CLIPP Board

Panopto Lecture Capture Workshop 2011

For those of you not familiar with Panopto, they are a company that make a lecture capture system called “Focus”. At Aston this is also known as Aston Replay. We have used the system now for several years and generally we are very happy with it. So much so that last year we actually hosted a SCHOMS event that was centred around lecture capture, with Panopto invited to talk to the delegates about their product.

Workshop time has come around again and Panopto have organised a “Lecture Capture Workshop” at the University of Birmingham. Members of CLIPP will not only be in attendance but Paul Gorman will be giving a short presentation about some research we have been working on related to Aston’s usage of lecture capture.

Here’s what Panopto have to say about their event:

Location:   University of Birmingham

Date:         Wednesday 19th October

Time:        10.30am – 4.30pm

Register today! (Note that our ‘South’ user day will be held on 2nd November at University of Southampton – if you are interested in this, please contact us here too and we will be in touch)

Networking opportunity for users of Panopto

The University of Birmingham is kindly co-hosting this event with us. It will give users of Panopto an opportunity to discuss technological and pedagogical issues relating to using Panopto’s software and will provide an opportunity for you to network with other universities.

Introduction for those new to lecture capture

If you are a university that is interested in learning more about Panopto’s lecture capture, this event will provide an ideal opportunity for you to hear from other institutions and talk to Panopto about how our platform works.

The day will include talks by Birmingham and Aston universities, as well as product updates from Panopto.

Lunch will be provided and there will be plenty of time for round table discussions. Faculty members who have used Panopto or are interested in it are also encouraged to sign up.

Register your attendance today – email us, confirming the name of your institution, number of colleagues attending, along with their names and job titles.

Once you have registered, we will send you a final agenda and more details. Meanwhile, we look forward to hearing from you and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.

The Reusing Medical Recordings Project

Just a quick note to introduce the Reusing Medical Recordings Project, which is a JISC-funded project “to encourage shared understanding between managers and practitioners across clinical and educational settings on the rationale and good practice for the creation and use of medical recordings for educational purposes”. This consultation aims to produce a set of guidance materials around ‘making and using clinical and healthcare recordings for learning and teaching’, aimed “primarily at students, teachers or doctors who wish to use a patient recording or patient data for learning and teaching.  It will also be of interest and use to other clinical and healthcare workers as well as to university staff where patient recordings are being made available for learning and teaching.

The project should standardise guidance around issues of ethics, copyright, patient permission, storage and re-use in order to demonstrate good and responsible practice, and to generate trust and reassurance for the patient.

This may well have an effect on the work which we do in Media & Learning Technologies, but also across the campus. Findings and recommendations are expected in Autumn 2011.

VLE features

Our upgraded VLE has a new permanent URL and a new “paste from Word” tool added to text editors.  This tool sits below other Mashup features added to the latest version of Blackboard. This new addition fixes previous bugs, and now allows course builders to simply paste directly from Microsoft Word documents, whilst retaining text formatting.

Find other Blackboard tutorials in our new TLC website.

We are the Learning Development Centre

This week sees our latest video – a promo for the Learning Development Centre at Aston University – go live, for all students (new and returning) to watch. Our brief was to make a video that explained what was on offer at the LDC and how students could benefit from using it. We wanted to steer clear of the traditional and sometimes impersonal ‘talking heads’ approach, so we hit upon the idea of showing the staff as friendly and approachable, using signs to give some factual information and then filming in the LDC, using text projected onto surfaces for the user comments.

Featuring excellent camerawork and editing from Colin Roach, and full participation and winning smiles from the LDC team, it’s turned out even better than we’d hoped and has impressed everyone who’s seen it so far. It’s even been shown as an example of the work of CLIPP at the Aston Advance, the gathering of the University’s senior executives.

I’m delighted that we were able to try out this new style of video, and that the end result is so strong and distinctive.

3D solutions

Further JISC case studies here.

Aston University has been identified as pioneers in the use of 3D virtual worlds to help develop students’ employability potential. The new JISC guide entitled Emerging Practice in a Digital Age , includes a collaborative project between Aston University and The University of Derby.

The PREVIEW-Psych course team developed four avatar-driven clinical scenarios designed around a family experiencing a range of common mental health disorders, closely linked to content from the University of Derby and Aston University‟s first year psychology teaching modules. The aim was to emulate campus-based learning using interactive lectures, seminars and group work.

Using problem based learning approaches in a blended context is certainly proving beneficial in this discipline, and we shall look out for future research publications by Jon Wood , who feaures in the above video.

electronic feedback

In this short video CLIPP, Dr Stuart Wallis explains how he and his students have benefitted from the GradeMark tool, when using it to assess work and give timely feedback.

See also my notes on the  presentation  by Dr Cath Ellis we posted earlier in the year.

Supporting learning

Dr Matthew Olczack explains how he used, and  subsequently researched web based resources to enhance traditional teaching and learning methods.  The research is of particular interest as Dr Olczack investigates aspects of self selection bias.  The overall results were very favourable, both in terms of the postive impact upon students learning, and their overall achievements.

Turnitin refined

Turnitin have just announced a few subtle enhancements to their tools.  The most useful for Aston are listed below;

What is reduced sensitivity for student paper matches?
In order to reduce noisy matches in the Originality Report (spurious, short matches that instructors don’t care about/ that don’t mean anything), we have raised the minimum number of words in a student paper match, added a requirement for the minimum number of non-frequently used words in a match, and lowered the amount of non-matching words that can be included in a match, the overall effect is to reduce the number of small or inconsequential matches to papers in the student paper database. This will also allow matches to primary sources like the internet and publications to rise to surface of the Originality Report source list (a common request amongst instructors).

What changes were made to the instructor inbox?
A number of small changes were made to the instructor inbox besides the addition of the “Response” column for the student GradeMark view indicator. These changes include the addition of on-hover help text for each of the column headers, expanded space for clicking on a column header to sort the inbox, a change to the GradeMark and Originality Report column headers, a change to the GradeMark icon, and a change to the downloadable file icon.

Instructor inbox Changes:

1. Hovering on a column header will display help text regarding the contents of that column
2. Clicking anywhere in a column header will sort the inbox according to the contents of that column (clicking again will reverse the sorting)
3. The column header for the Originality Report column has been changed from “Report” to “Similarity”
4. The column header for the GradeMark column has been changed from “GradeMark” to “Grade”
5. The GradeMark icon has been changed from a comment bubble and a grade or “–” (for ungraded papers) to a pencil (for ungraded papers) or the grade. Hovering on the pencil will show a message that the paper has not yet been graded
6. The downloadable file icon has been changed to a blue outline of a paper

Student Engagement: Student GradeMark view indicator

What is student GradeMark view indicator?
The student GradeMark view indicator is a feature that displays an indicator in the instructor inbox when the student has viewed the GradeMark for their paper for 30 seconds or more in one session (one viewing). If the student has viewed the paper for 30+ seconds a image of a little person with a check will appear in the new “Response” column of the instructor inbox. Hovering on the icon will display a message that the student has viewed the paper and when the latest 30+ second viewing took place. If the student has not viewed the GradeMark for the paper for 30+ seconds, a dot will appear in the “Response” column of the instructor inbox. Hovering on the dot will display a message stating that the student has not viewed the paper. The reason the student must have GradeMark open for 30+ seconds is to help ensure the student did not just open GradeMark view the grade and then close GradeMark.

P.s. If you have recently read about the new grammar checking tool (e-rater) now available, don’t hold your breath! It is only available in beta for USA customers, and selected markets.