This morning we welcome Andy Wilson from the University of Loughborough, and Donna Cullen from the University of Strathclyde in person – and Marina Janetzky from the University of Middlesex virtually, at the University of Winchester, to discuss the implementation of IT projects within a Higher Education context.

I’m really looking forward to working with The School of Media and Film this afternoon, in order to develop their social media presence, starting with Twitter, as this also provides data for our upcoming conference paper!

I was interested to see this appear on Facebook this morning (only on the full web-accessible page, it wasn’t possible to access it from the iPhone app OR from the mobile site).  The most obvious Facebook demographic are the “younger” voters, but any means by which we can remind people/each other of their right/responsibility to vote is useful. The counter is moving up quite fast, and it would be interesting to know how much difference such announcements on Facebook, and what other impact social media has had.

Winchester

We can keep up with what our prospective local LibDem MP has been up to today, as he engages with Foursquare:

and both Martin Tod and Steve Brine are on Twitter, interesting to see how much they are engaging (Winchester is essentially between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems!)

WINOL DEBATE

Having said I wasn’t going to stay up, I will now be coming into the University at midnight to talk about some of the uses and impacts of social media for WINOL, so looking forward to seeing some comments on this post as to how you have noticed any differences in engagement, voter swings, etc. in this first ‘social media’ election!

Notes taken on my iPhone

• Supporting elearning. Ms E-Mentor – follow e-learning through courses.
• Wolf is Wolverhampton’s VLE
• Blended – integration, developing online. Exercises 3/4 weeks, questionnaire after then integrate more coherently.
• V 1st session, integrate how the online works – black, info, pink – exercises. Start in the classroom. Move onto online, including threaded forums. Each session online is timebound. Critical mass – means knows others will be in there. (web transformed the visual)… Ask students to find & share.
• Compulsory/assessed. Collaboration, interaction & discussion – all part of it. Discussion only possible online.. Couldn’t have done visual exercises without the web. Some of it is v conventional.
• Forums – lots to say – those who leave it late – it’s their choice. Get less feedback & mark reflects lack of timeliness.
• Online roleplay – enter the debate as a character. Only 1 person can be each character. Students have great fun with this… Tutor interacts without killing the discussion.. Eg As Dickens. Had already done a lot of character work. Serious play.
• Assessment
• 7 exercises over time, lots of forum posts marked. Welcome folder sets out criteria clearly. Extensions of the sessions in seminars. Ensures better engagement – improvement over writing 2 x essays. Threshold participation 5/7 = D. Then qualitative. Emphasise marked individually but marked on interaction also. Clear criteria A-D. Pushing discussion? Engaging the readings? This element 40%. Other 60% long essay.
• Find topics they love engaging with … E.g Dickens, Dracula. Offer guidance as to how to find material etc. – encourage good Study skills. Put the first post on to establish in the right place & encourage the start. Imgs for fun. Sometimes students add another dimension – e.g My Opinion which others may pick up on.
• Forums related to assignment – but also a general forum – get student involvement – they name it. Vote in class. Feel ownership & participation – sometimes it doesn’t work – voluntary. Have notifications. Students can set up. Tutor picks & emails if urgent or encourages them to look on the social forum. If it’s not illegal or offensive it’s OK. Weblinks not just a repository.
• QUESTIONS
• End of year – every course archived but no one new could see it. Students like to see & engage!?
• Time spent engaging & marking? Can sort forum by author – both initial posts & replies. Skim read each and get a sense of the level – as you would with a series of essays. 2.5 days to mark 30+ over 7 forums. Less feedback as not writing on this. (what about forum/cut & paste/ commenting – added too much time). Short form – no sessions, narrative para feedback & a mark.
• 15 credit system – students – 4 per semester. Ft 7-8 over year.
• Sold soul for dissemination? Will it save time? NO – little buy in. Initial investment time in new teaching materials – now bank of materials to reuse. What expectations so you set up with the students? Eg NOT interacting with all posts.. Or should it be none? Try not to look like aren’t picking same students every time. Late submitters / yes – often bad essay marks. Occasionally find those who struggle to write essays enjoy online – but exception rather than rule.
• Questionnaire – some indicate they see it helping to give them context. Grading criteria – base line & how can improve rather than how can lose marks.
• Inbuilt reluctance to change set texts etc because have invested so much in initial preparation. Computer aided questions / more intensive than these. Here – tweak – and the format works & apply similar exercises.
• UoW: Am Studies – allow 12 weeks to write on Blogger – how express in marking criteria if they write it all in last couple weeks.
• Some think forums – unaccessible. Assessed 100% participation.. Otherwise not get engagement. Variation in assessment – validation. Shy of speaking. Lots of literture on the shy student. Reflective learners don’t talk out but go away & think. Emphasise the process.

Lim Teoh has been investigating the use of screencasting to provide feedback (I would think of JING for this, but max 5 minute screencast, Camstudio offers longer, but bit more complicated)

• Complaints timeliness of return of feedback, ESP large cohorts
• Stannard 2007, Brick & Holmes 2008 – screencast more intrreresting & personal.
• Coursework & assessment – anti-plagiarism – groups of 2. 10 assessments. Diff qus – students not aware of that. Reflect on challenges with work/group working, how they reflect on their feedback.
• Online submission through Moodle. Marks using comment field
• CamStudio, Screentoaster, free, good quality. sendspace. Large files – ITS tried to compress but not good quality. Requires code to see data. Questionnaire on Moodle – save time.
• 1 week design coursework. Download & mark 2.5 week. Record 1.5 weeks. Lots of positive feedback, clearly defines what is missing from criteria.
• Survey – control qu – did u listen? Positive feedback – more personal – clarified more. Mostly prepared to wait for better material. Some don’t mind just audio, most want video, ideal 2-5 minutes.

