Flexible tools for teaching online and face-to-face

Posted on by Paolo Oprandi
This chameleon can adapt to many environments – can our teaching do the same?

As we start to deliver face-to-face teaching, with some students still not able to make it onto campus, it is a good time to think about teaching tools which can be used online and face-to-face. One inclusive way to think about our teaching is that exercises and tasks that students do in class should also be available for people to do at different times online. For example, a seminar discussion that a tutor initiates in class, should also be initiated within an online space for students present and not present at the seminar itself to engage in. Equally exercises and tasks that tutors ask people to do in class, should be equally possible for students to do online. In this blog post we will be considering some of the tools that you can use for teaching online and face-to-face. For each of the tools we will consider how you will give feedback to those engaging in the asynchronous task.

Backchannels

During a teaching session, you can provide a backchannel for students to discuss and share notes. Think of the Twitter feed of a conference – they are usually at their most active during the sessions and people tweet about what they have learnt. For your teaching, you might not want something as open as Twitter but you can provide a number of other tools, such as the ones I mention below. The backchannel is not limited to the teaching session either. Students can continue to use the backchannel through the period they are studying the topic and further into their studies.

Canvas Discussions

Seminar discussions that you start in the seminar, can also be available for students to contribute to online. One way of doing this is through the Canvas Discussion feature. Because there is no automatic refresh of the page after another person posts, the best way to use Canvas Discussions is after the teaching session. For the most engaging discussions, ask provocative questions, which require personal reflection rather than responses that are right or wrong. The best way to make it work is to be active in the discussion yourself.

Padlet

Padlet is the institutional online classroom “wall” where students and staff can share text, audio or video comments, links and even drawings. I have seen it used in classrooms, in groups or in solo tasks, to great effect. Depending on how you set the wall up students can leave each other comments and “like” each other’s contributions. Padlet could be used by students in the classroom and remote students at the same time. The Padlet can also be made available to students to do asynchronously in the students’ own time and the best way to do this is by embedding the Padlet within the Canvas site. Remember to leave instructions for the task.

Polleverywhere

Polleverywhere is the institutional classroom response system. For those of you who don’t know it, it allows you to ask questions of your students and for them to respond on their devices (typically phones but could be a laptop). The student responses are collected by the Polleverywhere system and can be displayed back to the students immediately. This could be used by students in the classroom and remote students at the same time. It can be embedded into your PowerPoint slides too. The teaching spaces on campus should all have the Polleverywhere for PowerPoint plugin installed but it is worth checking before you start your session. If you have one question or wish to use the Polleverywhere Survey question types, the Polleverywhere can be left open and students can respond in their own time. One way to do this would be to include a link question from your Online Study Platform, also known as Canvas.

Shared Documents

Shared documents are online text, slides or spreadsheets, shared with your students. The supported space at Sussex is Microsoft OneDrive, which opens documents in Office 365 applications. Another option is Google Drive and their related Apps. Sussex staff and students have a terabyte of free space on OneDrive and unlimited space on Google Drive if they log in using their Sussex username and password. 

When you set work for students to complete in class, remote students can also contribute to these shared documents which exist online. The contributions to the shared document can be simultaneous but also can be asynchronous and people can contribute at their own pace. You can link online documents from your Canvas page so everyone can contribute.

Giving feedback

During face-to-face teaching sessions you naturally respond and give feedback to student contributions to the session at the time. This can be more difficult when some of your students are face-to-face and others are online. It can be even more time consuming when some of your students are contributing to discussions or completing tasks during the teaching session and others are doing it during the week. The key to making this work is good communication. You should dedicate some time to responding to the online students. If this is going to be later in the week then let them know when you will be doing it. Also, try to activate students to give each other feedback before you do. Student peers are fundamental to student engagement and learning. If you can use them to help each other within either a collaborative or (light-heartedly) competitive environment, this will increase their engagement, motivation and enjoyment for the topic you are teaching.

