Blackboard TLC Europe 2021
• June –
  • Blackboard EMEA webinar Culture of Inclusion: How to create a more inclusive classroom
  • ONLINE Kent Digital Accessibility Conference 2021

The Kent Digital Accessibility Conference 2020 was like yesterday, and I took some time to attend the Kent Digital Accessibility Conference 2021 (You can get all session details from this website). I have to admit that I have learned a lot from the University of Kent Digital Enhanced Education webinars and the Digital Accessibility annual conferences.

Accessibility is in my daily practice and over a year I have made changes as follows.

• Always use an accessibility checking tool (e.g., Accessibility Insights for Web, WAVE, Microsoft Accessibility Checker) to check accessibility of my document before making it available for others.
• Remind colleagues to check and improve accessibility of their documents if I notice a problem.
• Suggest people to be aware of the accessibility issues and improve content accessibility if I assist their online courses.
• Keep my knowledge updated and keep learning from communities and accessibility experts.
• Share resources in our internal community.

#KentDigitalAccessibility2021 was a super accessibility event. I’m grateful of the organiser and presenters’ effort and time. I was able to attend all sessions in the morning and one session at afternoon. Here I recap what I learned from the event.

First, there are many support that we can get to help our institutions to improve (digital) accessibility. Although I don’t work in a role of accessibility support particularly, accessibility is with everyone for everyone. This is not new from this event, but I found the Accessibility maturity framework developed by Alistair McNaught Consultancy and AbilityNet is a very supportive tool that helps institution leaders to define what need to change. I learned more from talks from Dan Clark, Michael Vermeersch, George Rhodes and Richard Morton.

• From Dan Clark’s talk, I revisited the two reports: Arriving At Thriving: Learning from disabled students to ensure access for all and Covid-19: Disabled Students in Higher Education: Student Concerns and Institutional Challenges. I learned the issues of accessibility support so far and checked my own support requests for accessibility. I think I received even fewer requests about accessibility from students and staff. I agree that accessibility is everybody’s responsibility as we all create some digital content every day.

• From Michael Vermeersch’s talk, I know that I have recognised Microsoft accessibility features and are using them. I recently encountered an issue of “Check Reading Order” warning in a file, which I found it’s time consuming to fix if it’s a complex diagram in PowerPoint with many animations on the diagram items. I was glad to see Michael demonstrated these features. Furthermore, I learned the Microsoft developed support materials. A diagram of how to enable accessibility would be useful for us to check how we have done so far.

• From George Rhodes’ talk, I learned findings of how Accessibility Statement prepared in FE. Again it addressed the “lack of initial individual engagement”.

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  AllAble finding VLE in FE

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  AllAble research finding mystery shopper

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  AllAble research actions so far

• From Richard Morton’s talk, I learned the mobile apps exceptions complying with WCAS 2.1 level A and level AA. It is an app or not an app. How to test mobile apps. What happens about non-compliant apps and sites, and CDDO resources.

The criteria do not apply to apps

Second, understanding student needs is key. I don’t normally have opportunities to work with students and see how they use technologies and know barriers that technologies/content bring to them in relation to accessibility. Therefore, talks like what @Paul_GeorgEnder and Wayne Wilsdon have given about their experience and thoughts are very welcome. This caused me to think two things below.

• They need to use assistive technologies. In the session I noticed that the camera facing Wayne Wilsdon was not in a good angle. However he wouldn’t know what was the right angle due to blindness apart from someone told him. No one next him could give him a hand neither. So I was thinking – Don’t we have AI technologies such as eye movements, face recognition and video surveillance? If the camera could recognise his position, adjust angle automatically and captured his movements for this presentation purpose, it would improve everyone’s online experience, wouldn’t it?
• I would expect in future there is a conference that only students as presenters to show us their accessibility awareness, their experience of the impact by accessibility improvement, their research and stories about accessibility.

Third, as usual, some new resources to read and take some into my practice.

• NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) screen reader application. It does not support MacOS.
• NADP COVID-19 Resource Hub (Coronavirus)
• RNIB Bookshare UK education collection
• GDS (Government Digital Service) Accessibility videos. “The accessibility monitoring and accessibility capability teams and functions have all moved from GDS to CDDO” quoted from Richard Morton’s presentation. CDDO refers to the Central Digital and Data Office.

