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Month: June 2015

Academic Year Rollover

We are now in the final stages of preparatory work for the academic year rollover on the VLE, SunSpace. This has been a big job this year, and a difficult and somewhat stressful one for me. For the past three years at Sunderland, since we moved to LearningStudio, as part of the rollover we have copied content from the previous version of all module spaces to the new ones en masse, a process that was, compared to Blackboard, fast and effortless. However, it did have the problem of perpetuating bad practice and design. In an effort to improve the quality of module sites this year our Academic Board decided that instead of rolling over content the new sites for 2015/16 would be created from a template. Although they issued guidance on what that template should contain, exact details of how to implement this fell to me. Putting something together that made everyone ‘happy’ was not a joy.

The end result is, I think, a considerable improvement on the template that was used in previous years for new modules, but I would have liked to have done so much more with it. There are two distinct parts to the new template. First of all there are placeholder items for all of the items that Academic Board specified should be in the template and these contain information and guidance to help academics update them. Secondly there is a hugely expanded section for staff help, and a new section for student help that is almost as large. The design is very basic, deliberately so, as I didn’t want content that academics create to not match the set items that were pre-prepared, and realistically most will only use the basic functionality. However, there are some items in there that are designed to either help academics improve the visual appearance of their modules, such as some generic icons, and others that show-off what can be done in SunSpace such as a collapsable accordion menu and embedded content items including content from our streaming media server and external sources such as ThingLink.

One final thing we did was to turn off, by default, all of the tools which don’t work as they should for one reason or another. I was able to get consensus from the team on this one. They are all still there if people really want to use them, but we hope they won’t. In the staff help section there is a page dedicated to the various SunSpace tools where I have explained why these particular ones are turned off and advising people on what to use instead to achieve the same ends in a better way.

To support staff with the changes to the rollover process I have also arranged a training and publicity programme that includes emails, announcements, an article on the University’s blog, US Online, and a series of workshops supported by roaming sessions that will run over the next couple of weeks, to be repeated again at the start of September.

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OERs: Using Free, Shared, Information Literacy Resources

rose_bowl_building

“The what and how of using, re-writing and sharing Open Educational Resources in HE and FE library contexts”. A one day conference run by the Yorkshire and Humberside Branch of the Academic and Research Libraries Group and hosted at Leeds Beckett University (in the Rose Bowl building, above).

Who Needs a Repository When You’ve Got Google?
Nick Sheppard – Repository Developer, Leeds Beckett University
http://www.slideshare.net/MrNick/cilip-oer

Nick started his presentation by exploring the differences between the Green and Gold models of open access publication of research papers and the current recommendations of the Finch Report and HEFCE, and the implications on library departments, particularly the potential for additional costs. He then moved on to demonstrate an OER resource he has created in Xerte, an interactive exploration of the SCONUL Seven Pillars model of information literacy, itself based on Creative Commons licensed OERs he found in Jorum. (And an hour later the news broke that Jorum would soon be no more!)

CoPILOT: What Can We Do For You?
Nancy Graham – Research Support and Academic Liaison Manager, London School of Economics

Nancy led a discussion on how to convince academics to use OERs and contribute their own materials to repositories. Challenges and barriers we identified included where to find suitable materials, concerns about quality, and relevance to their subject areas. Nancy then shared some of her research into reasons why people choose to use OERs which included personal recommendations from colleagues, reputation of the repository and relevance to their subject area, and clear Creative Commons license indicating allowed re-use. Finally Nancy told us about the Lilac Credo Award for Digital Literacy and recommended we put any good uses of OERs forward for consideration.

Skills@Library: Using and Creating OERs
Helen Howard – Learning Services Team Leader, University of Leeds
http://www.slideshare.net/hehoward/oers-at-skillslibrary

Helen gave us an overview of the Skills for Learning provision at the University of Leeds and shared their experience in developing their resources. Considerations included identifying core skills which all students should have and how best to present the Skills for Learning material to those students. From their experience Helen recommended working with academics to embed the Skills for Learning materials in student’s core curriculum, ideally linked to learning outcomes and including an element of assessment. All of their materials were published as OERs accompanied by lesson plans and notes on how to use them.

OERs for People With no Technical Skills and No Money
Sarah George – Subject Librarian, University of Bradford
http://www.slideshare.net/sgeorge71/creating-oers-with-no-technical-skills-and-new

Sarah presented an extended case study of their experience developed OERs in very short timescales and with no budget. One thing they tried was re-purposing OERs from other institutions and Sarah discussed some of the problems they experienced, including the difficulty in removing the branding from certain types of document, such as PDFs, and the inability to do any kind of editing of others, such as those created with Storyline. One tool they used successfully was SlideGo, an online tool that converts PowerPoint files into HTML5 web presentations, to good effect according to Sarah. Something else which she demonstrated was a home-made method of doing simple quizzes in PowerPoint by utilising internal links applied to objects and shapes.

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Is That a Rocket on Your Campus?

rocket

It seems that the University may have acquired a space programme overnight. Are we about to become the first University to put a student in space? The rocket seems a little small for human exploration, perhaps we’re starting with a student’s hamster instead? The alternative explanation is a weapon’s programme. Are we about to make a decisive pre-emptive strike against some of our competition, Northumbria perhaps? It’s one way to get up the league tables I suppose.

Seriously though, I made some enquiries and the rocket visit, courtesy of Starchaser Industries, is in connection with a programme to raise awareness of the practical applications of chemistry in schools, and there were a lot of school children on campus today and I saw some of them with their own smaller scale models.

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SLS Innovation Event 2015

Some highlights from my second SLS Innovation Day where we celebrated the success of the department and all of the teams and services had the opportunity to showcase the best of their work to each other. Much more enjoyable and relaxing for me this time around as last year the event happened only a couple of weeks after I started work here and I was dropped into arranging the stand for the Learning Technologies Team in very short order.

Also this year, in the run-up to the event I was on the panel to chose the winners of the individual and team awards for innovation and I really enjoyed reading all of the applications and learning more about the fantastic work we do. All of the applications were of an incredibly high standard and it could have been really difficult to pick the winners, but I wrote a rubric for the panel to use in which we scored each nominee against the criteria the department was looking for in the applications. Once we had all done this individually, to try and eliminate any bias, we met to add up the scores and, though the results were really close, there was a winner by a single point in each category.

A tinge of disappointment that we didn’t win the award for best stand with our Oculus Rift, despite being a huge hit and generating some screams which could be heard clear across the room. I think we went too high-tech, as the winners this year and last were both bright, fun stands with games and prizes. Not from the best stand winner, but I did win the pink snake and a small orange teddy from the Careers stand who had a hoop toss game which I owned.

Kudos also for the range of vegan food on offer this year.

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