[Image adapted from “An open spiral bound planner for 2017” by Your Best Digs, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence]

Introduction

We’d like to extend a warm welcome back to all staff and students as we move into 2017. This term, TEL are offering a range of workshops for teaching staff, so why not sign up to brush up your digital skills for the New Year. 

Next week: Technology in Teaching Spaces

We’re starting off the year with a week of practical sessions to explore the technology available to you in seminar rooms and lecture theatres across campus, to get you ready for the start of teaching. Come along and find out how to: control the projector; use the controls at the lectern; use the Interactive Whiteboard to annotate PowerPoint slides and pdf files; play CDs, DVDs or Blurays; use the document camera; and project content from your own laptop instead of the PC.

There’s a session a day, Monday to Friday. Book now on Sussex Direct.

Through January and Feb

Additionally, over the next few weeks, we’ll be offering the following sessions:

• Multimedia Enhanced Learning
  This practical workshop will share a range of ideas and practical techniques for creating multimedia resources to enrich teaching practice and student learning.  Working in small groups, participants will be supported to experiment with a range of devices and applications which might be used to create engaging presentations, learning materials and feedback to suit multimodal approaches to learning.
• Rich Resources in Study Direct
  This hands-on session will introduce you to the different functions within Study Direct which allow you to share rich learning resources with your students. We will look at different ideas for adding content, files, media and web content as well as reading lists. In addition we will explore options for embedding external content such as RSS and Twitter feeds.
• Smartboard Basics
  This workshop combines a demonstration of the main functions of the interactive whiteboard with discussion of its use in your teaching and hands-on practice with the board and software.
• Introduction to Poll Everywhere
  This workshop will introduce you to Poll Everywhere, an interactive polling application which takes advantage of mobile devices to increase student engagement in lectures and seminars. There will be some mobile devices available for staff members who attend but we would also encourage participants to bring their own mobile device for the interactive demonstrations.

We will also be continuing to run our weekly sessions on e-submission and e-feedback, “Introduction to e-Submission and e-Feedback via Turnitin (ESEF)”, which are open to all staff involved in the marking process and introduces the e-submission and e-feedback process and using the Turnitin software to mark work and check for originality.

How to book 

[Image: “Ticket office, USJ” by pelican, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic licence]

Later in the term

As we move through into March and beyond, we’ll also be offering the following sessions:

• Large Group teaching
• Portfolios in Mahara
  The University has recently introduced the Mahara ePortfolio system. This workshop will provide an overview of how Mahara works for staff and students. Using example portfolios, it will examine the range of content that can be included in a Mahara portfolio. It will also outline the e-submission process for Mahara.
• Learning by creating with smartphones
  Mobile devices are often seen as being for consumption of content, rather than creation. This workshop lets you explore some practical ideas for using students’ smartphones and other mobile devices as part of a creative learning process that develops digital capabilities alongside subject knowledge and understanding.  Participants will be given the opportunity to try out a range of mobile apps including AudioBoom, YouTube, Flipboard and Thinglink.
• Show & TEL
  ‘Show & TEL’ is our termly event showcasing practice by colleagues across the university, and sharing new ideas in the use of technology to support teaching and enrich student learning. Join us to talk teaching, learning and technology, meet colleagues from around the institution and to connect with your TEL team.
• Open Education Week
  Week 9 coincides with Open Education Week (https://www.openeducationweek.org), and we’ll be marking this by running an event to explore open practice in teaching and learning.

Keep an eye out for more details of all our events as the term progresses.

June: Take 5 month

As the academic year comes to an end, we’ll round things off with our bite-sized online Take5 courses, one per week in June. We’ll be announcing more details about the topics and signing up for these as we get closer to the Summer.

School-specific training

[Image adapted from “tailoring” by Russell Davies, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic licence]

Digital Practice Awards

Lastly, we’d just like to remind all University of Sussex teaching and research staff that you can still apply for this year’s Digital Practice Awards, to receive up to £1000 and the expertise of the TEL Learning Technologists to help you develop or experiment with new tools, resources or teaching approaches. You will need to be quick, however, as the deadline is this Friday, 13th January, at 5pm. Full details and the application form are at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tel/innovation