Conclusion

Many of the online tools can be used to support students in your face-to-face teaching sessions at the same time as students who are accessing remotely and those who cannot attend at the time. Using these tools will not only benefit the remote students. It improves the inclusivity of your teaching so more of your students can engage in your teaching materials. If you would like to discuss options for peer feedback please contact tel@sussex.ac.uk

Posted in Uncategorized

Can I use this app?

Posted on by Matthew Taylor

A question that regularly pops into the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) inbox is, ‘can I use this app?’ Assessing the educational potential of a new tool is a core part of the role of a Learning Technologist so this is a question we are very happy to answer. In this post I’m going to detail some of the things we look for when evaluating a new tool. 

1. Suitability 

The first and most important point to consider is, does this tool help you and your students to achieve the learning objectives? If the same objectives can be achieved more quickly and simply in another way, using this tool may not be the best approach.

2. Cost

The next thing we might look at is cost. TEL would usually steer you towards apps that are free as any cost would likely need to be met by your school. On the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) website we maintain an A-Z of apps and one of the criteria for this list is that the apps have a free version. They may have a tiered pricing model, so check if the feature you require is available in the free tier. It is also always worth checking with TEL that we don’t already have a tool provided centrally that would meet your requirements.

3. Accessibility

This is the practice of making sure students with disabilities are not disadvantaged. At Sussex around 20% of the student population have a registered disability and the majority of those may be hidden disabilities, such as specific learning differences or mental health conditions. If an app is not accessible you may be excluding a large proportion of your cohort so either avoid using it or make sure you also provide a comparable, accessible alternative for those for whom it doesn’t work.

For information on the accessibility of apps many providers supply information on their website. SearchBOX provides a crowd-sourced listing of accessibility statements for different apps. These can often be hard to interpret so do come to TEL if you have questions.

4. Usability 

To a certain extent whether or not something is usable will be a personal judgement but don’t bet on students finding it easier to use than you do. If you want to introduce a tool once for a specific purpose, students need to be able to pick it up intuitively and quickly. If it’s something you intend to use throughout the term you may be able to accept a small learning curve. Either way, it is certainly worth working through things from both the facilitator and the student’s point of view as these can differ. Again TEL can support you here.

5. Privacy 

GDPR is a familiar acronym for anyone storing data online. When using any online tool, we need to be sure that students’ personal identifiable information is protected. This might include things such as images or videos of individuals, their names and emails. This is another good reason for using core university services, where the security and privacy of services have been approved. If you are unsure, see the University’s GDPR guidance.

6. Availability

A big strength of our University is its global reach. However, this can present its own challenges. Many websites and apps are not accessible to students in China or in embargoed countries. It is always worth making sure the app is available to all of your cohort. See our blog post on The Great Firewall of China for some tips.  

7. Lifespan

Things frequently change with apps and online tools. Tools are dropped (a favourite practice of Google), terms and conditions change, and new costs are introduced. This is another reason we often first direct people towards the core services we have at Sussex. They can be relied upon to work for years to come. If the core services don’t meet your needs, it’s worth doing a quick web search to check there aren’t any press releases informing of imminent changes.

8. Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)

Finally one of the strengths of our particular learning management system, Canvas, is its support for the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard. This provides a means for apps to work more seamlessly with Canvas, removing the requirement for additional logins and linking to the gradebook among the potential benefits. Many popular apps have an LTI. You can find a list of these apps in your module settings in the Canvas app center.  Note, some LTIs may require a paid licence and an administrator to implement so do discuss with your School’s learning technologist.

If you are looking for a new tool to use in your teaching then hopefully these tips will help you to make an informed choice, or Sussex staff can contact tel@sussex.ac.uk and we’d be happy to discuss options.

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Posted in Apps and tools

Canvas ePortfolios

Posted on by George Robinson

Canvas has a tool called Canvas ePortfolio which allows students to create a series of self contained ePortfolios. Each ePortfolio can be made up of a number of sections, each consisting of pages of content such as text, images, video and other multimedia as well as links to files or resources on the pages.

ePortfolio’s are not tied to a specific Canvas module site but rather are tied to an individual, which means they can be used by students  throughout their University experience and across modules and courses. This is an example of a Canvas ePortfolio page.

