Ed-Tech news and issues

Learning Technology Ideas Exchange

Click to sign up to the Learning Technology Idea Exchange

“Learning Technology Ideas Exchange” is an opportunity to get inspired, meet colleagues, exchange ideas and discover ways to improve teaching and learning with technology!

Run as informal café-style presentations, LSE colleagues will share insight into technologies used for teaching and learning and explain the educational rationale behind their work. You will have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss.

Posters from various LTI projects will be on display during lunch, which will be provided by LTI. Learning Technologists will be available to answer any questions throughout the event.

There will be a further opportunity to ask questions in a plenary before we wrap-up.

Time	Programme	Themes and presenters
11.00 -11.10	Welcome	Tea and coffee provided
11.10 - 12.10	Café 1	Table 1 - e-assessment * Sara Geneletti (Statistics) * Elisabeth Grieger (Mathematics)	Table 2 - General Innovation * Francesco Panizza, (Government) * Kay Inckle (Sociology)
12.10 - 12.20	LTI Update
12.20 - 13.00	Lunch (provided)
13.00 - 14.00	Café 2	Table 1 - Students as Producers * Jennifer Jackson-Preece (European Institute) *Catherine Xiang (Language Centre)	Table 2 - e-assessment * Edgar Whitley (Management) * Lourdes Hernandez-Martin (Language Centre)
14.00 – 14.30	Plenary	Group discussion and questions

When	Monday 23rd May
Time	11am -3pm
Location	Lower Ground of Parish Hall (PAR.LG.03)

April 28th, 2016|Announcements, Assessment, eAssessment Events, Ed-Tech news and issues, Events & Workshops (LTI), innovation, Roundup, Show and tell, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Summer of Student Innovation 2016

The Summer of Student Innovation (SoSI) project, run by Jisc, is a competition encouraging innovative education technology ideas from students. The initiative focuses on engaging with students to improve creative design, research, entrepreneurial and project management skills.

This year Jisc are running two competitions, a summary of both is below.

Student Ideas competition:

Jisc are seeking ideas for using technology that could improve research, learning or student life and have the potential for wide use across higher and further education.

Your idea might be a small tweak to how things work or a big solution for a whole college, university or other learning provider – but you will be required to show that it could have benefits beyond your own context.

The successful teams each gain an initial £2,000 plus mentoring through a design sprint, and a further £3,000 if we select their idea to be developed as a product.

Supporting tech startup projects:

The supporting technology startup projects competition is for small teams who would like to pilot their existing product within colleges, universities or skills providers.

A £20,000 startup grants will enable five successful teams to turn their working beta into a functioning product. Your product should be at least a working beta; we don’t expect that you will have an existing customer base but some evidence of pilots with learners would be beneficial.

Closing Date for submissions:

The deadline for submission of ideas is just under a month away on 23 May, 23:30h.

Further information on both competitions, how your students can submit their ideas and links to promotional material you can use are included on the Jisc website:

April 27th, 2016|Ed-Tech news and issues, Events & Workshops (LTI), innovation, Student projects, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Students’ Expectations for the Future of Technology in Education

Last term, Learning Technology and Innovation (LTI) started a project involving three days of interviewing all over campus. We asked 100 students questions designed to gather their insight about what teaching, learning and technology could look like at LSE in 2020. The three-minute interviews, whether filmed or just audio recorded, have helped us start a conversation from the grassroots up about the future of innovation and education at the school.

We are currently reviewing the hours of footage gathered to create a short video and a report relaying the students’ voices about the future of technology in education. In the meantime, we have designed the following teaser to give you some insight into the project. This teaser is a compilation of the answers given to a single question: if you could describe, in one word, what you would expect from technology in the future what would it be?

I would like to end this post by thanking all the students that accepted to be interviewed, your feedback is tremendously helpful. Stay tuned for more updates and videos!

