QR codes at Bath

I’ve just written up the findings from the cross institutional study on student engagement with QR Codes. This covered students at the University’s of Bath, Gloucestershire, Leicester and Sheffield.

Report available from: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/19974/

The intention was to answer the following questions; Do students know what a QR Code is? Have they accessed a QR Code on their mobile device? How appealing are QR Codes for entering mobile information? Would students access learning materials on their mobile phones?

The findings will help inform the appropriate design for effective QR Code based learning activities and campus tours.

The findings suggest, when compared to the results of a previous survey; students are becoming more aware of QR Codes, more students have experienced scanning a QR Code on their device, they find the use of QR Codes to access information very appealing compared to manual entry of information on their phone, and they are not enthusiastic to spend their own money on accessing learning materials on their mobile phones and would prefer to access them on a computer

As an outcome of my workshop at the #IWMW10 I was asked about Geographical Locations in QR Codes. A user case would be where people are currently typing details into Google Maps on their mobile from emails and web sites to find conference locations etc., Instead, could we not just use a QR Code which automatically decodes to open your Google Maps on the device?

Well, the answer is you can, the Quickmark QR Code Generator includes a Geographical Locations option (http://www.quickmark.com.tw/En/diy/?qrLBSgoogle2). This will allow you to create a QR Code with the longitude and latitude coordinates. The problem is, the reader !! You’ll need to get the reader to automatically connect (see settings on your QuickMark for the iPhone App). However, I’d be surprised if this available on all QR Code Readers. So there are going to be support issues if you wanted to roll this out within a specific learning activity.

Mike Ellis (eduserve) and Mark Power (University of Bolton) have been experimenting with a really interesting QR Code based group quiz at the IWMW 2010. The prize game is as follows;

1. you register online (pre-event), create yourself a username and password, and self select a team to join.
2. the game requires a web browser on your device.
3. you locate a QR Code (example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25246864@N08/4789452993/), which you scan. If the question has not been successfully answered by anyone, or if it has not been attempted (unsuccessfully answered by your team members) you are displayed the multiple choice question and can attempt it.
4. If the question has been successfully answered you are informed via the web page (example: ). Therefore, the question can be answered only once.
5. If answered wrongly … feedback is given (example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25246864@N08/4794715850/)
6. The results (league table) is available online, or can be displayed on screens etc., (example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25246864@N08/4789066723/). This also gives you a heads up about how many tags are unanswered.

Overall, I think it is great, very easy to use. There are some many really obvious application for this, in particular at campus inductions, student enterprise competitions, student elections, my activity (see earlier post).

It also includes on the web form the option to include the individual tags ID, so it can be used by those who haven’t got a QR Code Reader on their device.

A few issues seemed to have arisen, which we’d need to think about when designing a use at an Institution.

• it is web based, therefore, the student will need a good connectivity (so place the QR Codes where you get a phone / wireless signal)
• it will cost money to participate
• user account management needs to be minimised

It would be really cool to see a few enhancements for an institutional adoption;

1. reporting tools – or at least the change to export the data in a csv format. I’d like to see who got a question right, but also the people / teams who got the questions wrong
2. question options – ability to disable the option which disables the question if it’s been successfully completed
3. hook up with LDAP / CAS to remove authentication issues

The following will be trialled at my IWMW 2010 session in Sheffield.

The intention is to experiment with using an outside location as part of a classroom activity. The activity is based around a previous blended learning activity which uses clickers and VLE quiz banks (see slide 11 and 12 of http://www.slideshare.net/andyramsden/bath-spa-keynote-tl-dat).

The rationale for getting people to work outside as part of the activity is so I can engineer the groups to force people to work outside the peer groups. An observation of many of the clicker activities is although they encourage group activity, many fall down because people are static in lecture threatres and tend to sit next to their friends, people also tend to sit in the same area of the room throughout a taught course.

Therefore, to maximise the educational benefits of this design I need to change the groups. The design principles are based on a social constructivist approach. This suggests students come into the activity with predefined knowledge, they will collect more information as part of the activity and discussions and construct further understanding through the interactions they have with others (who have different knowledge constructs).

The learning activity is an application of an economics MCQ question. The authors of which (http://web.uct.ac.za/projects/cbe/mcqman/mcqappc.html) suggest a successful answer requires the ability to recall the relative economic rankings of various countries (knowledge) and understand the basis for such a ranking (comprehension). They must be able to apply these concepts when information is supplied to them (application) and they must be able to analyse the given information in order to answer the question.

