Last week I attended the Digifest 2024. It’s nice to see some old peers and meet new people in person, and mostly support my colleagues (Dr David Pike and Alina Bajgrowicz) to present “Engaging students and staff with generative AI ethical dilemmas”.
Here I jot down some key takeaways. A few key speakers call themselves as Futurists. There were highlights on ‘community‘, ‘environment‘ and ‘immersion‘. For example, the 17 goals released by the United Nations, which well linked to our recent Academy for Learning and Teaching Excellence talk event about climate change and the use of En-ROADS Simulator. What can we do as an individual about our space environment, where 50k objects (4k satellites) in the space that can affect us? Dr Moriba Jah raised the issues of space leftover objects, and cleaning them is very costy. But I wonder why did human being generated these objects initially. Shouldn’t the ones who generated them take the responsibility for cleaning their leftover objects?
A few important but not new things are below that I should remind myself of more often:
In life/work, we should try not taking ‘assumptions’. This is quite hard as it connects to our prior knowledge and experience. I think it’s a challenge to our cognition ability, from awareness to consciously making changes.
Nowadays with online communications and mobile phones, persisting distraction is unavoidable. Don’t forget to use the Eisenhower Matrix.
Many things/ideas we already know. How we interpreting what we already know into future matters.
A few noticable changes are:
“Data analytics” is maturing, therefore enabler roles such as data engineers and data managers are required more for data governance and data interpretation.
By 2025 many new jobs need to be reskilled. More people will choose to work for themselves as entrepreneurs. “Adaptive to changes” and resilience are curcial in employability skills.
Four areas matter in workforce in future: Is it your interest, Are you good at it, Is it well paid and Does what you do make you feel adding value to the world.
Comparing to my Digifest experience in 2018, this time new technology (products) seems not so highligted/addressed. It has become a part of our work/life. There were hardly robots, big touch screen, and VR equipment.
Seems people didn’t tweet as much as before (the Covid time). I wonder if people have started to use LinkedIn more or have they moved to use other social media tools?
I haven’t written blogs for a while due to my job and personal conditions have been changing.
I realised the “Dunning Kruger effect” on me here as I thought I will keep writing and maintaining my blogs as usual. This over-positivity and self-ability estimation made me understand myself even better. I had draften a couple of posts in my spare time over the year, but haven’t completed them. Let’s not slip this one again.
With two previous attendance experience of ALT conferences, I know it’s often compact and full of interesting sessions (see the programme details). I favour the ALT community not only because the variety of professionals who openly share their practices, experiences, lessons, expertise and visions, but also due to its reflective approach to CMALT (It’s not a life certificate but an ongoing reflective practice). Despite my institution didn’t/does not support my SCMALT membership, I continuously encourage my colleagues to achieve one. “Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.” (Clear, 2018, p.250).
It’s the 30th anniversary of ALT. There are also many changes about ALT. I am pleased to get the opportunity for attending the ALT conference online, which I unfortunately could not gain the benifits of meeting and interacting with old and new peers in person, however, it did allow me to be away from my work emails/Teams messages to some extent. It indeed allows me to gain insights, learn from peers, and check my practices.
Things I very appreciated are (only list a few here):
I can play the livestream sessions from the start if I was late to join (It’s like traveling through time, isn’t it?) or if I want to switch and join in a different session during a presentation. On the spot, it would be discouraged to leave one session room and go to another room in the middle of sessions because it’s impolite as well as can end up missing both session parts. The technology brings such flexibility well.
The platform strcuture is clear and easy to navigate.
The support guide sources are very useful.
It covers wide range of rich timely topics.
A few inconvenient things are:
The vevox.app seems not connecting to different sessions and I couldn’t check back a session’s questions page easily (I might not get how to use it in a right way.).
The slides related to each session are unvailable from the session box, which I haven’t worked out how to get them yet.
