I have had no time for core work let alone blogging recently. However I did rush something through on the Health & Bioscience blog after a presentation at Herts blended learning conference on 17th June.
http://blog.uelconnect.org.uk/hab/2010/06/17/virtual-patient-developments-june-2010/
I do many things apart from Second Life but you could be forgiven for thinking that’s all I do. I will try to widen the scope of this blog one day …….
Recently I have been beavering aways creating UML (Unified Modelling Language) models for an assignment and it occurred to me that I hate installing software. I don’t just hate it I will spend countless hours trawling the net looking for a web 2.0 system that can do the job. Of course this is nothing to do with the awkward process for installing Rational Rose, ahem. So what is my motivation for this effort? Briefly:
Of course this is just my personal opinion as to the client software/web 2.0. I just can’t imagine programming students in the future being taught to create heavyweight desktop clients.
Arguably most people are ‘in the Cloud’ at this point to some extent. Facebook, MySpace, Buzz, Gmail and on and on and on. Death of the desktop? Back to dumb terminals it is!
I attended the London Blackboard User Group at the College of Law yesterday. It was housed in a very nice building in Moorgate and was an interesting trip into the city for a number of attendees. The event was entitled ‘Making the most of what you’ve got’ and was designed to showcase powerlinks and building block for those using Blackboard Classic or CE Vista who do not yet want to make the move to Blackboard 9.
In the CE Vista session we covered two different powerlinks, one for Txttools and one for the learning object repository Equella. If we had got any further with our use / installation of Learning Objects, it might have been useful for us to show that to the group.
Txttools
Stephen Vickers from the University of Edinburgh presented on the edutxt powerlink he has developed for the text messaging system Txttools. Stephen has developed a number of different powerlinks available from his SPV Software site.
The current version of this powerlink enables a course leader/instructor to send a text message to the students in their module via the VLE. Students are requested to insert their mobile phone number in the user profile of the VLE and it is from there that the powerlink collects the information. As UEL has a txttools account, it looks very much like a Powerlink worth investigating as it would enable staff members to send text messages to a specific module cohort or group within it.
Further developments are being made to the powerlink to enable a polling option to be set up. Students could text a key word and their answer to enter into a poll. A very useful option for users who do not have access to lecture voting kits.
A couple of questions that arise for UEL would be how the credits system would work. We have to pay for every message sent, so some form of agreement would have to be made as to acceptable use for academic schools. Also, we would need to investigate whether the mobile phone data we hold on the student records system could be integrated into the VLE to enable us to contact the students without them having to submit their mobile phone number.
Equella
Jonathan Blatchford from Imperial presented on their use of the learning objects repository Equella and the Web CT integration. The aim of the integration is to enable a user to seamlessly access the repository without logging into an additional system. There were a few issues noted with the PowerLink e.g. being unable to view an Equella resource in Student View.
An interesting use of a repository system, but at the moment, the level of use of Equella was lower than had been hoped. An interesting point noted was that after the release of the repository system, the IPR and copyright concerns of staff were increased even though the issues are the same as those faced with using the VLE.
A couple of other interesting points out of the day were:
Wow it has been a an entire since the birth of UELconnect, time does indeed fly. So to celebrate this milestone we hosted an event over in Knowledge Dock to present what we had been up and also a have a series station dotted about the room. The presentations were all very informative and it is certainly useful to hear the academic viewpoints. Use of facebook in AVA, ConnectingUEL in Law and so forth. My main duty of the day as it were was to present on the Panopto Lecture Capture system. Below is the presentation that I gave with Mat Tinker (Mat did most of the presentation), I just added the badly spelt parts!
Seemed to be quite a lost of interest in the idea of lecture capture from the various folk that I spoke to. It did however highlight the fact that this does need to be supported institutionally. As much as I would like to run around the University with lots of kit it’s not really practical. Although it probably would help me to shed that excess Christmas weight that is lingering! Also my zero documentation working practice is probably not a brilliant idea, but you can’t do everything. Like most tech focussed people I share the adversion for writing anything down. So all in all there were lots of useful chats with regard to lecture capture and if nothing else it raised awareness N.B. that I did actualy spell this correctly this time.