Screenshot of a Canvas ePortfolio

ePortfolios can be shared through the use of a unique link, which allows anyone, even those from outside the institution, to access the ePortfolio if the link is shared with them. This makes it very easy to share ePortfolio content broadly if required.

It’s also possible to allow others to comment on an ePortfolio if the correct option is enabled by the ePortfolio’s creator, this means students and instructors can provide comments around ideas and feedback on each other’s ePortfolios.

How could we use the Canvas ePortfolio?

Reflective Journal

If you’d like to encourage students to keep a reflective journal of their learning experience then Canvas ePortfolio can work well for this purpose. Students can create pages for each week or topic they cover, these can then either be kept private and used only by the student or they can be shared with tutors or convenors through the use of the sharing link. This link can even be submitted to a Canvas Assignment if you’d like students to submit them as a non contributory assessment. 

Staff can also use the ePortfolio tool as a reflective journal for CPD purposes around a topic or area or to showcase your work and research.

Weekly assessed ePortfolio 

There is no way to control when students add content to their ePortfolios, this means they are not appropriate for summative/contributory assignments but could be used for formative assignments where students contribute a weekly page to their ePortfolio as they work through their module or course. The student can then allow convenors or tutors  to comment on the pages of their ePortfolio to allow for feedback. 

Student showcase ePortfolio 

Students can use the ePortfolio feature to collect and curate examples of the best work they’ve produced, their submission to assignments can be linked into their ePortfolios and these ePortfolios can be externally shared allowing those from outside the institution to access and view ePortfolios, which could be useful for students looking to showcase their work to external users for any reason.

The contents of an ePortfolio can be exported to a ZIP file, so students can download a copy of their ePortfolio to take with them even after they leave the University.

Other options, resources and support

This  is not an exhaustive list and there may be numerous other ways you can incorporate this tool into your teaching and learning experience. There are also other tools that can work for the purpose of portfolios such as Mahara  and Microsoft OneNote. If you’d like to discuss possibilities and would like any help using the Canvas ePortfolio tool please contact TEL at TEL@sussex.ac.uk

Resources 

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Posted in Canvas

The tech behind the Online Festival of Learning

Posted on by Paolo Oprandi

The Technology Enhanced Learning team has been core to the Active Learning Network from its creation in 2017. The network is a group of educationalists who share an interest in active approaches to learning. We have a growing number of satellite groups emerging in universities through the UK, as well as involvement from India, Cambodia, China and other countries. The ethos of the group can be expressed through John Dewey’s maxim, “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn”. The nature of the task we ask students to do should demand deep thinking and learning naturally results.

Online Festival of Learning

When the Active Learning Network set up the Online Festival of Learning we had a number of concerns including:

  • How could we make it work when we could not be face-to-face?
  • How could we make it work for people in different time zones?
  • How could we make it feel like a festival and avoid it feeling like a conference?

One important factor was that we didn’t have a budget, we didn’t want to charge people and so everything needed to be done for free. Consequently, core to our efforts would be the technologies that we put in place to support the festival and these ended up being: FlipGrid, Google apps, Zoom and Wonder.me.

Submissions

In order for potential session facilitators to propose submissions we created a Google form, which invited people to fill in the relevant information. We recommended formats such as Campfire (storytelling with an opportunity for participants to tell their own stories), Birds of a Feather (sessions without a pre-planned agenda designed to encourage discussion and networking), Solution Rooms (designed to provide peer-supported advice on individuals’ problems) and Hyde Park Corner Debates (a central theme or question where two speakers debate for and against). Once the potential session facilitators had submitted their proposals we reviewed each of them and fed back further ideas of how their session could fit the festival theme and ethos using a shared Google Slide deck.

Festival Itinerary

We put together the festival itinerary bearing in mind that some of the participants might not be in the UK and might be in timezones ahead of us or behind us. The festival lasted a week and we had 9am morning and 5pm evening slots. These times would allow participants from outside the UK to come to at least a morning or evening session each day and participants in the UK could have a full day’s work and be able to relax into our sessions without competing work distractions. We used the Google Slide deck where we had given facilitators feedback to construct the itinerary. It was versatile enough to enable facilitators to respond to reviewers’ questions, add photos and so on. This was a big time saver and provided us with an inclusive and colourful itinerary to be shared with participants. It was also navigable and was easy to find when sessions were and what they were about. 