The online view of the presentation screens in some rooms was small and blurry. It’s difficult to see the content clearly.
In a couple of sessions, the sound was not recorded, and I didn’t know how to tell them.
I started to think more of leadership not only because of my position/team/institution but also because of the situations and culture that I wasn’t facing before.
Anne-Marie Scott‘s keynote speech covers her perspectives on leadership and her experiences and tips on leadership. There are not many new points but how these points are put into practice does matter a lot. These include taking a step at a time, planning for multiple scenarios, leading by developing others, qualifying your time, taking time for refill and refocus, and building trust. I learned that we need to accept the complexity and uncertainty in our work. To me, trying to simplify and change it is like fighting back against the pull of entropy.
From Tim Neumann, Rich Osborne, and Abbi Shaw’s session “Distributed Leadership in Digital Learning: Agile Adjustments, Brisk Breakthroughs and Controlled Chaos”, I learned an Agile project management approach. I quite like the reflective way of viewing how they have led digital learning strategy and practice changes.
“Digital shock’” was a new term to me even though its explanation wasn’t new to me. It’s like a buzzword in the conference, which made me think of the “digital natives”. I guess this term was from the JISC International students’ digital experiencereport. The session “Equity, diversity and inclusion: understanding international students’ ‘digital shock’” delivered by Elizabeth Newall, Tabetha Newman and Diana Catana and the Day 2 Keynote Student Panel presented many examples of “Digital shock”. Linking to my own expereince, after moving from a Russell Group university to a young culturally diverse university, I have been facing enormous requirements for improving digital learning services for “digital shock” students: 25% of the student population are international, 70% are mature returners to eduation, and 15% of the student are part-time. Many of them don’t have a laptop, need a lot of extra support for academic writing and understanding computer applications, or don’t know how to seek help. Recalling my own experiences as a mature interenational student 20 years ago, I had a good laptop, had a small cellphone without using wifi, had enough support of academic writing (not by using technologies like Turnitin, ChatGPT, Grammarly or Studiosity but from staff), and had a personal tutor. The big differences between that time and now perhaps are the mobile devices, VLE, social media, AI, and rapidly increasing requirements for good Internet and Wi-fi connections and digital literacy support.
From Coline Loughlin and Ben Parker’s session “Investigating the Relationship Between Virtual Learning Environment Engagement and Academic Outcomes Using Learning Analytics“, I learned that students spend 60 hours on average on viewing content, with a range of 12 hours to 75 hours. It’s interesting to see a pattern that they are trying to find. To the current stage, they noticed that over the point of 45 hours, the positive correlation between students’ spending time on learning content and their assessment results does not continue. It becomes inversion correlation. I’d like to follow their next stage research.
The VLE review seems a common institution task over the last 5 years, especially during the pandemic time, people have seen its importance and constraints. As I am involved in our institution’s VLE review, I was pleased to learn other institutions’ experiences, approaches, and lessons no matter what platform they changed to. Will Moindrot and Ben McGrae’s session “Diamond ranking and kaleidoscope eyes: engaging stakeholders to tune-in to our VLE review” caught my attention. I made a brief comparison as follows.
University of Liverpool
My institution
Moved from Blackboard to Canvas
Not decided yet
To engage student feedback, they provided £50 Amazon voucher for students.
Some of us felt £25 Amazon voucher was enough, but a colleague who undertakes many student studies suggested £50.
They provided Tier 1 24/7 support.
We discussed about 24/7 support and found in fact, it’s difficult for us. I learned that our libraries actually hardly have out-of-hour staff.
Different tools: buddycheck, H5P, Canvas Studio
Studiosity, Mentimeter, MyProgress
Innovative approaches: student partnership; p2p community of practice
Similar to them, we used surveys and focus groups.
Findings: 54% of students use their Canvas mobile app Students did not immediately see the VLE as a space for peer-to-peer engagement.
