Learning, Teaching And Assessment In Higher Education

Susannah Diamond and Andrew Middleton led a workshop at the ALT-C 2007 conference at Nottingham University that set out to consider the opportunities and appropriateness of Web 2.0 applications as student portfolio applications. This podcast presents the discussion from the last part of the workshop. A wiki was set up to promote further discussion and engagement with the question beyond the workshop. This is publicly available at http://portfolios-2-0.pbwiki.com. If you would like to contribute to that wiki please email Andrew at lta-podcast@shu.ac.uk for details on accessing it. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Andrew Middleton speaks with Matt Gough about collaboration and technology. The interview followed a performance by Matt in collaboration with three other artists who between them used dance and various new and old technologies to transfer and mediate knowledge. It is hoped that by immediately reflecting on this successful technology mediated collaboration understanding of the dynamics and potential of collaboration and technology will be found. The performance took place in the Real-time Collaborative Art Making workshop organised by Dr Greg Sportan of the Visualisation Research unit at the University of Central England. See http://www.biad.uce.ac.uk/vru/collaborativeart/index.php for resources relating to this workshop. Notes made during the workshop can be found at http://andrew-conf.blogspot.com/ Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

This episode describes how a web-based application called MyChingo is allowing academics to invite students to leave voice notes in their Blackboard courses. We hear from Cheryl Middleton an academic in the ACES faculty, a student placement who worked with Cheryl, and my colleague Helen Rodger who tested the MyChingo device for ease of use. More information about MyChingo is available at http://www.mychingo.com/ Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Participants in an educational podcasting workshop discuss the question "What makes an engaging educational podcast?" This short episode repeats the activity carried out in episode #44, and many of the responses here echo what was suggested earlier. The podcast illustrates another aspect of educational podcasting - how the activity itself (rather than the information it carries) can be used to focus a class and provide an engaging platform to output group discussion work: the podcast as flipchart! Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Sheffield Hallam is gearing itself up to using digiatl audio. I sense that following two years of background work there are indications here that digital audio is a media that people are ready to use. There is a lot of interest in the Closer! podcasting pilot, for example. Part of the effort made by me has been in making sure that everything's in place for staff and students to use it whenever they were ready. In this episode I speak with James Dennis about what he and the AV unit have been doing in preparing the Edit Suites on both our City and Collegiate campuses. This recording is an extract of a longer recording I made as James and I talked through various learning scenarios and approaches to making good quality recordings. These recordings are available for staff on the Closer! pilot project website site. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Rob Appleyard talks to Andrew Middleton about his research into Immersive Virtual Environments. Rob, from our Faculty of Heath and Wellbeing, describes IVEs in general and discusses his own research that relates to developing a 3D awareness of anatomy by using interactive IVEs. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Helen Rodger in Academic Innovation at Sheffield Hallam has been leading the Backpack pilot for the last 9 months. Andrew Middleton speaks to Helen to find out about Backpack, the add-on tool for the Blackboard learning environment. They discuss the pilot and some of the tentative findings that are emerging at the end of the academic year. More information about Backpack can be found on the Agilix website at: http://www.agilix.com/backpack.aspx which says, "Improving student and instructor access to Blackboard resources. Backpack provides offline access to Blackboard course documents, assignments, announcements, grades and more." Blackboard inc describes Backpack as 'Blackboard to go' in its own introduction to the tool: http://www.blackboard.com/extend/backpack.htm Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

The Impact Mentoring Scheme run at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield matches students to professionals in the area. Run by the Careers teams at each university, it is a career focused scheme where mentors use their skills, experience and knowledge to support a student as they make decisions about their future career. Initially established as a positive action project designed to develop the competitiveness and employability of UK Black and Minority Ethnic students it now also benefits other students. You can find out more about Impact at http://www.graduatesyorkshire.co.uk/impact/ and contact Annette Baxter, the Impact Project Officer, by email at a.r.baxter "AT" shu.ac.uk. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

The Closer! pilot is a new educational podcasting initiative being run at Sheffield Hallam. It will run in the 2007-08 academic year and will evaluate the Podcast LX Building Block in Blackboard. The pilot will be supported by Academic Innovation in the Learning and Teaching Institute and e-Learning support teams in the faculties. Podcasting, audio and video are relatively new media and Academic Innovation are particularly interested in working with people who are interested in taking the opportunity to introduce innovation into their own practice. The pilot seeks to encourage ideas that introduce either new voices or new ways of sharing voices in the learning environment. The pilot is called Closer! because one important area for innovation is how the learning community can be brought closer together through the use of audio. Here are the 10 points I propose in the recording that will help podcast designers to create a good educational experience with podcasting: 1. Relevance is clear to the students 2. Rec

Audio Feedback takes many forms. Several academics at Sheffield Hallam University have taken the essential concept of producing formative feedback in audio format and put their own spin on it. In this workshop from the The Assessment for Learning Initiative week Andrew Middleton co-ordinates a discussion with Anne Nortcliffe, Anthony Rosie and Heidi Probst. Participants discuss the methods they use and the benefits they have found. Apologies for the quality of the recording, which is not as good as usual. This recording is 43 minutes long and follows the process of planning through to evaluation of the approach. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