Introductions

Given the festival was at either end of the day for people from all over the world to join, it didn’t make sense to have just one slot for introductions so in the spirit of blended learning and flipped classrooms we used an asynchronous introduction space on FlipGrid. The organising committee all made three videos of themselves, one introducing themselves, a second saying what they were excited about and a final one recommending a festival theme song. All festival participants were invited to do the same.

Zoom sessions

In order to deliver the festival activities we used the Zoom platform. The most sessions we ran concurrently was three so we set up three zoom meetings, with no set time and reused them. That made it easy for us to administrate and easy for participants to join. To give it a festival feel we gave each of the three meetings the name of a tent.

Collaborative writing

In the spirit of multiple forms of delivery, we wanted to include a collaborative writing platform and offered participants the opportunity to contribute to our collaborative book by adding a hundred word summary of a short idea for putting active learning into practice. A number of the sessions introduced the idea of collaborative writing and participants were regularly offered the opportunity to submit their ideas.

After hours socials and Festival Spirit Circle

Each evening at the end of the afternoon session we had an after hours social using the wonder.me app. This is a visual app that allows groups of people to easily meet and talk in groups. We closed the week with a festival of learning spirit learning where we all shared what we had got from the festival. We had a shared Google Spreadsheet where we shared thoughts and musings.

Summary

The festival of learning was a great success and a great ambassador for, and example of, active learning. We utilised a number of free services to put on an event which was enjoyed by over 300 participants over the week. It was a different sort of event where we all learned a little more about the importance of fun and innovation in teaching for deep and meaningful learning.

Posted in Active learning

The top TEL blog posts in 2020/21

Posted on by Anne Hole

It’s been a year (plus) like no other, but now the academic year is ending there’s a chance for some reflection. I was interested to see whether the number of views of posts on the TEL blog could tell us anything about what has been interesting to our readers in 2020/21 – and to give you the chance to see any you missed. Here are the ten most viewed posts in the year to June 2021.

Zoom

Not surprisingly Zoom for online teaching has been well-read. It was published in April 2020 as we adopted the platform for synchronous online teaching. That first post about Zoom at Sussex was followed up with more on the topic throughout the year including:

Zoom was also mentioned in the recent post on Poster presentations online which shows just how versatile the platform can be. We have seen it used for all sorts of interactions including one-to-one ‘office hours’, student presentations, seminars, tutorials, staff meetings and live lectures.

Padlet

Padlet was popular before the pandemic and its use at Sussex has grown in the last year. Three Padlet posts made it into the top ten for 20/21. 4 fantastic uses for Padlet in online teaching offered some great ideas for using the platform and Padlet maps and timelines introduced the most recent additions to the range of formats. Even the 3 year old Padlet for collaborative learning post got a lot of views this year. 

The versatility of Padlet makes it a great platform for many types of online learning activities including collaborative ideas-generation, concept mapping and sharing resources. Sussex teaching staff can request to be added to the University’s Padlet Backpack account by emailing tel@sussex.ac.uk.  

Accessibility

It is good to see that people are thinking about digital accessibility topics with two posts on the topic making it into the list.

It has been more important than ever to think about digital accessibility at a time when so much interaction is happening online, but this was a topic at the top of our list of priorities anyway. We already had our Digital Accessibility toolkit and were publishing a series of ‘Accessibility Tips’ blog posts when the university moved teaching online. These looked at:

Greatest Hits

Our most popular posts of all time (well, since this blog began in 2014) continue to be 5 Tips for Multimedia Enhanced Teaching and Learning and InShot – A video editor for Android and iOS. These both continued their popularity this year as did the post that brought us our highest ever daily views – 5 Myths and misconceptions in learning theory.

It was interesting to see that one of our very first posts made it into the 2020/21 Top Ten. Using Creative Commons images in presentations addressed a topic that has been returned to several times over the years as tools change. More recently we have blogged about Free images to use in presentations and Canvas and Multimedia Creative Commons which provide up-to-date advice on finding images to use in teaching and learning. 

