Teaching & Learning

What is a Learning Technologist and How to Make it Known to Your Institution?

On Tuesday my colleague Kris and I ran a workshop at the University of Greenwich’s APT Conference. The theme of this year being “gaps”, we thought it would be interesting to work around the gaps in the perception of what a Learning Technologist is and does. These gaps can be found in the profession itself and amongst the various stakeholders in teaching and learning, be they teaching staff or teaching and learning support professionals. This provided the basis for another discussion between the participants on implementing an “action plan” to share their understanding of the job within their institution.

What is a Learning Technologist?

In the first part of the workshop, a mix of learning technologists, teaching staff, educational developers and other teaching and learning support professionals were asked to write their own definition on a post-it note, the colour of which depended on their job. They then discussed and compared them. It was interesting to note that participants, of all roles, mentioned the technical but also the pedagogical aspects of the job, highlighting the relation between teaching and technology. A few examples:

“Explores pedagogical aspects of technology to aid and support teaching, learning and assessment” – Learning Technologist

“Those who use technology to enhance the learning experience” – Teaching staff

“To explore and share practice, research strategy, etc. for how technology can motivate, support and enhance learning” – Other teaching and learning support staff

However, it was also pointed out that there was “a perceived lack of visibility from learning technologists in comparison to other support staff”. When asking a teacher about it, he agreed that he did not know much about the learning technology provision in his institution.

In his chapter from David Hopkins’ “The Really Useful EdTech Book”, Wayne Barry* concludes that the challenge for learning technologists is “how we engage with ourselves, our institutions and the wider public and make them aware as to who we are what we are and what we do“. How do we do that?

Spreading the message across the institution

The role and situation of learning technologists varies greatly from one place to another so it is crucial to a) define what a learning technologist is b) ensure that it is known across the institution. The second part of the workshop focused on this issue.

Remaining in mixed profession groups, participants reflected on and discussed ways to get the message across to the right people. They considered the “who”, “what”, “how”, “when” and “where”, they produced a mindmap summarising key action points. Here are the highlights:

From the top down:

voice at a departmental and more senior level
institutional strategy

2. At individual/team level: being proactive instead of reactive

physical presence (events, training)
comms plan in place

Click on the picture for the outcomes of the two activities

The focus was different for each group with this activity, which may be explained by the various roles and different levels represented in the room, as well as the team and institution they come from. The aim of the activity was not to provide a universal solution on how to address the visibility issue -as it was not to provide a universal definition of the learning technologist. Rather, it was an opportunity for any staff involved in teaching and learning to discuss the many options to address it.

We hope that it proved useful to the participants and provided – and provides for anyone reading this- an option as to how to engage the various stakeholders in a discussion to share their understanding of what being a learning technologist means to them, find a common ground and ensure that it is made explicit at the institutional level. It certainly did make us reflect on all of this!

At the LSE

At LTI, we also think that engaging the stakeholders as much as possible in what we do is key for them to understand who we are and how we can help.

Our team works mainly with academics and teaching staff. In addition to answering their queries and providing the relevant support, we also encourage them to pilot, test and implement projects aimed at exploring the use of technology in teaching and learning through a grant scheme.

We also engage with students through the SADL (Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy) programme, a staff-student partnership to improve their digital literacy skills, in collaboration with the Library and Teaching and Learning Centre.

Another route is dissemination of successful technology-enhanced projects and recognition of the work of TEL champions behind it. Our series of case studies, LSE Innovators, highlights the people who are leading and living innovative practice in their teaching.

What now?

We would love to hear from anyone involved in teaching and learning about their own definitions and suggestions/experience on sharing it within their institution. Please leave us a comment at the bottom of this page or use #LTRoles on Twitter.

For those interested in knowing more about the profession, we recommend to read David Hopkins’ “The Really Useful EdTechBook” (free PDF download) as well as his blog posts entitled “What is a Learning Technologist?”.

For an alternative to the “top down” and “bottom up” approaches, have a look at Peter Bryant’s post on the “Middle Out” approach (no, we are not biased!).

Slides from our workshop

*Barry, W. (2015). “‘…and what do you do?’: Can we explain the unexplainable?”. In: Hopkins, D. (Ed.). The Really Useful #EdTechBook. London, England: CreateSpace, pp. 23-34

July 11th, 2016|Conferences, Ed-Tech news and issues, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off|

Tablets in Teaching and Learning: Marking and Feedback

In 2014, teachers from LSE’s Language Centre started exploring the use of technology to mark and provide feedback on students’ written work. After trying out three tools (Moodle, iPads and annotation apps, Snagit) with her colleague Catherine (see blog post), Lourdes Hernandez-Martin decided to focus on the use of iPads and worked on the project with Mercedes Coca.

