PGCHE'd

Well I'm pleased to say that I've passed my PGCHE.

Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education.

Great course if rather heavily assessed (given how busy we are). But that's a universal student gripe I'm sure. Even if I hadn't passed I would have gotten a lot from this course. I've changed some of my practices as a result of things I've picked up on the course and in other instances it affirmed that I was already pretty good stuff, which is of course why I got the title of University Teaching Fellow a few years ago. Still get lots of things wrong but nice to know also getting plenty of them right.

I would certainly recommend the course to anyone thinking about it and the assessment load has been lightened so really nothing to quibble about.

Award Winning Teaching Blog

Economics Subject Network eLearning Winner

This morning I learnt that I'm the joint winner of this year's eLearning Award from the Economics Subject Network.

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/

For several years now I have delivered a Level 3 module for Economics at NTU called

The Internet, Computers & Society

I only entered the competition following the overwhelmingly positive feedback from students who took the module this year. It has a history of very good feedback but there was particular emphasis on some of the blended learning innovations I had introduced this year.

What especially motivated me was the positive response to my use of free Web 2.0 services like Blogger and YouTube in combination to provide low tech but effective revision aids. These were simply topic based revision videos that were no more than 10 minutes in length. Module feedback showed that these were both popular and seemingly effective.

Difficult to measure how effective but what they certainly did do was encourage some of the students to then seek out further materials from other sources. Great stuff!

Examples of the use of YouTube clips embedded into Blogger for teaching can be seen on the module blog itself at

http://phil-wane-ics.blogspot.com/

Annual Leave...

I'm currently on annual leave but will start updating this blog in the near future.

Although on leave (and enjoying it) I'm also logging in now and again, thinking about outstanding PGCHE assignments, and reflecting upon what changes I still have time to make for next year's teaching...

But thought I would post something so people don't think I've forgotten about the blog.

Merely having a break!

White Rabbits!

Today is the first of the month and some people have the tradition that if the first thing you say on the first day of any month is "White Rabbits" then you will receive a gift. Something like that!

I think I manage it about one a year as like most people I usually manage "Oh God what time is it?" or something similar. I kind of managed it today so as a present to myself and to anyone reading this blog and I know there are some people (if only the PGCHE tutors who read the hard copy, which forms a neat addition to my PGCHE portfolio).

I will make a determined effort this month to make some regular postings, if only as a way of reminding myself of some useful events and developments that I might otherwise forget to mention or otherwise chase up. Since this blog is a type of reflective journal I find it useful to both reflect upon things and simply to remind myself to chase others up...

Expect postings on subjects as diverse as Gilly Salmon and podcasting, undergraduate plagiarism, and prize winning photographs.

Instant Polls without Polling Technology

I'm going to share a useful trick with colleagues.

Many of you will have seen these instant polling systems where people in a room use little "remotes" to select answers or vote and the results come up on a big screen.

These systems are great and indeed NTU is about to purchase one. But what if you haven’t got access to such a system? Well something I’ve done for a few years is to use SurveyMonkey as an instant polling system. It is really (just) a well thought out, free, web based survey service. It is great for surveys and I would recommend it.

But if you are teaching in a classroom equipped with networked computers you can use it to gather instant feedback – and then use that feedback in your actual session

So yesterday I had a class where I showed video clips to students (and they could also access them independently via their PCs) and then got them to complete a short questionnaire on SurveyMonkey. I made the (very short) survey just before the class and emailed the URL to the students. A survey is really just a collection of questions so a short survey is simply a way of asking some questions and collecting the feedback. I then call up the feedback in class and we then discuss the results. It works well since the students get to have an individual and collective say; this gives me natural teaching material of relevance to the topic (since I author the survey) and the students (since they have just given anonymised answers).

Yesterday I asked students to give me feedback on the video clips (key part of the session and an excellent response rate) and later on I showed them a clip of the new iPhone and asked for some feedback on that (again using a pre-prepared SurveyMonky survey). Must do a video clip demo of this or write a short paper on this and other useful tricks… will add it to my job list!

A First Class Ticket to Dottingham?

(The title of this post and first paragraph also appear on the Internet, Computers & Society module blog but I didn't think the second paragraph was relevant to the students.)

There used to be an advert for Tunes (I think) where a man with a heavy cold cannot make himself heard to the person at the railway ticket counter. If anyone is watching these demo clips then you'll hopefully realise that I made one batch while I was full of cold. So I sound a bit odd but it also means I wasn't very focussed on the materials. So they're a little waffly but they're only demos so that's okay.

All part of the process of being a reflective practitioner. You plod along at times, soar along at others, try things out, get feedback, consider it (accept/reject the feedback?)and repeat the process... Is this the wheel of progress or the treadmill of despair? Some days it can seem like both!

