flickr photo by Thomas Hawk shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license.
In this post we’ll look at technology that can help you or your students to learn a new language.
We’ve covered the popular language app, Duolingo, previously in Gamifying language learning.
But what other digital tools and social networks are available to help you learn? Read more ›
In our recent post Making learning accessible through technology, Tab Betts (@MrTabKey) took us through some valuable tools that promote inclusivity, productivity and help overcome what are for some significant barriers to learning.
Dr David Sloan – UX Research Lead, The Paciello Group
A growing range of free content creation tools (e.g. WordPress) and intuitive social media platforms (e.g Facebook) have opened up web authoring to the masses, but as non-experts in web content creation this can inadvertently result in the introduction of accessibility challenges. Read more ›
Requirements gathering, sounds easy. Ask people what they want and gather their answers together. But how do you know you’ve got the right information?
People are creatures of habit and it’s harder than it may seem to take 
yourself out of the here and now. Not everyone is a natural futurist. Read more ›
How can we make learning easier for everyone?
We all experience barriers to learning, but for some of us these challenges mean that we require additional support in order to complete everyday tasks pertaining to work or study.
While everyone working in education has a responsibility to promote inclusivity and make learning as accessible as possible, it is also important to recognise that accessibility tools can be used by anyone to increase their productivity.
Here at the University of Sussex, we recently invited Alistair McNaught from the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc) to deliver a workshop on how technology can enable us to increase productivity and overcome barriers to learning.
This blog post will attempt to summarise some of the most important tools introduced in this workshop and provide some brief suggestions about how these could be used in academic contexts. Read more ›
flickr photo by Martin Snicer Photography shared under a Creative Commons (BY-ND) license
One way to develop your digital capabilities is to carry out familiar activities using digital tools. We already offered some examples of this approach in Doing it digitally – presentations and in this post I’ll be looking at a range of ways that you can have a digital summer. Read more ›
Poll Everywhere at https://www.polleverywhere.com
Polling and quizzing tools can be a great way to increase interactivity and engagement in classes, in particular in large lectures.
Poll Everywhere is a useful tool which takes advantage of the mobile devices that students already use, affords students anonymity and encourages interaction between peers.
To learn more about the benefits of in class voting systems, read our post from September 2015, Encouraging student engagement through interactive lectures. Read more ›
Reinforcing feedback. flickr photo by Jurgen Appelo shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
Implementing processes to support the electronic management of assessment has been a priority for many universities and colleges in recent years, with many making use of Turnitin as a means of checking the originality of submitted work and providing feedback to students.
The University of Sussex have been using Turnitin in this manner since the introduction of e-submission and e-feedback at the start of the 2014-15 academic year.
The following article will look at ideas and best practice for using Turnitin’s GradeMark software (soon to be renamed Feedback Studio) to constructively align marks and feedback to a module’s intended learning outcomes. Read more ›
The Networked Teacher, flickr photo by courosa shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license
‘Connectedness’ is the very essence of the social web. Digital technologies have an important role in mediating connections but it is important to recognise that it is the connections that these tools facilitate that are important and not the tools themselves.
This notion was at the heart of Alec Couros’ seminal work on The Networked Teacher emerging from his PhD research and which has framed much of the discourse around connected education and the value of professional learning networks (PLNs). Read more ›