June 29th, 2016|Announcements, Assessment, eAssessment News, Ed-Tech news and issues, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Turnitin in Moodle rolls out

Learning Technology and Innovation are pleased to announce the roll out of Turnitin originality check from within Moodle across the School from Tuesday 16th August.

Turnitin provides originality checks against webpages, library catalogues, journals and publications but also other student submitted work (within LSE and other institutions). By integrating Turnitin into Moodle, originality checking becomes more efficient, reliable and a robust solution in identifying matched text through the production of originality reports and scores (%); viewed directly within Moodle.

Learning Technology and Innovation (LTI) have trialled the integration at eleven departments across the School; liaising with ARD, GLPD, IMT, SU and TLC throughout.

We will roll out the integration across departments and are developing supporting material for teachers and students ranging from documentation, videos, FAQs etc.

If you would like LTI to demo how Turnitin in Moodle works; Book a place to our briefing or get in touch with LTI for 1-2-1 or departmental sessions.

For full details on the rollout and the resources available, please visit the Turnitin page.

June 28th, 2016|Announcements, Assessment, eAssessment News, Ed-Tech news and issues, Moodle, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off|

How at home are you online?

How do you use digital tools? Are you constantly online and using social media or management tools to record your every action, or do you just dip in and out of online resources using them as and when you need?

LSE students who have recently taken part in the Students Ambassadors for Digital Literacy project were asked to map their digital footprint to find out more about how they fitted on the Digital Visitors and Residents model (V&R).

The students found significant difference in their use of institutional tools, such as Moodle, LSEforYou, LSE email and their library accounts and personal tools such as Google, Skype and Dropbox.

The exercise encouraged students to think about the overlap with these tools and perhaps how they could utilise them more effectively.

“Drawing a pair of axis, one ranging from Visitor to Resident and the other outlining the nature- Personal or Institutional, we populated the graph with various tools- social media, organisational, entertainment and fitness- from all realms of our being and analysing where we stand for each of them. This method of analysis offers a refreshing way of looking at digital engagement- capturing both the extent and the nature. It allows for subjective interpretation of each tool and hence is not limited by strict definitions. For example, I could put in Microsoft OneNote which I exclusively use for work related documentation.”

However, it may still be too simplistic since it does not account for overlaps well and does not factor in the nature of some tools that are only meant for visitor purposes- eg Moodle. No tool could be on two extremes of a dimension without sketching it in twice- making the chart less succinct. Furthermore, there are other characteristics of engagement that could be factored in with more dimensions: regulated use, open source, within the personal space (entertainment or personal development). These are things we take as banalities and its not until we stop, think and categorise that we can alter and optimise our use of these tools and this would be the biggest takeaway for me from the task”

Simran Masand

“This process was stimulating as it was good to take a step back from our normal online activities and to understand the extent to which we personally interact with these services. By creating the map, it was significant for me as I noted how we do not always need to act either as a “Visitor” or “Resident”, but rather, this model should be viewed as a continuum. For instance, in my map, I noted how Facebook, even as used as a residential tool, both was within the personal and institutional category due to the fact that I have joined LSE specific groups whilst also having a personal interaction with it.

One point that I came away with from this task was the questioning the extent to which it is possible to be off the scale on the map (i.e. is it possible to be anonymous). However, thinking about this, even for users who may not login to services at all, they will still be classed as a “Visitor” on this model. Therefore, perhaps it is not possible to be completely anonymous whilst we are using online services.”

Alex D’Arcy

Most of the maps showed that students were more likely to act in a visitor mode when accessing institutional tools and behave as residents when using tools to manage their personal lives. This indicates something about how students are engaging and learning at the LSE but also how these tools are presented to them by the School. There is a wider debate about the place of personal tools such as social media in teaching, but perhaps some of the institutional tools are not being used to their full potential. For example Simran mentions in her post that Moodle is “only meant for visitor purposes” yet in fact Moodle is designed using social constructionist pedagogy with the idea that learning is a collaborative cultural event which would encourage ‘resident’ use. Moodle supports the use of discussion forums, peer assessment and feedback, collaborative writing, group submissions, anonymous Q&A, Wiki’s, blogs, and many more activities. If designed well a Moodle course can encourage an online community which supports and extends beyond face to face work carried out in the classroom.

