There will be a number of new starters in the team in the new year. These will all have a set of induction tasks to complete as part of their probation. Apart from the maternity cover, who I assume will have a slightly different probation period (need to check !!).

In terms of the ESSD posts, the aim of the induction tasks are as follows;

1. let them get upto speed with our install of Moodle 1.9.6, custom code, and the specific development of the Moodle-SAMIS integration

2. get them familiar with the process by which we run our Moodle install, i.e., development box through to live, including subversion control, and testing procedures

3. make them familiar with the relationship between the different parts of the team; ESSD, LT (central & dept), and the use of RT and Trac

4. expose them to working collaboratively within the ESSDs, other members of the Team, BUCS and the wider UoB community

5. objectively identify they have the required skills, knowledge and approach as outlined in the job description to be able to play an active and appropriate role within the team. In other words, evidence that they have successfully passed probation, and indicate from an early stage their progress through the probation period.

Therefore, the induction tasks should be;

1. very well defined
2. achievable within the time frame
3. ring fenced time
4. mapped back to the required skills / knowledge in the JD
5. can be monitored and this monitoring is transparent and objective
6. include set milestones

Ideas for tasks, and timeframes;

• 15 minute presentation on how the SAMIS-Moodle Integration (Block) works, and suggestions for feature enhancements from the user perspective. This is a four week piece of work
• Moodle housekeeping – removal of old users, and hiving off of log tables. This is a two week piece of work
• 15 minute presentation on risk assessment on current system architexture (hardware & software set up) in terms of trends in user growth and expectations for start of 2010-11 academic year. Three week piece of work

>>> mid probation >>>

We are continuing to use RT to log all queries to e-learning. This has even involved a member of the team adding telephone queries. This is a really nice addition

A question often asked by me as the Head of the team is what’s happening in terms of the number of queries entering the process. Is it stable, increasing or decreasing? This will give an indication of pressure and requirements in terms of resource allocation.

The following displays the number of tickets created per day since 1st Sept 09 on our system.

It shows the help desk get a large number of queries (over 400 in the last two months), it also shows the peak period is October (as you’d expect with the start of the new academic year), and the underlying trend is starting to fit the september pattern of a few emails a day.

This is good news in the sense it looks like we’ve got through a peak period (thanks Team), so we can re-think the required resource level of front desk staff.

Please take this with a pinch of salt, i.e., it gives us the trend data. However, we’d need to map this against resolved in the same period, time taken to resolve and type of ticket to start to unpack a clearer picture. Much of this I simply haven’t the time to answer. Therefore, for now, I’ll leave it that RT queries (volume) will start to fall back to a much lower level, indicating we can release people to start to work on other projects.

Met up with Jules to discuss e-assessment (objective) work which I need doing.

Have agreed he’ll write a 3000 word discussion paper (for publication on OPuS), around the following questions;

1. what is e-assessment (objective testing)? (about 600 words)

2. how might I use it in my teaching and learning? This would include scenarios, evidence from UK HE and publications. The aim is for the audience to be won over to the pedagogical benefits of objective testing for formative purposes. They can reflect on how they might use it in their teaching.

3. objective testing in Moodle 1.9? (a few hundred words). This is the authors perspective of the use of other tools in Moodle (not just quiz) for objective testing, i.e., the lesson.

This will be completed by Dec 09. Assuming agree on the cost (;-)).

The rationale for this is, in terms of support e-assessment (formative, objective testing) at Bath, we have the FAQ which contains lots of material on the Moodle Quiz (http://moodle.bath.ac.uk/faq/category/1/quiz.html), and the e-book available through the staff area. We also have links to guides on question design (http://esu.bris.ac.uk/esu/e-assessment/writing_e-assessments/index.htm) and material on planning your online assessment (http://esu.bris.ac.uk/esu/e-assessment/planning_online-assessment.pdf). Finally we have policy statements on using Moodle for formative assessment only (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/moodle/moodle-policy/#high-stake). However, we don’t have why and how to effectively use e-assessment in your teaching. So it is the last piece of the puzzle.

We discussed the idea of workshops etc., agreed we’d need to look at this for semester 2.

