Comments(0) This is my favourite slide for our new Study Skills lecture for first year students…
This is based on tracking data from the VLE.
Half of the class correctly identified the line representing first class students. Let’s hope the other half learnt a useful lesson.
Comments(0) Today I virtually attended an unconference at the University of Leicester using Twitter and the #uollts hashtag to filter tweets.
The conference organiser, @stujohnson , displayed tweets containing this hashtag in the room using http://twitterfall.com.
I initially tried following the conference in Tweetdeck with a filter on the hashtag, but then found that Twitterfall was faster in updating, and you can also login and respond directly from the Twitterfall page.
The only improvement that I would like to see is automatic insertion of the hashtag into posts which are in reply to a post including that hashtag. (I think I’ve seen it somewhere, but can’t remember where.)
Thanks to all attendees, real and virtual, for a very stimulating discussion. I have lots of ideas to follow up, which is the sign of a good conference.
Comments(0) 
BMSY3options2009final.xls (39 KB)
Here is our final year options form for Biomedical Science students. This course is run jointly by the Department of Life Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine, with options available across multiple degree streams.
The options available are complex and the form includes validation so that the students can only select permitted choices.
The forms are uploaded by the students into our VLE and then our autograding script is used to extract the data from each form into a single spreadsheet, which can be used to make the allocation.
Comments(0) My contributions to the recent college eLearning Day – Today’s Technologies for Teaching and Learning – were:
All the supporting documents from the eLearning Day are available on the CED Website at http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/edudev/cedworkshops/ltworkshops/elearninggeneral
We are planning a revision of the Statistics and Computing in Biology course which will involve:
It will require funding to develop these materials, and I will investigate funding sources. The content is likely to be of interest widely because R is a desirable skill, and the lecturers concerned are happy to make their materials available under a Creative Commons licence, which would allow reuse within other universities. I am in discussion with various people in college about the legal/copyright issues involved with this.
Comments(0) I just read an interesting post on Rene’s Assessment blog entitled “Is feedback really all it’s cracked up to be?”. This reviews a guest lecture by Jesse Martin of Bangor University’s School of Psychology on how psychology can contribute to the scholarship of teaching. Specifically he questions whether feedback actually improves learning.
Here are some findings on this subject from an experiment which I performed by accident.
Our first year biochemistry students had an assessed test on Proteins and Enzymes (P&E) last term. Beforehand, a practice test was made available for them in our VLE.
By mistake I forgot to allow the students to see the results of the practice test, i.e. they could not see their overall score or details of which answers were correct.
76 students (out of 141) attempted the practice test and these students performed significantly better on the assessed P&E test than those students who did not try the practice test:
|
|
Average score on P&E assessed test |
|
Students who did not attempt P&E practice test |
38% |
|
Students who did attempt P&E practice test |
55% |
The results of a previous assessed test in a different subject area (Molecular Biology 1 – MB1) did not show an equivalent difference between the two groups:
|
|
Average score on MB1 assessed test |
|
Students who did not attempt P&E practice test |
80% |
|
Students who did attempt P&E practice test |
81% |
Therefore the difference seen on the P&E assessed test is not because those taking the practice test were better students overall. Their improved performance was specific to the P&E test.
However, we did provide some feedback on the P&E practice test as a standalone document. This gave the correct answers to each question and detailed feedback.
Further analysis of the test results gave the following results:
|
Consulted P&E feedback |
Attempted P&E practice test |
Average on P&E test |
Average on MB1 test |
|
No |
No |
37 |
79 |
|
Yes |
No |
40 |
80 |
|
No |
Yes |
53 |
82 |
|
Yes |
Yes |
56 |
81 |
This suggests that attempting the test (even although this provided no feedback) was of more benefit than reading the detailed feedback.
This inadvertent experiment, in which I separated feedback from the associated formative assessment, supports the point made by Rene that “formative assessment is still seen as crucial. But it might be that the activity is much more important than the feedback resulting from it.”
Comments(0) Comments(2) I love the idea of showing QR codes alongside library catalogue info, as they are doing at the University of Bath library. Finally there is no need for that little scrap of paper to write down the shelf number.
I also think that QR codes of primary papers could be very useful, for example to list further reading at the end of a lecture/in a handout.
This would be best using Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to link directly to the reference.
For example:
An easy way to find DOIs from references in text format is via http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery/ .
Now all we need is this mashed up with the Google QR Code Generator.
Comments(0) Faculty of Natural Sciences (Life Sciences)
eLearning Report, 17 March 2009
Live streaming of lectures is still running well, but we are glad that the year is nearly over. This is not something that we would want to do again!
We have now produced nine lecture recordings using Live Meeting/Camtasia and have made these available to students via Blackboard. Each lecture is currently produced in four formats.
The multiplayer evolution simulation which is being developed as a Masters group project in the Department of Computing is nearing completion. During the course of this project we have used Live Meeting for regular contact with a colleague based at Silwood. We were also able to maintain contact while he was in Singapore on holiday. The software allows voice communication and also sharing of the desktop, and has been a very useful communication tool.
One of the PG Tutors has expressed interest in using Live Meeting to conduct interviews and view presentations from overseas applicants. We will experiment with the technology further before exposing applicants to this in an interview situation.
Blackboard is running smoothly. We now have student photographs available in the first year biology and biochemistry courses. This is very useful for checking who a particular student is.
For the past month I have been participating in a Blackboard Product Development Program on Teaching and Learning, focusing on assessment activities. A different feature is considered each week in a phone call/Webex meeting. Blackboard staff seek feedback on current work practices and new features and functionality which they are developing.
Comments(0) Comments(0) Faculty of Natural Sciences (Life Sciences)
eLearning Report, 17 January 2009
The Live Meeting system for live streaming of lectures continues to work well. With the help of the Streaming Assistant, I have been investigating the possibility of using the same system to record lectures. We now have a relatively straightforward workflow for recording streamed lectures, which we will trial in the early part of this term. This functionality will be required to record lectures in early March which the BMS students are unable to attend because of a timetabling problem.
Everything is running smoothly in Blackboard, with assessments taking place regularly on all courses. This has included several formal tests under exam conditions, and we now have standard procedures for these. Three more PG students have been trained in uploading.
Last week we had two biology students using locked-down PCs for exams; these are dyslexic students whose statements include this provision. Our local ICT team have now developed a PC image, so that it is quick and easy to turn our regular laptops into locked down exam machines. One biochemistry student will be using the same system next month.
The new system for tracking coursework continues to develop. We are working on a revised form for gathering information from convenors on the items of coursework for each course. We are also planning to standardize the database for all three degree streams to make automation more straightforward, especially in the final year, where courses can include students from all degree streams.
We have a new group project running with Masters students in the Department of Computing. This was proposed by an MRes student from Silwood (one of last year’s biology graduates) who is going to teach in Singapore on completion of his studies. The idea is to develop a multiplayer evolution simulation – a scientifically accurate version of Spore, he calls it – which can be used as a flexible biological teaching and learning resource. It sounds like a very interesting and ambitious project.
At the recent Blackboard Regional User Group meeting, held at Imperial on 19 December, I presented on “Joined up teaching with Blackboard”, highlighting the way we use the VLE in a coordinated way across the department.