The maps raise several questions about how we separate out our behaviours and identities online. LSE students appeared to leaving a large digital footprint with their use of external applications in their personal life but did not seem as comfortable in creating a professional persona on apps like Linked In or Twitter. One of the aims of the SADL project is to work with students in order to discuss strategies to build a positive online presence and expand their networks. Workshops involve sharing and testing online tools to see how they can be adapted from personal use to manage their academic work.

The student blogs about the workshop and more information about the SADL project can be found on the SADL blog.

June 28th, 2016|Blogging, Digital Literacy, Events & Workshops (LTI), Student projects, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Celebrating LTI’s Moodle men!

This week two members of the LTI team were recognised for their work at the 2016 IMT awards.

Chris Fryer the LTI Systems Manager was awarded ‘unsung hero’ for his behind the scenes efforts to ensure that Moodle is always up and running and working well with other LSE systems.

He is a very deserving recipient of this award as LSE Moodle has the highest rates of ‘up time’ across the whole of the UK compared to other HE institutions. Over the last academic year it has been online 99.99% of the time, this means that the system was ‘live’ for all bar 42 minutes in 2015/16!

LSE Moodle has supported the running of 1651 active Moodle courses across all departments, the IPA, language centre, TLC, HR and LSE Enterprise (a 50% increase from the previous year and that doesn’t include those courses in the Summer School and TRIUM). Moodle courses were accessed by over 22000 unique users and facilitated over 15.5 million ‘participating actions’ (actions where students and staff click to do something on Moodle).

His work has not gone unnoticed by those in IMT with staff recognising his dedication to the job:

“Chris Fryer doesn’t seem to ever truly take a holiday. Regardless if he is hiking through Italy or looking after his kids, if there is an emergency he will take time to fix it”.

In addition, our very own ‘Moodle Man’, Milan Popovcic was awarded “Excellence in Customer Service” for his work on responding to LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk emails. Recent analysis of the LTI emails has illustrated that LTI responded to queries from every academic department, centre and institute across the school from staff and students alike. Moodle is the most common query but topics also included questions on online assessment, the use of forums and social media, how to record audio feedback and requests for training. The number of emails received has gone up year on year, with 4667 emails received for September 2015 to June 2016.

Milan is often the member of staff that responds to these calls for help and was one of the most nominated colleagues across several categories with positive comments from customers and colleagues.

“Delightful manner, patience of a saint, really cares about helping academics with their problems, not just answering their queries but also developing them to help themselves. Milan is a joy to work with”.

We are currently working on developing more resources and support to go on our new website which should be up and running before the start of Michaelmas term 2016. In the meantime if you have any queries, Moodle or otherwise please contact lti.support@lse.ac.uk

June 23rd, 2016|Announcements, Moodle, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Student Innovation projects

Congratulations to the LSE students who came up with winning ideas on how to use technology to make life better for staff and students in Higher Education.

The Summer of Student Innovation competition asks for student technology solutions to improve education, research and student life. Now in it’s fourth year, students are asked to submit a 2 to 5 minute video pitch on the Jisc Elevator website. Entrants must receive at least 250 votes to go through to the development stage. The 15 winning teams will receive £2000 of expert support, with the possibility of an additional £3,000 funding to develop their projects.

See the 2 LSE submissions below and view all 15 successful projects on the Jisc website

Augmented Reality App: to provide visitors and students with digital content enhancing campus experience.

Stutor: Get help from other students in the UK through our application. Everybody can be a tutor!

June 22nd, 2016|Announcements, innovation, Student projects, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Embedding Student-Produced Videos in Courses: Why and How?

This academic year, LTI funded two projects to integrate student-produced videos in courses through their LTI Grant scheme. Outcomes and findings from their evaluation provide some interesting reflections on how they can be used to bring added value to the learning – and teaching!- experience.

The Projects

Using Film in Urban Planning Analysis – Nancy Holman, Geography and Environment

As part of the Urban Policy and Planning course, students produce written work alongside a group presentation and a short interpretive film of neighbourhood fieldwork. Film-making started two years ago with students using their own devices. Last year they were helped by an LSE alumnus who is now a filmmaker to better understand the process of storytelling and how to use the equipment. This year, Nancy applied for DSLR kits to improve the quality of the work produced. An evening screening of the 8 short films produced by the project groups was also organised at the LSE, at the end of which a panel of ethnographers and filmmakers judged the films and awarded three prizes: Best Overall Film, Best Cinematography and Judges Choice.

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

Jennifer wanted to “enliven the end of term debate on multiculturalism” in her Identity, Community and the ‘Problem’ of Minorities course by replacing group presentations with short films narrating the students’ take on the theme. Instructor videos were made and presented during seminars and resources on making short documentaries were made available on the course’s Moodle page. Students then worked in groups for three weeks to produce their short films. The videos were screened during the last session of the course and were followed by a debate.