Finally, discussed a role in the upcoming e-assessment review. This will involve a data collection activity (who is using e-assessment, why, and what are their expereinces). So it would be nice to use an external for the semi-structured interviews.

Also, given the likely outcome is, we need systems to provide e-assessment on (in terms of robust, scaleable solutions), I’d like to find out if Moodle 2.0 is future proof interms of quiz, and online submission functionality. Jules could be commissioned for this report, i.e., is it fit for purpose from the academic / admin perspective. Then I’ll get a technical review from the e-learning / BUCS team. A potential model is to provide a second install of Moodle for high stakes summative (objective) testing and online electronic submissions.  So ensuring this type of activity can be provided away from the general use of Moodle. Plus, the institution could own this, so it could be on a separate upgrade path to Moodle, and include our own adds up.

Just been to a Mech Eng Sypodium software demo in 4E 3.38.

Firstly, organised by an academic (Nigel XXXX). Who had been using it and thought that others might be interested in using it as well. Especially, given 4E 3.10 has the same set up. In all 10 people attended, not including myeslf and Cher (AV) who’d been invited.

Session was very good, lots of people tried it, lots of interest. We finished up mulling over different scenarios of use, when/where you might use visualisers etc.,

A point to include is on the timetable software can it would be useful to have a link to uses / support pages. So if you know you are going to use the room you can check out how to set up the equipment.

Also, I learnt the following;

1. visualisers can be recorded — need to find out how
2. panopto to broadcast live (i.e., to other rooms) — need to meet up with Sacha and find out more.

Introduction

The aim of this report is to inform to the Head of e-Learning, the e-Learning Team, the LTEO and the wider community at the University of Bath if the e-learning staff development programme (central provision of events) is achieving its broad aims, and feed into planning decisions for the next academic year.

The need for an appropriate and effective e-learning staff development programme is highlighted by an objective in the new Learning and Teaching Strategy . The strategy states the following objective is owned by e-Learning; “develop appropriate and effective e-Learning development and support programmes for staff and students”. Further more, the aims of the e-Learning Team at the University of Bath are;

• Helping staff to integrate e-Learning into their programmes
• Sharing innovation and good practice
• Developing an e-learning community
• Promoting and evaluating e-Learning
• Developing e-Learning tools

To help achieve these aims we run a number of central staff development events (workshops, seminars, blended courses and coffee breaks) throughout the academic year (see: http://www.bath.ac.uk/learningandteaching/events-workshops/?dept=elearning)

In terms of our broad aims we need to identify if  “our staff development programme achieves the broad aim of developing staff capacity in e-learning? does it share innovation and good practice while encourage the develop an e-learning community? This report attempts to answer these questions for the 2008-09 period.

Background

The following are the descriptive statistics for the e-learning staff development programme (2008-09). It is evident we have run a large number of events over the period (28) and cancelled 20 sessions. In total, 148 particpiants attended our centrally provided events.

Table 1: Events (by type)

Semester 1 (ran/canceled)

• workshop 10 / 7
• seminar 4 / 2
• blended course 1
• coffee breaks 0 / 0
• elpf 0 / 0

Semester 2 (ran/canceled)

• workshop 2/6
• seminar 6/2
• blended course 2/1
• coffee breaks 4/0
• elpf 0/1

Table 2: Events by broad focus (all sessions)

Semester 1 (moodle / non moodle)

• Workshop 12 / 5
• Seminar 0 / 6
• Blended Course 0 / 1
• Coffee Break 0 / 0
• elpf 0 / 0

Semester 2 (moodle / non moodle)

• workshop 5 / 3
• seminar 0 / 8
• blended course 0 / 2
• coffee break 0 / 4
• elpf 0 / 1

Table 3: Total attendance (average per session which ran)

Semester 1

• workshop 53 (5.3)
• seminar 14 (3.5)
• blended course 17 (17)
• Coffee break n/a
• elpf n/a

Semester 2

• workshop 7 (3.5)
• seminar 41 (6.8)
• blended course 7 (3.5)
• coffee break 9 (2.25)
• elpf n/a

Analysis

The first question is, does our staff development programme build capacity in the individuals who attend our sessions and have they applied it within their teaching?

