Student projects

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!

SADL Celebration: ending term on a digital high

SADL SeniorsLast 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.

Rebecca, Djelila and Ella 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

The LSE Language Centre Project Day

To celebrate the success of various teaching and research projects, the Language Centre hosted a Project Day on Friday 18th September. Several LSE Language Co-ordinators presented their experiences of experimenting with innovative technologies in language learning. The Day provided the opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of online learning systems, the merits of e-marking, and the ways in which video production can aid language learning.

Lang1

Dr.Peter Skrandies: Reading for Academic Purposes with Annotated Texts

The Day started with Dr Peter Skrandies (Language Co-ordinator: German) offering his views on how the online annotation of texts can assist traditional teaching methods. The benefits of this online learning system were clear to many Project Day attendees. The online annotation of texts by language teachers can compensate for limited contact hours. It also complements the learning objectives of in class activities. The development and use of the Moodle-integrated annotation tool was made possible through an LTI innovation grant and that the software  tool was developed by Steve Bond from LTI.

On the other hand, one attendee suggested that this teaching method may only be appropriate for higher ability students. Dr Skrandies’ presentation reminds us that the use of online learning systems is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution.

In the context of UK Higher Education, language teachers often find it difficult to develop students’ grammar skills. Limited class teaching time and the pressure to develop communicative skills are just two of the challenges which language teachers face. In order to overcome these obstacles, Dr Lijing Shi (Assistant Language Co-ordinator: Mandarin) introduced Chinese Online Self-assessment (COS). COS is defined as a dynamic assessment that aims to assess potential for learning. It does not provide a static indication of achievement. COS carries a particular advantage. It enables teachers to quickly pinpoint gaps in students’ learning:

‘From my experience with level 5, COS is the quickest way for me to identify the problems students have in grammar or common mistakes made. I can then focus on specific areas of teaching to sort out these problems.’  Hongyi Xin, Co-ordinating Language Teacher (Mandarin)

Lang2

Dr. Catherine Xiang: From ‘Current Affairs in Mandarin’ to ‘Students as Producers’, Catherine Xiang

As was the case with Dr Skrandies’ project, COS has certain drawbacks. The potential for technical hitches is problematic. Instead of focusing on language learning, Mandarin teachers may attend to the technical maintenance of COS, or liaise with IT services, when they could otherwise be planning seminar activities.

Towards the end of the Project Day, Dr Catherine Xiang (Language Co-ordinator: Mandarin) presented her project, titled ‘From Current Affairs in Mandarin to Students as Producers’. Dr Xiang emphasised the specific benefits of video production. Past students of Mandarin have produced short videos which allow them to focus on a topic related to the social sciences. However, these shorts film, interviews and documentaries are all conducted in Mandarin. The production of a TV style interview or short film provided students with the opportunity to gain confidence. By listening to their interview responses, students determined how much progress they have made. They could highlight areas for improvement, including pronunciation and grammar. However, Project Day attendees noted that this non-traditional form of learning was time consuming.

The final project was presented by Dr Xiang and Lourdes Hernandez-Martin Language Co-ordinator (Arabic) and Co-ordinator for Spanish Projects. They discussed their experimentation with e-marking. Approximately 60 participants (students and teachers) contributed to a pilot scheme. Programmes such as ‘iAnnotate’ and ‘Snagit’ were used. The benefits of using e-marking software were manifold. Students noted that having video and audio evaluation added clarity.

Assessed pieces of work could even be used for revision purposes:

“Video – it’s much better to hear something directly rather than having to try and work things out from comments or notes written down. Also allows things to be explained much more easily – you can learn from home, rather than having to come in for office hours.”

“The video feedback is very helpful especially for language courses because often ‘word’ feedback is not enough to understand grammatical mistakes. Besides, you can replay it for revision”.

On the other hand, e-marking carries certain complications. The ability to readily edit and review comments may incentivise teachers to add unnecessary advice which, ironically enough, may confuse students.

As the four projects discussed above demonstrate, use of language learning technology is not always a move in the right direction. Nevertheless, teaching staff at the LSE Language Centre continue to experiment with technology which can provide a diversified learning experience. Tailored according to individual teacher needs, technological innovations can significantly improve the teaching of Modern Foreign Languages in higher education.

 

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For more information on how LTI Grants can help your projects or to see what projects we have helped visit our Grants page on the blog.

LTI have just closed the first Grants call of the year however a second call will be announced in the near future.

January 19th, 2016|Assessment, Events & Workshops (LTI), innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Student projects|Comments Off on The LSE Language Centre Project Day|

An alternative to text essays?

Replacing a 2,000-word formative essay with a short video or visual presentation. That’s the challenge that Dr Sivaramjani Thambisetty set to undergraduate students on her Intellectual Property Law course.

But why do that?

September 29th, 2015|Student projects, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off on An alternative to text essays?|

Our first SADL Graduate

Maria and Seow WeiStudent Ambassadors for Digital Literacy (SADL) has now run for 2 years, coordinated by Learning Technology and Innovation (LTI) and the Library. It is aimed at undergraduate students and this year was offered to students in Statistics, Social Policy, International Relations and Law. Students were recruited to attend 4 workshops over the course of the year to develop their digital literacy skills, in terms of finding and evaluating information, improving their reading and research, managing and sharing information and managing their online identity.

This year four students who completed the programme in 2013/14 acted as Senior Ambassadors to help develop and teach the workshops and provide peer support for students.  This year we had our first graduate from the programme, Seow Wei Chin, from the Department of Statistics, who had been involved in the project from the start and acted as a senior ambassador while in her final year at LSE. Seow Wei also attended several national conferences where she spoke about her involvement in SADL. Here she is pictured with Maria Bell, who is the library lead for the programme, on the day she was awarded her first class honours degree. Read Seow Wei’s reflections on her SADL experience on the SADL blog. Seow Wei recently told us:

“I am glad I joined SADL because I wouldn’t have known anything about copyright or any qualitative skills …. [SADL] really helped me a lot like research and managing information. It helped me through my second year. In my third year I am doing a half quantitative half qualitative module, so I feel more confident, being able to extract the skills from SADL to work on that. And I could actually teach others when they needed help as well.”

July 29th, 2015|Research Skills, Student projects, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on Our first SADL Graduate|