Last but not least, apart from the University of Kent resources, I can’t recommend more of the JISC Accessibility community group and AbilityNet, and the Blackboard Ally user community (if you use the tool).

Takeaways from the Blackboard TLC 2019 (Newcastle)

The Blackboard TLC 2019 ends. Big thanks to Blackboard and the University of Northumbria for the collaborative conference, and the speakers who shared their experiences and stories. Now it’s the time to polish up my notes and reflect on my experience over the three busy days.

I think the key discussions are still around (1) user experience – accessibility and Ally, (2) learning analytics – (Blackboard) data and (3) the platform – SaaS & Blackboard Ultra.

I can’t recommend the Blackboard community groups enough. I found it’s a good way for me to learn solutions and new things about the technologies we support. It’s a repository where I can find useful support materials and ideas. It saves my time when I am able to reuse some excellent support materials. There are always one or a few peers to answer my questions and help me understand the tool and the design ideas behind. Congratulations to the MoCo User Group chairs Sarah Sherman (BLE) and Amy Eyre (University of York) who won the Blackboard Catalyst Award for Community Engagement.

Visions, why and how

Blackboard announced its EdTech platform which aims for supporting connected user experience, academic effectiveness, learner engagement, and education insights. The journey for us will be self-hosted service -> Blackboard managed-hosting -> SaaS -> Blackboard Utlra. 

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The University of Northumbria presented their journey. I would say the most difficult part is to have a clear strategy as a guideline. I was very impressed with their rapid process of moving from Blackboard managed-hosting to Blackboard Ultra. Undoubtedly many teams have worked together to contribute to the successful transform.

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Revisit the known

From learning design to students experience investigation, many useful cases and experiences were shared. It’s always nice to recall the resources again.

• Allan Carrington’s Pedagogy wheel Eng v5.0 – A learning design tool that is developed from Bloom’s Taxonomy and the SAMR  model and focuses on help educators to apply simulations into their learning design.
• UCISA Webinar – VLE minimum standards – Lessons from the sector – UCISA is a digital practitioners community and it shares a great amount of good practice and resources. One of the professional communities that learning technologists should join.
• JISC report – Digital experience insights survey 2018: findings from students in UK further and higher education
• Future Teacher Talks UK – the monthly webinars are must-see resources for educational practitioners (delivered by Lilian Soon, Alistair McNaught, and Ron Mitchell)
• Learning design:
  • DADDIE (a blended learning design model, developed by Daniel Scott)
  • ABC (an online learning design method developed by Clive Young and Nataša Perović)
  • Bloom’s learning taxonomy (developed by Benjamin Bloom in 1956)
  • TPACK (developed by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, Michigan State University)
  • JISC learning design module from the Designing Learning and Assessment in a Digital Age guide

Learn the new

First, the keynote from Professor Kevin Bell (Western Sydney University) called us to rethink learning, learners’ experience and what skills students need to have. It brought concepts, designs and practices of gamification (the idea, the book), ubiquitous content (a quote about information), story arc (also narrative arc) (an explanation, storytelling), intrinsic motivation (an explanation, Dan Pink’s TED talk about motivation), credentialing mistakability (Professor James Arvanitakis’ talk) and more. I quite like the innovative example of UNIV 291 Courses. Making students take the ownership of the learning activities and feel they are an important part of the group that affect the activity outcomes. Gaming, is very psychological. It’s about curiosity, control, challenge, enjoyment, self-value, and satisfaction.

    

Second, what is learning capture? Jim Emery (Glasgow Caledonian University) presented their project that encourages us to think out of the box. Don’t just create videos of lectures.

lecture capture vs Learning capture

examples of learning capture

lecture capture resources

Third, Blackboard Data is a new unified, cross-portfolio data and reporting platform. It is a SaaS platform itself and has been integrated with Blackboard SaaS only. Obviously, Cardiff University VLE won’t be able to use it yet. Here are the platform displayed by Rachel Scherer (Analytics Product Director) and the Blackboard Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs) for authorisation.

Fourth, Brian Finnegan (Director of Educational Consulting) introduced the new Blackboard Training and Professional Tool. It was designed to support requests such as pre-sessional students to use VLE, a way of supporting prospective students, pre-enrolment engagement, viewing students journey and so on. However, we have a student journey tool. Do we want another tool? I think the key problem here is not the tool, but the management policy and workflows, the data flows and the regulations of managing and using the data.
    