A survey was run (30th July, 2009 to 5th September, 2009) for staff who attended one of our events in the Semester 1 period (Sept 08 to Jan 09). The time delay was to give participants a number of months after the event to apply the knowledge and skills gained from the e-learning event before evaluating impact.

The respondents were strongly bias towards those attending the “Introduction to Moodle” workshop (13 out of 16). This workshop is designed for those new to Moodle, to act as a heads up, start uploading content, and managing their courses.

The survey included questions to inform us about longer term impact. For instance, to what extent do you agree with the statement, “I have applied the knowledge and skills which I developed during the workshop in my teaching and/or work? The responses indicated 6 strongly agreed with the statement, 5 agreed, 2 were neutral and 1 disagreed. Overall, it appears the majority would argue they have applied the knowledge. When asked to explain why, the extracts indicate a positive impact and implied effective embedding within practice.

“I have currently only used the basic applications in Moodle but plan to use more in the future”

“I have never used Moodle before, and the introduction sessions makes my life a lot easier with moodle”

“I have set up a moodle site”

“I was introduced to Moodle during the workshop, and at the time, I was very early on in my post. But when I came to use Moolde for my job, I remembered most of the training and my project could not have taken off without the use of Moodle”

In terms of exploring peoples views of the quality and worth of the session I asked two questions. Firstly, would they recommend an e-learning workshop to a colleague? Secondly, has attending the workshop motivated you to attend more events by the e-Learning team? The first question is based around the concept that a person is only going to recommend a course to a colleague if the experience was good as their reputation is attached to the recommendation. So if you did not enjoyed the experience, or questioned the value added of attending in your teaching and learning you are more likely not to recommend attending. The responses to these two questions were, 8 respondents would (57%) would recommend it, while 6 would not. In terms of motivating them to attend another session 9 people it did, however, 5 it did not.

A further question tried to understand why people responded as they did. I was pleased to observe there was no clear message emerging in terms of participants perceptions of low quality or little value added from attending. In fact, there was no comments around this issue. There were a few points about finding time to attend other sessions or there not being any appropriate to their need. One comment needs actioning within our designs for the blended courses. The view is not new, and it does support the views of many of the session leaders. This is the issue of motivation, if people aren’t motivated to participate on blended courses the learning activity becomes meaningless for the others.

The final question focussed on identifying if people engaged in our support materials after attending the event. The assumption being if they followed up the session by accessing more resources and assistance this would indicate an increase in staff capacity, and sharing good practice. The responses suggested a number of people (at least 9) engaged with the following resources over the last three months;

• accessed the e-Learning pages on the LTEO web site: 7
• visited ine of our supporting (blog) web sites, such as Moodle Blog, ARS, SMS or QR Code: 2
• emailed e-learning@bath for assistance: 4
• read an e-learning case study from the LTEO web site: 0
• visited the staff area in Moodle: 9

A slight concern is the lack of awareness of our case studies. This is a concern as we intend these to be one of the primary mechanisms for sharing good practice.

The questions concerning does our programme share good practice at the University, and does it help develop the wider e-learning community can be addressed in a number of ways. In particular, for this to be effective we need to explicitly sign post this to participants. A simple method would be to;

• include case studies from practitioners at the University of Bath within the sessions. These should be provided as linked examples from the case study web site (http://www.bath.ac.uk/learningandteaching/themes/e-learning/casestudies).
• the session should require (if hands on) the participants accessing the social (community) space. They should update their profile, be directed to discussion and resource areas.
• at the end of the session, any outcomes should be made available through the social (community) space. Participants should be made explicitly aware of the resources.
• at the end of all sessions there should be the follow up email, thanking them for attendance and encouraging them to visit the social (community) space with specific questions raised from the session.

A review of a number of slides, and discussions with individuals within the team indicated the above approach is not commonly deployed across our courses. An action for the Head of e-Learning is to ensure it is. A caveat is we still haven’t decided on the social (community) space. There have been discussions around using Moodle or a social network tool (Crowdvine, Ning). An action is for us to agree, asap.

