Rapid quiz creation for Moodle

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flickr photo by sea turtle shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Online quizzes can be used as an effective tool to help assess student knowledge, elicit feedback and add variety in learning. A common criticism of the quiz activity in Moodle is that it can seem cumbersome and time-consuming. Tutors navigate and click through multiple pages, menus and boxes on forms in order to create a single question. However, for those of you that would prefer to simply type your questions into a single document to be imported into a quiz in Moodle, I offer some potential solutions.

In this article, I will review three simple methods designed to speed up quiz question creation in Study Direct.  For readers who are not members of the University of Sussex, Study Direct is the name of our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) which is built on Moodle (version 1.9). The two terms may be used interchangeably throughout this post. Read more ›

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Capabilities, Connectivity and Student Experience with Jisc #connectmore

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Image with thanks to attendee at Jisc conference haymoncollins @haymoncollins

The Connect More event in London represented the last in a series of regional day conferences organised by Jisc concentrating on the themes of ‘Capabilities, Connectivity and Student Experience’, and featuring an exciting ‘Fab Lab’ complete with dancing robots, 3D printing pens, augmented reality apps and virtual reality technology.

Having recently attended the 13th Academic Practice and Technology (APT) conference at the University of Greenwich – ‘Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post-Digital Age’ – I was particularly interested in the sessions which touched upon the flipped learning theme. Read more ›

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Posted in External events, Technology Enhanced Learning

Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post Digital Age

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flickr photo by Scott McLeod shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

The 2015 Academic Practice and Technology conference at the University of Greenwich focused on ‘Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post Digital Age’. There was a huge range of sessions to choose from, so this is just a flavour of what I took away from the day. Read more ›

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Posted in External events, Technology Enhanced Learning

The benefits of lurking in higher education

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flickr photo by CollegeDegrees360 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

Inspired by the journal article Online Discussion Forums in Higher Education: Is ‘Lurking’ Working?, International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education Mazuro and Rao (2011), we take a look at the benefits of lurking in online learning spaces in HE.

Lurking to some may have negative overtones, but why is this? A lurker is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary simply as ‘someone who reads the messages in a chat room without taking part.’

Whilst this definition indicates a level of passivity in terms of overt engagement, it does not mean that learning cannot, or is not, occurring. Read more ›

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Posted in Study Direct, Technology Enhanced Learning

Camscanner: turn your phone or tablet into a mini-scanner

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flickr photo by Carollainy shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

This blog post will review CamScanner, an app that allows you to turn paper to PDF using only the camera on your mobile device. Scan anything from mathematical equations to your shopping list and then edit, organise and share your files in a variety of different ways.

The CamScanner app allows you to:

  • Take a photo of your paper document and turn it into a PDF (you can also take a photo of many documents and batch them together)
  • Edit lighting and contrast to ensure optimal legibility
  • Use the pen tool to free form annotate on top of the original document or highlight areas of the document using the highlighter
  • Add text notes to the documents
  • Either email your document to other recipients or upload it to DropBox,
  • GoogleDrive, OneDrive or Evernote
  • Share your document with other CamScanner uses to have multiple editors
  • Read more ›

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Posted in App review, Technology Enhanced Learning

Clever apps for smart researchers

flickr photo by Jason A. Howie http://flickr.com/photos/jasonahowie/7910370882 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Once upon a time research meant mountains of paper, tapes, card-index systems and hours spent trying to find just the right note or adding bibliographical references. Today, mobile devices and cloud-based apps make life as a researcher easier and less stressful. Here are a few apps that you can use to streamline your research life. Read more ›

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Could you be a TEL Champion? Learning with Open Badges

TEL Champion badgeTechnology Enhanced Learning were thrilled recently to award the first TEL Champion badge. Open badges have been awarded for a range of TEL workshops over the last year and Lucia Guzman from the Sussex Centre for Language Studies (SCLS)  is the first to collect the 5 badges necessary to earn TEL Champion recognition. Read more ›

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Take 5 – online bitesize courses for Sussex staff

Take 5 is a series of bitesize online courses that offer academic and professional services staff at the University of Sussex the opportunity to gain an insight into five interesting learning technology topics including;

  • blogging
  • Twitter
  • apps
  • podcasting
  • open education

These short self-study courses aim to provide an introduction to these topics, highlighting the ways in which each learning technology can be useful in a teaching and learning context, and in day-to-day life.

Take 5 will be hosted on the university’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Study Direct, making use of many of the resource and activity tools available. Read more ›

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We are the Educational Enhancement team at the University of Sussex. We publish posts each week on using technology to support teaching and learning. Read more about us.

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