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Tag: Conference

SLS Innovation Event 2014

The Student and Learning Support Innovation Event is an annual showcase of the work done by each team within SLS. It is an opportunity to both meet and network with other teams and find out what they do, and to demonstrate work which we have been doing. At two and a half weeks in the event was perfectly timed for me and was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the other teams and how we collectively contribute to the enhancement of the student experience. As to our own stand, we ran two live demonstrations, the first was an interactive quiz – with prizes! – using a student response system running on a portable SMART Board and the second was ClassLive (Blackboard Collaborate).

While I feel that my contribution on this occasion was rather minimal for obvious reasons, I was at least able to obtain a small budget for giveaways and small prizes for our quiz in order to attract people to our stall, and I hope that I was a positive influence on the team and encouraged us to showcase some really nice tools we can help people with.

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e-Fest 14: An e-Ventful TALE

rubrics_cube

Organised by Jisc RSC Northern and held at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, eFest 2014 was a conference bringing together staff from FE and HE institutions across the North East, with an emphasis on learning technologists and people from related fields, with service providers such as Turnitin, OneFile and MoodleRooms.

The whole day was fantastic, I got to meet lots of interesting new people, discovered some new services, many of which I went away and read up on, adding the best to my personal toolkit, but the highlight of the day was the presentation of Paula Kilburn from Stockton Riverside College who presented three case studies on the use of video marking. The first was the simplest, an academic using an iPad to record him as he annotated a student’s written work. In the second the academic used the screen and audio recording functions of QuickTime to record him as he worked through an audio file the student had created, demonstrating in real time the changes required which would have got the piece up a grade. In the final example an academic was watching a video while recording audio feedback, pausing or going back as required. In all three cases the resulting videos were uploaded to the College’s Planet eStream account with no, or minimal editing, the idea being to deliver better, faster feedback, not a polished video. In all three cases the academics reported that it was faster and easier for them to give better and more comprehensive feedback than would have been possible to write. The whole pilot was a huge success with students who received video feedback showing substantial improvement compared to the respective cohorts from previous years.

As always at these kinds of event, there was a open marketplace for tea, coffee, mingling and for various providers to demonstrate their wares, trying to attract people to them with the usual games and freebies. Turnitin, however, set the standard to beat with their Rubrics Cubes, very droll.

Finally, I would just like to say that with regards to the ‘Stadium of Light’ Metro station, I would humbly suggest to Nexus that to improve accuracy this station be renamed to the ‘Random Tesco car park over a kilometre away from the Stadium of Light, with no clear sign posting’ Metro station. My unexpected journey humbly reminded me to be grateful for smartphones, satellite navigation and the company of fellow wayward souls. In all seriousness, to anyone who needs to go to the Stadium of Light on the Metro, get off at St Peter’s station instead as it is actually closer.

http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk/northern/e-fest-awards.aspx
http://www.planetestream.co.uk/
http://submit.ac.uk/en_gb/
http://www.onefile.co.uk/
http://uki.moodlerooms.com/
http://edina.ac.uk/

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