NTU-Tube Anyone?

Just booked my placed at the Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

NTU ALT-C

Looks like a couple of good sessions though I've missed out on some of the more popular ones. I had thought about doing a presentation this year but at the time the notification came around I was just so busy that I didn't want to commit myself to yet another thing. As it happens I would have been able to put some together.

What? Well I would have done a short presentation on using services like YouTube to communicate with students whether they're attending NTU full-time, out on placement or full distance learners. Here's an example of the sort of thing I've been doing with one of my modules. I use a blog and embed video clips hosted by YouTube into it.

The Internet, Computers & Society

Some clips are ones I've found elsewhere and linked to (so no copyright worries - don't even mention proscribing deep linking to me!) and others are ones I've created. Some of the current ones are short clips produced in a range of styles. I then demonstrated these to the students and used SurveyMonkey to collect feedback on their preferences. All part of my normal reflective practitioner good practice and in this particular instance it will make a contribution to my PGCHE course.

PGCHE versus Economics Course Committee

And this week my principal clash on Wednesday afternoon is between Trevor’s PGCHE session (on something I can probably manage but I simply like Trevor’s sessions) and the Economics Course Committee, which will be worthy but - well I won’t say dull – but course committees are often heavy on materials and light on interaction, especially if you are not part of the core teaching team. And I’m certainly not singling out the Economics Course Committee, which is no better or worse than others, and I happen to know of a couple of staff who periodically check this blog.

Just a pity there is so much overload on Wednesday afternoons...

Widening Participation PGCHE

A few days ago we had a PGCHE meeting that focussed on “Widening Participation”.

Some quite firm views were exchanged in relation to various aspects of this topic.

Mmmmmm. Must come back to this one. I was going to write about it now but I’m too tired. I’ve just done hours and hours of marking and so I’m fairly brain dead. So just doing a few odd jobs, checking out this week’s timetable etc ( my teaching timetable changes most weeks so I cannot memorise it) while listening to the best techie pod cast I’ve come across so far, which is Buzz Out Loud from CNET.

Always easy background listening and usually something informative in every show… go check it out. Here’s a link to the feed at CNET

http://www.cnet.com/i/pod/cnet_buzz.xml

Oooh A Publication! - JISC eLearning Conference

innovating e-learning conference 2006Innovating e-Learning 2006: Transforming Learning Experiences
27 - 31 March 2006

Yesterday morning I checked my email and found one from Geof Minshull, who amongst other things, helped to organise an online e-learning conference for JIC last March (2006). They’ve just published the final set of e-books (actually nicely formatted PDFs) containing the proceedings from the conference.

This includes a paper I presented (online) about the use of interactive crosswords (pages 48-51), which of course I used as the basis for my first presentation to the PGCHE course. Since it has just been published it can go into my PGCHE portfolio.

You can say my paper, and more importantly, loads of other really good ones in the PDF collection located at

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elp_conference06.html

Trial Module Blog

I've just set up a blog for my third year module, which is called "The Internet, Computers & Society". I'm trying this out as an addition to materials on the VLP and I've given all the module students (about 40 this year - not bad for an optional module) the requisite permissions to post things on the blog. I've just set up a couple of exercises via email and given them a chance to register with Blogger (completely free) if they haven't already done so since they need to register to post contributions to the blog.

I suspect a bit like Gilly Salmon and her e-moderating exercises I'll have to do a few things to get them going. Anyway you can see the module blog here

http://phil-wane-ics.blogspot.com/index.html

Part of my rationale for trying this out is that I think this is a much more user friendly interface than the current VLP, the students can post comments, add images and embed video clips (something they cannot easily do on the VLP) and it should encourage those who haven't considered blogs to check them out.

I'll post updates in due course reflecting upon the success or otherwise of this move. On a related note (since I've had no feedback on this yet) I thought that an easy (convenient/efficient) way for me to contribute to the material that needs to go into my Personal Development Portfolio was to set up this blog. It’s a quick and easy way to keep short notes or observations (all dated by the blog system) and I can then add additional materials later. But it at least gives me a skeleton outline of just one part of my portfolio… What do fellow PGHE students think? Would it help you? Do you want me to show you how to set up a blog like this? It really is easy!

Plagiarism Paranoia

I came up with one of those nice sounding sentences (the sort that don't bear great critical scrutiny) for the start of one of my assignments. Here it is:

If we are thinking about learning are we learning about thinking?

But then I wondered if it sound a little too familiar so I Googled it (how naughty using Google as an adjective) as a phrase with, and without, the question mark. Both times the phrase could not be found. I'm still a little paranoid but is the "not on Google" defence a reliable one for accidental plagiarists?