Last but not least, Karen Howie and Paul Smyth (University of Edinburgh) showed how they have improved student experience with VLE, which focused on 6 streams: VLE templates, template checklists and guidance, redesign of training, agreeing consistent terminology, automation of processes and finally measuring and evaluating the impact of the project. They have used the Elements of User Experience framework (developed by Jesse James Garrett) to improving their service based on their findings.

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To-do and To-ponder

One good thing about attending conferences is to get great insights, ideas and inspirations. However it’s not good to have many wanted things and ideas together at the same time. I use the MoSCoW method to help my next-step plan.

Must have	➽ Blackboard Collaborate Ultra – A “First step of delivering online session checklist” (ideas from the Amy Eyre’s Online Workshop/Seminar Requirement Form, the University of York) ➽ Review our existing support materials and improve the icons. (ideas from Steinar Hov and Paul Ole Hegstads’ Eesysoft experience of using Eesysoft, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Should have	➽ Comparison of Bb managed-hosting and SaaS, learn what SaaS does and doesn’t. Do we have resources ready? ➽ Revisit our design (surveys and communication methods) of evaluating user experience of VLE (ideas from Karen Howie and Paul Smyth’s research and improvement work, the University of Edinburgh) ➽ Explore Blackboard Coursesites ➽ Check GDPR (T&C) for our supported learning technologies
Could have	➽ Blackboard Ally – to review the Ally report my colleague has written. ➽ Move to SaaS – to meet and discuss with the universities that have been on SaaS
Won’t have (this time)	➽ Blackboard Data ➽ Blackboard Ultra

More…

With speaking to people from different universities, it’s fairly clear that the VLE system support and the academic activities support relating to use VLE must work closely. Those who have been in the same team/division work more productively and feel less stressed.

It’s very nice to see old peers and meet new people. Interestingly it’s the first time in the UK someone asked me if I have a business card. No, no, since LinkedIn, Twitter or personal web pages are well used, I am a visible/searchable person online. Newcastle is a wonderful city. I had taken the opportunity to see the beautiful seven bridges in the sunrise and the Angle of the North in the sunset. I was very impressed with the City Campus East, Northumbria University (though the lecture halls do not have charging points). I also wonder if students will miss the support posters in the lift. I didn’t attend the DevCon, some interesting information can be seen via #BbTLCEUR.

    

Catch up insights (2)

As I am not a teacher, I wondered how I would teach if I were offered a teacher job? With this question in mind, I finally revisit and carry on learning the Future Teacher 3.0 Talks (resources) over the Christmas break.  The rich resource indeed provides a handy guideline for me to refer to if I’d like to learn ‘how to teach’. [It’s recorded, it’s accessible and I hope it’s available even after the project ends.]

Very grateful that Ron Mitchell, Alistair McNaught and Lilian Soon have designed and facilitated the online sessions. I enjoyed this online learning particularly on the five aspects below.

First, I like the storytelling style which brought my focus into the session topic through an interesting story (e.g., Harold Houdini’s escape in session 2 and the singer’s Tarboosh in session 3). This is well linked back to session 1 (8/23) – ‘Elements of brain-based learning’ and proved the ‘Emotional’ element works.

Second, each session was well organised with similar pattern: introduction, pedagogic topic with research evidences, engaging view sharing, presentation, engaging activities, review, reflection, and reminder at the end. I can see all elements introduced in session 1 (8/23) have been applied in the session activities. It provided a consistent and coherent learning environment that reduces participants’ confusion and supports effective learning.

Third, it invited some practitioners to present their work and practice in the session (e.g., Using social media in Chemistry teaching from Glenn Hurst in session 8, a summative podcast project designed by David Beer in Session 11). This is a great way of sharing good practice and let participants to see how other educators have used technologies in their specific teaching area. With practitioners to answer questions, it stimulated deeper discussions and allowed connections to be built between people who are interested in the similar teaching activity/idea.

