Flipping great.

Earlier this year, we had the good fortune of catching up with Dr. Bryan McCabe, a lecturer in Civil Engineering at NUI Galway. Bryan has been re-configuring his pedagogic approach, by giving students exposure to lecture materials out of class through lecture videos and quizzes. He then uses lecture time to problem-solve, discuss and debate. More popularly known as "the flipped classroom", this learning model has been growing in popularity in recent times, due to its emphasis on active student engagement (Chen, Wang, Kinshuk & Chen, 2014).

In this short video with Bryan, he discusses his approach, and the feedback he has received from students on allowing them to take more responsibility for their learning, and engage collaboratively in the practice of engineering.

 

Further Reading:
Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Kinshuk & Chen, N.S. (2014). Is FLIP enough? Or should we use the FLIPPED model instead? Computers & Education, 79, 16-27.
 
Straw S., Quinlan, O., Harland, J. & Walker, M. (2014). Flipped Learning: Using Online Video to Transform Learning. Nesta Report. Accessed from http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/flipped-learning-using-online-video-transform-learning

Check out two NUI Galway Library Books:
Bergmann J, & Sams A. (2012)Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

Bergmann, J. & Sams, A.(2014). Flipped learning Gateway to Student Engagement, Learning & Learning with Technology.

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Why I blog

Image by andyp uk on flickr 

A couple of weeks ago, as part of an informal lunchtime conversation session on the topic of Academic Blogging, Simon Warren (@worried_teacher) invited me to speak, along with John Danaher (@JohnDanaher), on my blogging experiences. This forced me to take some time and reflect on my own practice as a blogger, what I blog about and why. So, thank you Simon for giving me the purpose to reflect.

John blogs at philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.ie and is a prolific blogger. He admits to spending between 10 to 15 hours per week on his blog, writing an average of 2 lengthy posts each week. His writing is habitual and he starts most days writing at least 1000 words. He writes for research purposes and much of what he writes is repurposed for papers and articles. 

Clearly I am not nearly in the same league as John Danaher, but listening to him speak, I realised that some of our reasons for blogging are similar. 

 
The LearnTechGalway blog

This blog first started as a conference blog in May 2007, and has since accumulated more than 400 posts, with various authors from the Learning Technologies team at NUI Galway. We use the blog to document our work; to highlight and showcase the work of others; to share information about upcoming events; to document events we've hosted or attended; and to network with other groups.

The audience for the blog is the university community at NUIG and a broader network of academic, academic-related and educational technology people nationally and internationally.

Writing for me

But actually, my primary audience is myself! As a non-academic, there is not the same pressure on me to write; but as a former academic (who is still interested in research) I find that blogging provides me a platform to articulate and make sense of the world around me. John described something similar - he uses his blog to explain things to himself. 

When I first started blogging (in 2007), my contributions were short and factual. I blogged about news, gave details on upcoming events and wrote up conference reports. The conference and event reports developed as I started to reflect more, and began to put my ideas in writing. As my online identity continues to develop, through blogging and Twitter and other social tools, my blogger's voice has also continued to develop. It is still not a confident voice, but that is something that I would like to work on. 

So, blogging, for me, supports my own professional self development, allowing me to reflect, and helping me to shape my identity, both online and in real life.

Me as an open practitioner

It has also become important to me that I reflect openly and I'm working to become more of an open practitioner. This is not necessarily a comfortable place to be, especially as a woman online. But through blogging and twitter in particular I have developed a pretty good (and constantly shifting) personal learning network (PLN).

The value of the network is manifest in multiple ways. The feedback from comments on the blog or on twitter (or LinkedIn or Medium or wherever they happen to be) reminds me that I'm part of a wider community, but also supports the development of my thinking. Blogging can also result in unexpected opportunities for research or collaborative work, such as my chapter in David Hopkins' Really Useful #EdTech Book last year.