April 26th, 2016|Ed-Tech news and issues, Images, Audio & Video, innovation, LSE 2020, Projects, Reports & Papers, Research Skills, Show and tell, Social Media, Student projects, Surveys, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

SADL Celebration: ending term on a digital high

Last week saw the official end of the SADL Programme for 2015/16 and students and staff got together in the Studio in the Saw Swee Hock to report on their group projects, be presented with their certificates and prizes for the best blog posts and generally let their hair down before the end of term.

The evening started with each of the three groups discussing the research project they had been working on together since Michaelmas Term. Each group was supervised by three of our Senior Ambassadors and the projects included:

how to improve learning spaces at LSE
how to improve assessment and feedback and
how to improve peer support.

The groups were given complete freedom in how they wanted to interpret the question and how to present their findings, however they were supported by the Seniors. The first group led by Djelila, Simran and Vikki were tackling the question of how to improve learning spaces at LSE. This is a really important question and the group highlighted some of the issues with the current learning spaces at LSE and how they felt they could be improved.

The next presentation was from Eugene, Katie and Chandra were investigating how to improve assessment and feedback at LSE. Again lots of issues were raised and the students had carried out a survey to gather the opinions from their peers about how improvements could be made.

Finally we heard from the group led by Geteesh, Chantel and Melissa who explored how peer support might be improved. The group talked about what peer support is and had lots of suggestions for how technology and face to face contact can build a peer network.

Throughout SADL we encouraged students to blog about their experiences rewarding them with Amazon vouchers for their blog posts. We also had a prize for the best blog post over the course of the year and two runners up. We were looking for a reflective piece of writing, that emphasised digital literacy and shared ideas with others. The blog posts were judged by Valerie Brese who was a SADL student last year, Sierra Williams from LSE’s Impact Blog and Heather Dawson from the Library.

We are delighted to announce the winner was Ella Sun for her blog post on OneNote or Evernote. The two runners up were Rebecca Quinn for her post on referencing, no longer a pain in academia and Djelila Delior who wrote about how SADL got me hired, who is also one of our Senior Ambassadors.

Congratulations to all the SADL students this year. They will all receive a statement on their PDAM record for their contribution to the programme and be eligible to apply to be a Senior Ambassador next year to help shape the programme.

Blog post written by Jane Secker (Digital Literacy and Copyright Advisor) and is taken from the SADL blog

March 21st, 2016|copyright, Digital Literacy, eAssessment News, Ed-Tech news and issues, Events & Workshops (LTI), innovation, Learning Spaces, Show and tell, Student projects, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Technology in Teaching and Learning: Newest Projects from LSE Staff

Games, revision podcasts and electronic feedback are the main themes of the latest projects funded by an LTI Grant. You can find more information about our funding schemes and other projects in our dedicated pages.

Strand 1: Innovation in Teaching and Learning

Gustav Meibauer and Andreas Aagaard Nohr, Department of International Relations – Development of PowerPoint-Based Simulation Games for Use in Undergraduate Teaching

“This project will design and implement three PowerPoint-based interactive simulations for use in introductory undergraduate classes. Currently available solutions are targeted at course-long activities, at a high cost of time and preparation effort for both teachers and students. Instead, this project explicitly aims at providing a low-cost, easily accessible and class-long interactive experience to students to encourage theoretical linkage with own in-class experience in such issue areas as foreign policy, diplomacy, or great power dynamics. “

Kay Inckle, Department of Sociology – The Game of Research

“The Game of Research is designed for social science students undertaking a final-year qualitative primary research dissertation. In stage one it is a board game similar to Snakes and Ladders but adapted with additional features to make it research-focused and dependent on skill and discernment rather than luck. Through the game students learn the six essential components for a successful qualitative research project: research question, design/proposal, ethical approval, methods/fieldwork, analysis, writing and referencing. The second stage of the game mimics the board game, but takes place in a virtual platform using students’ actual research projects.”