Fourth, participants were encouraged to share their work and contribute to the topic. This brought new views and discussions. For example, in session 4, Teresa MacKinnon was invited to explain terms of ‘information sharing’, ‘collaboration’, and ‘co-creation’, which pointed out the most demanding action is not only sharing information and working together, but more about sharing understanding and creating together.

Last but not least, the sessions own are excellent examples of how technologies can be used in online teaching to engage learners and simulate active learning. For example, Xerte is used to create the website and to present session content; Zoom is used to deliver the online sessions; Textwall and Padlet are used to collect/share/present participants’ views/resources; Tricider is used to for participants to share and vote views; and many more (e.g., mindmeister for creating mind maps, Audio Feedback Toolkit for creating audio feedback). I noticed that Zoom has a same problem to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, which people who join the session cannot see the resources(links) that have been shared before they join the session. The moderator needs to keep checking if newer participants follow and re-post the resources again and again. (To show resources in one place of a session without re-posting has been one of the highly required features in Blackboard Collaborate community.) I also remembered recently a University student told me that a lecturer took the assumption that all students have smart phones and asked them to use TurningPoint to answer questions without providing alternative options such as the website URL if accessing via a laptop. This made students who do not have a smart phone feel helpless. Clearly, the “The ironies of text” in session 5 and the session 9 Inclusive Practice are essential guidelines for us to avoid such problems.

There are many useful tools/resources for me to explore. I am unable to cover everything I learnt here. I listed some new tools that I had a quick look when they were mentioned the session.

• Zeetings A cloud-based presentation platform that allows users to combine their PowerPoints and PDFs with video, web content, notes, images and polls. Seems this is a powerful tool. I will try this one soon.
• Ipadio A podcast tool that allows record, upload and share audio to the web easily.
• poodll It is a set of tools for language teachers to build dynamic courses. I cannot tell how useful it is for non-language teachers yet.
• Hypothes.is The application aims to collect comments about statements made in any web-accessible content, and filter and rank those comments to assess each statement’s credibility. Very useful for peer review.
• coggle.it This is a collaborative online mind-mapping tool.
• SMOG Calculator It is a handy tool that helps you to check the readability level of your own documents or texts from a website.

I am sure I will revisit the site for time to time to check the case presentations, learning design checklist (session 1 16-20/23) and tools/resources/research that people have recommended.

Catch up insight (1)

Today I am able to sit down to catch up the ALT Online Winter Conference 2018 recordings (one of the enjoyable things on my to-do list over Christmas break).

I am glad to review the Johari window model, revisit my digital capability mapping (JISC Digital Capability Framework), and try the practice mapping template after viewing the session of “‘Mirror, Mirror’: working towards a reflective digital practice“.

Probably I came across Johari window back to my Masters study on Nonaka’s SECI Model many years ago, and then used it in a CPD training course to learn assertiveness four years ago. I don’t remember how I did it in that course, but I realise that such activities (Digital Perceptions tool), which is similar to the ‘skills audit’ activity I did in the Springboard course last year needs other people’s help, otherwise I cannot complete it right away. Although in the discussion part (@34:15), Dr. Donna Lanclos has explained Rosie’s case, I still wonder how much useful balanced views the person who I seek feedback from can really provide based on their knowledge of me online and/or reality?

I thereafter listened to the e-Learning Stuff Podcast #92: The Digital Perceptions Tool to learn more. This is not diagnostic tool, it is for reflection. Yes, it should not be a diagnostic tool, it should not be a judgemental tool. It said that the bottom-left quadrant shows what you have chosen about you but others don’t. The bottom-right quadrant shows leftover terms which are those terms that neither you nor others have chosen. Thus my understanding is that in Rosie’s example of the bottom-left quadrant is empty (Facade), it means all six terms that she chosen were chosen by others too, which should all appear in the top-left quadrant. As I can only choose top six terms about myself, and others need to do the same, I will not know the terms that I abandoned about me and others abandoned too due to the option limit, so these terms left in in the bottom-right quadrant and become Unknown. The interesting thing is some terms could be “Known to self” (in my perception) but they become displayed as “Not Known to Self”.

Blended learning course III week 2

To complete the week 2 was not as smooth as I expected because of some other unpredictable work. I went through each section and felt this course does not have as many comments from participants as the other two Blended learning courses. However, this doesn’t mean the course content is not well-organised. I am very grateful for the module providers and educators.

