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Tag: Portfolio

University of Sunderland Practice Hub

Published 12th August 2021

I made a thing! Like, a year ago. But I didn’t show it off at the time because it didn’t feel very show-off worthy, it is, after all, just another WordPress blog (hurr-hurr-hurr). This one a collaborative effort between myself and our academic developer to showcase best practice in teaching and learning from across the University. We’ve had a Practice Hub for a long time, but it was previously hosted on Confluence in what passed for our intranet, whereas one part of my brief in putting the new site together was to make it fully accessible to everyone, both inside and outside of the organisation.

I’m writing about it now for two reasons. First of all because it recently had a little injection of adrenaline as it was used to host the presentation materials of participants in our Digital Learning and Teaching Conference in July. And secondly, because I’ve heard whispers about revamping the site once more to make it more flashy. That’s ‘flashy’ as in fancy, not as in peak noughties internet. (Although that would also be interesting.)

So I suspect that is going to be a piece of work coming my way in the new academic year, and that’s fair enough. The design as it is was the result of many cooks, and with a looser brief I could be able to do something pretty cool with it.

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New Student Induction Video and Getting Started

Published 11th September 2020

Student Induction to Canvas, by Me

I made this. I don’t get many opportunities for pure video creation / editing because we have a specialist in the team, so this was fun and a nice change of pace for me. I broke it up and did separate recordings for each area which I stitched together in iMovie, then uploaded to Panopto and added in the closed captions and bookmarks.

Related, I’ve also spent this week working on a new version of the Getting Started module which we have on Canvas and that all new students are automatically attached to. Updated content, some new pages on new systems we have and ways of working that have changed as a result of the pandemic, and new icons to match the look and feel of our new standard module template and other student induction materials we’ve been putting together.

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Multiple Mini Interviewer Training Module

Published 4th October 2019

I made a thing. And it feels like a long time since I made a thing, and I like showing off the things I make, so I hereby present to you a thing.

This specific thing is an online Multiple Mini Interviewer training module. The University’s new Medical School is in partnership with Keele University who have supplied us with the initial range of teaching materials, including their MMI training module for staff who will be interviewing applicants.

Last year we used their training as provided due to very short timescales, but for this year I was asked to re-create it with Sunderland branding, style and contextualising. It was a fun one, as I had to work out how to create reveal style effects when people click on buttons in Storyline. Still patiently waiting on Storyline 3 here… this will likely be the first thing I convert to the new version.

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Positive Allies Online Training

Published 8th February 2018

positive_allies

Proud to have been able to help my colleague, Drew Dalton, with the creation of a new Positive Allies Charter Mark which is designed for organisations to show that they are HIV friendly. This was a huge project, and my part was to convert Drew’s lecture on the subject into a stand-alone online training module.

As is typically the case when I decide to show off something on my blog, I’m proud of my work, and it’s probably the best thing I’ve made yet. That said, there’s nothing radically new or different about this one, it’s just very polished, although I did finally update my Storyline template to match the university’s new blue branding.

The Charter Mark will be officially launched on the 23rd of February at the university’s London Campus – full details and tickets are available from Eventbrite – but the website is live now at https://sunderland.ac.uk/positiveallies. Click on the link ‘Positive Allies online training’ to see my handiwork.

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PG Cert AP: Day 11

Published 9th March 2017

peer_teach

And so we come to the infamous peer teach session! In which we were each given seven minutes to teach on anything we wanted by whatever means we desired, followed by seven minutes of questions and answers, not about the content so much as observations about our teaching style.

Some interesting topics and techniques as you can imagine, from the health benefits of juicing with taste testing, to a presentation on everything you would ever want to know about the Fender Stratocaster. I taught some philosophy, in a session I called ‘Something Nietzsche Couldn’t Teach Ya: A potted history of Western philosophy from 470 BCE to (almost) the present day … Via the medium of song!’

I created a presentation using Storyline that took Monty Python’s Bruces’ Philosophers’ Song and added breaks after each philosopher was introduced in which to talk about their key contributions. In the presentation itself I had some bullet points fly in along with displaying some basic biographical information. It was well received, and I was able to field all the questions I got, though sometimes with reference to the notes I had prepared as there are things in the song which I haven’t studied.

One little thing I did struggle with was time management. The seven minute format was chosen for a reason, to see how well you can manage your topic into the available space. Though the song is very short, I had about a minute of content for each philosopher which took me over. Anticipating this, when I received my six minute warning I was ready to skip to the end and the final slide which I wanted to leave people with – about Socrates decrying modern technology! Watch the full presentation here if you wish.