What next?

I wonder what 2021/22 will bring. We will be looking to blog about the things that will interest and help our readers both within the University of Sussex and the wider Learning Technology community. If you have any ideas for technology enhanced learning topics you would like us to cover please email us at tel@sussex.ac.uk. 

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

Using Microsoft Translator

Posted on by Stephen Kiely

Over the last few years closed captioning has come on in leaps and bounds; Zoom’s built-in closed captioning service can provide instant, accurate captions that are useful for students and staff alike. Whilst closed captioning is helpful for providing a speech to text service, from, what if we could translate these closed captions into different languages? That’s where Microsoft Translator comes in.

Created as a ‘Garage’ project, an initiative Microsoft implemented so that their staff could get some funding for their own, off topic ideas, Microsoft Translator started as a small idea and has recently hit the mainstream market.

Microsoft Translator is a free service which transcribes text to audio and changes the output into a multitude of languages, instantly and accurately.

Imagine you are presenting a PowerPoint presentation, over Zoom, in English, while a student in Greece is seeing the presentation transcribed in Greek, a Norwegian student is listening to the same presentation, enjoying the instant Norwegian captions, and a Chinese speaking student is watching the same video, taking notes from instant Chinese captioning. One presentation audio but multiple closed captioning languages. Sounds good right?

Getting started with Microsoft Translator

 So how do we go about getting it all set up? Thankfully, it’s a super simple setup. Head over to the Microsoft Translator website and choose ‘Start the conversation’.

A screenshot of the Microsoft Translate homepage

Choose your name, language you will be speaking in, and tick the ‘I am using the product in a classroom’ checkbox. You should then be taken through to your conversation homepage.

You’ll notice a few features similar to other pieces of software, for example at the top of the page you can see the ‘Conversation Code’. This is the code you give to the participants in your presentation so they can join and receive the translations. On the right of the screen is a handy QR code which you can ask participants to scan so they can join the session.

When participants are ready to join, either by using the QR code or by going to Microsoft Translator and entering the conversation code. They will be met by the screen shown below. It is important that on this screen, they choose the language they would like to display the text in.

screenshot of login page for participants

Now, when you speak into the microphone, you will see the transcript of what you are saying and the participant will see this translated, real time, in the language of their choice.

Translator can work with numerous languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Italian and French, with surprisingly good accuracy. Perfect for lectures, seminars, or even online meetings.

Participants within your meetings or lectures can now view the live transcript in their own language alongside their video call software.

Microsoft have created a great piece of software, breaking down translation barriers and making it available to everyone. The software can be accessed in your browser, so you don’t have to download anything in order for it to work.

More options and information

Microsoft Translator can be downloaded as an app, if participants want to look at the translations on a mobile device, keeping their computer screen free for notetaking or research.

You might also like the live subtitles option in PowerPoint that was recently highlighted on the IT Services blog.

Microsoft Translator has a built-in, basic audio translate feature, although it comes with fewer languages, that can provide text to speech in your chosen language, providing more accessibility options for you and your participants. For example, you can be on campus, speaking in Chinese and a participant in India can have you translated and voiced in Arabic instantly.

And for the more adventurous, it even translates into Klingon, if that is your thing of course.

You can learn more on the Microsoft Translator website.

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Posted in Accessibility, Apps and tools

Getting your Canvas modules ready for a new academic year

Posted on by Anne Hole

Summer is coming and thoughts in the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team are turning to the next academic year. Many staff will be involved in assessment and marking for a while yet, but for anyone who is itching to start setting up their Canvas modules for 2021/22 the empty sites are now available.

Where are my 2021/22 Canvas modules?

Depending on how many modules are currently showing on your Canvas Dashboard you may see the new sites there, listed under ‘Unpublished modules’, or you may need to look in ‘Modules’ and ‘All modules’.

To show modules on your Dashboard, click the star icon next to each in the ‘All modules’ list. Your Dashboard can show up to 20 module cards. 