The key points of this week are digital content creation and collaboration in relation to the Digital Skills Framework.

We create/use digital content almost every day. It can be simple or sophisticated. I summarise a list of common skills and knowledge as follows.

Digital Content Creation Skills	Knowledge on using technologies	Tools / Technologies
Create/edit/publish/share images	image file types (e.g., .png, .jpeg, .exif, .gif, .svg, .bmp) editing convert file types backup embed html code elements	screenshot tool (e.g., picpick, Awesome Screenshot, Jing) image creator (e.g., vectr, pixteller) graphic editor (e.g. Canva, GIMP, Google Photos, pixlr) publish and store pictures (e.g., Pinterest, Flickr,Photobucket,instagram)
Create/edit/publish/share podcasts	audio file types (e.g., .wav, .wma, .mp3, .rm) recording editing convert file types backup embed html code elements	podcast generator (e.g., podbean, Audacity, PodcastGenerator, poderator) Player (e.g., PlayerFM, iTunes, cloud Caster, smarterPod)
Create/edit/publish/share videos	video file types (e.g., .mp4, .flv, .avi, wmv, .mov) recording editing captioning convert file types backup streaming embed html code elements	video capture tools (e.g., Panopto, jahshaka, splice, Camtasia, movavi, movie maker) video editor (e.g., wevideo, videosoftdev, videopad, FFmpeg) Player (e.g., VLC, SMPlayer, xine, RealPlayer) Converter (e.g., handbrake, freemake) share videos (e.g., vimeo, youtube)
Create/edit/publish/share websites	webpage files RSS CSS HTML(5) XML Web domain URL web browser	Text/HTML editor (e.g., w3schools, Online HTML Editor, Adobe Dreamweaver, NetBeans) website creator (e.g., wix, weebly, wordpress, google web designer, imcreator)
Create/edit/publish/share objects	presentation animation multimedia files web design	presentation tools (e.g., Powerpoint, Prezi) Interactive authoring tools (e.g., Xerte Online Toolkits, voicethread, h5p) animation maker (e.g., biteable, animatron, scratch)
Create/edit/publish/share documents	file types (e.g., .doc, .odt, .rtf, .pdf, .txt, .xls, .csv, .wps) backup	Windows Office OpenOffice Dropbox
Create/edit/manage databases/content management systems	programming languages (e.g., SQL) debugging E-R data structure software architecture server configuration	Programming Editor (e.g., Notepad++, SciTE, bluefish) Web Inspector on the web browser E-R diagram maker (e.g., lucidchart, smartdraw)

We share digital content with others frequently. We can reuse numerous online digital content created by others too (see free digital resources below). Copyright of digital content is the crucial knowledge. It is vital for we to understand what is free licensed online content and how we use Creative Commons.

• clker (free clip images)
• Stock free images  (free images)
• Pixabay (free images and videos)
• Wikimedia Commons (freely usable media files)

We use collaboration technologies widely too. It can be a group of people work on organise socialised activities, distant learners take a group work, researchers from different institutions co-write a book, or people undertake a project together. Many useful tools have been introduced in the course. Here I list a few.

• web conferencing and meeting tools (e.g., Adobe Connect, Webex and GotoMeeting, Skype, Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, FaceTime) You can communicate online either one-to-one or in a group.
• Twitter hashtags (A way of organising a discussion around topic and allowing people to easily follow through twitter.)
• Diigo (A multi-tool for personal knowledge management. It supports many features such as bookmarking websites, tagging, creating your own library of online resources, highlighting text on web pages, and adding notes to web pages.)
• OneFile (An e-portfolio tool that records and manages work-based training.)
• Mahara (An open source ePortfolio and social networking web application.)
• PebblePad (An ePortfolio and personal learning platform, where learners can manage their own learning materials in the way suits their learning purposes.)
• Slack (A Teamwork tool that supports messaging, files management and sharing, video communications and more.)
• Trello (A project management tool that can be used as a personal to-do list, or as a collaborative online tool for sharing and planning how a group of people work together.)

For me, there are many good tools, but the key is not the tool itself as it always changes and develops according to people’s needs. We cannot use one technology to help learners achieve the expected learning outcomes. It’s necessary to trail different ways of using technologies and find the most useful features that the technology can support for the learning activity.

