Consult | Collaborate | Create
The 2018 Blackboard & VLE Awards bring the competition into its sixth year, showcasing some consistently good practice and some innovative approaches to delivering blended learning. Students had the opportunity to put forward course sites that made a real difference to
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2018 has seen another substantial haul of nominations for our Blackboard & VLE Awards, with students sharing the numerous ways course sites have supported and inspired their learning. It’s evident that many courses do this well, and after careful consideration
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Clickers have provided a good way of involving learners more actively in lectures, and with mobile devices increasingly ubiquitous, quizzing, polling and feedback are becoming easier to integrate into taught sessions. At this month’s eCoffee session we explored some of
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Nominations are open for our sixth annual Blackboard & VLE Awards. Students have the opportunity to feed back on what they’ve found particularly helpful to their learning, and invite recognition of the staff who are supporting them in this way. A ‘virtual
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Kumu In 2018’s first e-coffee session, Simon Fraser demonstrated Kumu, a powerful tool for creating mind maps. Kumu allows detailed mind maps to be built, with an underlying structure and customisation options, for instance colour-coding for different categories. Once completed, mindmaps
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In December’s eCoffee session, Nick Evans talked about his experiences in podcasting. He and Steve Lee co-create the popular fortnightly podcast The Science Shed, described as “an irreverent ramble through the undergrowth of academia”. The half-hour podcasts involve discussion of a range
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During December the Digital Learning Team will each be sharing a top tip or tool, in a festive series of blog posts. We hope that our 12 days of posts will bring you a feast of ideas and examples to unwrap.
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In November’s e-coffee@SGH we explored some of the possibilities offered by H5P (https://h5p.org/) – a free, easy-to-use tool for creating interactive learning objects. H5P offers a range of content types, with activities produced in a mobile-friendly html5 format. We had a look at various
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Problems in education are rarely unique: my solution or experience might help you. That’s at the heart of ALT-C, the annual conference of the Association of Learning Technologists. A key theme of this year’s conference was “moving from the practical
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Over the summer, you may be updating your module’s ‘virtual learning environment’ in readiness for the new academic year. If you are looking for inspiration, there is plenty on offer from this year’s Blackboard & VLE Awards. There has been
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July’s eCoffee took us on a tour through some of the tools we have explored over the year, with a chance to catch up with colleagues who have been putting them into action. The LifeLab team have introduced the LifeSaver
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Final year medical student Callum Taylor led this month’s e-coffee@SGH session, with an inspiring look at some of the tools, projects and platforms that can help engage students. It was packed full of useful tips and information and showcased some
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Now into its fifth year, the 2017 Blackboard & VLE Awards competition has seen an increasing number of courses supported by exemplary use and design of their virtual learning environment. This year’s awards event featured a mix of familiar and new faces:
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Twitter was a popular theme for April’s e-coffee@SGH, with a great turnout to hear Penny Lee from Medicine’s Marketing team share lots of tips for top Tweeting. Penny gave a brilliant presentation ‘Twitter for Scientists’, explaining what might be the
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Students have contributed a record number of nominations for this year’s Blackboard & VLE Awards, sharing valuable feedback about what is most useful in a course site. It is evident that many courses offer students a fantastic online learning experience alongside the
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In this month’s e-coffee@SGH session, Daryl Peel from the Digital Learning team demonstrated two tools that can help users familiarise themselves with a physical space, or even use a physical space to help familiarise users with a topic. ActionBound offers
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February’s e-coffee session was led by Sarah Fielding, exploring possible uses of Thinglink, a tool for making interactive diagrams and videos. Signing up for a basic account gives you access to upload 2D images and label these with a series of
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December’s e-coffee@SGH explored some of the 12 apps of Christmas recommended by Dublin Institute of Technology and Regent’s University London. Both discuss how the apps suggested can be used in education, with case studies and examples. Sway is increasingly being
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e-coffee@SGH builds on the iPAD coffee clubs that previously took place at SGH, exploring the use of mobile devices, but also sharing wider experiences and ideas around the use of technology. This month we looked at tools for creating quizzes and simple
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The fourth annual ILIaD Blackboard & VLE Awards event brought together colleagues from across the university who have inspired their students by the quality of their VLE provision. With a record number of courses nominated, the judging panel had the
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At April’s iPAD coffee club Adam Warren (Senior Learning Designer, ILIaD) joined us to demonstrate various apps in response to requests raised at previous sessions. The conferencing tool Adobe Connect is useful for webinars and is licensed for up to
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After last session’s inspiring introduction to Nearpod, it was great to hear that the Allergy team have been using this in their new ‘Teaching the Teachers to Teach’ module and it is being well received by students. This month’s iPAD
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At SGH’s first iPAD coffee club of 2016, Andrew O’Malley, Stuart Morton and Lucy Law demonstrated Nearpod. The CLAS team have been using this to deliver interactive teaching sessions in Anatomy. Students enter a code to receive the session presentation
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At a festive-themed iPAD coffee club we explored some of the 12 apps of Christmas recommended by the Dublin Institute of Technology. Andrew O’Malley has tweeted further details of apps recommended in response to various questions raised during the session.
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This month’s iPAD coffee club focused on recording lectures and tutorials, with Veronica Hollis explaining how Panopto is used to support the MSc Allergy course. The Panopto app allows students to re-watch their lectures, with the slides accompanied by an
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The focus of the latest SGH iPAD coffee club was looking at how social media can be used in teaching and research, with some inspiring examples from within the faculty. Catherine Hennessy explained how students on the NLM2 module had
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It was great to have a record seventeen attendees along to the latest iPAD coffee club at SGH, with a range of devices. We talked about how new users might set up their devices to support them at work: Setting
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