This post has taken me a couple of weeks to complete (though you wouldn't know that to read it). Yesterday I had the immense pleasure of hearing Joseph O'Connor speak at the National Summit for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. As well as providing the hugely accurate description Writing is like attempting to juggle with mud he also said

Learning is a way of seeing, again, a way of looking at the world 

I think blogging does this too. And blogging is part of my learning.

See Also..

Can blogging be academically valuable - by John Danaher

Blogging helps academic writing - by Pat Thomson

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Providing campus wide video services with limited resources

This article first appeared in the December issue of the Media and Learning Newsletter, published by the Media and Learning Association. Sign up for regular issues online.

The Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the National University of Ireland, Galway is a staff-facing central unit which has the broad aim to enhance the quality of teaching and learning at the University. The centre is responsible for various types of activities, grounded in the promotion of good pedagogy, including the support of learning technologies and media production. In the last 5 years, we have seen an increase in the use of video in online, blended and on-campus courses, including the flipped classroom approach.

With a small complement of staff (just 4 members in the learning technologies team) to support an institution with about 17,000 students and 2,500 staff across 5 Colleges, we have to be selective in how we allocate our resources. We have a small recording studio, for video and audio, with facilities for video editing. Our approach is to empower academic staff to develop their own resources through a combination of technology provision, formal and informal training, advice, support and good practice guides.

There is an impression that video is inherently complicated and that advanced knowledge and skills are necessary to produce anything worthwhile. However, increasingly people are walking around with a smartphone video camera in a pocket, and this is particularly true for our students. We can create and upload a short video to YouTube or Facebook in seconds, so why not educational video too?

Since 2011 we have used the Kaltura platform and VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) building block to make video easier for all staff and students. Instructional videos, webcam or screen recordings can be created and uploaded to the VLE using simple tools that don't require anything more complicated than a webcam and headset, and no knowledge of video files and formats.

While having a technological solution is a necessary first step to support and grow the use of video as a mainstream teaching and assessment tool across campus, it's not sufficient. The CELT learning technologies team is involved in a range of activities to raise awareness and enable the whole university community to leverage the power of video in teaching and learning, including:

• provision of basic advice and support, through a ticketing helpdesk, online resources and good practice guides for self-support. Online resources include both text guides with screenshots as well as video guides using the tools themselves.
• highlighting and showcasing existing good examples of video that have been well integrated into the curriculum.
• hands-on training through workshops on using the tools and technologies for video. The workshops can be stand-alone or included in staff development technology events.
• embedded in the formal CELT professional development programmes (PG Cert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, PG Dip in Academic Practice), thereby situating the use of video technology firmly within the pedagogic context.
• leading by example, by making use of video in our own teaching and training activities, even when the focus is not video.
• working closely on selected, defined projects with individual staff and/or student groups, thereby creating showcase opportunities.
• provision of recording and editing facilities and services, where appropriate and feasible.

In an environment that is increasingly driven by measurements and metrics, it's important for us to monitor the use of video. From the Kaltura analytics tools we know that contributors, contributions and entries played have increased year-on-year since 2011, and are likely to grow further.

Republished with permission. 

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A lecturer perspective on peer assessment

When it comes to student learning, there is no activity with greater impact than how you design your course assessment. We all know that it works best when it facilitates meaningful and engaged learning by allowing students to participate in the process and gain timely and relevant feedback. It must be fair, accurate, and manageable for those undertaking it, and this is no easy task.

There has been much written in recent times on innovations in assessment. Lecturers have long been striving for new ways to make it more valid, transparent and diverse (Race, 2007). Asking students to review and give feedback on each others work is one such approach. With the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this practice of allowing students to assess and give feedback on each others work has grown in prevalence (Bali, 2014). Surely, it makes sense that students would benefit from understanding the criteria of an assignment so well that they could appraise the work of others for quality.

But introducing peer assessment can seem to be a daunting and hazardous prospect. How well do students undertake this task- would they be too harsh or too generous in their comments? Would they benefit from seeing their own mistakes and others? What other outcomes does it bring? And most importantly - how easy is it to manage?