Blended learning course III week 1

Completed the first week of the Blended Learning Essentials: Developing Digital Skills online course. Comparing to the previous two Blended Learning Essentials courses, it includes more learning design activities. Although it says 4 hours per week are required, I still feel it’s not enough. If I read all comments and responded all questions, I would double or triple the time.

This course focuses on developing learners’ digital skills for successful employment and modern workplace. What digital skills employers are looking for? How can education help students to gain the skills?

The University of Leeds and UCL have developed a Digital Skills Framework which includes four themes:

• Managing digital identity
• Managing digital information
• Creating digital content
• Collaborating digitally online.

This week is about the Digital identity and Digital Information, and the next week it will be more about the Digital content creation and Digital collaboration. One of our activities was to find the requirements for digital skills in job descriptions in our own area. Interestingly I read a tweet recently about “Learning Technologist” and “Learning Designer”. My opinion is that they have little difference about required digital skills but some differences of the levels of requirements for pedagogic and research knowledge. Linking to the course activity, I list brief examples between the two according to the digital skills requirements.

Digital Skills	Learning Technologist / Educational Technologist (job essential criteria examples)	Learning Designer / Institutional Designer (job essential criteria examples)
Digital Identity	Knowledge of ways to present information online for maximum impact and professionalism	Experience of using websites and social networks in a professional context
Digital Information	Knowledge and understanding of TEL theories, systems, tools, their varied applications and potential for innovative practice Awareness of issues related to the use of resources in an HE context, such as copyright, data protection, academic integrity, accessibility etc. Provide research, analysis and optimisation of all digital activities Ability to analyse and process data accurately To plan and manage the development of varied e-learning material, including video, webinars, self-paced interactive resources, and online activities.	Experience of administering content on a virtual learning environment or online content management systems Ability to evaluate and quickly learn new software tools. Experience of administering content on a virtual learning environment or online content management systems Good understanding of copyright surrounding the use of digital materials Have a good understanding and experience of web technologies such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
Digital Content Creation	Knowledge of tools for multi-media content production, including ideo and audio creation systems and associated editing and streaming technologies High level skills in writing and editing online content Knowledge of design and implementation of engaging online guidance, training materials and technical documentation	Ability to create and maintain digital resources for learning – including, graphics and video. An excellent understanding of and confidence with complex IT systems and multimedia content creation Reviewing and creating learning content for websites and other digital products including the content of interactive games, video, animation, apps etc.
Digital Collaboration	Excellent team working skills, able to work collaboratively to enhance service delivery Able to work in a team of multiskilled professionals.	Work in a supportive role within a team, collaborate with colleagues to solve problems and innovate Ability to create visualisations and prototypes/mock-ups for sharing ideas with colleagues

(Sources: jobs.ac.uk,  indeed.co.uk)

When we talk about Digital identity, using digital badges is one way to motivate learners to gain more skills and do better. For example, the Employability passport set up by the Sussex Downs College. Primarily, I hope educational institutions and employers develop more agreements on digital capabilities and issue relevant digital badges widely.

Some other digital skills frameworks (see below) are also useful. Basically for me, apart from subject knowledge, what we teach and what students need to gain are the skills that enable them to be adaptive, transferable, resilient and learn how to learn.

• All Aboard project – Digital Skills Metro Map (by NUI Galway, University College Dublin, the University of Limerick, and Mary Immaculate College Limerick)
• JISC Digital Capability Framework
• Open University Digital Skills Framework
• The 8 Core Digital Competencies (slide 10, by Grovo)

As usual, I learned new resources:

• Tech Nation 2016 Transforming UK Industries  – An annual report that said “… digital jobs and activity are becoming ever more important in traditionally non-digital areas of the economy.” Yes, I haven’t found a job that does not use digital technology completely nowadays.
• OneFile – a training eportfolio, an assessment software, a CPD tracker, a dynamic reporting suite and a virtual learning environment.
• Weebly – a free online tool for building a good quality website from scratch. I have seen Wix as a free online website-building tool due to advertisements.

Notes from the BbTLC 2018

This is the second time that I attended the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference. As Cardiff University has about 31k students and 5k staff using the Blackboard technologies, it is an effective way for us to get involved in the event. I highlight what I have gained from the 3-day conference as follows.

