Classroom Technologies

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

On Thursday 12 May 2011, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office at the University of Bath will be hosting Innovations Day.

The event will provide an opportunity for colleagues to discuss issues and share practice within their Departments / School and to come together, with external speakers, for a University wide conference.

With the Annual Learning & Teaching Seminar entitled How Feedback is Being Reshaped and Rethought by Professor Dai Hounsell, Vice Principal for Academic Enhancement, University of Edinburgh, as well as a range of networking opportunities and workshop activities, the day promises to be an exciting one.

During the lunch break (12pm onwards), there will be a Classroom Technologies showcase in 3WN 3.7 where representatives from the following will be in attendance:

• Panopto, the institutional lecture capture platform
• The TurningPoint Audience Response System (ARS)
• SMART Interactive whiteboards and sympodiums

Additionally, academic colleagues from Departments will be on hand to discuss how their use of these technologies has helped to develop their teaching and support student learning experience.

For more information on how to utilise any of the above to support learning and teaching, please do take a look at the Technologies section of this website, and come along on Thursday.

Registration is free and open to all who are involved in teaching and supporting learning at the University.

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.

One of the real pleasures of my role as a Learning Technologist at the University of Bath is that I sometimes get to go along to undergraduate lectures. Usually, I am there to support the use of the Audience Response System (ARS), though I also take it as an opportunity to observe and later reflect on others’ teaching practice.

Generally speaking, I am happy to support a lecturer’s first use of the ARS to support their teaching, though on occasion, will go along to their teaching sessions on several occasions if there is a specific issue or item that needs resolving.

In one particular case, I was invited by Hedley Bashforth, a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social & Policy Sciences, to a SP10001 Social policy, welfare and the state lecture. The title of this weeks lecture was Social citizenship and the postwar welfare settlement and students were due to use the ARS.

Hedley has used the hardware on several occasions previously, given that a few weeks had passed since his last use (and there had been a Active Directory profile issue with the TurningPoint 2008 software), he wanted me to be around in the background, just in case I was needed.

In 2005, the British Government launched a citizenship test for foreigners who wanted to become British.The idea was that if  “you want the passport, then you’ll have to read Life in the UK, a special book, and sit a 45-minute test on society, history and culture.” (BBC News, 16 June 2005).

Following the short presentation of a video which outlined the issues that accompanied Windrush, the students were given an outline of the citizenship test, and told that they would be answering 18 sample questions using their clickers over the coming minutes. The idea was that after each question, Hedley would give some feedback, as illustrated in the photo below.

One of the key drivers for the use of the ARS was to further engage the students in their learning, and to enable them to become more actively involved in their learning.

As a formative exercise, and with the ARS being using in an anonymous form, the students could give answers in a risk free manner, knowing that their responses were not being individually logged.  It was also clear that the students enjoyed this particular exercise, with the activity creating a stimulus for discussion and debate, which Hedley facilitated.

If this is a type of exercise that you would like to repeat or adapt for your own context, and within 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.

Oh – and for the record – I got three answers incorrect. Must try harder! ;-)

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.

All General Teaching Area (GTA) rooms are self access throughout the semesters – that is,  Monday to Friday, 8.15am to 7.05pm.

In response to requests for additional support materials for those using these spaces, the Audio Visual Unit have recently produced several How To Videos. These focus on the technologies within GTAs.

These look to assist colleagues in the use of the room (s) you have booked or are scheduled for this semester. Six versions, influenced by the hardware in GTAs, appear below:

Set 1
8W1.1
[play]

Set 2
5W 2.1, 5W 2.4, 8W 2.1, 8W 3.22
[play]

Set 3
5W 2.3 & University Hall
[play]

Set 4
All rooms on 8W level 2 and in 1W and 1WN.
4E 2.56, 4E 2.61, 4E 2.4, 4E 3.5, 3W 3.7, 3W3.9, 3W4.7, 3WN3.7, 3WN3.8, 3E2.9, 3E3.11, 3E4.17, 1E3.6
[play]

Set 5
8W 2.5, 6E 2.1, 6E 2.2, 4W 1.1, 4E 3.10, 4E 3.38
[play]

Set 6
8W 3.13, 8W 3.14, 6W 1.1, 4W 1.2, 4W 1.7
[play]

Set 7
3E 2.1
[play]

The full list of videos can be found on the Self Access Rooms webpage. Further guides will follow, covering rooms such as the Arts Lecture Theatre (ALT), 6WS and 3WN2.1.

For any questions related to these How To Videos, please contact the Audio Visual Unit at a.v.bookings@bath.ac.uk.

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