Recommendations & where next

The message from the descriptive statistics appears to indicate a large number of sessions were canceled (1 in 3), which were mainly the workshops. This will be for both supply and demand reasons.  When these are canceled the session leader follows up with 1-2-1 sessions. In terms of the next session this implies we should reduce the number of duplicate sessions we make available, and shift some workshop topics into seminars.

The descriptive statistics imply Moodle development sessions tend to be in the workshop format and are run mainly in Semester 1. While non-Moodle topics tend to focus on shorter formats and run in Semester 2. A recommendation would be to even out the balance across the academic year and by type.

We need to put more effort in weaving in our case studies and support spaces if we are going to use our staff development programme as a vehicle for meeting the sharing practice and community building aims of the e-learning team.

In terms of the methodology, the survey needs developing a more effective way to measure the impact on sharing practice, and community building. Also, we need to include more varied data collection techniques (selected interviews, focus groups) to triangulate these findings.

Timetable

• Data collection during November 2009 for those who attended sessions in Semester 2 (Feb 09-June 09)
• Data collection during June and July 2010 for those who attended sessions in Semester 1 (Sept 09-Jan 10)
• Next Annual Report: Due September, 2010

1. Aims

The intention of this paper is to report on the e-learning area in OPuS over the period 31st July 08 to 1st August 09. In particular, what did we add? Was our material downloaded? Is the use of OPuS and the encouragement of e-learning team publishing working papers raising awareness of our work? What are the plans for 09/10?

2. Background

The e-Learning Team use OPuS to store our presentations at external events, conferences and workshops, and to publish our working papers. The intention is to use OPuS as a central repository of e-learning teams’ work so that other members of the University, and elsewhere can access it. Therefore, the key objectives for e-learning in OPuS are;

1. Make people aware around the University of Bath of the work we do. In particular, address a common misconception that we focus on supporting staff on technical aspects of using Moodle.

2. Promote the culture within the e-learning team of an action research methodology. In particular, the idea of developing our ideas and research skills. The longer term vision is these will feed into project development opportunities (internal and external), and personal development goals such as CMALT.

3. Develop awareness within the sector and beyond of e-learning at Bath. Build a reputation as a forward thinking, professional unit with the longer term aim of promote cross institutional collaboration and recruiting top quality staff.

3. Submitting Material

During the time period a total of 12 items where deposited within OPuS. Of which 9 were presentations at external events and 3 were working papers. Out of a team of around 6 people this was a good effort. I was particular pleased to identify material was submitted by the majority of people within the team. This should be recognised as a very good effort.

4. Access to our material

A review of the top 10 downloads from the e-learning area indicates there were a total of 1812 downloads of e-learning materials. This is an incredible result! Another very pleasing indicator for me is when viewing the downloads by type over the period 6 of the 10 were working papers. Also, out of the top 10 downloads it covered 5 different technologies (QR Codes, ARS, SMS, Twitter and Word Clouds).

To place our achievement in perspective with the rest of the University. A review of the top ten downloads from all submissions over the period indicates that e-learning holds the top three places, and have 5 items in the top 10. This is incredible as there are over 15000 items in the total repository. It can be strongly argued this level of us must be feeding through into people perceptions of the e-learning team. Given the proportion of working papers, and the evidence that we present are work to peers at national conferences this can only be having a very positive impact.

Unfortunately, we only have the data to interpret impact of our activity on awareness. However, a review of unique monthly visitors (I assume this involves examining IP addresses) indicates we have a consistently high number of people reviewing / downloading our material (between 150 and 300 per month) In terms of how people locate our material the data is a likely tricky to interpret. It is clear that 11% are finding us from browsing / searching within the OPuS system, while 35% are coming in from search engines. Of the search engine traffic 15% is coming from Google Scholar. The last set of figures is particularly pleasing as a driver for me to encourage the use of OPuS was it would allow people to find our material much easier than if we hosted it on our own web site or individual blogs. I think the performance over the period indicates it was a very good move to publishing through OPuS as it has led to a much larger number of downloads compared to using our own web site.

As a consequence of the traffic it must be having a postivie impact on the e-learning teams profile both within and outside the institution. In addition the breadth of material, and in some cases the developmental aspects of the material give a clear message that the e-learning team do not simply focus on Moodle support.