We spoke with Michael Coyne, in the School of Law at NUI Galway about his experience in using peer assessment with students, and heard about the benefits it brought. The result is a short three minute interview.

Watch Michael's video interview here.


References: 
Bali, M (2014). MOOC Pedagogy: Gleaning Good Practice from Existing MOOCs”, MERLOT. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10, 1, 44-56.
Race, Phil (2007). The Lecturer's Toolkit: A practical guide to assessment, learning and teaching. 3rd edition, London: Routledge

Additional Resources: 
Blackboard's Guide to Peer Assessment
CELT Resources on Peer Assessment
JISC Exemplars of Peer Assessment

See more showcase videos

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The 5 x 12 apps of Christmas

12 Days. 12 Apps. 10 minutes per day.

I've just signed up (again) for the 12 apps of Christmas #12appsDIT offered by the Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre at DIT, and facilitated by Frances Boylan. This was launched last year (and I blogged about it at the time) based on a similar initiative at Regent's University London.

Each morning over 12 weekdays, starting Dec 1^st 2015, a page will be released that reviews a particular mobile app and explores it in terms of how it could help students personalise their learning. Like an advent calendar, every day you open a new door and see what's behind it.

This year the DIT folk are focussing on personalisation of learning, and are inviting teaching staff and students to take part. Already more than 600 people have registered. Why not sign up too?

As well as #12appsDIT, Chris Rowell of Regent's University London, has launched Christmas 2.0 #RUL12AoC.
Aimed at academic and academic support staff, this open course offers to cover the basics and some more advanced tips on using 12 educational apps.

You can sign up for the RUL course, which is offered via Blackboard's Open Education platform.

Meanwhile, the University of West London has also launched their 12 apps of Christmas open course #UWL12Apps. This course aims to inspire you to explore how you can use your smartphone or tablet in education and beyond.

In case 3 apps per day isn't enough for you, the University of Brighton has also launched a satellite cMOOC of #RUL12AoC, with hashtag #12brightapps.

So, starting on 1st December, with a new app (or 4) every weekday until 16th December, you could learn about the educational possibilities of up to 48 apps. At that stage, we could all do with a rest!

Update (18 November): Thanks to Chrissi Nerantzi (@chrissinerantzi) for alerting me (in the comments below) to another 12 apps  offered by Manchester Metropolitan University Library. This course, which does not need any registration, promises engaging hands-on activities, top tips and support from expert facilitators. Staff at MMU are also encouraged to participate in #RUL12AoC for the experience of an online course, with a suggestion that a common hashtag #12AoC is used.

That's a potential 60 apps, although I suspect there'll be a certain amount of overlap.

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How to effectively engage students through video

Last term we spoke with Mary Barrett, at NUI Galway, about her involvement in a project that created short screencasts within Blackboard for students. Along with her colleagues, she was looking for something to explain the technical nature of the subject, in additional to lectures and tutorials, for students. They arrived at a solution of working through problems on screen, narrating the process, and explaining steps involved. The resulting recordings allowed students to access these clarifying steps again, and again. Each screencast became a very valuable and engaging resource for learning.

Behind the scenes is a technology called Kaltura Desktop Recorder, which enables you to quickly and easily recording your screen or lecture and upload online to share privately in Blackboard, or with a wider audience on MediaSpace or other public video channels.

Watch Mary's video interview here.

You can see some further examples of their results on http://www.nuigalway.ie/cairnes/leavingcert/ and read more about Mary's Accountancy Nuggets project on the Explore project website.

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NUI Galway on Wikimedia Commons

The Quad by Malbe554

Just over a week ago I had a workshop for academic staff (on the PG Diploma in Academic Practice module in Learning Technologies) where we discussed the use of wikis in teaching and learning. As well as demonstrating how Blackboard wikis work and might be used to support collaborative group work, I also tried out a Wikipedia familiarisation session, in the style of Martin Poulter. This was based mostly on the talk I gave at EdTech earlier this year, on Academic Writing and Wikipedia.

