Technology Enabled Learning & Teaching

TELT related resources, news, events and debates

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PeerWise and Sparkplus

Posted by xinni on April 30th, 2012 · Learning & teaching, TELT news, UNFED

UNFED notes, April

PeerWise – http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz

Belinda gave the group a guided tour of PeerWise, a Wed-based MCQ repository that supports students in the creation, sharing, evaluation and discussion of assessment questions. Students use PeerWise to create and to explain their understanding of course related assessment questions, and to answer and discuss questions created by their peers. PeerWise is currently hosted at the University of Auckland.

Students are presented with a simple, intuitive interface and instructors can easily view student content and monitor participation. Most PeerWise activities are voluntary for students. The group had a discussion on how to engage students in formative tasks. The incentives include allocating minor percentage of marks for task completion and selecting 2 or 3 MCQs designed by students for the final exam.

To download Paul Denny’s presentation slides on PeerWise, which was used for Belinda’s presentation, please go to http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/download/ng/file/group-3300/peerwise.pdf. Paul is the founder of PeerWise.

PeerWise is free and very easy to use. To apply for instructor account, please go to http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/join/. To find out more about how to use, please visit http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/docs/

 

SPARKPLUS – http://spark.uts.edu.au

Anne Gardner from UTS gave us a presentation on using SparkPlus to support collaborative learning activities.

Anne is a Senior Lecturer of the Faculty of Engineering  & IT and she is also a co-developer of SPARK, which stands for Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit. The overarching purpose of this online tool is to provide support for instructors in designing activities aimed at developing student judgment in a range of areas relevant to their current studies and/or future professional career.

After briefly mentioning the history of Spark development, Anne demonstrated how to use the tool to support criterion-based self assessment tasks. Anne also showed the group how to use SA/PA factor, generated by the tool, to provide ‘perception’ feedback to students on their group projects.

Apart from being used to support self and peer assessments, SparkPlus also could be used for student and tutor benchmarking activities.

As Anne emphasized, providing early and on-going feedback is essential for supporting collaborative learning. ‘Walk before you can run’ is Anne’s recommendation for those who would like to start to incorporate self/peer assessment in their practices.

Click to view Anne’s presentation slides for PARKPLUS 24042012

 

Moodle courses, Ning and Assessment Toolkit update in March

Posted by xinni on April 5th, 2012 · TELT news

UNFED notes, Wed March 28

Kate Coleman, LTU – Assessment Toolkit update
Papers have been collected for the Leading and Managing Assessment section of the toolkit, these will be published online as a resource, and in book form. The online versions will be available soon.

Standards-based assessment topic is being updated and may be useful for anyone still planning to submit a poster proposal to the L&T forum, which is focussing on this subject. Beverley Oliver will be giving the keynote.

We would love you to share the Toolkit resource in your discipline, and let us know of any strategies you have for dissemination.

Assessment toolkit website

Russell Waldren – Faculty of Engineering
Russell shared his experience of developing courses in Moodle, and some usability issues were discussed, such as the multi-screen sign-on and poor use of space on the Moodle screen. Some of the things Russell has used to engage students are:

  • Essential info only on course page to avoid clutter, eg. How to get started, Assessment information
  • Some blocks are useful (eg. Course completion criteria) but can add to clutter.
  • Assessment plan and weighting presented in visual (coloured table) format
  • Collaborative pedagogy approach – students encouraged to use Discussion forums for sharing knowledge – quiz can be taken multiple times

In another course, an interdisciplinary project provides minimal information to students who learn through negotiating with team mates. An intro activity  links to the Learning Centre plagiarism quiz. Many external/guest lecturers are represented by visual of their face to add personality to the interface.

Click to view Russell’s presentation slides

Tam Nguyen – Faculty of the Built Environment
FBE courses tend to be practice-oriented and studio-based, requiring ongoing formative assessment, and deal with visual material. Institutional LMS (eg Blackboard) is not appealing to teachers or students. Challenge is to get students engaged, talking, contributing to the course facilitation.

Solution – NING social networking tool, based on Fb model of communication as central, uses social terminology eg ‘friends’, ‘events’, good support for media (drag&drop)
Risks of going external – copyright, ownership, archiving …

Result – Students loved it, addictive, liked seeing each others work. found the environment engaging with focus on latest activity, competed to post quickly for feedback. It provided a distinct ‘learning place’ separate to Facebook.

Challenge – students loved seeing each others’ work, but risk of copying – students dealt with this by selective posting of their stuff.

Sadly, Tam is leaving UNSW, but will be not far away at NIDA, managing online learning.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

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UNFED member reports on TELT projects, Moodle pilot and more

Posted by xinni on March 23rd, 2012 · TELT news

UNFED notes, Feb 2012

Blackboard Outage

Karsten advised the group that Blackboard upgrade and system outage is scheduled for the Easter break.  It is for installing service pack 8. The next outage is most likely to take place during winter break.