Olga Sobolev, Language Centre – Language Immersion in a Self-Study Mode: Revision e-Course

“A new self-study revision e-course, promoting students’ proficiency in spoken and aural Russian through autonomous learning […] This is very much a student-centred initiative:

The course is geared specifically to the syllabus covered in the Russian Language and Society Course throughout the year.
It will offer a valuable alternative to teaching contact hours that are not available to students throughout the Easter break, to back up and enhance their revision/preparation for the exams in the ST.”

Tobias Pester, Department of International History – Sustainable Autorship with Academic Markdown

“I am proposing to develop, document, and teach a Workshop for Sustainable Authorship for students of the LSE that familiarizes and equips them with the writing environment of Academic Markdown. […] One, it provides the automatic generation of references and bibliographies. Two, it relies on the single most sustainable file format since the invention of computers: human-readable plain text. Three, it is platform independent: the most basic text editor available on any operating system will do. Four, it does not rely on proprietary software.”

Read Tobias’ post on his experience with Academic Markdown

Susan Scott, Department of Management – Using Digital Innovation to Curate a Living History of Uber and Uberisation

“This project will explore the usefulness of establishing and curating an open access digital ‘living’ archive to support problem-based learning about contemporary topics in global business management particularly (but not only) reconfiguring business models and service innovation. With help from LTI we will create an open access archive populated with a selection of material to date about the American international transportation network company Uber and the phenomenon known as “Uberization” ”

Strand 2: e-Assessment

Edgar Whitley, Department of Management – Using Mahara: Blogging, Peer Review and
Feedback

“The aim of the project is to assess the suitability of the Mahara platform as a means of student assessment, feedback and peer review for courses within the School.”

Strand 3: Students as Producers

Jennifer Jackson-Preece, European Institute – Narrating the Death (and Life?) of Multiculturalism

“EU 458 Identity, Community & the ‘Problem’ of Minorities ends with a student debate on the ‘Death of Multiculturalism’. Instead of group presentations, the initiative would ask students to work in small groups (3-4) over a 2-3 week period to produce a short (5 minute) film narrating their take on this theme. The films would be screened in LT week 11, and a general debate / discussion would follow on from them.”

February 22nd, 2016|Announcements, Assessment, Ed-Tech news and issues, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Five reasons why using technology could make your teaching and learning better!

The use of technology is an issue that is danced around quite a lot, especially here at the LSE. Technologists, academics, students all debate the notions of pedagogy before technology and how we can avoid the pitfalls of technological determinism or the replacement of every one of us with the robot Sheldon from the ‘Big Bang Theory. The reality is that this should never have become a polarised debate, where the choice was either the unregulated and ill-defined change agenda driven by technological adaptation or the last line of defence of the ‘way it has always been’. Technology (if such a concept can be simply defined) is a means; a society changing and generation shaping means for sure, but a means nonetheless. LTI are here to be part of your approach to engaging with technology to enhance learning and teaching. From the simplest innovation to the most transformative intervention and at a pedagogical or instructional level, technology is a critical part of modern teaching. So, if you are thinking about whether you should use ‘technology’ in your teaching or learning, contemplating a change in pedagogy or simply finding out what your colleagues or learners are doing with their technology, then maybe these five reasons might help shape your thinking.

1. All your students are already using technology to a wide variety of degrees
This is a simple assertion. All of us are using technology; from cash machines, to smartphones, to laptops to tablets to our oyster card. Each of these pieces of technology serves a purpose. They change the way we do things. They change the language we use and they shift core practices around processes (such as paying, communications, processing and thinking). There are no universal rules about this. Generations after us are not naturally better than their parents at being technologically adept. These technologies are simply there. They develop, change and progress like most other means. In your classroom you have an array of devices more powerful than any of the ones that went before. There are ways to use that technology for the benefits of learners and learning. Instant communications, collaborations, interactions outside the classroom, annotations, engagement with readings, critical thought, right down to managing the calendar. These skills are not native, nor are they uniform. Learners and teachers may need support, training, mentoring and practice. That’s where we can help.