If you aren’t seeing all the modules you are expecting, please check in Sussex Direct that you are listed with a teaching or assessment role on the module and contact your School Office if anything needs to be updated. 

What do I need to do to get modules ready for students?

TEL have created a set of guidance pages and resources tailored to each School. If you are the module convenor, have a look at Step 1 on the Canvas Module Set Up page and click through to your School’s page. Once you have applied the relevant template and imported any content you want to, steps 2-4 will take you through the other things you need to consider and check. Step 5 shows you how to publish your module. 

Top tips

  1. Make your Dashboard work for you. You can edit your Dashboard to show/hide the module cards you want and arrange the ones you use most frequently at the top.
gif showing moving module crd on dashbaord
  1. Make it easy to correct mistakes. If you are editing Pages it’s a good idea to save often. Each time you save, Canvas will retain a copy of that version so if you make a mistake you can then use the ‘Page history’ to revert to a previous version. 
  2. Tidy up your Files and Pages. This is a good time to do some housekeeping on your module. When you are importing content from a previous year you can leave behind any redundant files and pages to avoid cluttering up your new site. If you have files you think you may need at some point in the future, but not this year, download them and save them in Box or OneDrive.
  3. Think accessibility! Use the Digital Accessibility toolkit to help you make your content accessible. 
  4. Banish broken links. Before you publish your site, use the Link Validator to check if there are any broken web links in your site. This will also highlight any places where students are being directed to another Canvas site that they might not be able to access. If your template has support links to Sussex Direct these will show as inaccessible in the validator because they are behind a login, but the links will work for students.
  5. Publish, publish, publish. To ensure that students will be able to see what you want them to, check that items, units and the whole module are published. A published Page in an unpublished Unit won’t be visible to students.
  6. Check what students will see. Each Page in Canvas has a ‘student view’ button at the top right, that will let you see what an imaginary student would see on that page. This is a great way to check that things are as they should be. It isn’t definitive for items that are specific to individual students, such as assignments, but is a great way to check things before publishing and if you have forgotten to publish a unit (see 6) this will be flagged up in ‘student view’.

Further support

TEL will be providing support throughout the summer to help you get your modules ready for September. There will be a mix of School-based workshops, live Q&As, one-to-one sessions and of course email support via tel@sussex.ac.uk.

Posted in Canvas

Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD

Posted on by Matthew Taylor

Thursday 20th May 2021 sees the 10th Annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD is an international event aimed at focusing attention on digital accessibility and inclusion.

Digital accessibility presents a huge challenge for students with disabilities. A recent report from WebAIM showed that 97% of the top one million homepages on the web do not meet the recommended industry standard for accessibility, WCAG 2.1 AA. 

Since September 2018 it has been a legal requirement that public sector bodies including Universities meet the WCAG standard for web content. In June this year that requirement is extended to cover mobile applications as well. 

Here at University of Sussex around 20% of our student body have registered disabilities, from physical disabilities to specific learning differences such as dyslexia, and mental health conditions. Addressing this need is core to providing an excellent student experience for all.

Over recent years Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and many other areas of the University of Sussex have been working hard to support staff in making their content accessible.

This reflects only a small part of the work going on to ensure we provide an inclusive digital space for students.

Many organisations are putting on open events in support of GAAD and you can find a list of many of these on the GAAD website. Sussex TEL are getting involved and we have teamed-up with our counterparts at Brighton University to offer our own event. On GAAD itself (20th May) we are excited to present a keynote talk from Dr Kevin Merry of De Montfort University (DMU). Dr Merry is an expert in Universal Design for Learning, an approach that he helped to introduce at DMU five years ago.

Dr Kevin Merry of De Montfort University (DMU).

Dr Merry will be presenting his online keynote, ‘Institution-wide approaches to embedding accessibility’, on Thursday at 3pm. The event is open to all staff and students at University of Sussex and the University of Brighton.  Please sign-up via eventbrite.

We encourage you to follow and to tweet about GAAD with the #GAAD.
If you have questions about how to make your modules accessible, please do get in touch via tel@sussex.ac.uk.

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Posted in Accessibility

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