However, I’m keen for them to do this as a group activity. Therefore, I’ve adopted the Dufresne Sequence, which has been applied to the use of Clickers (http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/ilig/qpurpose.html). This focuses on the use of class-wide discussion enabled through audience response systems.

The idea is to set the participants in groups. Give them the question (instructions sheet), which requires them to locate and scan QR Codes. These QR Codes are text based, and contain economic data about countries (one QR Code per country). After collecting the data, the group need to answer an MCQ question (via texting their group name and answer) around suggestions of the countries.

I’m very happy for them to share the data amongst themselves, and they will be instructed on two key points. Firstly, they must collect all the data as we’ll be using it in a later session. Secondly, I will be selecting some groups to explain their answers in the next lecture. However, they’ll not be notified beforehand. Both of these are designed to motivate the students to collect and apply themselves to answering the question.

The instructions are available from: https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1bKCz14blYoK3bYGaBepd094GY73Hei8CsIcT6oJhYs8&hl=en&authkey=COey57gM

The QR Codes are available from:
http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcaF5QN3s_UDZGY2azRwajVfMTE4ZDY2em5waHM&hl=en&authkey=CK3Xw8wJ

The data set is available from:
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1yaXD-k7vvnavnawkYeGq-d49akYofeOjCwPY4eMmL4Y&hl=en&authkey=COLN7Eo

A suggested learning sequence would be;

Prep work

• Create MCQ bank in Moodle
• Create the lecture replacement videos in Panopto
• Set up work groups in Moodle
• Release the student support documents for finding and installing a QR Code reader on their phone

Week before deployment

• Release the instructions
• Announce in lecture, include setting out expectations and motivations for students to participate
• Inform need to access the lecture replacement video (which includes explicit reference to the exercise)

Week of deployment

• Place QR Codes
• Monitor responses to the SMS server
• Check Panopto logs to track those who have not accessed video. Email (?)
• Analysis response pattern, and identify groups who you would like to feedback

Week + 1 of deployment

• In lecture, show results, get people to present why they made the selection they did, continue the discussion, summarise and close
• Set a Moodle quiz based on questions around the data set they have collected

Week + 2 of deployment

• Check the grades in the MCQ
• Provide generic feedback via Panopto recording
• Make reference – walk through parts of panopto recording in lecture

When I deploy this next week, I’m particularly interested in trying to identify what the QR Code offered as opposed to simply giving them the data set.

We (James Barrett) has worked with Fac Engineering and Design to finalise the coversheet, and convert it to a PDF version (so it will print on one page). The following link is an exmaple of the print link from the student view of their assignments listed in SAMIS.

http://www.bath.ac.uk/barcodes/p/?a=5745507800,MN6555675545AY,A,56,MN65556A

Therefore, if another Faculty wishes to start to use the service we will be able to customise the coversheet to meet their needs. Each faculty will have a generic coversheet. Please note, we will not be rolling out different coversheets for Departments or by type of assignments.

This is a quick summary of a year (or so)  in the life of QR Codes at the University of Bath.

A driver for this summary was an email from Pablo Muñoz, University of Oviedo, who wanted to benchmark some of their QR Code developments with other HE institutions.

I’ve divided our use into a number of broad themes;

What’s worked

1. Macro scale. These  are across whole institution or institutional services. These are usually implemented by a group(s) within professional / central services

• QR codes used within recording student assignment submission (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode/2010/05/27/qr-code-recorded-submissions-final-pilot-data/)
• QR codes within the University of Bath Library catalogue (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode/2009/03/23/uni-of-bath-library-including-qr-codes-in-catalogue/)
• QR codes within the University of Bath Moodle (VLE) service (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode/2008/10/31/qr-codes-automatically-added-to-moodle-print-outs/)
• QR Codes on web sites & service blogs for bookmarking

2. Micro scales. These are usually associated with specific locations, and implemented by a group (individual) within professional services

• QR codes on posters around campus – IOTA project, Bath Entrepreneurs
• Use within presentations (on slides) to link to resources – implemented by members of the e-learning Team
• Poster displays for the University of Bath’s Innovation in Teaching and Learning Week (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode/2009/11/23/qr-codes-museums-and-social-constructivist-learning-models/)

3. Micro scale. These are introduced by individual and I’ve heard about the use.

• QR codes in handbooks linking to activities
• QR codes in marketing material from departments

4. Embedding within our Staff development

• QR Code based learning activities for staff development programme (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode/2010/04/30/lessons-from-running-a-qr-code-based-learning-activity/)

Future developments

• Mobile campus – entry point to content, as an alternative to web browser, or augmented reality mobile web browser. This would focus on a number of activities, including campus tours (the tales buildings would tell – http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode/2010/05/28/what-tales-would-this-building-tell/)

What hasn’t worked … what is holding the use of QR Codes back in teaching and learning at Bath?