2. All the jobs students will do are shaped in part by technology
We use technology to do all our jobs. You are reading a blog now. Almost every discipline has been impacted by technology; from research practice to visual rhetoric through to open access. How do we integrate these changes into curricula, teaching and assessment? Like any other programme/design process, we are research informed, we maintain rigour and we understand what skills and knowledge graduates will need to be develop expertise and understanding. Technology is just another part of that. Technology can help simulate real world employment situations, global phenomena or inter-personal scenarios. Technology can develop the communication, collaboration, identity or teamwork skills required in most modern workplaces. Technology skills such as media making, coding, social media or searching are critical trans-disciplinary concepts. Either inside or outside teaching and learning, having access to these skills enhances the employability of your graduates. LTI have a number of great cases where courses and programmes have embedded these skills. Maybe some of those practices will work for your course/programme or have an impact on your student satisfaction?

3. Technology is not a scorched earth approach to teaching
No institution wants to replace you with robots after recording your lectures. There is no replacement for the interaction and engagement face to face contact supports (either live or facilitated). However, you can add aspects of innovation to your teaching that build on and magnify that impact. Encouraging students to interact and engage through collaborative assessment, support each other and provide peer feedback, comment and discuss your lectures and tutorials or annotate and debate your PowerPoint slides. Technology does what it says on the box. It enhances, it adds, it disrupts and it transforms. Whether this is technology students use outside the classroom, or the innovative, flexible spaces were are looking to create within; Technology does not teach. Technology does not make people learn. You do. Students do. We want to work with you to enrich the student experience through innovative approaches to pedagogy, to the embedded use of technology such as Moodle, lecture capture and social media and through encouraging your students to use their own technologies to enhance their own learning.

4. Technology can make things possible that you previously thought impossible
One of the great potentials of technology is change. Technology for education represents a wonderful catalyst for change. One department commented to us recently that they have been waiting for the technology to catch up with their thinking. Maybe thinking about technology will change the way you think about assessment, challenge some of your assumptions about feedback, maybe it will open a door or close another. Maybe technology will shift the lecture from being bounded by transmission pedagogies to being discursive and interactive. We advocate for technologies to be more than an economic replacement of one practice with another. They are a chance for a rethink, a chance inspiration or a series of experiments that allow you to embed some play and fun into your teaching and learning. One of the most important roles here at LTI is innovation, thinking about and making available cutting edge ideas, practices and platforms in order to provide all staff with opportunities to rethink and experiment with their teaching.

5. Technology does enhance learning
Give it a go. The gap between what our learners see and understand as their online learning experience and the face to face experience is narrowing. It is all just learning. The capabilities required to search quickly, determine the veracity of information and do this whilst doing three other things are developing rapidly. These skills are by no means universal or natural, but they are developing and they are shaping how people learn. From students being able to re-watch lectures 8 or 9 times to make sure they understood concepts to being able to access a support network at 4am through twitter (or just to know when the Library lift is out of order @LSELibraryLift) technology is enhancing learning right now. LTI are here to help you, offer ideas and a critical (but friendly) perspective. We can offer you money, technology and expertise. We are happy to share with you all our experiences, knowledge and coffee. But most of all we share our confidence that we can help you make your teaching and learning better.

Want to get in touch? Drop us an email lti.support@lse.ac.uk

November 17th, 2015|Digital Literacy, Ed-Tech news and issues, LTI Grants, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends|1 Comment|

Working with TeenTech

Maggie Philbin (yes, THAT Maggie) recently published a report about digital literacy skills in the UK. I agreed with much of what she said, except that I thought she forgot to make a key point: that people need the ability to engage CRITICALLY with the information that’s out there, i.e. being able to discern what is useful, academic, trustworthy and what isn’t. We all need to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, online.