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CMALT Review

Published 14th December 2016

Just finished writing a new version of my CMALT portfolio, adding the new ‘Portfolio Review’ section which is now required every three years. It feels like I’ve just submitted an assignment, which of course in a way it is. About 2,600 words, and took me the best part of a week to write.

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Appraisee Online Training Module

Published 8th September 2016

appraisee_training

Freshly rolled out, our HR’s new online appraisee training module that I created for them in Storyline. We’re developing a good relationship with HR and more work of this kind is on the cards. Storyline is also picking up throughout the university, though Faculties are tending to purchase their own copies for one or two interested people to do the development themselves. The next big one I should be working on after we get through the new semester busy period is for HIV awareness.

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Interface Symposium: Arts, Participation and Higher Education

Published 7th September 2016

artworks_mooc_taster

Attended a symposium for people working in participatory arts, organised by the university with attendees from ArtWorks-U, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, ArtWorks Alliance and many independent artists. It was an enlightening day and I met lots of interesting people, with discussions around challenges facing the arts and how participatory practice can interface with university research, and presentations on current good practice and reflections on the Asunder Project.

However, the main reason for my attendance was that I was facilitating one of the afternoon sessions: ‘New approaches to teaching resources’, a live demonstration of some of the content which is being developed in collaboration between the department and WaLTS for the ArtWorks MOOC. The MOOC platform will not be ready for some time yet, so what was demonstrated was a sample unit which I build out on SunSpace. This included a number of videos produced ourselves, some video and written case studies for discussion, a main presentation which I converted to Storyline, a couple of Google forms to get gather participant’s experience and reflections on the mini MOOC and a short sample assignment asking people to give their definition of participatory arts.

After some issues getting people logged on with the guest accounts, it went pretty smoothly. I deliberately kept the structure simple and the use of tools to a minimum to eliminate the need to give any kind of training on how to use SunSpace, and feedback was generally positive and useful.

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The Legendary Anti-Bribery Act Online Training

Published 21st April 2016

It’s finished! The now legendary University of Sunderland Anti-Bribery Act 2010 Online Training module was finally, finally approved by all interested parties yesterday (finally), and the link has gone out to the first batch of people who need to complete it.

I have been working on this off and on for almost as long as I’ve been at Sunderland. The original scoping meeting happened in July 2014 with a due date of September. Delays and competing priorities in our very busy Legal, Governance and Business Assurance department meant that deadlines slipped, many times.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. My skills with Storyline have improved considerably over the past couple of years, and this is by far the richest content item I have created, including a very professional voiceover on every slide and, in the most recent enhancement, a PDF certificate generated on the fly upon successful completion of the quiz.

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New CMALT Page

Published 13th August 2015

Keen-eyed observers will note the new CMALT page on my blog. My portfolio is now three years old and due for review as per ALT’s new guidelines which have come into effect this year. I had assumed that my portfolio would need to be reviewed first before my membership could, or would be renewed, but I’ve just found out today that the review process is actually still in pilot.

In any case, in preparation for this, and as a first step, I have converted my original portfolio from 2012 from a Word document to a webpage hosted here. In doing so I have changed no content whatsoever as it is a historical document, but I have removed the guidance notes and instructions which formed a part of the Word proforma and removed the need for the appendix of evidence by creating inline links to the evidence, all of which is also now hosted on this site.

I did consider using Google Sites or creating the portfolio in Mahara, but I don’t like the results of content produced using Google Sites and both of these options restrict my freedom in different ways. Part of the benefit of having this website is that I have complete control and freedom to do what I want and have no concerns about access in the future. Interestingly, in 2012 I hosted all of my evidence in my personal Content Collection area in Northumbria’s Blackboard and I have found that everything still works, even though presumably my IT account has long since been deleted. Nevertheless, it will all disappear at some point. A further reason for hosting my CMALT portfolio here is because I have known about the need for this review for some time and built my blog with this in mind, and I anticipate that I will be citing many of the posts as evidence. I have presented the portfolio as a flat page rather than creating sub-pages for each section as it matches the design of my other pages and because I am a fan of flat, minimalistic design and navigation. My concession to the fact that it is a large piece of work has been to create an internal navigation menu at the top of the page and included links back to this after each section.

The next step will be to complete the new review sections but I will wait for guidance from ALT on when this is going to be due rather than ploughing ahead. I have however created the required headings and placeholder text based on the guidance documents that have been published on ALT’s website as I think they are unlikely to change much now.

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