Classroom Technologies

During a recent conversation with a colleague at City University London, I was pointed to a recently produced video by the Education Support Team in the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences on the use of a TurningPoint-based Electronic Voting System (EVS).

The Education Support Team interviewed Dr Kielan Yarrow, Deputy Undergraduate Course Director, who spoke on his experiences of using EVS to support learning and teaching.

Dr Yarrow drew on his own practise to highlight some key points during this video as to why one might consider engaging with the technology to support their teaching. These included:

• The EVS can be to maintain student attention, by enabling an (interactive) review of what they’ve just learnt.
• The EVS enables immediate feedback to the lecturer as to whether or not the students have taken in the previous part of the lecture.
• It provides a mechanism to quickly assess students’ understanding of a given topic at the beginning of the lecture.. .and provide students with some feedback on where they are both individually, and in relation to the rest of the cohort.
• It is possible to gain feedback on some issues that students may not feel comfortable feeding back on within an open forum.

The full video, which explores the points above in more depth, can be found at: http://drgn.in/liqrHP

If you would like to would like to utilise these technologies to develop your own learning and teaching related activities, please do get in touch either on 01225 384 392 or via email at e-learning@bath.ac.uk.

To support the Classroom Technologies showcase during Innovations Day, the e-Learning team are pleased to announce the release of two guides to support members of staff in their use of the Panopto, the lecture capture platform.

Introducing Panopto is a four page guide which outlines the process that colleagues should follow when thinking about capturing lecture content. In particular, it focuses on five distinct stages — Prepare, Book, Capture, Share and Archive — as appears below.

The PDF guide can be downloaded from: http://www.bath.ac.uk/lmf/download/51820.

The single page flyer 5 Reasons to Capture Your Practice gives sound evidence-based advice on lecture capture and is available as a PDF at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/lmf/download/51821

Both resources from the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office of the University of Bath are an Open Educational Resources and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (except the Panopto screen image and the LTEO logo).

For  information on either of the publications, or for further advice and support with capturing your practice, please contact the e-Learning team at: e-learning@bath.ac.uk

Later on today, I am going to be presenting to colleagues who have enrolled on Section A of The Bath Course in Enhancing Academic Practice. My focus for today is going to be the use of Classroom Technologies within large group teaching.

In a slight shift from previous presentations that I have delivered on this topic, the slides that appear below are more pedagogically focused than I might have presented previously. This represents the beginning of the next phase in deployment of such technologies – that is, focusing more on the Why? qualities of the technologies, rather than simply the How?. That said, I’m still available to facilitate training on TurningPoint 2008 software and the like.

If you have any questions related to the presentation above, and/or would like to utilise these technologies to develop your own learning and teaching related activities, please do get in touch either on 01225 384 392 or via email at e-learning@bath.ac.uk.

Next week on Monday 7 March, 1000 – 1200, the e-Learning team will be hosting the second Using technologies in face-to-face teaching workshop of 2011.

The aim of this workshop is to investigate how the effective use of technology might enhance face to face teaching.

In particular, it will allow you to gain hands-on experience at developing learning activities using a range of Classroom Technologies which encompasses the TurningPoint-based Electronic Voting System (EVS), the lecture capture software, Panopto, as well as a range of related technologies such as Papershow.

Through the discussion and evaluation of a range of University of Bath-based case studies, there will also be the opportunity to discuss some of the issues that need to be considered when implementing these technologies in teaching.

To book a place, please send an email to acdev@bath.ac.uk, stating your name and department.

On Wednesday 9 February 2011, 2.00pm – 3.30pm, the e-Learning team will be hosting another TurningPoint 2008 Masterclass. For both new and experienced users of the system, the seminar will encourage colleagues to focus and reflect on their own current practice with using the Electronic Voting System (EVS), before examining case studies of use at both the University of Bath and further afield.

Later on – Paul Jenner, a TurningPoint Account Manager at Reivo Ltd. and an experienced user and trainer of TurningPoint 2008 software, will guide participants through its more advanced features. This with the aim of allowing current practitioners to get more out of existing software.

For further information, and for details on how to book a place for the seminar, please head along to: http://go.bath.ac.uk/turningpoint2008masterclass

An Access Grid Node (AGN) is an advanced video conferencing application that uses audio and video tools to allow people in different locations worldwide to meet within a virtual meeting room.

Uses of AGNs might include collaborative teaching or hosting research focused meetings. Features of Panopto could potentially be utilised in this way, but AGN’s offer far more versatility, along with being more fit for purpose.

AGN use could also be intertwined with the TurningPoint Audience Reponse System (ARS), where the possibilities exist to run the same interactive slides across multiple sites in real-time.

For more information on what AGNs are and how they can be useful, head along to the links listed below:

• http://www.insors.com/io/index.html
• http://www.ja.net/services/video/agsc/AGSCHome/

The University of Bath now has four AGNs, three funded by research grants and one for general use. Details on rooms and their locations can be found at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/agn.

Colleagues in BUCS have scheduled a demonstration of the AGN rooms for tomorrow, Wednesday 26 January 2011, 10.00am to 11.30am.

If you would like to book a place, please send an email to agn@bath.ac.uk, stating your name and department.

Next week on Wednesday 12 January, 1000 – 1200, the e-Learning team will be hosting the first Using technologies in face-to-face teaching workshop of 2011.

The aim of this workshop is to investigate how the effective use of technology might enhance face to face teaching.

In particular, it will allow you to gain hands-on experience at developing learning activities using a range of Classroom Technologies which encompasses the TurningPoint-based Electronic Voting System (EVS), the lecture capture software, Panopto, as well as a range of related technologies such as Papershow.

Through the discussion and evaluation of a range of University of Bath-based case studies, there will also be the opportunity to discuss some of the issues that need to be considered when implementing these technologies in teaching.

If you are unable to make this workshop next week, it will be repeated within a couple of months on Monday 7 March 2011, 1000 – 1200.

To book a place, please send an email to acdev@bath.ac.uk, stating your name and department as well as your preferred attendance date.