seckerj

About Jane Secker

Digital Literacy and Copyright Advisor at LSE's Centre for Learning Technology

Using tablets and mobiles in teaching and learning

CLT are facilitating an ‘iMeet’ workshop on Friday 2nd August at 12-1pm which is an informal get together for staff who are interested in sharing good practice around the use of tablets and other mobile devices in teaching and learning. CLT staff will attend but in no way dominate the meeting nor push any sort of agenda. Open to all interested in using, or at least in thinking about using, or in being critical about using, tablets in teaching and research.

Further details and bookings available at: https://apps.lse.ac.uk/training-system/userBooking/course/217140

Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available.

July 30th, 2013|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI)|Comments Off on Using tablets and mobiles in teaching and learning|

CLT LSE Staff Survey 2013 is open

Please help the Centre for Learning Technology to develop and improve its services in line with your needs and interests by participating in our staff survey. It should take no more than ten minutes to complete and your feedback will help to shape the team’s continuing practice.

This year’s survey seeks to identify current practice with learning technologies, staff perceptions of the value of technology-enhanced teaching, learning and assessment, and some of the learning and development needs of LSE staff.

The survey is open until midnight on 30th August to allow you to find a convenient time for completion. Your opinions and feedback are extremely valuable to us and any information you can give us will help to improve the services that we provide to you and your students.

July 29th, 2013|Announcements, Surveys|Comments Off on CLT LSE Staff Survey 2013 is open|

LSE cited as example of best practice in digital and information literacy

I am delighted to report that LSE’s MY592 Information Literacy for Research programme (run jointly by the Library and CLT), has been highlighted as an example of good practice in enhancing the information literacy skills of postgraduate students and early career researchers in UK higher education. On behalf of the Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition (RIDLs), the Research Information Network (RIN) and Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) have announced the results of this research, which showcases fifteen resources for information literacy training provision in a variety of UK higher education institutions.

The analysis draws from these cases, which provide a  range of online and in-house training resources, and incorporates various recommendations that may be of value to those planning to develop such resources.  The analysis is founded on the provisional criteria developed by RIDLs to describe and assess training provision in information literacy.

Project officer Dr Charlie Inskip said: “A number of self-selected information literacy resources have been evaluated, leading to a shortlisting of a selection of 15 good practice examples.”

RIN’s Stéphane Goldstein went on to say: “The value of the RIDLS criteria in this research has been to provide an analytical framework for such evaluations (for the researcher) and act as a reflective tool (for the developers/deliverers). Hopefully some of the recommendations and comments within the report, combined with a reflective look at the examples – and contact with their helpful representatives – may assist those attempting to deliver good practice information literacy in UK HE in 2013 and beyond.”

The full report and short list is now available on the project website, http://rilads.wordpress.com/

June 11th, 2013|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), Research Skills, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on LSE cited as example of best practice in digital and information literacy|

Learning at work day: all about MOOCs

2012 was described by some as the year of the MOOC, or Massive Open Online Course and as part of the Learning at Work day activities CLT are going to be at the Learning Cafe  on Thursday 23rd May from 3pm in the Bean Counter, 32 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

There is a lot that has already been written about MOOCs (for example. see this recent Guardian article about MOOCs as the scourge or saviour of higher education), but essentially this blog post is aimed at staff at LSE and provides some useful links to MOOCs you may wish to explore as part of your learning and development at work. There are many MOOCs you may wish to do to further your knowledge outside of work, so why not check out this list of over 300 MOOCs from elite universities. There is also a list of MOOCs in all shapes and sizes on the Open Culture website.  You’ll see some of these courses offer some form of certification, although you may need to pay a fee for that. You may also wish to browse the list of courses offered by Coursera, Udacity or keep an eye on developments from FutureLearn.

However we’ve tried to pick out some interesting courses which might be useful for LSE staff, who wish to develop their knowledge, skills and competencies in some key areas.

Communication Skills

There are a whole series of courses available via Coursera on Teaching and Learning, such as this course on Learners and Learning. The University of Washington are also offering this course on an Introduction to Public Speaking.

Management and finance skills

If you want to learn more about leadership and critical perspectives on management, this course on Coursera may appeal to you. There is also a course entitled Introduction to Finance starting in June and provided by the University of Michigan. Another course this time from the University of Pennsylvania covers Operations Management teaching you how to improve and analyse business processes.

Technical Skills

Interested in finding out how to set up a blog then how about this course provided by San Jose University on Web Development. Or this one on Programming Languages.  The University of Washington are offering a course on Building an Information Risk toolkit.  There is also another course by the University of Washington starting next week on Computational Methods for Data Analysis.

Creativity

Closer to home the University of London are offering a six week course in Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps. There is also a 7 week course starting next week entitled Introduction to Art offered by Penn State University. And if you are interested in Creativity, Innovation and Change, this course again from Penn State may appeal to you.

Whatever you choose to study, whether it’s for personal or professional reasons, they say no knowledge is wasted. But as Albert Einstein said “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” So why not explore the world of MOOCs!