Emerging results: mobile learning, more VLE training
Their findings of student opinion on VLE
I agree the view that VLE review is not about platform itself. It’s about how you use the platform. People could use the same platform for different purposes and ways. We should focus more on the student experience. When we review a VLE, we should ask what our insitution defines our VLE role and what’s its identity. This is from the session “Digital Platforms – Mind the Gap” by Zac Gribble. I also enjoyed learning from the Day 3 Keynote speech from Satwinder Samra: “Keynote Collaborative Practice: Designing, Communicating and Diversifying Architecture”. His drawing of user experience illustrates what we are doing in our VLE review which is reviewing technologies use and supporting needs in the student journey.
In relation to digital transformation strategies and approaches, I got insights from Elaine Huber’s session “Leading transformational change in higher education: A critically reflective lens” (Note: they moved from Blackboard to Moodle). The Systemic Design Framework is new to me and I’m keen on learning from the Characteristics of Changemakers Series.
AI is another inevitable topic. In the session “Providing guidance and support to academic staff about the challenges and opportunities of generative AIs/LLMs”, Paul Finley and Matthew Wood shared three lessons in their practices of supporting AI uses.
Keep it simple.
Prepare for hooks, delivery, and materials. (I think their initial approach to encouraging staff to give AI tools a go is the same to what we are doing. However, I think we all need more designed activities for supporting students and engaging students as partners to explore AI uses.)
Planning for the long term.
The pre-recorded session “Corpus of student uses of AI foundation models to improve their assignment reports” from Eric Atwell and Noorhan Abbas presented how they designed assessments that studied Computing students’ experiences and opinions in exploring AI technologies to complete their assignments. The studies show the benefits and limits of using ChatGPT vs. BARD, Grammarly vs. Microsoft Word, and ChatGPT vs. Google Scholar, which is useful for us as we are studying our students’ experiences and views on using ChatGPT, Studiosity, and Grammarly.
I was thankful to hear student voices from the Day 2 Keynote Student Panel (the three students are from Russel goup universities). There are many valuable feedback and I joted down the ones that made me ponder further.
There needs more studies on understanding how online and viewing videos impact on student learning.
The need of more staff quick interactions.
The need of multiple ways of notifications about learning content updates.
The need of pre-support for digital skills before starting their university life.
Clarify course resources and requirements for technologies that are needed in study.
Not enough encouragement from staff to allow students speak up and ask for help.
Online and physical spaces for students to ask questions. (I know my previous insitituion has provided an online community plaform for all students and staff. I hope my current institution will reduce email uses for such purposes and provide a community platform too.)
It’s difficult to avoid using AI. The gap between students who have the knowledge of using AI well and who do not have knowlege of using it will become bigger and bigger.
Celia Popovic presented her study on staff’s opinions of turning on camera in online learning (see the session “Selfie Generation: but not in class”). I quoted the information from her abstract as follows. I’d agree that “… camera use is treated by instructors as a proxy for student engagement“. To be honest, I think there are more complicated elements behind the scene. For example, when with some specific people in the online session, poor Internet connections or solw computer devices, how much interaction it requires, encouragement to students, consistent guide to online etiquette across all online sessions, the insititution culture and so on. Based on my own experience of online meetings, people did not turn on camera each time. If it’s a webinar or one presenter leads a talk, most people will turn off the camera tacitly and when they speak, many of them will turn on their camera. If it’s a small group discussion, the people who don’t turn on the camera the first time tend to never turn on their camera. I presume in an online meeting that requires attendees’ interaction and input, turning off the camera would bring unnecessary challenges to attendees who have a hearing impairment. With my personal bias, turning off camera in a meeting with someone at the first time and not explaining why is unprofessional behaviour and disengagement attitude.