On a less positive note it was the UEL football tournament on the same day. Sadly we did not qualify! Perhaps next year.
Wow it has been a an entire since the birth of UELconnect, time does indeed fly. So to celebrate this milestone we hosted an event over in Knowledge Dock to present what we had been up and also a have a series station dotted about the room. The presentations were all very informative and it is certainly useful to hear the academic viewpoints. Use of facebook in AVA, ConnectingUEL in Law and so forth. My main duty of the day as it were was to present on the Panopto Lecture Capture system. Below is the presentation that I gave with Mat Tinker (Mat did most of the presentation), I just added the badly spelt parts!
Seemed to be quite a lost of interest in the idea of lecture capture from the various folk that I spoke to. It did however highlight the fact that this does need to be supported institutionally. As much as I would like to run around the University with lots of kit it’s not really practical. Although it probably would help me to shed that excess Christmas weight that is lingering! Also my zero documentation working practice is probably not a brilliant idea, but you can’t do everything. Like most tech focussed people I share the adversion for writing anything down. So all in all there were lots of useful chats with regard to lecture capture and if nothing else it raised awareness N.B. that I did actualy spell this correctly this time.
On a less positive note it was the UEL football tournament on the same day. Sadly we did not qualify! Perhaps next year.
The UELconnect 1 year on event earlier this week had a number of interesting presentations throughout the day. It was interesting to hear the new VC (Patrick McGhee) talk about his interests in technology and the use of lecture capture technology. Interest in the use of such tools is growing and having the appropriate infrastructure to support this interest is very much needed.
One thing that occurred to me during the day was how much I learnt from the presentations I saw. It was really useful to have academics from across the university giving their views on different projects we have undertaken. What I think is an interesting and crucial challenge for us is to capture and disseminate this good practice and innovative approaches throughout the university. Given the fact I work in the e-learning team and I didn’t know about a number of the projects presented on, I wonder how those out in the schools and services have any idea what is happening in other schools.
In the recently released JISC Portfolio for Senior Managers one of the key ways noted for enhancing the student and staff experience was ‘Ensure that best practice and innovation is being shared across your institution rather than being confined to pockets of excellence’. I think this is going to be an interesting, but crucial challenge for us.
We recently undertook a survey of the e-learning staff development requirements of staff. In all, the survey was completed by over 200 members of staff from a variety of schools & services. The survey asked for people thoughts on the University VLE (UEL Plus) and a range of learning technologies (Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts , Videocast , Virtual Worlds , Image sharing, Social Bookmarking, Video/audio conferencing , Chat , Microblogging, Online games and Social networking). The survey also asked for preferences for support mechanisms when they require immediate support and longer term training on learning technologies.
Further analysis of the results is being undertaken at the moment, but some brief highlights are as below.
This staff development survey highlights some interesting results, which will feed into the redevelopment of the provision. Trials in virtual classroom tools are currently being undertaken along with a much needed review of the support documentation we have for UEL Plus.
Debates about virtual worlds continue to interest some of us and Eduserv’s ‘Where next for Virtual Worlds’ on 25th January was no exception.
Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute argued the case for two end states – 3D video conferencing or computer generated virtual worlds on the one hand and virtual reality environments on the other. (Or something to that effect – refer to one of his many publications for the definitive version.) John Kirriemuir of Virtual World Watch summarised his latest snapshot survey of Virtual World activity in HE & FE. Daniel Livingstone brought us up to date with Sloodle and then went on to predict how technologies might converge in the future.
Martin Oliver of London Knowledge Lab (LKL) challenged the use of the term ‘affordance’ in virtual world research. Diane Carr also of LKL gave us the deaf person’s perspective on communications in Second Life – voice was not a welcome addition for this community.