 

Moodle pilot project

At the moment, Moodle pilot project has more than 200 courses with more than 10,000 users. It is likely that the decision on moving Moodle to production will be handed down around July – August, 2012. Karsten encouraged all pilot participants, including teaching staff and students, to complete survey in order to provide comprehensive data for evaluation.

 

Wimba suite

Wimba suite is currently unavailable due to licensing issues. The new contract has been drafted and sent for review.

 

Moodle 2.2 new release

Kristin gave us an update on Moodle 2.2 new release. One of the highlights in the newer version is build-in rubrics, which could be used for activities as well as across the entire course. The Mobile version will be enabled for 2.2. Copy function has been added to the newer version. Users can duplicate resources or activities in 2.2.

 

Moodle pilot professional developments

Niki reported on the progress of Moodle professional developments. LTU is providing one-on-one support and consultation to pilot participants.

 

Online conferencing tools

School of Public Health is looking for suitable technology to facilitate synchronous online teaching.  Technologies, such as BigBlueButton and Google Hangout, are under review.  Sonal may report to the group later this year if any tool is selected for trial.

 

MBT experiences of using Moodle to delivery fully online courses

Andrew gave the group a brief report on MBT’s Moodle experiences. MBT starts trialing Moodle from semester one, 2012. This fully online program chooses discussion forum as the main tool to deliver learning activities. Andrew would like to see more flexibilities with the forum settings.

 

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

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MoodleMoot 2011 and Moodle 2.0

Posted by xinni on September 7th, 2011 · Learning & teaching, LMS Upgrade, TELT news, UNFED

UNFED notes, August 2011

Learning and teaching Forum

Ann gave us a brief on the upcoming Learning and Teaching Forum. The forum will be held on 16th September in Scientia Building. The topic is assessment feedback. The keynote speaker is Professor Royce Sadler. BackNoise is the technology that will be used on the forum to capture audience’s questions for the Q&A session. The interactive session of the forum will be divided into two parts:  an equation / mind map activity based on keywords from Royces’ keynote, and 12 facilitated table discussions with different assessment focuses.  For forum agenda and more information, please go to http://teaching.unsw.edu.au/forum-september-2011

UNFED Usergroup course on Telt Moodle

As advertised before, the UNFED usergroup course has been set up on TELT Moodle.  Those who have subscribed to the UNFED mailing list should have enrolled to the course. The URL is https://moodle2.telt.unsw.edu.au/login/index.php. Login by using your zID and password. If you cannot see the course name appearing on your homepage after logging in, please contact Karsten  (k.sommer@unsw.edu.au).

Karsten demonstrated the usergroup course and encouraged UNFEDers, especially TELT admins, to participate in online discussions related to TELT platform. So far, active discussions on next Blackboard upgrade have been used to inform IT in regard to outage schedules.

MoodleMoot 2011

Many people from UNSW attended MoodleMoot 2011. Karsten noted that the conference atmosphere was engaging and collaborative. He introduced Moodle HQ to UNFED and briefly talked about Moodle management and development processes.  Karsten highlight the differences on files management in Moodle 2.0, compared to it in 1.9.  The reasons behind those changes have been well summed and explained by Mark Drechsier on his blog.  http://www.markdrechsler.com/?p=481. To respond to the changes, which means Moodle users will not longer view and manage their files through ‘file cabinet’, UNSW adopted legacy course files as an interim solution for 2011. Netspots and LTU have been working on integrating Alfreso, an open source content management system, with Moodle 2.0.  EQULLA is another content management system that has been mentioned on the forum.

Niki demonstrated a Moodle course design course, which is highly interactive by using a wide range of moodle tools and web 2.0 tools. Niki also recommended Moobrics, which could be used as a catalyst to identifying staff’s current and future online teaching and course development skills.

For more information on MoodleMoot resources, please visit the UNFED Moodle course.

 

Due to time limit, UNFED MoodleMoot session will extend to the Sept meeting. Anatoly and Fiona will brief us on Moodle course visual presentations and the database tool.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

 

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Peer review task and Workshop tool in Moodle 2.0

Posted by xinni on August 8th, 2011 · TELT news, Tools & applications, UNFED

UNFED notes, Jul 2011

Associate Professor Julian Cox, Faculty of Science, gave UNFED a brief demonstration on how to design and facilitate a peer review task using the Workshop tool in Moodle 2.0.

Starting from the instructor view, Julian explained workshop features by taking his own course as an example. The workshop tool can be used to facilitate self-assessment, peer assessment, peer review and commenting.  It also allows instructors to upload pre-written or selected examples for students to assess and compare their assessment with a reference assessment. The workshop tool streamlines the administrative process of

  1. allowing and closing off submissions
  2. allocating students into groups and randomly distributing submissions within groups
  3. allowing commenting and peer assessing
  4. closing the task and releasing comments and grades.