Reasons cited by students for turning off their cameras include (Castelli and Sarvary, 2021, Hariharan and Merkel, 2021): • Concern with appearance • Privacy, such as family or living arrangements visible • Discomfort with being looked at constantly • Doing the same as everyone else • Being judged for their behaviour (eg non-course related activities)
We use ‘EdTech‘, ‘digital technology’ and ‘learning technology’ interchangeably. We continuously face the tasks of procuring, selecting, evaluating, and developing technologies for supporting education needs. Anne-Marie Scott’s session “5 Things You Need to Know Before You Buy Edtech” was another wonderful presentation that shared tips of supporting EdTech and made me ponder our practice more.
It’s surely not enough to cover everything I learned from the 3-day conference in a blog post. I appreciate peers took the time to share their practices, projects, tips and insights. I appreciate ALT organised people in the EdTech area together, which allowed me to see the trend/changes, challenges, solutions, and possibilities and to reflect on my own practices. Congradulations to the ALT awards winners, who are excellent exemplars in improving edcuation.
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.
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.
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:
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.
At the beginning, I was thinking to use “online education” in the post title rather than “education”. However nowadays in HE, how many courses/programmes without online activities? Do I need to specifically say “online”? Cardiff University CESI colleagues have put great effort on making the Teaching and Learning Conference 2021 happen online. A big thumb up to them. I have managed to attend some sessions today. Here to jot down my takeaways.
To discuss the online education, two hours were not enough. Considering the wonderful keynote talk from Dr Tim Fawns, I’d like to reflect on three things particularly.
Self-directed learning
Self-directed learning (also self-regulated learning) is one of the theories I like to use in my practice, especially when I generate support materials. Tim mentioned it in the teaching context. Although I don’t teach, I embed this idea into my design and often explain to people why I designed it in such way. I expect learning materials that learners visit are latest, accessible, easy to follow, and mostly relevant to their context. This may not be related to their specific discipline/study, but absolutely about the feature/functionality that they use, for instance, it helps them to learn what could happen if they do not click the “Submit” button after uploading their Turnitin assessment. Tim pointed out that we should not leave the teaching materials for students to self learn, rather we need to tell students what it is, what they could do and how they may go through the materials in line with the topics. I nodded indeed. I often provide feedback channel with support materials and track the usage data regularly to see how users have interacted with the materials. However, unlike teaching and learning, the challenge for us is that most users are unwilling to spend time on telling us the details of their experience and what exactly are the barriers for their use. Apart from I take the ownership of this process and make it as a research project, then I could go to collect such data from users. Otherwise there is little opportunity for us to really look into the outcome of self-directed learning in our practice. This is also an ongoing challenge for IT – how much research we would have time to do when evaluating our delivery design in supporting teaching and learning.
Technology & pedagogy
Over the years, people criticise that technology drives pedagogy. Although I work in IT, I never felt so. With working experience in software development, we always take users’ requirements the first. So from my bias view of supporting users, the software is formed by users. Therefore systems we support are largely shaped and improved by what users wanted it to be. On another hand, I do see the impact of technology on people (education), such as who don’t need mobile phone and the Internet over last year? Technology impacts our methods. I see them interplay. I guess the view of “Tech drives pedagogy” was related to how much control/administration that users have and who have the ownership of evaluating, purchasing and supporting technology. I like Tim’s model of technology and pedagogy (see below tweet).
I have been guilty myself of simplifying things by saying ‘pedagogy before technology’ but really like @timbocop’s ‘entangled’ model #LTCU2021pic.twitter.com/G0pssvMaMP
I agree Tim’s viewpoint of honesty. I think no matter it’s teaching or supporting teaching, honesty is a necessary rule if we really want to engage the learners. I mean the teacher and the student are both human. Honesty is the invaluable trait in building human relationships. The purpose of education is to gain knowledge, to learn skills, to grow, and to explore unknown. When I was a child, I had a mindset that a teacher is not for questing how much they know, a professor knows everything of the subject; a doctor knows everything of their field. Questioning a teacher in classroom is strange. I think I started to learn critical thinking and understand why professors encouraged us to inquire when I took my Masters programme. I wish I had been led to see honesty of whom a teacher is in an early age.