Others wrote about the event at the time – see Daniel Livingstone and Heather Williamson (JISC). Most of the presentations are available on the site above.
Several weeks on I am reflecting a bit further ….
A room full of enthusiasts tends to be quite optimistic about the future of virtual worlds, even if the organisers Eduserv have come to the end of their funding stream for new developments, but for me ‘the elephant in the room’ is ongoing lack of uptake by the mainstream.
In the school of Health & Bioscience at UEL we are using SL in a very specific way for simulation and problem based learning in healthcare settings. Elsewhere in UEL, very few are using it. The only other educational use I am aware of is a limited pilot in the school of Psychology offering tutorials and the possibility of a virtual conference later in the year.
In a post in January 2010 Stephen Downes, in reference to another post by Alja Sulčič, described SL as ‘not dead but niche’. I tend to concur, whilst acknowledging that the same could be said about quite a few technologies e.g. Twitter. On the other hand, I also feel that if those institutions already active in SL can find ways to share their developments and resources beyond their own institutions in the form of OERs or their VW equivalent (e.g. Leicester have recently made a deposit in Open Jorum ), there is a possibility of wider use. A welcome aspect of any open offerings would be more end user tools, such as UEL’s embryonic web-based case editor, that enables academics to manipulate Second Life objects without any technical knowhow. Only a small minority will ever rise to the challenge of building letalone scripting in SL. Many, in fact, still struggle with the most basic aspects of more common place technologies such as the VLE.
Where next? My crystal ball points towards increased activity in simulation for health education and other subjects and for problem based learning generally but without a more open approach and user friendly development interface this type of growth will be limited. And one other thing – Second Life’s dominance of Virtual Worlds may recede as OpenSim and the like come of age.
Further to the post below all presentations from the day can be found at:
Lots of useful anecdotal presentations with regard to the joys of Moodle from various Universities (e.g. LSE, ULCC, Porto, Coventry of course). Everyone seemed happy with Moodle and rather disasppointed with Blackboard, particularly in terms of support. High cost little support seemed to be a fairly standard theme. Manchester waved the Blackboard flag a bit but that did feel a bit forced. No surprised for me personally with regard to how Moodle is being used at various institutions but it was still useful. I do feel slightly guilty for making our LTT past in plain text in to our Moodle install when there is a HTML cleanup button however (you learn something new everyday). Apparently this bit of functionality is a bit patchy, ahem moving on.
The staff development strand was a nice chance to see what was happening at other Universities, although did stray off the Moodle topic somewhat. The lady leading the session from Coventry, Anne Dickinson, gave a very nice presentation beforehand with regard to staff dev using Prezi.
My overwhelming impression of the staff dev strand was the amount of time and effort required in order to bring staff up to speed. The emphasis did seem to be initially on skill and drill style session with pedagogy coming after the initial training session. Makes sense to me in my techy mind as where is the value in pedagogy if basic navigation and functionality is not understand. Perhaps somewhere in the middle is where we should aim to be.
The Moodle-do poster was arguably a bit twee but a very useful resource for raising awareness to change. Nice video for supporting users though in basica functionality.
Another example of a nice piece of documentation produced at Coventry was that ‘flipping book’. Basically Coventry produced some student documentation with regard to Moold and Blackboard. One side being Moodle and the other being Blackboard based, hence the flipping reference. Nice idea and not overly expensive. It also appears to completly replace student inductions which can be quite time consuming.
City Universitys’ idea of calling there Moodle installation a ‘Strategic Learning Environment’ perhaps has merit as it does imply buy in at high level. Rather than the grass roots approach that appears fairly common when attempting to kick start Moodle migration. If interested there is more info on the City website with regard to their SLE
http://www.city.ac.uk/ldc/Projects/VLEEvaluation.html (Careful the videos killed my browser)
All in all a useful day and definitely came away with a few new ideas.
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