1. Expectations and unexpected facts

Having a conference mobile app and a twitter hashtag is an effective way of organising my activities and not getting lost in the big venue and the busy schedules. One feature I like particularly is the option of “mobile web browser” if you do not want to install an app on your mobile device. Also, following the #BBTLC18 tweets allows me to learn what is going on in other sessions that I was unable to attend. It’s a good way of taking notes and sharing with people at the same time.

Attending conferences is a great opportunity to network. It helps me to catch up with old peers and get to know and meet new people who work in the same area. Especially it’s very useful for me to recognise the pioneers and experts from other universities and to learn how they have contributed to this area. For example, talking to Dr Jonathan Knight, one of the three UK Blackboard MPVs (Matthew Deeprose, Chris Boon), I learnt that Blackboard provides Weekly Office Hours (Technical and Learn) to enhance its support.

Blackboard IM product will end its life in December 2018. Although not many universities are using it, we have users who like it and use it for supporting students widely. It’s pity that Blackboard did not show its user feedback research on this tool before they made the decision. Conversations with Behind The Blackboard are often like to talk to a robot. So I was pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Anneke Bates about my concerns and requirements. Thank Andy McGinn and Wade Weichel for directing me to the right expert.

There is no perfect product and service. With non-enough testing and users’ feedback, the transitioning from Crocodoc to New Box View had brought many unnecessary problems to our users. I appreciated that Blackboard honestly took the responsibility for this issue. I’m also very grateful for the peers who have shared their resources and experience of supporting the transition via the Blackboard Community.

2. Priority

For me, the first thing that I need to do is to check and participate in the User groups. The Blackboard Community has been available for all users for about two years. I haven’t followed the user groups as regularly as I should. I need to go through the information and discussions in the Mobile/Collaborate (MoCo) User Group and the Wales User Group, and keep an eye on the European Ally User Group when it activates.

In Wade Weichel and Dan Loury‘s talk, it presented Blackboard’s platform strategy and upcoming product development. Blackboard becomes listening to users more. So the second thing for me is to check the details of the Q2 2018 and discuss with my colleagues about our plan.

The third is to bring the offer of “Academic Adoption Discovery Workshop” back. Although we had Blackboard consultation a few years ago, I don’t know where it ended. Meanwhile, I didn’t attend the pre-conference Academic Adoption Day on 9th April 2018, and not sure if there were something similar. It would be helpful to see other attendees’ reflections on it if they had attended the first day activities.  I will keep an eye on relevant tweets, blogs, and discussions.

The Blackboard Catalyst Awards can be tracked back to 2005. It aims to recognise and celebrate those in the Blackboard Community that have demonstrated and achieved exemplary practices in teaching and learning improvement. Congratulations to the BbTLC18 winners (University of Derby, Edge Hill University, University of Leeds, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University). I think two schools in Cardiff University have done excellent work through Blackboard technologies. I will encourage the academic staff and learning technologists to submit applications for the awards.

3. Adoptable ideas

Andy Jaffrey from the Ulster University (the first UK university of adopting Blackboard Predict) presented how they have used Blackboard Predict to explore predictive analytics solutions which would allow at-risk students to be identified sooner, make early intervention possible, and further to increase retention. He mentioned that they provided “Annual report for each school on their Internet”. I think this is a service that we haven’t done enough and should investigate how we can improve sooner. We use Eesysoft to assist the Blackboard analytics. When Andy mentioned the challenge of answering to staff’s question “Can you show me why the student is predicted to fail?“, I took it as a thought-provoking question for both my team and Eesysoft (a very friendly supportive team) to prepare.

Maria Tannant from the University for the Creative Arts shared their experience of developing a toolkit to support their VLE. The most valuable lessons/tips for me to take back include:

• Devolve responsibility and allocate ownership of the resources to different teams – indeed when we design a supporting structure, we often manage the resources for the original team which created the resources. We did not make the ownership and responsibility clear.
• Involve QAE (Quality Assurance and Enhancement) – we often forget this one or maybe we do not know how to involve them?
• Provide Glossary to help students to understand the terms that the University uses, for instance, learning outcome, feedback, and assessment. We are improving at this point. However, we need to make it more accessible for students, and design a way of involving students to contribute to it too.