More
In addition, I have enjoyed a lot of Allan Theophanides‘ “Pecha Kucha” presentation of A-Z of LT. May be because the topic is so close to my daily work. I like the little timer on each page and the simplicity of how he explained the technologies.
I used WordPress and Xerte often. Recently I decided to use Google Sites to create a personal website. Three years ago, I briefly tried it, but didn’t really use it. I haven’t explored how easy it is, especially considering both saving time and easy to customise. I summarise what I learned here.
Although I can use HTML and CSS to create a nice website, I don’t want to spend a lot time on web design. The WYSIWYG style website builder is what I expect. I was expecting the free Google Sites is super easy to use based on my experience of many Google applications. Now I completed my website. As a consequence, if you ask me whether I’d like to use it to develop more new websites, I would say Unlikely and tell you that I prefer using Xerte or WordPress. My first impression comparing with my rough idea of the previous Google Sites (Classic) is that the current Google Sites looks easier and nicer, but when use it, there are many restrictions and it seems not as structured and straightforward as the Classic version.
Don’t take me wrong please. Each tool has pros and cons. Google Sites just does not support my specific requirements well. When encountered a con, I would find a workaround. However, if the workaround is clumsy. It’s not easy to use. I think my most-used workaround with Google Sites is to create embedded codes, which is no difference from creating a webpage by writing HTML and CSS codes. That is, it is not supportive for people who have little HTML knowledge. It’s annoying as at the beginning I thought Google Sites provide easier ways of customising web pages than WordPress. To be honest, it doesn’t.
Let’s see Google Sites cons.
Cannot customise font & colours of the navigation menu easily as this is related the main theme you have chosen.
Cannot customise the page heading size and position easily by uploading a CSS file. The heading type is related the main theme you have chosen and limited to 4 options.
If you have a brand logo image and title, there is a restricted size and style for this. You cannot use CSS file or edit its HTML codes.
Cannot make the background colour of a page easily as it’s theme-based. If you choose one theme, its colour and font will apply on all pages. You cannot add a new theme or edit the default themes. There is very limited options for you to chose with a default theme.
Cannot embed a 3rd-party tool codes like ATbar accessibility tool onto a page or the Header area and make it work within Google Sites. (see my question on Google Site community)
Limited six default layouts. It is not easy to edit a layout and its parameters once you have used it. You’d better to create another layout to replace it rather than try to edit the layout you chose.
When editing a section, sometimes you cannot make an image and a texts box in the position with the size you’d like to as it has a designated fixed width and position for you already. See this image as an example.
If you want to embed an image into a Text box section between paragraphs, you cannot customise the image size as if you resize it, the texts in the box will be resized with the image. This has the same cause to the above limit. What you need to do is to separate texts into two text boxes and insert an image between the two Text boxes. When you change the image size, it will not affect the text paragraphs width.
There is no Tabbed Navigator available. If you want to have tabbed sections presented in one page, you have to use the Insert > Embed feature to add HTML codes that create the tab sections. In this way, your texts need to be in the HTML codes too. If you want to keep texts font size and style consistent cross all pages, you need to know what the default attributes are, and use the same attributes in your HTML codes. This requires a lot of extra work into your creation of the website. (tip: If you want to check the font or colour code on a page, using the Firefox web developer inspector tool is easier than using the Google Inspector tool.
If you use HTML codes to insert navigation tabs in a section, there is no option of height control. The height of the navigation tabs area is the same height of the section. The section height will not automatically change according to the texts length in different tabs.
If you want to add ALT description for a image, you need to do it in the Google media area rather than in Google Sites.
Cannot have an image as a link within texts. If you want to do so, you need to put the texts in one texts box and the image in a separate box. Alternatively, use the Insert > Embed feature.