The purpose of the Wikipedia familiarisation session is to highlight certain academic qualities of Wikimedia articles - the quality scale, citation guidelines, peer review, authorship, collaboration. I also talked about some of Wikipedia's sister projects, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, that can be used to enhance teaching and learning activities, such as Wikiversity, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikimedia Commons.

To add a practical element, without a full-blown editing session, I asked each person in the group to take one or more pictures (using a smartphone or other device) of the place where he/she works, and to create a wikipedia account in advance of our workshop. During the workshop, then, each person uploaded a new media file to Wikimedia Commons, which was later tagged with National University of Ireland, Galway.

This had the advantage of each person creating an account and making a real contribution to Wikimedia Commons. Moreover, the collection of images of NUI Galway has been expanded and enhanced.

Some of the newly uploaded images are below. As you can see, they have all been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

Old Civil Engineering Building
By Theorydave (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Office View of the Quadrangle
By Kardoy1 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Earth and Ocean Science, NUIG
By TiernanHenry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Áras de Brún
By Niallmadden (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Aras Moyola
By Mary R Mulry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Digital Storytelling at NUI Galway

 For the past six years, Bonnie Long, in the School of Education, has been pioneering a novel approach to encourage teachers to reflect on their professional practice, as part of their studies at NUI Galway. We caught up with her before the summer to ask her a little more about her approach of using digital storytelling as part of the formal curriculum.

The result is a three minute long interview with Bonnie, that explains in more detail. Watch it here: https://www.kaltura.com/tiny/s18l2

Bonnie Long talks about digital storytelling in Higher Education

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Summer Holidays

Earlier this week I became aware of #blimage - a challenge to write blog posts on learning, inspired by particular images. You can read more about the challenge from Steve Wheeler in his post Blimey, it's #blimage. Since then, there have been #blimage blogposts appearing all week, and I'm barely keeping up with them!

Following David Hopkins' post Desks of Doom, David challenged me to get involved.

Take the challenge @sharonlflynn, here's my response to @timbuckteeth and challenge too: https://t.co/t9KNLdvyAp #blimage

— David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid) July 20, 2015

To be honest, my first reaction was "I haven't got time for this", but actually, David's challenge image aligns nicely with my current phase of work. So, I decided I'd use the opportunity to get something written.

Birmingham Airport Departure Lounge (gate 14/15) 

Image by David Hopkins on flickr

I've been in plenty of departure lounges while travelling; sometimes for work and sometimes on holiday; sometimes as a solo traveller and sometimes with colleagues, friends or family. This one, at least, has seats - unlike some areas used in the past by Ryanair.

What I see here is not a dull, depressing scene. It's likely that, just minutes before, this area was full of people, old and young, excited about the journey ahead of them. In another few minutes, the space will begin to fill up, and the cycle will begin again.

This image shows just a snapshot in time, but it's a time when it's possible to take stock of the space - maybe do some cleaning up or perhaps rethink the whole area in terms of upgrading, arrangement and facilities. That type of upgrade activity can only take place at a quiet time, like the moment depicted.

So, why does this image align with my current phase of work? Well, I think it looks quite like the scene I can see out of my office window. I am lucky to have an office on the ground floor of a very central building, that looks out on one of the busiest areas of the campus: just outside the library, with the main university restaurant just down some steps, and many of the university's lecture theatres in easy reach. During the teaching year, there is a magnificent buzz, with students and staff milling around, grouped together in clusters, rushing from one space to the next. It is constant, and a perfect reminder to me of the main purpose of the university. To be part of the scene is energising, and I can't help but feel motivated by the anticipation of the crowd.

View from my office window

 But just now, this is how it looks. If you look hard, you'll see there are a couple of people outside the library entrance, and I do see people walking up and down the steps. There are people around, as evidenced by the collection of bicycles in the rack, but nothing like the buzz during term. It's hard to imagine that, in just over a month, this place will be teeming with students. Some of them may even be excited about the journey ahead of them.

