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Lunch and learn: New TEL Seminar Series

Posted on by Kitty Horne

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Following on from last year’s inaugural series of Technology Enhanced Learning seminars hosted here at the University of Sussex, we’re delighted to kick-off the academic year with a new season of seminars featuring a fantastic line-up of speakers who are leading figures in the fields of:

  • learning technology,
  • social media,
  • and innovative teaching practice.

In our last series of seminars attendees enjoyed talks around the themes of flipped learning, open education and gamification. The autumn programme has been developed in response to feedback and in line with emerging trends in the sector. Topics include learning analytics, social media in academia and assessment and feedback. Read more ›

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Online or offline…you choose: TEL’s staff development workshops

Posted on by Nicholas Botfield
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flickr photo by GotCredit shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Following the success of last year’s staff development offering and the online bitesize courses we piloted over the summer, the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team have expanded our professional development programme for 2015-16 to include both online and offline courses and sessions.

Summer success

The online bitesize courses that TEL delivered sought to develop skills in different technological areas, which could be utilised both inside and outside of academia. The original idea was to run these courses as a pilot to gauge interest, needs and requirements. However, the response we received from university staff was overwhelming with over 100 individual staff members signing up for the courses and incredibly positive feedback from participants. Read more ›

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Learning together: Technology enhanced collaboration.

Posted on by Anne Hole

UntitledPeer learning and small group activities have long been staples of higher education – and with good reason. Working together develops students’ understanding of the topic alongside teamwork skills which are so important for employability and lifelong learning. Professionals across a wide range of disciplines now work together online and students can benefit from exploring digital collaboration as part of group work. Read more ›

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Threshold Standards for Moodle: A Learning Technologist’s tale

Posted on by Nicholas Botfield

Study Direct imageAn Unexpected Journey….

Over the summer months Sussex TEL have been in their various Hobbit holes focussing a lot of time on implementing school-level standards for Study Direct, Sussex’s virtual learning environment (VLE) that’s built on the Moodle platform.

This endeavour began this time last year when the TEL team discussed individual needs and requirements with representatives from each school. During these discussions, one issue that was consistently raised was the inconsistency amongst Study Direct sites. So, with a large task in our hands and commitment in our hearts we began our arduous and unexpected journey… Read more ›

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Being there – or not? Conferencing virtually and ‘in real life’ #altc

Posted on by Anne Hole

Conferences are changing just as Higher Education and modes of learning are changing. Where once you had to be present to engage with and learn from your peers at a conference you can now follow proceedings and interact online. These changes can be seen across disciplines, but in this post I am going to reflect briefly on my hybrid participation in the recent ALT (Association for Learning Technology) conference.

The physical conference took place over 3 days in Manchester but people were also encouraged to participate online  and there were many opportunities ahead of the event to connect with the ALT community via the conference website or using the #altc hashtag on social media. Read more ›

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Exploring The Keep – valuable resources for teaching and research

Posted on by Kitty Horne

Recently the TEL team went to visit The Keep and were hugely impressed with the range of resources available to students, teaching and research staff and the public. Here we talk to Fiona Courage, Special Collections Manager & Mass Observation Curator at the University of Sussex, exploring the many ways in which The Keep can be used to enhance learning experiences and develop research skills as well as the ways in which TEL will be working with The Keep in the future.

Tell us about The Keep

The Keep is many things but at its most basic level it’s a building which has been created to house the archival and rare book collections of the University of Sussex, the archival collections of East Sussex Record Office and the collections from the Royal Pavilion and Museums Brighton and Hove. Opened in 2013, the building is designed to house archives and rare books in the correct environmental conditions and has been created to be completely accessible. Read more ›

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Encouraging student engagement through interactive lectures

Posted on by Kitty Horne
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flickr photo by teddy-rised shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

With large lecture sizes there is always the risk that some students may become disengaged. Bringing interactivity to the lecture setting through the use of mobile student response systems can contribute towards solving this problem and, used effectively, can encourage higher levels of student engagement.

A study by Voelkel and Bennett (2013) from the University of Liverpool highlights the positive effect that the introduction of mobile response system had upon students’ enjoyment, engagement and attendance on four undergraduate modules. Read more ›

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Posted in Polling tools, Technology Enhanced Learning

Reflective practice goes digital

Posted on by Anne Hole
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flickr photo by Wagner Machado Carlos Lemes shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Reflective practice for academics in Higher Education is not a new idea, in fact reflection is encouraged in most professional fields and is a habit that students should be developing as part of their wider digital capabilities.

Unfortunately, reflection can easily be overlooked when time is short. If digital tools can make it easier to quickly capture thoughts and ideas across a range of media, then there can be huge benefits for learning and professional development. Read more ›

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

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Based on a work at https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/.