The Excellence in VLE Awards scheme developed by the University of Southampton is a good example of engaging academic staff to recognise and share e-learning best practices through listening to students’ voices. I missed the session presented by Tamsyn Smith, Sam Cole, and Matthew Deeprose. However, I had nice conversations with them in the evening party. I’d like to share their tips and experience with my colleagues and develop some engagement programme in my institution.

4. Good to learn

• The close speech from the Professor Richard J. Reece, the Associate Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students at the University of Manchester showed us what a Digital university looks like, what the University of Manchester’s digital strategy is and how they are working on it. I like the diagram of the Student Lifecycle at Manchester in particular.
• It’s good to have the time to read the e-learn magazine (No.19 Learner Engagement) on the train back to Cardiff. The particular interesting reading was the 5 UK highlights in Education on p.67.
• Not new but still good to see the similar findings of what are the key matters in students’ experience of VLE from Lisa Fishburn’s (Newcastle University) presentation, for instance, More lecture capture, Easy to access resources, Better mobile app, and Consistency of content. I was surprised to see an Organisation in their VLE has grown so massively and pleased to learn how they have stopped the potential disaster. It’s an alert for us to check our use of Organisations in VLE too.

5. Further reading and exploring

• Blackboard Accessibility Checklist
• Jon Kolko‘s website of interaction design
• NSSE National Survey of Student Engagement Findings 
• Octalysis, the Gamification Framework and behavioural design 
• Overview on Student-Centred Learning in Higher Education in Europe
• After Dr Malcolm Murray‘s presentation about Gamification, I had a brief conversation with him as I am not sure if a student’s profile should be visible to all other users in the designed content area. He said that students asked for this feature so that they are able to compete with each other. I suppose it is related to the specific pedagogic “context”. I need to do further research on this aspect.

The conference can be overwhelming. All in all, it provided opportunities for me to meet people, develop ideas, speak to vendors, be aware of new development, and get inspired. A very big thank you to Blackboard for organising the event. I look forward to working more closely with the community, the peers, the third-party producers, and Blackboard partners.

Jisc Digifest 2018 notes

It’s the first time I attended Digifest (#digifest18). Thanks for technologies and sharing, most programme sessions are available now.

The key areas include digital strategy, learner experience analysis, and blended learning pratice, especially many from FE.

What did I learn?

• Many institutions have developed digital strategy.
• Many institutions have adopted the Jisc Digital Capability Framework.
• There are two types of digital strategies. One is the  institution commits to its digital strategy (e.g., Lancaster University, UCL). The other is the institution grants the digital champions who drive the digital change (I suppose Cardiff University is one of these).
• 116 institutions have used the Jisc student digital experience tracker over the past two years as a benchmark. The Jisc staff digital experience tracker was released last month.
• Institutions started to look into data critically, make sense of data, and generate useful data for students. It’s worth viewing the “Evaluation of student engagement with feedback: feeding forward from feedback” presentation made by Dr Dan Gordon.
• Students’ expectations for enhancing learning experience include more opportunities for interacting with lecturers; collaborative opportunities; developing digital literacy skills; directing students to use BYOD in a constructive way; being partnership.
• IT infrastructure and institutional culture are vital in digital strategy implemenation.

What did I think?

• I heard the view of mirroring physical spaces to virtual spaces. I don’t think virtual environment should be the same to the physical environment, so do the learning activities and experience. If we just think how to mirror physical to virtual, we probably lack flexibility and innovation.
• The challenge of changing from fixed to flexible study paths. It made me think about how APIs and SCORM were developed.
• How important the digital learning designer’s role is?
• Sanbot has visited three HE universities. It said that it can recognise faces, talk 28 languages, respond your questions. It can be programmed to do anything you need. Perhaps I only saw a small side of the technology. I felt it needs a lot of development.
• A finding from the Canterbury Christ Church University: Students often said that they don’t want to be contacted by email. However, the survey found that students still use email the most to receive information. I guess that email is still the common communication method even though the instant messages, audio messages and video calls become increasingly used. This is because many institutions still choose conventional communication channels.
• A senior audience said that it’s often the university policies (governance) stopped the university strategies. Sounds like a conflictive statement, but it’s the lesson and experience we should not ignore.

This is my reflective post for the Cardiff University Learning Technology blog.