So, what has me so busy? Well, this is my team's time to do all the necessary maintenance and updates before the term begins. We can only do this work at this time of year (and possibly a much shorter window at Christmas).

In addition to our ongoing support for staff, we have 4 fairly big projects scheduled over the summer including various upgrades to current technologies (VLE, video technologies, lecture capture, language labs), which entail development of new training resources and documentation. We are working on a completely new website (due to launch end of next week) and are planning a full schedule of training for academic staff for the second half of August. Some of our efforts will be visible to and appreciated by university staff, and we look forward to supporting their work in the new academic year.

Will the students notice any difference when they come back in September? Possibly not, or not immediately. A bit like improvements in an airport waiting lounge!

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Learning Resources and Open Access in Higher Education Institutions in Ireland

The National Forum for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education has published 2 focused research reports today. One of these is the outcome of a project, led by Angelica Risquez at the University of Limerick, and involving a team of people from University of Limerick, Dublin Institute of Technology, Mary Immaculate College, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and National University of Ireland Galway, looking at the current state of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education in Ireland.

This report provides a considered account of some of the key issues which influence the sharing of open educational resources. These include questions of awareness and understanding of open educational resources at individual as well as institutional level, and the value placed on openness as a positive incentive for academic engagement. Acknowledging the complex interplay between these factors, the study suggests important practical steps to take forward OER engagement, including: awareness raising; professional development for academic staff; capturing excellent OERs and continuing relevant and targeted research to support particular OER initiatives.

The full text of the report is available from the National Forum website.

From the report:

This project, a national analysis, set out to examine strategies for sharing open education resources (OERs) to enhance teaching and learning in Irish higher education. Drawing on the collective expertise and experience of colleagues, with on-going involvement in open education resources, the study explore current practices and potential approaches for future sharing of resources. The experiences gained through the National Digital Learning Resources project were also considered, along with options for the management and discovery of digital teaching and learning resources through local repositories. As part of the exploration focus groups were held with selected groups of academic, library, educational development and educational technologists.

 Consequently this report provides a considered account of some of the key issues which influence the sharing of open educational resources from primary data gathered and also from a survey of current research literature. The relevant issues incorporate questions of awareness and understanding of open education resources at individual as well as institutional level, and in particular the value placed on openness as a positive incentive for academic engagement and sharing. Alongside the increasing growth of social media and online sharing platforms which have altered the way resources are shared amongst some groups, there is also the question of how in an Irish context distinctive institutional missions and approaches can determine levels of OER engagement. Acknowledging the complex interplay between these factors, the study suggests important practical steps to take forward OER engagement, including: awareness raising; professional development for academic staff; capturing excellent OERs and continuing relevant and targeted research to support particular OER initiatives.


As a member of the project team, it was an honour to work again with such a dedicated group of people and it's great to see the report being launched.

A related presentation can be seen on slideshare, from the EdTech conference in UL in May.

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Research Seminar with Caroline Kuhn H.

CELT RESEARCH SEMINAR: 

Supporting students in developing their digital research skills

Thursday, July 16th, 11am – 12noon, AM 207 

 (Arts Millennium Bldg.) 

Presented by visiting scholar Caroline Kuhn - Institute for Education, Bath Spa Univ.  

How can universities encourage and support students in developing their digital research skills — in particular through the design and implementation of their own Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)? Caroline Kuhn will share research from her current PhD study in this area and looks forward to engaging in discussion with participants. 

Further information:

Caroline Kuhn research blog  

Twitter: @carolak 

Any questions?

Please contact Catherine Cronin catherine.cronin@nuigalway.ie

On the afternoon of July 16th, you might also like to join the #GREAT15 Conference, also being held at NUI Galway. 

Update (27 July)

We are delighted that Caroline's seminar was recorded and can be viewed online.

Caroline has also written a blog post based on the discussion following her talk last week.

More on Getting Real about Virtual Learning...

We've finally gotten around to uploading Doug Belshaw's keynote from last month's symposium...

