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Faculty
of Science Learning,
Teaching and Assessment Information and Resources |
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02/06/15 Faculty of Science Learning, Teaching and Assessment (LTA) Update |
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LJMU Teaching and Learning Conference – Registration closes Wed 3rd
June A reminder that this takes place
from Wed 17th June to Thu 18th June and you can
register here. There is good representation from the
Faculty this year and SCS staff are involved in 15 presentations covering a
range of topics: |
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·
Graduate Employability. ·
Prior learning experiences and transition
into higher education. ·
Staff-student partnerships in curriculum
enhancement projects. ·
The changing faces of 21st century
learners. ·
Embedding reflective practice into student
assessment/learning. ·
Non-intellective constructs and academic
achievement. ·
Lecture capture: student perceptions and
recommendations for staff. How the
maker movement is reinventing education.
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Patient simulation and inter-professional
learning in pharmacy education. ·
Civic engagement: learning everywhere but
the classroom. ·
Students’ responses to feedback returned to
them alone at a computer. ·
Internationalising the curriculum. ·
Can Blackboard tests & tasks be used to
enhance engagement and performance? ·
The Turnitin originality report: developing
writing skills during Level 4. |
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Module Guides and Programme Guides 2015/16 The standard MS Word template that must be used for
creating module guides is largely unchanged from last year and is now
available here. Last year, the Faculty introduced an
additional template for the Assessment section of UG module guides and we
will decide whether or not to continue with this at the Programme Leaders
away day on June 11th. You
may recall that using this approach allowed us to automatically collate
assessment deadline information and create programme coursework schedules (example). Students have been invited to comment on
the worth of these schedules and if you have any comments in advance of June
11th then please email
them to me. Thanks to colleagues who replied with comments on the
proposed programme guide templates.
There were no general issues with content but it was felt that distance-learning
programmes are distinctive and merit a unique template. This was fed back to the University, along
with the suggestion that technological solutions should be used to improve
students’ experiences of the guides and to address the workload associated
with programme leaders being required to start from a blank programme
template every year. |
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General outcomes of
the LJMU Room Use audit You may have had a teaching session visited by a room
auditor earlier this year and almost 14000 audits took place across the
University. The overall findings are
in this report
and Faculty-specific data has been requested to enable a deeper analysis. |
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Technology in
teaching events and courses (thanks to Virendra Mistry) There is a free JISC
event in Leeds on 30th June 2015 that will include sessions on
sharing practical tips on applying technology in teaching. Please email
me if you wish to apply for travel expenses.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/connect-more-with-jisc-in-england-leeds-30-jun-2015 The eLearning 2.0
Conference 2015 takes place at Brunel University on 29th July
2015 and is a lively international conference exploring technology-enhanced
learning and social media technologies.
http://www.elearning2.org/
Please email me by Tuesday 9th
June if you are interested in attending.
The Faculty could fund travel, accommodation and registration expenses
in return for a short report for publishing on the Faculty LTA website. Edinburgh Napier’s award-winning MSc Blended and Online Education is available by distance
learning http://www2.napier.ac.uk/ed/boe/. The Faculty could fund course fees and we
would ultimately require approval from your line manager. Please email
me by Tuesday 9th June to express initial interest. You would be expected to run a dissemination
event within the Faculty upon completing the course e.g. at an annual LTA
development day. |
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Potential technology
developments over the summer (thanks to Chris Gilles) Here are four potential technology developments that you may
want to be mindful of during your planning for 2015/16. Note that they will only come to fruition
if everything goes well over the summer testing period. Chris emphasises that this caveat needs to
be underlined as sadly with large scale technology change few things can be
guaranteed. 1. The
Blackboard Assignment Tool may be getting an inline marking function similar
to Turnitin’s Grademark. Whilst it
won’t have features such as statement banks or similarity reporting, there
will be a facility to annotate scripts online. 2. A big
Blackboard e-portfolio update is due.
Whilst it is still unclear what exactly will change, it should be
noted that it is the first substantial overhaul in a long time. Admittedly alternatives to this system may
arise but those currently using the e-portfolio or interested in using one
for the first time will want to monitor this. 3. Delegated
second marking and personalised student profiles within Blackboard are new
features that may appear after the Summer upgrade. 4. An LJMU
version of Office 365 could be rolled out to all staff and students this
Summer. This is an online version of
Microsoft Office which apes competitor’s offerings such as Google Drive, Docs
and Dropbox. If this goes ahead
students and staff will gain a flexible web based storage area for their
files with the added bonus of being able to use a wide range of Microsoft
Office applications online. Hopefully
staff and student storage space will also go up significantly because of
this. In addition to his four predictions above, Chris notes two
big changes that have recently taken place: ·
The institutional educational video and
audio system Panopto. Short guide here.
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The Adobe Creative Cloud suite of
applications. Short guide here. |
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Dr Philip Denton BSc PhD PGCE PGCert SFHEA |
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