QR codes at Bath

The following survey is being carried out by a number of educational institutions across the UK to act as a snap shot to identify student awareness of QR Codes, what experience people have of using them and the type of technology they have in their pockets.

This piece of research is very important as it will give us a much better appreciation of how we might use QR Codes and similar technologies in teaching and learning. People are becoming increasingly interested in the potential of using QR Codes to connect physical and electronic learning spaces. This is being investigated in a JISC LTIG Project run by the University of Bath (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk)

The survey is available from http://www.survey.bath.ac.uk/qrcode1109

The survey should take you only a few minutes, and you will be able to enter for a prize draw to win an iPod Touch or a Nintendo DS Lite. There is an iPod Touch and a Nintendo DS Lite available for each of the seven institutions involved in the JISC LTIG Project (Gloucestershire College, Manchester Met University, University of Bath, University of East Anglia, University of Gloucestershire, University of Leicester and University of Sheffield)

The survey is available from http://www.survey.bath.ac.uk/qrcode1109

The closing date is 6th December, 2009

I recently invited to ran a workshop on QR Codes at  the ALT / BECTA “Successful deployment: networked handheld devices for learning and teaching” at the National College for Leadership for Schools and Children’s Services in Nottingham. Slides available on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/andyramsden/qr-codes-fad-or-fab-at-alt-becta-successful-deployment-workshop

At the end of the session I asked 2 questions and requested they texted me the answers.

Q1: in three years time do you think QR codes would have been fab for L&T or simply a fad?

Q2: at this stage would you strongly support the prioritisation of resources to create and support the implementation on QR Codes related activities within your institution?

The group was 20 people from across the different educational sectors. The answers where;

• 15 people thought QR Codes would be viewed as fab in 3 years time (5 thought they’d be seen as a fad)
• 10 people where willing to strongly support the prioritisation of QR Codes at their institution (10 said they would not).

Interestingly, in the final summing up of the event (http://etherpad.com/altgoodpractice) two people mentioned they’d taken QR Codes as the key insight from the event (very pleasing )

The following link is to a screencast of a summary of the presentation I made at ALT C 2009. I’ve created and uploaded it using Panopto (a lecture capture tool which is about to be rolled out at the University). It is 16 minutes, and should be accessible via your web browser.

http://coursecast.bath.ac.uk/CourseCast/Student/CourseContents.aspx?id=942603a5-2d5c-4c18-ab34-02cccdcee6af

Just a quick nudge for an article which recently appeared on http://2d-code.co.uk/diy-qr-code-ticketing-anyone/

There was the question why given we have the technology in our pockets? Well, the answer appears to be robustness. The application in our field? handing in assignments. This normally causes significant amounts of resource for administrators in offices. However, an approach I’m really interested in progressing is the following;

1. student accesses their profile on institutional website and visits their assignment area. This displays what assignments are due to be handed in, and when. They print of the assignment cover sheet. This automatically includes lots of details, including a QR Code. The QR Code contains the unique ID (student number), unit and assignment number.
2. when they hand in the assignment they include the coversheet (as they have to anyway)
3. the assignment is scanned using something like http://2d-code.co.uk/diy-qr-code-ticketing-anyone/
4. the details are logged. This enables staff to run various reports, and cross reference with extensions etc., they can also identify who hasn’t submitted and contact them if required.

Not exactly new, it has been raised by lots of people when I’ve presented on QR Codes in education, and offers significant time savings for people / courses who aren’t / can’t adopt on online submission route.

We’ve discussed some important points to consider when designing the QR Code, and the learning activity. The following post on 2-d code sums up these ideas as three rules. I think they are really important and the concepts transfer very easily to educational QR Codes.

See: http://2d-code.co.uk/three-rules-of-qr-codes/

This post is entended to capture people’s thought after they’ve attended the two sessions I’m running at Alt C.

The discussion question which runs through both sessions is … how do you think QR Codes (or tags) could be used in learning and teaching?

Please submit your ideas using the comments box below.

The links to the presentation and the poster will be available soon …

For me, this is a very important question, and I keep revisiting it with more data and stories. All this interesting stuff we are rolling out in terms of QR Codes in education is not going to embed if students can decode them. Therefore, I have tended to break this down into two (proxy) questions;

• are people aware of QR Codes?
• do they own phones which can run a QR Code Reader?

The latest evidence is suggesting very positive responses to these questions. For instance a recent survey in “What Japan Thinks” (http://whatjapanthinks.com/2009/07/05/qr-code-reading-phones-held-by-almost-four-in-five-japanese/, see also http://whatjapanthinks.com/2005/09/26/qr-codes-extremely-popular/), indicated 78% knew they had a QR Code Reader on their phone (sample = 300), while 84% had used their phone to read a QR Code (sample = 235). This translates to 4 in 5 people (in the survey) had accessed a QR Code. I’d imagine, this level of engagement would transfer to UK Culture in a relatively short time. So very good news.

