Thoughts on live-streamed lessons
Thoughts on live streamed lessons An observation of a child taking part in a Year 7 Live-streamed Science class, during the Covid-19 crisis. Okay, so I do have some bias to be aware of. I find it hard to engage with didactic live-streamed lessons, and feel there must be some better way of […]
Using Top Hat to increase student engagement and satisfaction
Dr Curro Martinez-Mora in the School of Business has been using Top Hat extensively in the delivery of his Intermediate Microeconomics (EC2002/EC2012) course, working closely with one of his students, Nathaniel Patel, on a Digital Innovation Partnership (DIP) project. The objectives of the project were to make use of technological tools, in particular Top Hat, […]
Useful accessibility options in Windows 10 and Office 365
We recently took part in a very useful and well-attended meeting of the East Midlands Learning Technology group that discussed the use of Microsoft Office365 in teaching. This included a review of the accessibility features built-in to Windows 10 and Office365. I’ve selected a few of these that might be useful to share more widely. […]
Quizzes in Reflect recordings
Did you know you that you can add quizzes to your Reflect recordings? This feature can add a level of interactivity to recordings and presents a number of learning and teaching opportunities. You can use the Quizzes guide to discover how to add a quiz to your recording. This article will highlight how to use […]
Digitally General: why digital is not always the answer
Making something digital does not always make it better. Why? It not the digital itself that it actually the issue. After all, experimentation and exploration with digital practices and devices can bring on board innovative change within academic learning and teaching. Fundamentally, it is the way we view and handle the digital which needs to […]
A Literal Escape Room: an experiential approach to study skills
Developed by Mark Van Der Enden, Tracy Dix, and Alex Patel The challenge and rationale… The problem with ‘study skills’ workshops are that, typically, they are boring, generic and students feel they have little relevance to them (Lea and Street, 2006; Rooney, 2016). In fact, it takes a GREAT deal of time, effort and expertise […]
Using and Learning from Top Hat – a short post about our recent workshop
We recently put on a workshop ‘Using and Learning from Top Hat’. We found out about the problems and pitfalls of using Top Hat, but also how it can promote engagement, improve the experience of students and help lecturers to assess learning. Most importantly, we found out how planning for engagement fundamentally changes the way […]
Liven your lectures – engage your students with an active learning approach
Active learning is an umbrella term for learning and teaching methods which put the student in charge of their own learning through meaningful activities. They think about and apply what they are learning, in a deliberate contrast to passive learning. Research has shown that audience attention in lectures begins to wane every 10-20 […]
Enhancing our use of Blackboard – Ideas from the Bb Teaching and Learning Conference 2018
In this post I want to share some ideas from the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference I attended in Manchester last week about how we can enhance our use of Blackboard . It was a very diverse conference with 264 participants from 22 different countries. Topics ranged from the potential of using large amounts […]
The unintended consequences of MOOCs
I attended the Research and Innovation in Distance Education and eLearning (RIDE) conference in March, and a session I found particularly interesting was a presentation by Stylianos Hatzipanagos and Alan Tait, from the University of London, about MOOCs and their unintentional consequences for learning and teaching. Numbers of MOOCs, and learners taking them, have been steadily growing over the past five […]
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