 

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#celt15: Getting Real about Virtual Learning

Last Friday (19th June) was our CELT Symposium on the topic Getting Real about Virtual Learning. It was a fantastic day (despite the weather) with about 200 participants and plenty of learning.

Twitter at #celt15

Thanks to the twitter team (@gramcgrath, @marloft, @allaboardHE, @catherinecronin, @rosenidhubhda, @TELtales) and all the lovely tweeps at the conference, there were almost 1200 #celt15 tweets on Friday alone, and we trended in Ireland for most of the day!

The quality of the backchannel was quite amazing. I've created a semi-structured archive of all the comments and pictures using storify, which gives a sense of the day.

A beautiful TAGSExplorer visualisation of all the tweets for the hashtag was created by Martin Hawsey's Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS). From here you can find the top tweeter from the conference (@iainmacl) and the top conversationalists (@worried_teacher and @sharonlflynn). TAGS also produces a searchable archive of the conference tweets.

Keynotes at #celt15

Both Sian Bayne and Doug Belshaw gave very exciting and thought-provoking talks at #celt15. These have been recorded and we should be able to make them available soon.

In the meantime, Doug has already made his presentation available on Slideshare:

Identifying, scaffolding, and credentialing skills in an ever-changing digital environment from Doug Belshaw

And Sian Bayne's paper Teacherbot: Interventions in Automated Teaching is also available online.

Presentations from the event

At least one presenter has shared his presentation using Slideshare. If anybody else has shared their presentation, please let me know and I'll add it here:
 

Blended Learning: Feared or Misunderstood? (CELT15) from Tony Burke

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#celt15 Instructions to the twitter team

This is based on the original post by @derekbruff who has kindly given his permission to re-blog. It's an updated version of the #celt13 instructions, posted on this blog 2 years ago.

Hello #celt15 twitter team (you know who you are) and thank you for agreeing to take part. We're looking forward to an active twitter stream at #celt15 again this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt15 twitter team? Glad you asked....

1. Take a few moments at several points during the day (during keynotes, during sessions, whenever) to share highlights of the conference.  What are you learning?  What useful resources are you hearing about?  (Include links when you can!)  What questions or answers are occurring to you as you  participate in the conference?
2. Don't forget to use the hashtag! It's #celt15.
3. You’re encouraged to tweet some photos of the conference. Having some photos in the Twitter steam makes the conference experience more concrete for folks not there.
4. Feel free to be critical when appropriate, but please always be civil.  If one of the keynotes, for instance, turns out to be a big dud (unlikely - given that we've got Sian Bayne and Doug Belshaw), let’s not have any harshtagging or tweckling.  (See http://chronicle.com/article/Conference-Humiliation-/49185/.)
5. Engage with other #celt15 Twitter participants, including those not physically present: respond to questions and add value when you can.
6. Finally, if a conference participant new to Twitter starts asking you about Twitter, be ready to share your experiences. The conference is all about new skills, so demonstrate how Twitter can be a part of it.

I am already collecting an archive of all the tweets related to the hashtag, using Martin Hawksey's excellent Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS). As of this morning, two days before the conference starts, there are already more than 300 tweets in the archive. Who will be top tweeter this year? And who will be top conversationalist? Watch this space to find out.
 
#celt15 is the official hashtag of the 13th Galway Symposium, entitled Getting Real About Virtual Learning.

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The Kaltura Connect Education Virtual Summit 2015

The Kaltura Connect Education Virtual Summit took place last week. All the sessions are now available to view on demand, so it you have a little bit of time, head on over to the VOD site to watch.

My own talk User Engagement and Learning Outcomes: How NUI Galway is Changing the way Students Learn Inside and Outside the Classroom is available, though I have brought myself to watch it yet. Hopefully the technical guys worked their magic and I don't look as completely nervous as I actually felt at the time.

The powerpoint slides from the talk are available on Slideshare and embedded here:

User Engagement and Learning Outcomes: How NUI Galway is Changing the way Students Learn Inside and Outside the Classroom from Sharon Flynn

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The growth in video in teaching and learning at NUI Galway

The Kaltura Connect Education Virtual Summit will take place on 28th May this year (you can pre-register here) and I was absolutely delighted to be invited to give a talk, based on our experiences at NUI Galway. The talk was recorded last month in New York City, against the backdrop of Central Park.

