I have this book on my desk, so was interested to see what someone else had said about it:

Martin de Saulles, principal lecturer in information management, University of Brighton, is reading Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live(Simon and Schuster, 2011). “Jarvis presents an intelligent counter to some of the uninformed fear-mongering over online privacy and shows how individuals and society can benefit from greater information sharing. His tweets and blog posts about the side-effects of his prostate cancer treatment may not be to all tastes, but he shows how the kindness of internet strangers helped him and fellow sufferers.”

Taken from Times Higher Education.

Online via Blackboard Collaborate

Presenters: Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster)

The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.

The session will provide an overview of MAC and highlight some of the variant MAC processes that are being developed by six different universities, as well as drawing out strengths and weaknesses of MAC. There will be a demonstration of how the e-Reflect tool works but the presenters will also show how MAC can work without that tool.  Participants will be engaged by seeking their views on the affordances offered by MAC as well as their input into identifying barriers and enablers in applying MAC in their own institutional and subject contexts.

The webinar is free to attend.

The Webinar

Joined about 20 minutes into the event after teaching ‘Social Media for Job Hunting‘. Thanks to @sarahknight for sending me the login details which hadn’t arrived! 

MACE: https://sites.google.com/a/staff.westminster.ac.uk/mace/home

Immediate reaction from staff is that the workload is likely to be high re learning journals, but find that a few comments actually doesn’t take that long, especially in comparison to the improvement demonstrated from students.

Offers the opportunity for small, but detailed, positive feedback suggesting actions… rather than “So..?” as a typical written comment on an assignment.

What should the balance be between e & f2f feedback:

My comment:

I’m interested to see how coaching practice, etc. is impacting upon how things work. With manipulating-media.co.uk we give them ‘consultancy sessions’ as a group as feedforward, before they submit their assignments, and they write reflective blog post every week. They tend to use FB to connect with each other. Agree that we should look at the e, but ultimately it’s about ensuring that it meets the needs of the course.

Some chat comments:

• The record of what everyone says is increasingly important, a big advantage of ‘e’.
• Is dialogue about scaffolding or about generating cognitive conflict? different processes and different models of dialogue; is all dialogue equally productive?
• Awarding micro grades for demonstrating action on feedback

Further links:

• http://www.textwall.co.uk/
• http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/27533889/ESCAPE%20-%20Effectiveness%20versus%20Efficiency

I thought this looked really interesting:

Together traces the evolution of cooperative rituals in medieval churches and guilds, Renaissance workshops and courts, early modern laboratories and diplomatic embassies. In our lives today, it explains the trials and prospects of cooperation online, face-to-face in ethnic conflicts, among financial workers and community organisers. (from Amazon description).

Frank Furedi reviewed this for Times Higher Education - here’s a taster:

Today, informality and spontaneous behaviour are often regarded as a potential breach of contract by human resources departments. This formalisation of relationships is not a by-product of overzealous managerialism, but a symptom of society’s estrangement from the uncertainties associated with informality. Sennett rightly observes that “formality favours authority and seeks to prevent surprise”. Informal relations are by definition fluid and unpredictable. Precisely because such relations involve an element of give and take, their pursuit could lead to unpredictable outcomes. The reason why Sennett’s Boston workers cultivated relations of cooperation is because, through that interactive dynamic, they gained a measure of self-respect and a glimmer of agency.

Read the review here, or buy the book.

Listen to the audio here, which was recorded at #digimanc.

I was interviewed on UCB Radio this morning, discussing recent conversations about abortion adverts and plastic surgery adverts. You can listen to the radio interview here: UCBAdvertisingJan3012 (MP4 format, 7-8 minutes)

Information is on the Moodle site.
Research that has been done is wholly positive about the effects of audio feedback.

Portsmouth University. Find it personable, absorb information in different ways (skim read otherwise), listen to it on mobile devices on the move, shareable, can go through feedback in tutorials/agree targets.

Negatives seem to be all from the tutors side – about getting on board. Ultimately should be saving you time in the long run… Where it has been embedded evidence is that it saves time.

Negatives from students – some felt tutor was ‘cheating,, not a replacement, no visuals, can be too personal for comfort, can’t answer back/engage in dialogue. Some thought the novelty helped with success.

Range of tools that can be used for audio feedback. MP3 recorders (£8-20), record to iPhone (add http://www.ipadio.com/… A bit like audioboo). Particularly good for formative assessment. Screenr and Jing also useful. Example of staff member who does feedback into the device in class and then bluetooths it to student phones in class.

No eportfolio system? Try Posterous? [issues with privacy?]

Also podcasts useful, so e.g. Mike into an iPod. Recorded – placed into iTunes – so then becomes public data. Look at small microphones (£2ish – usually adequate).

Material will be on: http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk/southeast/courses-and-resources/moodle-courses.aspx?