Lots of ideas simply haven’t worked, or seem to add little value on the periphery for the student or staff member for enhancing learning. As opposed to adding value through efficiency gains in administration, or given the low costs inclusion for novelty value and/or catering for niche audiences. It has also exposed problems with the mobile web, as many QR Codes link to a site, however, this site offers very poor usability for mobile users. This emerging pattern is for a number of reasons, associated with awareness, motivation to engage, perceived benefits, technology ownership, and cost issues for both staff and students. Therefore, one of the key questions which the project wanted to address over the year has been, what do QR Codes offer as a learning technology? At this point in time, I’d suggest as an enhancer to the learning experience it offers very little, its strengths are in doing what is says on the tin, i.e., efficiently connecting a physical and electronic space.

Does this mean we should switch our attention away from QR Codes? The answer is no, over the year the QR Code technology (and other mobile scanning technologies) have moved on so much. While people (staff and students) will become more use to accessing content and completing tasks on their mobile phone via scanning stuff.

With a new academic year on the horizon, as well as a few campus open days. We are working up the idea of providing a range of stories about what happens in our buildings to visitors and new students via their mobile devices.

The aim is to give people an insight into what goings on in buildings, disseminate the buzz and excitement through capturing the people who learn and work in them as audio stories.

This stories will be as an mp3 file, in a vox pop style of snippets from the people who learn and work in the building. For instance, the course they do, the wow factor for their learning and teaching, recent research, or the services they provide, etc., These will be as small (3-5 minute) audio files.

The dissemination is to be via printed signs (mock up at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/lmf/download/45199), which include;

• a qr code url link to the audio file (probably hosted on youtube – suggest use University of Bath’s YouTube Channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/UniofBath)
• a short url to the building stories blog. This will contain links to all the audio files, and campus map, and encourage people to leave comments
• a heads up to access the information via the wikitude mobile augmented web browser. This will link to the info on youtube which has been geo located

So who will do what?

It is proposed the e-Learning Team will capture the stories – although they’ll be given introductions by Mark Ames. They will create the signs, manage the content and track the usage. It would be suggested we focus on 5 buildings in the first place. Including, both academic departments and central services. For instance;

• LTEO (Wessex House)
• Student Services (4 West)
• Computer Science
• Education
• Pharmacy

Why?

Well a number of reasons, a key driver is the need for us to explore the effective use of geo-located material, for all aspects of teaching and learning. This will give us a very good opportunity to start pilot its use in a controlled (time specific) environment.

An additional twist … because e-Learning can’t help themselves … will be to explore providing the RSS feeds from these Depts and Services within the WikiTude access route. For instance, e-learning (in the LTEO) provide a significant amount of its news via generic feeds. These will be provided as geo-located feeds. The feeds will include;

General e-Learning (audience: staff and students)

• eatbath Twitter
• e-learning Podcast
• e-learning occasional lecture (panopto)
• e-learning publications (OPuS)

News about Services (audience: staff and students)

• Moodle Service Blog:

News about Services (audience: staff)

• ARS Blog
• QR Code
• SMS

General news (audience: staff)

• How to guides
• Case Studies
• e-Learning staff development

The aim of this post is to outline some of the statistics of use for the submission and identify some key issues. The interim report is available from: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/18795/

Both the interim report and this post recommends the pilot is rolled out as an institutional service fr the start of the next academic year.

The figures from the Faculty of Engineering and Design (between 26th Feb to 21st May 2010, with a total of 1384 assignments being submitted).

• Architecture & Civil Engneering: 13 units involved and a total of 615 assignments submitted
• Electrical Engineering: 4 units involved and 216 assignments submitted
• Mechanical Engineering: 3 units involved and 553 assignments submitted

The pilot has lead to some enhancements in functionality.