Reflections

Why videos?

In the Geography project, the combination of written work and film allowed students to think about spaces both on paper and visually, which according to Nancy is ” a core transferable skill our students need to develop”. She also believes that the video exercise had a “knock on benefit” on students’ summative essays, which she observed were clearer and more thoughtful.

This is what she highlighted in the description of the project for students:

In the European Institute project, the resulting videos were used as a starter for a class debate. Videos were favoured in place of the usual presentations as Jennifer wanted students to approach the end of term presentations “from a fresh perspective that facilitates greater creativity and ownership of ideas“

In both cases video production have been a good way of engaging student with the course and material and resulted in a final product that can be used as a basis for discussion or examples and inspiration for the future cohorts.

“It would also enable student cohorts on EU 458 to ‘speak’ to each other across time through the creation of a permanent film archive on the EU 458 Moodle page” – Jennifer Jackson-Preece

They are also easy to be shared and presented to the wider institution and community. Students from the Urban Planning group attended the JustSpace conference on opportunity areas where they showed their films.

Students also got to develop useful transferable skills in the process: managing a group project, collecting/gathering/presenting information, video production and editing to name a few.

Embedding video-production into the course

Nancy’s project was seen as a way to “further embed […] practical experiences [walks, fieldtrips] within the programme” while it would “enable students to gain a different/complementary perspective on the concept of narrative” for Jennifer. It was thus important for both to integrate video production as (part of) a final task towards which students worked during the course instead of as a stand alone activity.

As highlighted in the description of the project, video production was gradually introduced in the Geography course. Students received the help from a professional filmmaker and were able to familiarise themselves with the equipment during a trip to Manchester in the first part of the year.

In Jennifer’s project, students received training in video-making face to face during seminars and through resources made available on Moodle.

Students were also made aware of the various ethical, safety and copyright considerations when filming, interviewing and using material other than theirs.

<= Resources on video production made available to EU458 students on Moodle

In terms of assessment, even though the video production exercise was formative for both projects, students received feedback on their work. Geography students received feedback on their overall presentation that included comments on the style and overall message of their video. Students from the European Institute course were given a template of the feedback form to be aware of the assessment criteria when producing their videos. They included design (style and organisation, creativity) and message (content, quality, overall impression).

Next year group videos will count as 50% of the EU458 summative assessment and adjustments will be made to the course to support this.

Interested in using student-produced content in your teaching?

Have a look at the past Students as Producers projects in our LTIG Grant Winners section or get in touch with us!

Read about LSE Innovator William Callahan‘s successful implementation of student-produced videos in his IR318 Visual International Politics Course.

June 21st, 2016|Assessment, Ed-Tech news and issues, Images, Audio & Video, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Student projects, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Game-based learning: teaching how to conduct a research project using a board game

In January, Dr Kay Inckle was awarded an LTI Grant for her “Game of Research” project. She received funding and help from staff at LTI to design and create a board game to help social science students understand the “essential components for a successful qualitative research project”. Findings from her evaluation of the first stage of this project give us some interesting pointers as to how games can be used to support teaching and learning.

June 14th, 2016|games, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Projects, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

New Teaching & Learning Spaces at the LSE: an Evaluation

In the 2015-2016 academic year, staff at LTI undertook an evaluation of the impact of new LSE classrooms on teaching and learning. The findings and lessons learnt can be found in our final report. Here are the highlights.

Background

As part of a “comprehensive review and rethinking of what space means to teaching and learning” at the LSE, new spaces were redeveloped and opened for the 2015-16 academic year. Staff at LTI were involved in the design of 5 different types of space, along with Estates, the Teaching and Learning Centre and AV services. Among them:

an overflow dining facility transformed into a medium-sized lecture space
three collaborative computer rooms to replace those lost in the demolition of three campus buildings
an old parish hall turned into a three-level teaching building with three classrooms designed to accomodate mixed-mode teaching thanks to their cabaret-style layout

Although these classrooms are very different to each other in terms of design, purpose and capacity, they were developed as a result of the common intention to “experiment with modern, pedagogically-sound approaches to learning space design”. LTI’s report investigates the impact that these new spaces have had on teaching and learning.

Click on the pictures for a description of each space and the design intentions

Findings

One finding common to all three types of space is that they did have an impact on both teachers and students, mostly through the furniture and its arrangement as well as the atmosphere created.

Layout

Findings for the three types of rooms highlight that the layout played an important part in rethinking the teacher/students and student/student dynamic.