Learning Cafe for Learning at Work Day

CLT will be taking part in the Learning at Work day activities this year on Thursday 23rd May. There will be a Learning Cafe in 32 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, on the mezzanine floor of the Bean Counter Cafe. The theme of the day is ‘many ways to learn’ and we will be a chance to find out more about:

  • using Moodle for staff development
  • using private social networks to communicate with staff at LSE
  • learning opportunities provided by MOOCs

The event will run from 3-4.30pm and there will be free tea or coffee for the first 50 staff members who visit the stalls. We are also holding a raffle with a fantastic food hamper for the lucky winner! You can find out about a range of other topics from our colleagues at LSE including: mind mapping software, how to safe a life, neurodiversity and computers and managing disability in the workplace using assistive technologies. We hope to see you there.

May 20th, 2013|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI)|Comments Off on Learning Cafe for Learning at Work Day|

The needs of the distance learner

Next week’s LSE NetworkED seminar is presented by Lindsay Jordan from the University of the Arts London, entitled ‘The Needs of the Distance Learner’.

Distance learning courses have always struggled to hold on to their students and steer them through to successful completion. While the Internet provides institutions with the tools to incorporate interactivity, group work and new forms of content, many of the factors contributing to distance learner dropout remain unaddressed, and the personality profile of the successful distance learner has altered very little. This workshop will explore the needs of the modern distance learner, and how they can be met in the current distance education landscape, including the rise of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in its various guises.

If you would like to attend, then please book a place via the Training System.

April 10th, 2013|Announcements, NetworkED|Comments Off on The needs of the distance learner|

Celebrating Open Education Week

This week is Open Education Week and colleagues on the Digital Developments blog wrote a post on Monday to highlight some of the open education initiatives that we have worked on at LSE in the Library and in CLT. The main one is of course LSE Learning Resources Online, which is a collection of open educational resources, many of which were produced during the JISC / HEA funded project DELILA.

I recently took part in a short project also funded by the HEA and JISC to see how the open educational resources we created as part of DELILA might be used internationally. The project was called CoPILOT and there is now a short case study about how to promote and share resources internationally on the DELILA website. Working with the University of Birmingham and UNESCO we looked to build an online community of practice for sharing information literacy resources, and used a platform provided by UNESCO called the WSIS Knowledge Communities platform.

OERs are not online courses, they are simply resources, and our main audience was other teachers, but the concept of open education and encourage teachers to share their resources is something LSE CLT should be proud to be involved in.

March 13th, 2013|Open Education, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on Celebrating Open Education Week|

Copyright and student-made videos

CLT provide advice and support for staff on copyright issues and teaching. However, we are getting increasing numbers of requests for copyright advice specifically for students. PhD students can attend a number of workshops covering legal issues in the CLT Researcher Development Programme running towards the end of March, such as Understanding Copyright issues for researchers and PhD students  However, we have recently been asked to provide advice and guidance for students who might be creating videos as part of their studies at LSE. The new guide covering Copyright Issues and Student-made Videos is now available on our website. If you wish to point students to this page then please do so.

February 11th, 2013|Images, Audio & Video, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on Copyright and student-made videos|

Information Literacy workshops for PhD students

Need help researching academic resources for your major review?

  • Want to keep up to date with the latest academic writing on your research area
  • Need advice on citing materials and structuring your bibliography?
  • Looking for statistical data for your research.

Then book a place on this term’s MY592: Workshop on Information Literacy
This six week programme (part of the Department of Methodology’s Workshop series) is taught by the Library and Centre for Learning Technology. Six 2 hour ‘hands on’ workshops will enable you to build up your research skills as we cover:

  • Literature searching, citation searching and finding academic materials using resources such as IBSS, Scopus, Web of Science, Econlit, etc.
  • Getting the most out of the internet for research
  • Managing information – creating bibliographies and using tools to manage your information, e.g. EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley
  • Dealing with data – resources for data and how to use them
  • Finding and using newspaper, conference, theses, research and specialist publications for research
  • Next steps, keeping up to date, sharing your research, developing your online presence and building a network.

MY592 is supported by a course in Moodle and all participants receive feedback on resources for their individual research topics. The course is ideal for first and second year PhD students.

This term the programme will start on Wednesday 13 February 10-12 in STC.S175 for 6 weeks. Further information is available and places can be booked on the LSE Training System .

Please email Maria Bell (m.bell@lse.ac.uk) if you have any queries about the course.

February 1st, 2013|Announcements, Research Skills|Comments Off on Information Literacy workshops for PhD students|

Learning Technology development grants

Calling all LSE staff. Are you interested in exploring the use of technology to support teaching and learning? The Centre for Learning Technology still have funds to provide small development grants to help you in this work. These funds can be used for a wide range of purposes as we are interested in encouraging innovation and supporting good ideas in their early stages. Possible areas include: trying out novel forms of assessment, use of video and rich media, “flipping” lectures and  exploring social media. There is no restriction on the use of funds but they are not intended for the purchase of equipment, rather for uses such as employing a graduate student to help you with the work, or perhaps purchasing resources to be piloted.  It is unlikely that any individual request will exceed £3k.

 If you would like to find out more please contact Steve Ryan, director of CLT or e-mail clt-enquiries@lse.ac.uk.

January 23rd, 2013|Announcements, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on Learning Technology development grants|