“In developing both inter- and intra- communities of practice there is a range of recently developed social media tools that are candidates to be used as the means of facilitating communication. One of these is Twitter, one of the largest social media platforms. Despite an average user age of 25-54, it has a growing number of younger users and, with rising Smartphone ownership, increasing functionality.

Twitter has provided new means of communication with students for purposes such as polling, question setting and passing administrative information.  But as yet these have been peripheral activities in course delivery. Difficulties encountered include not all students wanting to use Twitter or seeing Twitter as an adjunct to their social life, rather than a part of formal education, and an association with a culture of celebrity.

Blended Learning enthusiasts face two related tasks in developing communities of practice.  Internally they must support and encourage academics from across the institution, in many disciplines, requiring multiple approaches to e-learning.  Externally they need to connect with blended learning enthusiasts in other institutions.

One of Twitter’s key capabilities is relationship building, and we have started our use of Twitter concentrating on building external links.  The presentation will report on how this can be done and give ways of estimating the effectiveness of Twitter in the HE context.  Topics to be addressed include building an academic identity, developing a research network, the nature of tweets and use of crowdsourcing.

Results from a later development to introduce Twitter to enhance an existing internal community of practice  will also be discussed.  This experience shows what Twitter has to offer alongside other social media.  It also facilitates the identification of additional capabilities of communication tools such as Twitter that might be added to increase their utility in HE.”

6 Keywords: Twitter, Communities of Practice, Informal Learning, Social Media, Communication, Interdisciplinary

Conference Theme

The importance of developing a community to support learning is a well established idea. The virtual and physical learning spaces we build, as well as the ways in which we engage our students, are increasingly being influenced by our desire to create and support a learning community. The Fifth International Blended Learning Conference aims to explore the notion of community in its variety of forms. You are invited to submit proposals / abstracts relating to community. Suggested themes include:

• Developing blended learning communities to support and enhance different aspects of the curriculum, e.g. employability, internationalisation, lifelong learning, learning that lasts, research informed teaching, student support and pastoral care, study skills and personal development, the student experience and the student voice
• Developing a community of blended learning practitioners
• Extending the blended learning community Within and across disciplinary groups For pre-university entrants With Alumni
• Theoretical perspectives on blended learning communities

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2009) — “An experiment into the use of social media at the University of Leicester has shown that Twitter, an online blogging service, can act as an exceptional communication tool within academia.The study, published by the Association for Learning Technology, discovered that ‘tweeting’ helped:

• Develop peer support among students — with activity rising just prior to assessment deadlines or during revision for exams
• Develop personal learning networks — students used the network when they were preparing assessed work or revising for tests, often in situations when they were physically isolated from their peers
• Students to arrange social meetings
• The researchers also found Twitter to be very attractive as a data collection tool for assessing and recording the student experience, with a wide range of free and increasingly sophisticated online analysis tools”

Read full story.

I was checking out the RSC SE site to check out some of the information from Second Life, at which I’d attended an event recently, and noted : “For those that have not attended the RSC SE’s e-Learning Fair before, this annual event has become the premier gathering for all ILT professionals involved in post-16 education in the South East region. With its combination of 12 seminars and a highly focused exhibition, the e-Learning Fair provides the ideal opportunity to learn about the latest issues and technologies as well as to network with colleagues.” I’m expecting to pick up lots of useful information, although my No. 1 panel “Making the most of Moodle” is already full!

This morning, I officially join the Learning and Teaching Development Unit team as University Blended Learning Fellow, with a particular responsibility to promote the use of all aspects of e-learning across the university. Dr David Rush had been in the post for the last couple of years, when it was a completely new initiative, but with the increasing importance of digital technology in the educational world, I can see that this role could grow – which is a very exciting idea!

As I said in my interview, ¨“The term is commonly associated with the introduction of online media into a course or programme, whilst at the same time recognising that there is merit in retaining face-to-face contact and other traditional approaches to supporting students. It is also used where asynchronous media such as email, forums, blogs or wikis are deployed in

conjunction with synchronous technologies, commonly text chat or audio.” ¨Janet Macdonald Blended Learning and Online Tutoring: Planning Learning Support and Activity Design, 2008, p2

Loved this presentation: “E-Learning Sucks“, and used a few concepts from it in the interview also!

I thought this diagram from the University of Calgary was interesting, and suspect they’ll be more links to follow!

Links:

• Tagged “Blended Learning“
• Interview presentation
• Notification of interview

Well, for me at least. Today I was offered the post of “Blended Learning Fellow” at the University of Winchester, on a 0.2 contract (i.e. 1 day per week). So far as I can see, Blended Learning is something that is growing in importance and therefore it is likely that the role will grow, but for now I am very much looking forward to identifying potential uses in social media, and other software (the University is already signed up to Wimba and uses a Moodle-based VLE) and where those uses can add real value to the student experience.

Incredibly grateful to all those on my Twitter feed who offered ideas (whether intentional or not) and encouragement, which helped to make my presentation sing this morning! I have just experimented with uploading my presentation to Slideshare, and it should be below.