Another piece of interesting evidence to suggest there is a high potential was from a recent press release by Semapedia (http://blog.semapedia.org/wordpress/?p=182). This service monitors accesses to web sites, and “ran a query over the most used devices worldwide and crossed that with the QR Code capabilites”. They found 63% of Phones can install a QR Code Reader Application !!! They also provide a really neat service to enable people to easily identify a QR Code Reader for their phones … http://www.tigtags.com/getqr

Overall, this doesn’t give a definitive answer, yes they can. However, it is a good indication of change. It is becoming clear that in some cultures “scan and go” is becoming much better embed, while access to QR Code Readers is becoming more accessible.

It does answer the next wave of questions, just because they can, doesn’t mean they will !

The aim of the session was to work up some potential uses for QR Codes, present these back and finally vote (anonymous) if you agree or disagree that “QR Codes add significant value for the mobile user”. At the end of the workshop, the vote was;

Agree – 5 people
Disagree – 3 people

I’ll let you decide just how statistically significant these results are, and how you might implement this within your institution.

What did I take from it? The topics within the group presentations were very varied. One focussed on using QR Codes as part of the introduction for international students. I was particularly interested in the way they planned to introduce students to QR Codes and QR Code Readers through localised web sites before they travelled to the UK. The second presentation focussed on printing a QR Code on student ID cards which liked to their personal profiles / web space at the institution. This means people could simply scan the code to access the url. The third presentation focussed around using QR Codes within a museum. They’d taken an interesting approach (which opened up a group discussion) around trying to submit personal information (register phone number, language preferences) before scanning the QR Codes on specific exhibits.

I thought these all offered some really interesting and innovative approaches. The aim was not to analyse each approach but more to generate and share ideas.

We also discussed the factors which might inhibit adoption or our implementation. I’ve uploaded the photo to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25246864@N08/tags/iwmw09/). Many of the same issues came through. Interestingly, there was some discussion around the limitations of the QR Code, i.e., interms of only one task per QR Code, and limited characters.

Something I have taken away is to investigate the potential of using Google Analytics to track the people who have clicked through from the QR Code. This would be interesting for a number of reasons, one of which would be to see if people actually access the QR Code. I can see a good application at Bath, where the Library are looking to include QR Codes on the back of their Library Card holders.

Finally, I was very pleased to see the access to a QR Code Reader exercise worked. I asked people to point their mobile device web browser to http://www.tigtags.com/getqr. This service then provided a list of available QR Code Readers for their specific phone (if available).

The slides from the session are available from Slideshare, using the eatbath-present tag (http://www.slideshare.net/andyramsden/qr-codes-fad-or-add-to-mobile-user).

It would be great to hear thoughts from those who attended … please add comments.

I’m glad to announce the QR Codes  web site is being re-vamped during the summer (http://www.bath.ac.uk/barcodes). This service aims to act as the primary support gateway for staff and students to create QR codes, access details on how to install the appropriate software on their phone and gather information about how QR Codes are being used at the University of Bath.

The enhancements are being made through a number of steps. The first step, based on feedback from people during the year, is to improve the design. The second step involves improving the QR Code Generator to include more user control over the size of the QR Code and error corrections. The second step should be rolled out by the end of July, 2009.

If you’d like to discuss how QR Codes could be used in your teaching and/or learning then please email e-learning@bath.ac.uk

I’ve mentioned this idea in the past. Displaying a bookmark on your online material so the mobile learning can relatively easily bookmark resources on their phones and then transfer them to their bookmarks or share with friends. This has always been possible, however, I’ve never felt it was that easy to accomplish given it tended to involve lots of cut and pasting between applications. However, a few recent developments have changed my mind. Firstly, enhancements in the latest breed of QR Code Readers. For instance, Quickmark QR Code Reader includes a one click option to add a scanned url to your favourites, or share via your Twitter account. Therefore, if you bookmark the site and add it your favourites, when you sync the device to the computer it will be added to your bookmarks. This coincides with another development which is the promotion of sites such as Dashwire for mobile users. This site allows you to wireless backup bookmarks, photos, calendars etc., to their online service. Therfore, enabling you to bookmark, store and share the resource with your community.

Overall, these two developments are sign posting the likely future for mobile users, ie., better integration of scan based applications with other online services and a shift to online sync services and less reliance on desktop connections. Therefore, as a content provider I should be supporting this development by providing more information in barcode format.