Maggie and I subsequently struck up a very good rapport during a productive meeting and I have since become involved with TeenTech, of which she is CEO. TeenTech run lively one-day events to help young teenagers see the wide range of career possibilities in Science, Engineering and Technology. They also have an annual competition where students work in teams on a project of their choice. Awards are given at an event at the Royal Society in June and the projects are judged in a range of categories. I will be a judge on a panel for one of these awards, a new one which recognises excellence in research and information literacy in 11-16 year olds. This award is sponsored by the CILIP Information Literacy Group, a professional group that I now Chair.

We know that university graduates need to have well-developed digital and information literacy skills, but all research shows that individuals need to start developing them before they start their degrees. As Maggie said: “Search engines like Google are powerful and really valuable tools but, like any tool, students need to understand the best ways to use them. They also need to see how they can use them in conjunction with other ways of finding information.” This new award supports exactly that: it will celebrate how young people can be truly information literate researchers – dispelling the ‘Google Generation myth – as they explore their ideas to make life better, simpler or easier.

I am quite excited about this – and not a little star-struck! – because my work revolves so much around embedding digital literacy skills in adults and time and again it becomes clear that these skills need to be fostered at an early age, to produce the innovative academics of the future we need. Schools or libraries can register their interest now for the awards for 2015/6, or can contact TeenTech for more details. I’m really looking forward to being involved.

April 22nd, 2015|Ed-Tech news and issues, innovation|Comments Off|

‘The role of education in encouraging women to work in technology’

We are delighted to announce that following the success of our NetworkED student entrepreneur panel discussion we will be holding a ‘women in technology’ panel discussion on Wednesday 20th May at 3pm in R01.
The recording from the panel discussion can be viewed on the LTI Youtube channel

Read about the panel members below

Panel Chair, Dr Ellen Helsper is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor in the Media and Communications Department at the LSE. Her current research interests include digital inclusion and literacy; everyday production and consumption of digital media, mediated interpersonal communication; and quantitative and qualitative methodological developments in media research.

The three main research projects she is involved in at the moment are the From Digital Skills to Tangible Outcomes Project, longitudinal World Internet Project, a European Commission Project in relation to Online Advertising and Children, and the EU Kids Online project. Ellen holds Visiting Scholar positions at NYU Steinhardt’s department of Media, Culture and Communications, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and the University of Twente’s Media, Communication and Organisation Department. Read our Q&A with Dr Helsper.

Dr. Julia Davies works in The School of Education at The University of Sheffield where she is also the academic lead for Technology Enhanced Learning in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Julia’s research focuses on the intersections between literacy, language, technology and learning. Taking a broad view of literacy her work has included studies of people’s uses of social media, the ways in which technology affects their view of themselves and the world they live in, and the implications of these things for education.

Professor Cornelia Boldyreff PhD, FBCS, FHEA, Visiting Professor, University of Greenwich

Professor Cornelia Boldyreff lives in Greenwich and is a Visiting Professor and part-time lecturer at the University of Greenwich in the Department of Computing & Information Systems. She was previously the Associate Dean (Research and Enterprise) at the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London from 2009 – February 2013.

Cornelia gained her PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Durham where she worked from 1992; she was a Reader in the Computer Science Department when she left. In 2004 she moved to the University of Lincoln to become the first Professor of Software Engineering at the university, where she co-founded and directed the Centre for Research in Open Source Software.

She has over 25 years’ experience in software engineering research and has published extensively on her research in the field. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a founding committee member of the BCSWomen Specialist Group, a committee member of theBCS e-Learning Specialist Group, and chair of the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. She has been actively campaigning for more women in STEM throughout her career.

Together with Miriam Joy Morris and Yasmine Arafa, she founded the start-up, ebartex Ltd, and together they are developing a new digital bartering currency, ebarts.

Dr Sue Black is an award-winning computer scientist, radical thinker and passionate social entrepreneur who excels at bringing people together to solve complex issues. She’s a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at University College London, an associate at DSRPTN an all female technology and digital consultancy, and a mentor at Google campus for mums. Sue is a champion for women in computing, and founder of BCSWomen and #techmums, a social enterprise which aims to empower mums and their families through technology. Sue is well known for her successful online and offline campaigning and activism around digital social inclusion and Saving Bletchley Park. Sue is a frequent public speaker, a social media-holic, mum of four and soon to be grandmother.