• Print coversheets as PDF – in place by August
• Remove (unscan) submission from SAMIS – done
• Reset time and date for submission to SAMIS – done
• Email confirmations (each scan get an email even if scanned before) – user education for Departmental staff – update help documents on FAQ engine
• Group submissions – user education for Departmental staff – SAMIS doesn’t associate group work. So need to scan each coversheet

Well I ran a staff development session today which included a set of activities around decoding QR Codes for the participants to achieve key the learning objectives. See an earlier post for more details. To recap, this is problem based learning with big dollop of social constructivism. The learning outcomes where to be able to explain to a colleague what a qr code is, how to create on, how are they being used in an educational context, how might you use them. A secondary objective was to get them scanning codes, and trying to achieve the tasks, getting stuck and working it out.

A few observations for those who might wish to adopt a similar approach. Firstly, it seemed to work, very few had heard of qr codes before, by the end two had installed readers on their phones, a few had quickly developed potential applications, and they’d all got up, walked, scanned helped each other and when we re-visited the questions post session we were able to add lots more rich content.

So, what might I do better next time? I’d focus more of the activities around the quickmark iphone qr code reader. For instance, you can create QR Codes on the device, save it to your photo albums and then I uploaded to flickr !!! This liberates you from having to use a PC or phone web browser. I didn’t realise this … very cool. Also, sharing with other people via facebook etc.,

I provided no support material, ie., how to use the qr code reader, iPhone etc., just left it to them (10 second show to people in groups). In the end it worked, they worked it out. It also started a really interesting conversation around the differences in using URL QR Code (simply point you to a web site), and the superior usability of using a Text QR Code with textual context and the link. However, this would require them cut and pasting the url manually into a web browser. This requires more technical awareness. However, it is a very good hook to discuss implementation issues.

I’d include a few more SMS based activities. There was one, but people didn’t seem happy to actually send the message. I’d like to try developing a set of SMS decision activities, and use a QR Code to drive the activity. Alternatively, link in a sms survey.

I’d get them to finish the activity in terms of submitting their thoughts into the comment area on the wiki. Again, this was there, but people didn’t do it. However, in the debrief many people wanted this functionality.

So a lesson is … don’t forget many people will not take the risk and push the button to see what happens – I don’t understand that myself – so you need to design this into your activities.

Support the people who would like to install QR Code Readers on their own device. I think I’ll include some text on the print outs which directs them to http://www.tigtags.com/getqr and specific reference to QuickMark

The links to the PDF documents in OPuS seemed to be a little too much, i.e., people seemed to respond better (actually read) a QR Code URL which inked them to text material on web site. Therefore, I’d take some of the key messages from our working papers and write a set of FAQs, and host these online.

Overall, a success. Especially, compared to the previous method where I tended to present answers to the questions. I’d recommend this approach as a very effective staff development model.

In a previous post I discussed the use of QR Codes within a face to face learning activity. For this to be a success, a key question is, will staff be able to engage with the activity? In particular, do they own the appropriate type of mobile phone, and are they will to spend their own money on these learning activities?

To try to get an insight into these questions I recently surveyed staff in the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office (thank you to those who responded).  I got 16 responses (out of a possible 22). OK, it might not be a representative sample, however, it does give some very interesting insights, which we the staff developer needs to consider when designing our learning activities.

Firstly, can they access QR Code learning activities on their own devices? The following evidence suggests they can. To complete a QR Code learning task, you need a device with a camera, and have good possible accessibility to the web (most QR Code tasks require access to online materials). The following responses indicate they tend to own a camera mobile phone (14 out of 16), they own high spec phones with wi-fi capabilities (8 out of 16), and half the respondents had data tariffs.

A very interesting response was on the topic of staff having to spend their own money on learning activities. There was a very strong  message (from a group who are very committed to staff development), where 10 out of 16 would be unlikely, or very unlikely to spend there own resources to participating in the activities.

So what does this tell me … the staff developer who has spent lots of time designing a highly effective QR Code learning activity? Well, when staff walk through the door they are likely to own the right sort of kit, they might even have the tariff package, however, they are not willing to use their money. So, firstly, I the staff developer will need to provide hardware if I wish to use these activities, secondly, I have to be very clear where the use of the technology will add value to the learning activity. Staff will need to be able to identify the value of taking part if they are to engage in the session.

How likely are you to spend your own money on accessing learning materials for staff development on your mobile phone? Please note, I’m interested in your thoughts about using your tariff to access learning materials, not the issue around trying to use them on a small screen device