Show and tell

Changes to Moodle for 2016/17

The Moodle recharge event took place on Tuesday 27 June for those that couldn’t attend a brief summary of what went on can be found below.

This summer lots of changes are taking place so we split attendees up into four rooms and got them to rotate round to each room. We asked everyone to give us feedback on the changes and the padlet is still open if you would like to comment.

New Features

Adding links to Echo recordings will change with a plugin making it easier for students and teachers to view recordings – see our online guide.

Reading lists will now be added using the External Tool or reading list blocks – see our online guide.

There are lots of new features for Moodle 3.1 – see our website for more details and new guides will be created over the summer. In addition to our usual Moodle training before the start of term we are also offering bespoke training sessions for departments. If you would be interested in this please get in contact (Lti.support@lse.ac.uk).

New themes

The look of Moodle is changing to be more modern and in line with the new LSE website.

LTI are working on getting the Moodle mobile app ready for 2017/18. The app can be downloaded from itunes or Google play and more information will be made available on our website over the summer.

Turnitin have also made changes to their theme and on 1 August will introduce the Turnitin Feedback Studio which featuers a user-friendly interface, with a responsive design that is compatible with a wide range of devices. More information about the changes can be found on our website.

My Feedback & Moodle archive

My Feedback is a feature that has been developed by UCL to improve access to assessment and feedback for students and staff. One single view for all Moodle activities with marks and feedback. The report will be combined with a live archive of Moodle so that users can view marks and feedback from previous years. There will be a variety of options for staff with different roles gaining an overview of students marks and feedback.

Coursework has been created by the Royal Veterinary College to enable more online and assessment and feedback options in Moodle. LTI will be working on making it compatible with LSE Moodle for individual pilot projects in 2017/18. Features include: double blind marking, sample marking, sampling workflows, personal deadline and no deadline assignments. If you are interested in piloting this please contact LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk

Moodle labs & Moodle Audit

Moodle labs is a live instance of the most current version of Moodle which is available for LTI Spark or Ignite funded projects.

The Moodle Audit took place in March 2017. LTI went through the methods and overall findings of the independent review. Individual results will go out to each department in July for review with recommendations for improving your courses.

Next steps

Each department will be sent the results of the Moodle audit. We are currently working on new guides and case studies to go on our website ready for the start of term. We will be running bespoke Moodle training for departments – if you are interested in setting something up then please get in contact (LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk).

The Moodle refresh will take place on Tuesday 15 August for the majority of courses and Tuesday 12 September for courses used to collect dissertation submissions. On these dates Moodle will be unavailable all day and students must ensure that they have downloaded any materials they would like to keep before these dates. If you would like your course not to be included in the annual refresh then please let us know as soon as possible (email LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk). More information about the Moodle refresh is on our website.

June 28th, 2017|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), Moodle, Projects, Roundup, Show and tell, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Moodle recharge

Following on from our post back in February on our plans for Moodle we will be holding an event for all Moodle editors on Tuesday 27 June from 3-4pm to give everyone a sneak peak of the changes that will taking place this August in time for the new academic year.

Moodle is getting a recharge for 2017/18. In addition to the usual refresh of all courses we will be upgrading to version 3.1. On the 27 June we will be going through some of the new features that we think editors will be most interested in and unveil our new theme for the platform. We will also share the results of our Moodle audit and invite Moodle editors to try out our new features ‘my feedback’ and Moodle labs.

New features
Moodle 3.1 features improvements to the layout, course editing, course administration, grading, and activities. We will go through some of the more significant changes plus give attendees a chance to try out our new interactive guides.

Moodle theme

LTI will be changing the look of Moodle to be more in line with the LSE website. We will give LSE Moodle editors a sneak preview of the new theme.

Moodle Audit

In March 2017 LTI carried out/commissioned an independent review of a sample of LSE Moodle courses from across all the departments. Approximately 22% of all courses were reviewed using three different metrics – the 3E framework (Enhance, Extend, Empower), an overall classification and a traffic light Red, Amber, Green system. We will be sharing the findings of this audit and promoting some of the good practice that was discovered as a result. Individual reports will also be made available for departments which highlight areas or issues that were cause for concern or need attention.