The layout for the Parish Hall rooms was found to “enable seamless transition from teacher-led to student-centred learning”, allow teachers to move around the room, and encourage student discussion thanks to the informal feel, praised by a vast majority of respondents. Many positive comments were made by teachers on the rooms’ arrangement:

“The fact that the tables are laid out like that does make you think: well, how should I use them?”

“It was a really good class set up for group discussion”

“Frontal lecture arrangements (row layout) where everyone watches the teacher are a lot more impersonal. It doesn’t matter where you sit because there is no emphasis on social interaction. PAR by contrast, with those collaborative tables, recognizes every person as part of the arrangement.”

Teacher feedback for the collaborative computer rooms also indicates that the layout “would send a clear message to students, namely that the course is likely to involve collaboration“. Unfortunately, factors such as a lack of space and screens hindering conversations across table somewhat reduced the impact.

“So in terms of their [students] collaboration, I think that as soon as they enter the TW2 room they know what is expected of them. So intuitively, it is a suggestion to them that this is a joint class work type of exercise.”

Finally, the report suggest that the main intention for the lecture space to “create a layout where teachers feel close to students and vice versa has largely been met”

Atmosphere

The choice of furniture type combined with the layout and aesthetic considerations contributed to create a favourable atmosphere for students and teachers to work in.

Both lecture and Parish Hall spaces were identified by a great number of students as being a nice space to study in, with the two main adjectives used in the surveys being “bright” and “comfortable”. They also found the environment for the PC classrooms “visually bright and appealing”.

Some teachers also recognised the importance of the atmosphere set by the space, mostly with the Parish Hall rooms:

“I feel a lot more optimistic in that room, you feel like you are in a professional atmosphere, there a high ceiling, light – it helps my morale.”

“I also like the fact that it’s airy and light that’s important. It’s important in term of how you feel, how the students feel in the classroom.”

“PAR [the Parish Hall rooms] recognizes every person as part of the arrangement which makes it more homely in a way”

Report

More information about the rooms, findings and our analysis can be found in the full report: Teaching spaces design and development at LSE: An evaluation of impact on teaching and learning

LTI is planning to carry out evaluation of two more spaces in the next academic year:

3 collaborative seminar rooms
a modern language learning space/open-access PC room

Findings from this overall evaluation will inform the design of new spaces to be developed at the LSE as part of the School’s comprehensive review and rethinking of what space means to teaching and learning.

We would love to hear your feedback, please use the comments below or email LTI to share your thoughts!

June 8th, 2016|Learning Spaces, Projects, Reports & Papers, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off|

Constitution UK wins Campus Technology Teaching and Learning Innovation award

LSE has been awarded with the Campus Technology Teaching and Innovation (pg30) 2016 award for their innovative work on the Constitution UK project which ran in early 2015. The Campus Technology article on the award was published on 17 August 2016.

Constitution UK was a collaborative project that aimed to crowdsource and hack the UK constitution. The project, led by LSE Professor Connor Gearty of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) in partnership with Learning Technology and Innovation (LTI), invited individuals to share views and ideas on what should be part of a UK constitution in the 800th anniversary year of Magna Carta. The project generated over 1 million words, thousands of ideas and tens of thousands of votes and resulted in the writing of an 800 word crowdsourced constitution of the UK. Over 1500 community members took part in this large scale public policy and learning project, with over 20 LSE students acting as moderators.

The project utilized innovative methods of engagement, used techniques such as ideation, crowdsourcing, informal learning and gamification conducted through an online platform (Crowdicity) in order to generate engagement that increased over the duration of the course. We engaged social media organisations and special interest groups to ensure successful integration of learning outcomes and the effective and representative engagement of the community in the platform. If you want to know more about the project you check it out here.

This prestigious Teaching and Learning Innovator award by Campus Technology magazine (an industry, leading magazine for online and blended learning professionals) recognises the project in that it ‘…delivered both a public policy success as well as a significant and innovative approach to online learning and engagement.’

“… The awards represent excellence in experimentation, design, collaboration and implementation, and the projects they recognize expand the possibilities for individual campuses and the field of higher education technology,” said Dr. John Hess, program chair, Campus Technology Conference.

“We are extremely proud to have been nominated and then selected for this prestigious award. It recognises an incredibly innovative project that delivered far beyond our wildest dreams. It also recognises the hard work and commitment of many academic and professional staff at the LSE” said Peter Bryant, Head of Learning Technology and Innovation. “It remains the most remarkable project I have ever worked on.” noted Paul Sullivan, the Manager of the IPA.