Julian highlighted that the aim of the peer review task in the course is to engage students in the peer review process, giving them a platform for providing as well as receiving peer feedback and a means to improve their own writing based on feedback  before final submission. The main purpose of the task is neither to prepare students to be markers nor to reduce assessors’ marking loads. With this in mind, in his sample task he did not award students grades for completing the peer review task. Instead, he associated completion of the task with their final submissions; their marks for their final submissions were reduced by a certain percentage if they did not complete the peer review task.

For more information on self-assessment and peer assessment task design, please visit http://teaching.unsw.edu.au/student-self-assessment and http://teaching.unsw.edu.au/student-peer-assessment.

For both technical and pedagogical advice about the workshop tool, please visit the relevant Moodle support page (http://support.telt.unsw.edu.au/moodle/content/M2_create_workshop.cfm?ss=0).

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) and Web 2.0 assessment for digital literacy

Posted by xinni on July 20th, 2011 · Learning & teaching, TELT news, Tools & applications, UNFED

UNFED notes, June 2011

Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) is an online tool used by many educational institutions globally to manage frequent writing assignments in large classes. The tool allows instructors to setup a writing task with samples which his, or her students will mark and be calibrated against as markers based on strict criteria configured by the instructor. Students are first asked to submit their own writing assignments usually anonymously into CPR and proceed to the calibration stage. Once they are calibrated as markers they then go on to review and mark randomly assigned text submissions from their peers. Their markings are weighted based on how well they did in the calibration stage. In this process students learn both by becoming good markers during calibration, but also by reviewing and marking their peers work and receiving feedback from peers on their own work.

John Paul Posada, Educational technologist from Engineering, showed us how CPR has been used in ENGG 1000. For more details on John-Paul’s presentation, please view his Prezi slides on http://prezi.com/muxjr-w59kgg/. During the discussion, John-Paul highlight that admin support calls on both account access issues and time clarifications have been largely reduced after CPR has been host locally (Engineering CPR was previously host in United States).  The software can accommodate diversified task designs. User training is recommended for instructors who are new to the application. Engineering is working on integrating CPR, or at least the calibrated function, with Moodle 2.0.

Web 2.0 assessment for digital literacy - Belinda Allen shared with us some interesting practices presented that use Web 2.0 in assessment. Belinda collected these practices from a webinar presented by Ingrid Richardson from Murdoch university. The webinar presented research from an ALTC project: Remix, Mash-Up, Share: Authentic Web 2.0 Assessment Scenarios and Criteria for Interactive Media, Games and Digital Design. The project particularly focuses on activities for digital media students, but the approach to development of digital literacies may have wider application. To find out more, please view / download Belinda’s presentation slides web2assessment. Danny from ASB raised the question about copyrights. The participants had a discussion on social-media related copyrights issues. Kate from Learning and Teaching shared her experiences as an Visual Arts teacher.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

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Adaptive eLearning and ASB upcoming events on assessment

Posted by xinni on June 9th, 2011 · UNFED

UNFED notes, May 2011

Dr. Dror Ben-Naim from School of Computer Science and Engineering gave us a presentation on Adaptive eLearning.  Adaptive eLearning is Intelligent Tutoring Technology: computer-based educational environment that can intelligently adapt to students’ level of knowledge, providing students with the unique feedback that they need, when they need it. Dror also briefed us about different adaptive eLearning projects at UNSW. After the presentation, meeting attendees had the opportunity to have a hands-on experience using the Adaptive eLearning Platform. We trialed the student role in virtual lab and trialed the instructor role in designing adaptive questions.

For more details, please download the presentation slide -  Adaptive eLearning – UNFED workshop – 25-05-2011

Danny briefed us about upcoming events in ASB, which will focus on disseminating good practices of using technologies in assessment practices. For more information including dates and topics of the events, please download the flyer – ASB technology month.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

 

Assessment as learning Forum and LMS discussion

Posted by xinni on May 10th, 2011 · UNFED

The UNFED meeting in April was right after the Easter long weekend. As a result, many people were still on leave on that day. We did not have any pre-arranged presentations nor topics for the meeting. Instead, we have had free discussions within the attendees, mainly from the Learning and Teaching unit and the Library.

Ann, as the organiser of May forum, briefed us about the Assessment as learning Forum on 5th May. Tim and Roman, education designers from LTU, led the discussion on current learning management systems.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

ReView and Group Management in Moodle

Posted by xinni on April 14th, 2011 · Learning & teaching, TELT news, UNFED

The meeting invitation of this UNFED session was extended to L&T fellows and faculties. We have a very good turnout and engaged discussions for the session.

ReView

Dr Gigi Foster (academic Economics) and Danny Carroll (Educational Designer) of the Australian School of Business have presented on the trial of ReView in Courses and for accreditation at the ASB.