Moodle labs

A separate instance of Moodle that features the latest release for teachers to test out new approaches to teaching and is available for LTI grant projects.

My feedback

Developed by and rolled out successfully at UCL. My feedback allows students and staff a single view of all Moodle grades and feedback.

To reserve a place at the Moodle recharge event please book via the LSE Training and Development system.

More information about the Moodle refresh for 2017/18 can be found on the LTI website.

If you have any questions about the Moodle refresh or recharge email LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk

May 15th, 2017|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), Moodle, Show and tell, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Given the limited amount of innovative tools used in their studies, it is hard for students to actually know how technology could better their education.

Having reviewed all the interviews from our Student Voice project, we created a video highlighting a few of our key findings.

As the video suggests, a majority of students stated that PowerPoints are the main “technology” used in the classroom. Many added that, given the limited amount of innovative tools used in their studies, it was hard for them to actually know how technology could better their education.

That being said, students believed that technology – if used correctly – could challenge the current “one to many [educative] system”. The expression “one-to-many” refers to lectures where teachers talk and students listen, often giving the impression of a unidirectional information flow. Students stated that technology could be implemented to make lectures and classes more interactive, to foster teacher-students and student-student collaboration.

The video also suggests that students expect an increase in online pedagogical content. This includes more online courses and online exercises but also online exams. Students suggested that, to prepare them for the use of technology in their future career, more tasks should be carried out on line.

All findings are currently being written up and the full report will be available shortly!

The previous post can be found here

May 3rd, 2016|Announcements, Assessment, Blogging, Ed-Tech news and issues, Images, Audio & Video, innovation, LSE 2020, Open Education, Projects, Reports & Papers, Research Skills, Show and tell, Social Media, Student projects, Surveys, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|2 Comments|

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|

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|

Show and tell on students creating and sharing content

LTI show and tell on students as producers projects took place on the 30 April. Some common themes emerged amongst all the presentations which highlighted the importance of integrating the academic with the practical and embedding the projects into the assessment process.

Lecture capture of the event can be watched online and a summary of the presentations with the slides can be found below.
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Professor Bill Callahan from International Relations presented on the changes to the Visual International Politics course IR318. Students were asked to work in small groups to produce and edit their own documentaries in order to combine academic analysis with the practical skills of documentary film making and give students an insight into the visual politics of IR. Professor Callahan worked with LTI to deliver five seminars on film production and gave students access to editing facilities. The final films were shared on a Vimeo group and showed in a final ‘film festival’ seminar. Feedback from the students was positive but many would like to increase the weighting of the film component from 25% to 50% of the final mark.

Slides from Dr Bill Callahan’s presentation

‘I have really enjoyed this course. The topics were very intellectually stimulating. I enjoyed the practical aspect the most although it was very challenging.’

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Dr Hyun-Jung Lee from the department of Management discussed the use of video in group work projects. Students on the post graduate courses ID419 and MG463 were put into groups with mixed backgrounds and had the option to create a short video to demonstrate case studies and theories on cross-cultural management.

Slides from Dr Hyun-Jung Lee’s presentation
The films from the projects can be seen online and by clicking on the picture below

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Sarah Paterson from the department of Law talked about her use of Moodle to develop students critical writing skills.

Moodle Wiki
Sarah used the Moodle Wiki to enable students to write collaboratively. This worked well although it took some time to check and edit student responses once they had completed their submissions.

Peer assessment using Moodle workshop tool
She used the workshop function on Moodle to get students to provide peer feedback on assessment. Each student was randomly allocated another students work and asked to mark it using the course assessment criteria.

Online feedback via the assessment tool

She also gave students the option of uploading writing exercises that they had done in class to a online assessment in order to receive feedback. The students really enjoyed being able to develop their writing skills in class but were reluctant to submit their assessments online. There was some discussion on how they could be encouraged to submit (by making the assessment anonymous for example).