The recording "studio". Photograph taken by Anna Dutton.

All sounds a bit crazy? Well, yes, it was. Especially since this has happened before. But I did get to New York last month, where I recorded my talk in front of two video cameras, to two cameramen, a sound engineer and a couple of other people. I also attended the Kaltura Education Customer Advisory Board, and caught up with new developments in video technology for education.

When the invitation came in, I spent a bit of time thinking about what I could talk about. NUI Galway has been a Kaltura customer for almost 4 years, so I thought I'd take a closer look at the analytics available to us. I focused on the calendar years 2012 to 2014, for which we have full data.


The Big Picture

To give some context, we integrated Kaltura into our Blackboard environment at the very beginning of 2012, keeping it in "pilot mode" for the second semester of that academic year by only telling a few video champions about its existence. A small number of other academic staff stumbled across its functionality and also started using it.

By the Summer of 2012, once we'd ironed out any issues, and learned about it more as a team, we began to promote the tools more actively. In particular, we offered workshops and demonstration sessions.

The number of contributors (staff and students) who uploaded at least one video to Kaltura via Blackboard increased from 58 in the first year to 156 in 2013 and to 319 last year. I think that this increase is down to two things:

• The promotion and training offered by the Learning Technologies team to support staff in their use of the tools, and
• The ease of use of the tools themselves. Most staff are very pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to created a webcam recording or record themselves talking over a powerpoint.

The number of uploads in the first year was 287, compared to a total number of uploads of 962 in 2014. The number of media entries played in each of the three years speaks for itself.

The Analytics within the Kaltura Management Console allow admins to dig deeper into these numbers. For example the most played video in the last year is Examinations Advice  which was made available to students at the appropriate time of the year as part of a Blackboard System Announcement.

Breakdown per month

By extracting some of the data from Kaltura Analytics, I was able to take a look at the content contributions and views per month over the three years.

 

The graph for contributions has been adjusted slightly. It had been skewed by the fact that a single contributor uploaded 181 videos alone in January 2014. By removing that figure, the graph is definitely more readable. It's clear that very little activity is taking place during the summer months, outside of the teaching periods. There is a very definite increase in August, in preparation for the new academic year, with a lot of activity taking place in October and November, and a decline again as teaching ends in December.

Targeted training events took place in August 2013, December 2013, August 2014 and October 2014 - the effect of which is quite visible in the graph above.

The graph of content views per month mirrors that of contributions, but on a much bigger scale. Again it's clear that most of the activity takes place during the teaching period, with reduced viewing activity from May to August.

How is it being used?

The numbers and graphs are interesting, and certainly useful when you need to argue a case. But more interesting are the stories behind the numbers. For example, the contributors are not just academic staff - there is also an increase in video assignments, where the students create a video and upload through the Kaltura tool on Blackboard.

In my recorded presentation for the Kaltura Connect Education Virtual Summit, to be shown as the opening talk on 28th May, I give some examples of the uses of video in teaching and learning at NUI Galway. I had quite a lot to choose from.

A final thought

There's no doubt that video offers a lot of opportunity in teaching, learning and assessment, for teachers and learners alike. The Kaltura tools make things very simple for users - there's no fiddling around with file formats and post-production can be minimal. But just having the tools and making them available doesn't mean that staff and students will use them, or indeed use them in an effective and productive way for teaching and learning. Support and guidance is crucial. That's where the Learning Technologies Team comes in at NUIG. We can help with the technical stuff, but we're also ready to advise with best practice and a wealth of experience.


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We are on Facebook!

After some consideration, the Learning Technologies Team in CELT has decided to create a Facebook presence. And so, we are here!

Our intended audience on Facebook is staff at NUI Galway, though we're delighted to welcome other followers from further afield.