So where next? Do we relax and continue as before? The answer is no, the next year gives us the opportunity to further develop our working papers. In particular, continue with the use of OPuS. Encourage more individuals within the team to think about submitting material. I’d also like to improve on the quality of the papers. For instance, include (where appropriate) more theoretical underpinning, and have them peer reviewed by other members of the LTEO (I’m thinking members of the ASD team), and academics in Departments.

So here are some of the initial ideas;

PPP Sig Regional Event to be held at Bath on the 11th

Attendance, about 60

Format / programme

9.30-10.00 coffee / tea / registration (UBSA)

10.00 – 10.15 weclome (Bath, and Jethro) (UBSA)

10.15 – 11.00 Keynote (main room) (UBSA)

11.00 to 11.15 Coffee (UBSA)

11.15 to 12.00 Presentation (main room) (UBSA)

12.00 to 1.00 Lunch

1.00 to 2.00 workshops (need two rooms and main room) – hands on, thunderstorm, other (UBSA + 8 or 6 west)

2.00 to 3.00 workshops (need two rooms and main room) – hands on, thunderstorm, other (UBSA + 8 or 6 west)

3.00 – 3.30 panel session with tea, coffee (UBSA)

3.30 – bye bye

—————————-

Suggestions include;

live broadcast of the keynote so externals can also view it (arrange with local AV at Bath)

provide much more integration of twitter back channel

include an official event blogger to document the day (bath has a local person who does this for conferences)

Some spare resource has become available with our current student interns so I’ve a great opportunity to develop a proof of concept for gos mobile learning.

The basic idea is a variation on a guided tour from the bus stop to the our offices in wessex house.

The tour will be pre-created in mediascape. Therefore, as a person with a GPS device walks through  certain hotspots, actions will occur, i.e., info opens up on their phone. This will include images, audio, video, text and quizzes.

In addition, we will link more reflective questions from the text resources accessed via the mediascape resource to the wordpress blog. This will allow the indivdiual to read other peoples stories, and thoughts and add their own. In particularly interested in the idea of providing additional questions / data through this method.

finally, I want to add the individual story. This is where they will be encouraged to use their own device to create a journey as part of their own ePorfolio / reflections. For instance, generate their own animated kml file of where they went, what they captured / say / thought. Then upload this (in the field) to a file store so others can review it in google earth.

We have less than a week to pull this all together !!!! It would be fun to get it tested with other members of the LTEO who have GPS devices. I feel an activity afternoon next Friday

I ran a workshop in University of Essex’s iLab (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ilabs). This space divided into different areas and functions. I’ve uploaded a few images on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25246864@N08/tags/ilabessex/)

There was a specific computer area – four round tables with 4 laptops on each table. The wall was curved and you could write on it (one big flipchart). It was all very nice, and enabled lots of group work. A few things struck me as nice touches (compared to when I’ve worked in similar spaces at other institutions). I used their polling software (as opposed to clickers). So worth remembering, infact, worth looking at setting up to run in different spaces (just need access to the web). There were a few touches that would have made the experience even better, easy access to a collective space for documents we created (each group had to create a presentation), and the ability to project from the individual machines. We had to upload each presentation to a USB stick, and slot this into the main presenters’ device. Finally, having run a few sessions in this type of space, I finish up having to take quite a few photos of the writings on the wall. I keep thinking, there must be an easier way?

The photos I uploaded include pictures of the non-computer space. I was particular impressed by how they used flat screen displays, and ceiling effects to enhance the feel / atmosphere of the space without significant investments.

As a prize with our NSS promotions students could win tea with the mayor.

There where 3 slots (two at 5-6, and one 12-1).

The sessions were very poorly attended – no students for session one, about 8 for session two and three for session three. There should have been about 10 in each group.

LTEO attended as well as students Union – although we said nothing !!

We had to organise a photographer at short notice for the last session as this had not been previously organised. We also emailed the last days students to remind them.

Thoughts for next year include;

• change the time so the 5-6 is during the day.
• send out reminders
• arrange a photographer
• discuss with the mayor’s office about setting the context, and thanking students on our behalf (university)