Twitter: @Dr_Black Web: www.sueblack.co.uk Blog: blackse.wordpress.com

Dr Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta is a Reader in Adaptive Technologies for Learning and an RCUK Academic Fellow at the University College London Institute of Education, London Knowledge Lab. She holds a Joint Honours Masters in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, both from the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on developing adaptive interactive environments for learning and communication that are underpinned with user and context modelling capabilities, especially in relation to users’ affective and motivational states. She has close to 15 years of working with users, including with children and adults with and without special needs, using participatory design methods and of developing intelligent technologies for real world use. She has also first-hand experience of using knowledge elicitation methods, of working with practitioners on finding the best ways in which to embed the new technologies in the existing educational practices and in identifying the added value of digital intelligent technologies in supporting learning in different contexts with diverse user populations. In her research and practice, Kaśka’s key focus is to strike a balance between the needs of learners and pracitioners in real educational contexts and the design and engineering considerations related to creating and deploying Intelligent Learning Environments.

April 14th, 2015|Ed-Tech news and issues, Events & Workshops (LTI), NetworkED, NetworkEDGE, Research Skills, Social Media, Teaching & Learning|2 Comments|

LTI Grants 2015/2016 – opportunities for funding

Now that we have reached the end of term we hope that you have some time to catch your breath and reflect on your teaching in order to think about any changes that you might like to make for the next academic year.

In order to help with this process LTI are currently accepting applications for Learning Technology and Innovation Grants. Funding will be awarded to projects which make effective and innovative use of technology in teaching, learning and assessment.

The deadline for applications is Friday 29 May 2015 and more information about the various application strands can be found on the grants’ page.

Practical advice on using technology in your teaching

LTI are running a number of workshops that give practical advice on using technology in your teaching. The workshops below will involve working with other academic staff; sharing your teaching practice and selecting and developing new teaching approaches. They will also give you an opportunity to try out some of the technology and ask any questions that you may have.

Flipping lectures
Thursday 26 March 10:00-11:30am 32LG.15

‘Flipping’ is taking content delivery out of the classroom and putting it online so that the students get the content before they meet up and the face to face time can be used to allow them to do something with that content. Participants on this workshop will explore:

Alternative ways of delivering course content
Interactive use of face to face time
Preparing students to get the most out of this new way of learning

Encouraging active learning
Thursday 26 March 11:30-13:00 32LG.17

This practical workshop is an opportunity to explore and evaluate a range of learning technologies and their possible role in fostering active learning in your teaching. These technologies will include: computer based simulations and games, audience response systems and more advanced use of Moodle for active learning including quizzes, use of groups, wikis, glossary tool and discussion boards.

Writing collaboratively with wiki’s and Google docs
Wednesday 13 May 12:30-13:30 R08

Collaborative writing can:

improve efficiency of group work & quality of interactions between students in group
help with self reflection and critical thinking

This workshop will give participants an awareness of the issues that must be considered when using collaborative writing tools. It will also equip participants with the skills required to enable them to think about how they might incorporate collaborative writing tools into their teaching.

Book a place via the LSE training system

Assessment with technology
(date to be confirmed)

What is online assessment? What are its benefits? How can I move my assessments online? This workshop introduces online assessment, considering

methods of assessing and grading online
improving feedback and
helping students to avoid plagiarism.

This will be a discursive session and will not cover training in how to set up eAssessment. We will introduce the systems available at the LSE and discuss the best way of bringing them together.

Places for all the LTI workshops can be booked via the online training and development system and any queries should be sent to LTI-support@lse.ac.uk.

We will be publishing more ideas and case studies which contain examples of how technology can be incorporated into teaching, learning and assessment so watch this space for ideas of ways you could use an LTI grant.