The main rationale is because we're finding that traditional communication on campus is becoming increasingly difficult, and staff are too busy and inundated with email that they are not aware of what we're doing or how we might be able to help. With more informal and bite-sized pieces of information floating through their Facebook stream, we're hoping to increase awareness and engagement.

We'll provide updates on our activities and post information about upcoming events and workshops. We hope you'll comment on our activity, ask questions and offer your suggestions.

So, Like us, Share our posts and tell us what you think.

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The student as researcher

Last week, myself and my colleague, Margaret Forde, had the pleasure to help out in chairing at the 12th Annual Conference of IT in the Humanities- a conference is the product of module CT327: Humanities Applications in which the final year BA Information Technology class present on independently research topics of their own choosing.

The conference was an uplifting and fascinating insight into the curiosity and rigorous research activity of undergraduate students at NUI Galway. Forty one diverse topics relating to Facebook, social media, Sci Fi  fiction, the perils of working conditions and electronic waste, innovations in IT applications for health, forensics, construction, natural disasters, online dating, activism, and digital identity were among some of the themes addressed. 

Photo: Pat Byrne (Lecturer) with her class of Final year BA Information Technology Class, 2015

Several aspects struck me as interesting and innovative about the design of the module.

Firstly, it took place over an entire academic year, giving students ample time to get engrossed in their chosen topic. Students came up with their own theme, and developed a paper outline by November last year. They repeatedly met one-on-one with their lecturer, Pat Byrne, to discuss and get feedback. By February, a full paper was due. This was graded and students received additional feedback both from peers, and from the lecturer. A corrected version for the printed conference proceedings was submitted, and a final presentation at the end of March (consisting of 20% of the marks) emulated in the event I attended last week. These published proceedings were a source of great pride for students.

 

Photo: A copy of the conference proceedings

More attractive curricular design features included the module facilitated cross-curricular interactions with masters students in conference translations who paired up with the undergraduate students. These masters students were looking to benefit from the opportunity of undertaking live conference translations, and they served as peer mentors in a way, encouraging students to meet deadlines and targets (e.g have their peucha keucha presentation fully prepared a week in advance of the end conference). I can't recall ever having a presentation that prepared as an undergraduate! And this preparation was evident in the confident delivery of students on the day.

Furthermore, the undergraduates benefited from one-on-one conversations and guidance with an academic multiple times in the year. Their work was read and peer-reviewed by classmates at various stages, enabling them to also see into each other's written worlds. Throughout the entire process, they learned how to independently research and to adopt all the research practices that researching, writing and presenting an academic paper entails. Active participants, active researchers. 

Congratulations to them all, and particular thanks to Pat Byrne for the invitation!

Marvellous Mapping: Reflecting on online identities and practises using Visitors and Residents Mapping

Last month CELT hosted a workshop, "Marvellous Mapping: Reflecting on online identities and practices using Visitors and Residents Mapping".

The workshop facilitators, David White and Donna Lanclos, took the time while they were here to sit down with Catherine Cronin for a short chat and here it is...

Spring Lunchtime Lecture Series 2015

Last year I was asked by Elizabeth FitzPatrick, to assist with recording a seminar series for the School of Geography and Archaeology. The seminar series was organised to mark and celebrate the anniversary of 90 years of Archaeology at NUI Galway. 

It was a lunchtime lecture series, organised by staff in the School, in collaboration with the Galway City Musuem. The venue for the talks was the Education Room at the Galway City Museum. The talks were free and open to all. 

The lecture series was a huge success and drew large numbers each week. The video podcasts from these seminars are available to view at My Own Galway.

 The recorded seminar series is now being used by staff and students of the School of Geography and Archaeology as a learning resource. Such was the popularity of the seminar series that the School decided to run it again this year and the final lecture will be held tomorrow, March 27th, The speaker will be Conor Newman and his lecture is titled, The Sword in the Stone: the Galway Connection.

The seminar series has been a really fantastic example of the University successfully engaging with public and community. 

The 2015 series will be available online soon...