Let’s see Google Sites pros:
Free and easy to share with people.
Allow customise website URL.
When edit the Header, Google can automatically adjust text colour to ensure that it’s readable on top of the background image. This is to support accessibility. I heard that it is suggested to have readability OFF for the gold header and ON for the maroon.
Duplicate, edit, delete, restore and move an item on a page is very easy.
Easy to restructure a page.
You can insert any item on a page by using the Embed item, which is the HTML codes.
It’s easy to integrate with other Google applications, e.g., Forms, Docs, and Calendar.
I followed the Steegle website resources to learn Google Sites. As my experience is only based on quickly producing a website, I may not know all features and hints. If you have some better workarounds and tips of using Google Sites, please let me know.
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.Â
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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.
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.
  Â
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. Â Â Â
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
âž½ 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)
âž½ 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
âž½ Comparison of Bb managed-hosting and SaaS, learn what SaaS does and doesn’t. Do we have resources ready?
âž½ 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)
âž½ Explore Blackboard Coursesites
âž½ Check GDPR (T&C) for our supported learning technologies
Could have
âž½ Blackboard Ally – to review the Ally report my colleague has written.
âž½ Move to SaaS – to meet and discuss with the universities that have been on SaaS
Won’t have (this time)
âž½ Blackboard Data
âž½ 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.
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.
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
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)
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 –Â 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
This week we focused on how we apply blended learning in a realistic and sustainable way. From my perspective, leaders, champions, students and practitioners working together to shape the change is very important. The activities of this week aim to encourage us to reflect on and discuss three areas.
Matching your innovation to your organisation’s ambitions
Making blended learning affordable
Managing a change to a blended learning culture
The most useful learning for me is to consider the costs and benefits of blended learning. The critical questions are:
Can we improve outcomes without increasing the per-student workload for teachers?
Can we maintain or improve outcomes for a larger cohort, or a more diverse cohort?
For me, this is case by case. Improving outcomes may not mean increasing the pre-student workload for teachers, but could mean both teachers and students will have different experience from their previous ways, which may be adapted by some learner/teachers quickly comparing to others.
I am glad to know that University of London has developed a free tool “CRAM” to help educators analyse the teaching costs and learning benefits of moving teaching online. CRAM stands for Course Resource Appraisal Model. Below is an introduction presented by Dr Eileen Kennedy. It looks like a very useful tool, however I haven’t been able to try this tool yet due to technical problems.
The second useful learning is about “culture change”. The educators listed the important aspects of managing culture change. I think in my institution people are trying to improve each aspect regarding to their own remit, however they are not working together collaboratively enough to make the process efficient.
Leadership – leading by example, directly supporting culture change
Vision and strategy – demonstrating the reasons for change
Developing staff buy-in – overcoming barriers with individuals, demonstrating the value of technology
Using champions – sharing good practice between colleagues and teams to encourage positive change
Reward and recognition for staff – showcasing good practice, rewarding innovation and risk-taking
Working with students and other stakeholders – asking students, employers and professional bodies what they want, and involving them in change
Using evidence to support change – making sure that pedagogy drives the use of technology, not the other way round
Providing a supportive environment – encouraging a safe environment for colleagues to experiment, ask questions, develop confidence
Developing skills – providing opportunities for professional development
Providing a robust technology landscape – ensuring the infrastructure is robust, fit for purpose and easy to use.
In addition, reading, responding , and participating the comments are essential in online learning. It’s a good way of sharing, learning from others and getting peer review. To some extent, it encouraged me reflect more on my practice. Definitely I feel thankful for the opportunities to learn Blended Learning.
There is an upcoming course Blending Learning Essentials: Developing Digital Skills, which is one of the three Blended Learning courses run by the University of Leeds and the University College London. Although they are facing the VET sectors, I encourage HE academic staff and teaching/learning support staff to join.
It’s the first time I attended Digifest (
Web n' Circle 