The Assessment for Learning Initiative (TALI) at Sheffield Hallam University is running a week of activities relating to innovation in assessment next week. Andrew Middleton talks to Nina Miremadi about her role in the initiative and the sessions for next week. TALI are producing a podcast record of the week. You can access the podcast at http://tali-lti.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default and subscribe to it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TaliPodcast Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

The web is now a creative environment where anyone with basic ICT skills and an internet connection can publish their own ideas and collaborate with others. What does this new understanding of the Web, or Web 2.0, mean to education? In a continued exploration of this question Andrew Middleton discuses how Web 2.0 and studio practice might connect to 'extend the studio.' Andrew speaks with Drew Dallen, a part-time Fine Art student at Sheffield Hallam University. The following list of applications was the focus of the discussion: Web 2.0 - Example applications or try http://web2.0dot.org/ Visualisation and collaborative spaces * ConceptShare (http://www.conceptshare.com/) - supports the creation and management of interactive workspaces to present visual designs to others to gather feedback from team members, managers and customers * Thinkature (http://www.thinkature.com) - combines an instant messaging system with shared, visual workspace. Use it as a collaboration environment, a meeting room, a personal web-ba

You would have thought that thinking about your career is an important, on-going part of being a student - especially in that last undergraduate year. Many students however don't seem to engage with the university Careers team. They are preoccupied with studying for the exams. Before they know it they've graduated and not able to make the most of their qualifications. How can a Careers team make what they have to offer more accessible, more obviously relevant and more engaging to the student who, whether they know it or not, could clearly benefit from the services on offer? Perhaps a podcast could help? Andrew Middleton and the Careers team at Sheffield Hallam start to consider whether podcasting could provide a good fit. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Andrew Middleton proposes that educational podcasting models can be used to stimulate social engagement in the learning community. Do you agree? What ideas do you have for social educational podcasting? The next show is for you! Use the MyChingo recorder on the Show notes site to leave a message or send Andrew an audio response via email at lta-podcast AT shu.ac.uk. Your contributions will be compiled to form the next show! Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Andrew Middleton travels to Scotland for the second episode in a row, this time to Glasgow to the Massively Multi-leaner Conference held at the University of Paisley. He reports back on several of the sessions. A more detailed report can be found in the Creativity in Academic Innovation blog at: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/wordpress/?p=352 Second Life: http://www.secondlife.com Jeremy Kemp's SimTeach: http://www.simteach.com/ Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

In this episode Andrew Middleton proposes to attendees at Barcamp Scotland that there are much better things we can do with the medium of podcasting in higher education than record lectures. Slides for this session are available on at http://www.slideshare.net/amiddlet50/dont-record-your-lectures-educational-podcast-models Look at the BarcampScotland wiki for more information about BarcampScotland: http://barcamp.org/BarCampScotland Search the web for other networked content using the BarcampScotland tag. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Andrew Middleton travels to Edinburgh on a sunny Saturday to find out about Barcamps. He attends, and takes an active part in BarcampScotland. Barcamps, aka Unconferences, are informal, spontaneous, user-created conferences. Attendees are invited by networked peers. This peer networking approach is the method that ensures the quality and the focus of the event. Once invited you sign up on a barcamp wiki to say you're going and what you're interested in and what you can present on. This episode attempts to capture the essence of the event itself. Later episodes may present some of the talks that went on. The sound quality was not so good on this, so apologies for that. Look at the BarcampScotland wiki for more information: http://barcamp.org/BarCampScotland Search the web for other networked content using the BarcampScotland tag. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Andrew Middleton talks with Sue Jamison-Powell, who is carrying out research on social networking, about social networking technologies. In the discussion several sites are referenced: http://www.livejournal.com/ http://www.danah.org/ http://www.facebook.com http://www.myspace.com http://www.danah.org/ http://www.nmc.org/events/2006fall_online_conf/index.shtml (New Media Consortium keynote, Oct 2006) Social networks aren't constrained to living people! - http://www.myspace.com/loving_memory_anna http://aboutmyrecovery.com/2006/03/29/a-memorial-site-for-deceased-myspace-users/ Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Social Networking applications such as MySpace and Facebook are providing really interesting opportunities for education. In this episode I continue a conversation I started a couple of episodes ago with Vic Whittaker from Sheffield Hallam University. In the earlier episode we discussed Web 2.0 tools and Tada Lists. In this conversation we discuss Vic's experience of online communication and his recent use of Facebook in particular. We discuss ethical issues such as how such applications blur the lines between private, public and professional lives. The discussion references Facebook (http://www.facebook.com), MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) and Elgg (http://www.elgg.net) Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com

Andrew Middleton presents a short discussion on Creativity that he had with some Visualisation students. The podcast recording was set as a creativity exercise in this student workshop. It demonstrates how the constraints of time and the pressure of 'being on air' can lead to creative thinking, as much as techniques such as brainstorming or mind mapping. When the mic is open you've got to say something vaguely intelligent! He also presents a few thoughts about conditions for creativity and some of the underlying principles of creativity. Check the Show Notes at http://ltapodcast.blogspot.com