Tutors often prefer to record to PC as they have control over the file names. Most of these other ones don’t have meaningful names.

Microsoft sound recorder or audacity – can be provided portable style to be plugged into laptops.

Impressive. Tweeted about ipadio – had response from @ipadio with a link to http://ipadio.com/page.asp?section=99&sectionTitle=ipadio+in+Education.

Return assignments via Moodle. Most are uploaded individually via advanced assignment. Others put in folders online but are privacy issues there.

Conversation – run it in a ‘test’ assignment. Get students involved. Describe it like the Director’s Commentary … Talk as you read… Finding people’s way in. Efficient way to save time, and distributing it … Everything takes so long on Moodle. People more comfortable with audio than video (even a level/BTEC level – particularly self conscious).

Don’t get too hung up on scripting, etc — they are used to our voices, more engaging if not scripted. Expect effort in first stages, find what works for you – e.g. A list of repeated errors?

Care with quality of editing – too hi, the files will be too large. Compress audio, e.g. Lossless = like zip for audio. Much higher compression = lossy compression, most use MP3 – but it’s a licensed format hence why often a cost involved. Firefox doesn’t support MP3 as not an open source format. 96kbitspersecond about lowest can go to be usable – fine for text. 10 minutes about 1MB. Most 2-3 minutes, although exam paper can be 10-15 minutes – quicker than doing smaller bits – the file saving more of a complex process.

Cloud storage can be quite expensive. 365live – can give a lot of access control.. Could use something like Dragon to produce a text file – but would then have to proofread it. Could possibly ask students to bring in USB sticks that they keep just for feedback // need to take a backup copy .. Not ideal but an option.

Look also at – http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/audio/.

Care with recording straight to apple devices – uses AIF files by default – have to go into recording format settings to MP3 – most widely used format.

http://moodle-rsc.ukc.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=154

Nanogong… http://gong.ust.hk/nanogong/ – can speed up & slow down, embeddable in Moodle. Have choice via (grade book) to give individual or general. Doesn’t yet work for Moodle 2. Can preset text to go into the text box… Then add file. If already pre-recorded quick to upload, but hoping for a neater way of doing it.

Asked students to write in the notes to give feedback and got v. Good feedback. As always, has to be one method out of several for feedback.

Office 2007 – can embed the audio directly into the Word doc http://www.howtogeek.com/80016/insert-audio-into-word-2007-documents-2. Office 2010 – not so good… More clunky? Not seen add-ins that make it better… powerPoint works well.
Oo
http://www.knovio.com/ … Uses JPEGs & PPTs only. Can’t use live, but prerecord – audio feedback with video. Student has control over whether text or tutor appears large on their screen. Useful for diagrams, art, etc – can put multiple pics in so can talk through several images. Link can be emailed to any number of students – if not appropriate – copy link & share. Embed code & social media buttons. Querying if a plugin allowing material to be downloaded.

What about http://keepvid.com/ to retain files? What about using the annotate features in YouTube – allows students to deconstruct a video. Staff could also write video comments as feedback. Can only annotate ones you’ve uploaded – but can give rights. Look for edit/annotate. Could set up e.g. A programme channel – give passwords so all can upload. Cn turn the annotations off.

Plagiarism detection – Turnitin. Farnham – made it part of HE policy that all assignments submitted. Students really like it – linked into Grademark so works well… Now picks up on Google translate re-translations – which students were using as a getaround. Avoids collusion. Leave up to professional judgement as to whether deal as ‘catch out’ or ‘teaching’. More effective if student uploadsn self. Need a policy to deal with it afterwards.

Other options a cut & paste suspect sections into Google.

Screen capture: Jing. screenr (no software required – also 5 min limit). Camtasia. http://www.yawcam.com/.

e-assessment showcase (eastern region 30 – March).

Adam etc happy to come for a 1-2 hour kick start session if can get small group (e.g. 10) together. Useful to collect case studies applicable to particular programmes… Are linked from the Moodle site.

My colleague, Nicole McNab, has looked at plagiarism quite extensively over the past couple of years, so this has gained my interest … especially as Nicole tends towards the idea that TurnItIn, etc. should not be used for detection, but for training students to understand!

Students who are aware that their work will be checked by plagiarism-detection software are just as likely to cheat as those who are not, a study suggests.

Turnitin software, which is used by thousands of universities worldwide, extracts text from submitted essays and checks it against other sources, such as online documents.

However, the study conducted by a researcher at California State University suggests that such measures should not be regarded as a “silver bullet” in the battle against “deviant” academic practices.

Robert J. Youmans, a cognitive psychologist, says in the paper published in the journal Studies in Higher Education that he expected to find that fewer students would cheat if they were warned that their work would be scanned.

This proved not to be the case.

Read full story.