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Dr Pete Manning from the department of Sociology shared his experiences of getting students to produce and curate material as part of their group presentations. Students used Prezi and Padlet to collect material on virtual pin-boards. The resources could then be used for exam revision and essay preparation. The students were asked to peer assess each presentation and were also asked to submit a self reflection on the exercise. The students enjoyed being given freedom to explore a subjects of their choice and it allowed them to share real world examples of concepts in a very theory heavy course. However the task did not count towards their final mark and did require extra work so ideally it would replace a summative task in the future.

Slides from Dr Pete Manning’s presentation

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Dr Catherine Hua Xiang from the Language centre was awarded an LTI grant with kit to enable students studying Mandarin Chinese on LN808 and LN814 to work collaboratively to produce news reports on a global event or an interview on a current issue topic. The students were required to film themselves speaking Mandarin Chinese and then apply English subtitles to their finished project as part of their continuous course assessment. This project was very successful and the films can be used as a resource for future cohorts.

‘Although I spent a lot of time on the project, I really enjoyed it as we have real product and we have also been awarded a grade’

Slides from Dr Catherine Hua Xiang’s presentation

Video example:

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Siva Thambissetty from the department of Law gave students the option to submit a short video or series of images on Prezi or Slide share that explains an aspect of copyright infringement. Student feedback was generally positive with 60% recommending that the assignment continues next year.

Slides from Siva Thambissetty’s presentation

‘Quite refreshing after three years of essays!’

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If you are interested in developing your own ‘students as producers’ project then you might want to apply for an LTI grant see our blog page for more details and contact us at LTI for some advice and to discuss your idea LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk

May 14th, 2015|Assessment, Events & Workshops (LTI), Images, Audio & Video, innovation, LTI Grants, Show and tell, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Show and tell: “Students as producers”, Thursday 30 April 2015

LTI are holding a show and tell event with academics from various departments on Thursday 30 April, 12:00-13:45 in NAB.2.14. Presenters will discuss their individual experiences of allowing students to create and share subject related materials. An outline of some of the projects can be viewed below:

Dr Peter Manning – Department of Sociology

The Social Construction of Human Rights Violations: e-Bricolage Project’ – MSc Human Rights course.

Dr Manning asked students to work in groups of five or six to produce and curate digital resources to demonstrate a social construction of a human rights violation of their choice. They were then required to present and explain the ebricolage. The interactive resources produced by the students were then made available as a resource for exam revision and essay preparation.

Dr Hyun-Jung Lee – Department of Management

ID419 & MG463 – Group projects

Dr Hyun-Jung Lee gave students the option of producing a video to accompany their group presentations on cross cultural management.

Siva Thambissetty – Department of Law

LL251, Intellectual Property Law – The Remix and Copyright Infringement” project

Siva Thambissetty gave students the option to submit a short video (under 5 minutes); or series of images presented on Prezi or Slide Share that explains an aspect of copyright infringement.

Dr Catherine Hua Xiang – Language Centre

LN808 and LN814

Dr Hua Xiang applied for one of the LTI students as producers grant kits so that students on Mandarin Chinese courses could work on a collaboratively to produce news reports on a global event or produce an interview on a current issue topic. Students were required to film themselves speaking Manderin Chinese and then apply English subtitles to the finished project.

Dr Bill Callahan – Department of International Relations

IR318 – Visual International Politics

Dr Callahan’s IR318 course asked students to work in small groups to produce, film and edit their own documentaries.

Sarah Patterson – Department of Law

LL4AK – Insolvency Law: Company Liquidation and Stakeholder Interests

Sarah Patterson used the Moodle Wiki and workshop tool to get students to write collaboratively.

You can reserve a place at the show and tell event via the online training system.

More details about “Students as producers” can be found on our blog. If you are interested in applying for a LTI grant to try out some students as producers take a look at our blog page https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lti/lti-grants/students-as-producers/ and padlet for some ideas: http://padlet.com/lti_support/SAPs

April 20th, 2015|Events & Workshops (LTI), Show and tell|1 Comment|