LTEO Innovations Week

The last event in Innovations Week was an exciting session in the “Dragon’s Den”. The panel of 4 ‘Dragons’ listened to the pitches of the entrants and asked some probing questions. The entrants used a variety of props to get their ideas across which entertained the audience. The dragons marked the entrants against the criteria and the audience voted at the end using the electronic voting system technology.

The week came to a close when the winners from the ‘Dragon’s Den’ and Teaching Development Fund project competition were awarded their prizes.

A 10 minute video produced by Campus TV formed the basis of a discussion which took place today. Filming has taken place over the last week where staff and students were asked five different questions around the Innovations Week theme, feedback to students and student engagement. The video highlighted a range of perspectives many of which were not that dissimilar to those found in the SENLEF project. The audience participated in a discussion around the issues raised which was facilitated by Gary Mathlin, Andrea Taylor and Momna Hejmadi. Everyone was so impressed by the video, we also discussed how it could be more widely disseminated across the institution to continue the debate and discussion around this area.

Some interesting discussions took place in the Innovations Café on Thursday 26th. We heard from Dr Alex Wright about the changes in practice in giving feedback in crits that have been developed in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering. Dr Frances Laughton from the Department of Physics provided an overview of a problem-based learning approach introduced into a unit of study. She highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of this innovation and we discussed some of the areas for enhancement. Katie Mabery VP Education from the SU led a discussion around the 10 principles of assessment and feedback recently published by the NUS.

The emphasis of the session was to focus on technologies that you might use in face to face teaching within the context of enhancing feedback. The aims were a heads on available technologies, map these to uses at the University and give a little hands-on experience. The technologies included Audience Response Systems, SMS, Word Clouds and Twitter.

The session plan (as a mind genius mindmap) is available from http://www.bath.ac.uk/lmf/download/28778

You may ask, as the facilitator, what did I take from this session?

Well, I thought is was a success. I was particularly pleased with the emergence of use of Twitter. The academic needs students to keep upto date with current news items / affairs. In the past this has involved putting the links in their Moodle course. However, this was a significant workload for the staff member. So, it was thought that she could create a twitter account (named using the unit code), then she would regularly updating with tinyurl’s. In terms of equity for those who don’t want to create a Twitter account, and follow her, she will RSS the info into her Moodle course. What what does she need to start this? Create the twitter account, promote it with her students (including a heads up on how to follow someone in Twitter), set up the RSS into Moodle, and then start using it. A case study is on its way

Does anyone have any other thoughts on using Twitter in face to face teaching?

Led by Professor Brenda Smith, this seminar will be a chance to hear about the findings from Professor Smith’s research around assessment and giving feedback.

The slides (powerpoint) are available to download from here: http://www.bath.ac.uk/lmf/download/28770

Below are links to the videos shown during the presentation;

• Students discussing feedback, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/assessment/senlef
• The youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
• Marking critieria (reference was made to this, but not shown) http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/videoandaudio/marking_criteria

• A further useful website made reference to in the talk can be found by visiting http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/assessment

A recording (pre-editing) of Brenda’s keynote (captured using Panopto) is available from http://luna.campus.bath.ac.uk/CourseCast/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=596c41c5-9e6b-48e9-833f-7108a29e09c9

At the ‘monthly paper lunch’ event an interesting discussion took place around a paper looking at student engagement. It was great to see some ‘new’ faces at the group which meets regularly every month.

Day 2 of Innovations Week provided the opportunity for 14 HEA Subject Centres and 6 Centres of Excellence in Learning and Teaching to showcase what they do, share ideas with their discipline groups and offer free learning and teaching resources.  Over lunch there was a real buzz around the area where the event was organised as staff came up for lunch and circulated amongst the stands. Eleven people from various Subject Centres, CETLs and Intute stood by their stands and engaged with staff who came to find out what they can do to support staff in the disciplines in relation to learning and teaching.  I found some really useful materials and the series of 1, 2, 3 leaflets around issues to do with assessment from ASKe (Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange) I think are particularly useful.

Additional outcomes from the day were the opportunities for the Subject Centres and CETLs to network with each other and share ideas.  

On Monday afternoon, Geraldine Jones (e-Learning Support Officer, Education) and Nitin Parmar (Learning Technologist) from the e-Learning team ran the first of two e-Learning Interactive Taster Sessions, to be held during Innovations in Learning and Teaching Week.

This session will introduced a range of different online tools that are available both at the University of Bath, and elsewhere, which enable teaching staff to increase engagement with students and aid feedback to students. The slides from the session appear below.

The slides above are hosted on SlideShare, and colleagues will need to have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player installed to view them. A version of the slides, in PDF format, are also available for download. To view PDF files, colleagues will need to have Adobe Reader installed.

If you were unable to attend the session, but would like further information and/or advice about any of the items mentioned during the presentation above, please do feel free to get in touch with either Geraldine or Nitin at: e-learning@bath.ac.uk

The second Interactive Taster Session takes place on Thursday 26th February, 10am – 12pm. This session shifts the emphasis of the e-Learning tasters to looking at technologies to enhance student feedback and engagement in face to face teaching. In particular the use of Audience Response Systems and texting. To book a place on the event, please send an email to: acdev@bath.ac.uk

Summaries

There were some really interesting discussions from the three presenters this lunchtime . Alan Hayes talked about the use of clickers/electronic voting systems and how he is hoping to develop the use of them to encourage and develop higher order cognitive skills such as critical thinking.

Tim Bilham talked about an interesting project involving Health as well as Engineering. Based around the employer-led/engagement agenda which came out of the Leitch report, they are looking at many aspects of how we can support and assess workplace learning taking into account employers’ needs and development as well as those of academics and students.

The third discussion by Jos Darling was based around an exciting innovation in curriculum design where students were engaged in group projects where they designed racing cars and competed against each other. Jos highlighted the benefits to staff and students and also the issues of groupwork and how you resolve these. 

Ian Jamieson’s introduction to Innovations Week this morning highlighted why this week, and in particular the theme, is important to the University. Ian also encouraged those attending the launch to sign up for the Annual Learning and Teaching seminar on Wednesday and join in the discussion where  Professor Brenda Smith will present a session emphasising assessment for learning, rather than of learning. She will also provide ideas about how we can encourage the active engagement of students in all aspects of assessment and feedback including some practical tips. This is one  session you can not afford to miss!