Began with the design philosophies behind the tool, Danny introduced ReView as the software promotes a criteria based assessment focus and efficiencies in the marking and feedback given to students. Danny reported that user feedback collected from ASB academics has been very positive and the trial has been expanded in 2011. ASB is also interested in using the tool to demonstrate the level of achievement of Program Learning Goals.

Gigi gave us a guided tour in ReView by demonstrating student, tutor and lecturer views from a real course. Gigi has found it contributes to

  • quality assurance through standardisation of marking approaches
  • improve efficiencies on marking,
  • improve efficiencies on providing and distributing feedback
  • facilitate the process of self-assessment among students

Version 2.0 Review is currently under development. The new version will have an improved user-interface, enhanced mapping functions that enable courses mapping learning outcomes to program learning goals with the focus of Assurance of Learning.

Click to download presentation slides (in PDF format)

Group Management in Moodle

John Paul Posada (Education Technologist in Engineering) gave us a presentation on ENGG1000 group management in Moodle 1.9.

John-Paul explained the complexities of course requirements on group managements:

  • over 1000 students
  • multiple projects designed for group works
  • different project-related information being released to different groups
  • flexibilities on group sign-up options
  • instructors’ requirements on forming groups based on certain criteria

To meet the requirement, Engineering team developed its own Moodle plug-in, called Team Build, which enables instructors set criteria in the format of multiple choice questions and form groups based on students’ responses.

Moodle 2.0 pilot

Niki Fardouly and Karsten Sommer (Learning and Teaching Unit) briefed us about Moodle 2.0 pilot.  Those who would like to use Moodle 2.0 in smester 2 are encouraged to lodge Express Of Interest form via http://telt.unsw.edu.au/PilotEOI.cfm.  Information on Moodle profession development courses will be circulated soon.

Next UNFED meeting will be on 27th Apr,  2011. Don’t forget to let us know of any topics of interest, and to let your colleagues know about UNFED – contact Xinni for information.

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TELT Pilots and ASCILITE 2010

Posted by xinni on March 7th, 2011 · Connections & collaboration, TELT news, UNFED

This is the first meeting for 2011. We have a lot of people attended including Fiona Thurn, new education technologist from the Learning and Teaching unit.

Karsten and Fiona answered questions regarding TELT pilots

Moodle pilot

Learning and Teaching is currently running Moodle pilots on both version 1.9 (semester one) and version 2.0 (semester one and two). Pilot courses that are already developed / running on 1.9 will be rolled over by NetSpot.  NetSpot has also provided Moodle 2.0 trainings to pilot participants.

Engineering expressed their concerns on whether university migration will be able to accommodate current customizations that have been done on Engineering Moodle.

Note: For semester one, Turnitin will only be integrated with Moodle 1.9 pilot course.

Wimba Classroom

Wimba classroom is a web conferencing tool with provides virtual classroom environment. It is on open pilot stage.  Wimba classroom has been integrated with Learning Management System, Blackboard and Moodle.

Notes: Australian School of Taxation and Business Law (Atax)  is using Elluminate, an alternative online collaboration tool, for this year.

Omnium

Learning and Teaching, COFA and NetSpot are working together on integrating Omnium with Moodle.  It is expected to be delivered in semester 2, 2011 in Moodle 2.0. However, it may start with a link inside a Moodle instance instead of a full scaled integration.

GradeMark and PeerMark

GradeMark was in use within Blackboard Turnitin last year. Roman briefly reported that it has been incorporated into marking and providing feedback process in some courses despite of a couple of technical issues. PeerMark is the new feature provided by Turnitin, which is expected to be used in peer review process. More user feedback on PeerMark are welcomed.

Mahara

Fiona looks after Mahara pliot this year. Mahara is an ePortfolio tool that offers students the ability to collect and display their work in one place. UNSW instance of Mahara will be integrated with Moodle 2.0. The university offers 1000 student spaces in the pilot

For those who would like to participate on TELT pilots, please apply via

TELT Pilot Expression of Interest form on http://telt.unsw.edu.au/PilotEOI.cfm

For those who would like to find out more information on TELT pilots, please go to TELT wiki on http://telt.unsw.wikispaces.net/

ASCILITE Conference (2010) and CoCo Conference

Belinda has presented to the group on her

-       2010 ASCILITE Conference paper which is about disseminating good practice in blended learning in Science, and

-       presentation given on coco conference in University of Sydney, which was about designing curriculum with creativity, building learning environment that fosters creativity and assessing creativity as graduate attribute.

Please see her Belinda_ascilite_coco presentation (in pdf format) for details.

Next UNFED meeting will be on 30th March  2011. Don’t forget to let us know of any topics of interest, and to let your colleagues know about UNFED – contact Xinni for information.

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