Consult | Collaborate | Create
The outdoor ‘office’ At the end of March, members of the Digital Learning Team accompanied staff and students on fieldwork for the BIOL1001 module, Experimental and Field Biology. Students visit the south of Spain for hands-on experience in identifying plants
Read more
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
Read more
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
Read more
The 15th FutureLearn Academic Network meeting took place on 28th February at the University of Exeter. Professor Lisa Harris organised the event. Despite the snow and the strike, there was a more than reasonable turnout. There was representation from several FutureLearn
Read more
Writing for video is a different skill to creating a lecture or a presentation. Videos tend to be shorter than both of the aforementioned and, as such, require a more focused presentation of information. Focus on key ideas One way
Read more
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
Read more
Have you created a Blackboard course that you are proud of? Has your Blackboard course previously won or been shortlisted for the University of Southampton VLE Awards? If you have answered ‘Yes!’ to these questions, then the Blackboard Catalyst Awards
Read more
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
Read more
Some people find mindmapping a really helpful way of getting their thoughts together. It’s possible to take a low tech approach with a pen and a piece of paper, but sometimes you need something collaborative or presented formally, which is
Read more
Most people will agree that a brand new Blackboard course looks a little dull. Did you know that with 10 minutes effort, you can make it look much more appealing? In that time, you could change the course theme (the
Read more
Just before Christmas, the Digital Learning Team hosted a visit by Altro Orbis, a company specialising in VR experiences. We asked them to bring a couple of HTC Vive rigs (one of the market leaders in VR hardware) and invited staff from
Read more
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
Read more
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Dig. Learning sent to me, 12 Tiki-Tokis… Tiki-Toki is web-based software for creating interactive timelines. There are various options available for you to fully customise your timelines… and lots of benefits over other timeline
Read more
What makes a good video? Nice lighting, pretty pictures, interesting content? These all contribute, but something that is often overlooked is sound. There is a saying that states ‘50% of good video, is good audio’. It sounds so simple when
Read more
Google Keep is a free, simple notetaking service with apps on Android and iOS, which can be also used on the web via a google account. Notes can easily be integrated with Google Docs. I use an android phone, a
Read more
Improving assessment reliability and student experience with a particular focus on student feedback and opportunities for reflection A general criticism of many areas of learning in HE has been around the quality of student feedback. If students have taken part
Read more
We deliver many online courses, both open and private. In these courses, we have always thought that synchronous activities add value to the course. We cannot overuse them, because one of the points of making it online is that it
Read more
Taking nice photos is part of our day-to-day life, thanks to super-duper phone cameras and reasonably priced cameras. But how do you take your photographs to the next level? The answer is post-processing. Here are a few easy steps to
Read more
Lecture capture using Panopto can help students revise, work around timetable clashes, catch up missed sessions and assist with a wide range of learning differences and disabilities. But this is still a very basic use of a technology that offers
Read more
And this is the last post of the AppBonanza. I know it’s sad but you still have a few more days of apps, tech and other stuff to look forward to. This post will cover two apps: Alfred and Wox.
Read more
In the modern world of hyper-tech, everybody has some type of mobile device be it iPhone, iPad, Windows mobile devices, and even more. Each of these devices uses a slightly different Operating System (OS), iOS, Windows, Linux, etc. the ability
Read more
2 apps instead of 1? You lucky people! I’ve decided to have a good look at some PDF Readers. The reason behind this is because we all need to read PDFs at some point or another and normally you do
Read more
How to get organised and keep track of your lists using Trello for project management. My line manager is asking what I’ve done this month, we spent over an hour discussing the projects I have been doing and showing my
Read more
Today is a special day. Every two hours from 09:00-17:00 we will send you a new post with information and advice on some of the most useful apps available for mobiles, desktops and laptops. Get ready and read on! The
Read more
What is Padlet? Padlet is an online pinboard. It does not require any installation – just an internet connection and it can be accessed from anywhere and on any type of device: mobile phones, laptops, tablets, or PCs. You can create and save
Read more
Podcasting is another wonderful way to bring Christmas cheer. Whether it’s sharing your conversations, creating a platform for your thoughts and ideas, finding friends and bringing them together; podcasting is a chance to draw audiences into your experience and talk
Read more
By now, you may have heard of Articulate Storyline being mentioned around the University. Alternatively, perhaps you know a colleague who has access to the software. If not then Articulate Storyline is authoring software used to build interactive content to
Read more
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.
Read more
Earlier this month the Digital Learning team hosted the first workshop for the Hololens early adopter group. If you haven’t heard of Microsoft’s mixed reality headset, which enables users to interact with virtual holograms and real objects in the physical world, you
Read more
I and two colleagues attended Panopto’s annual conference in London last week, a professional event with over 300 delegates at 30 Euston Square, an impressive building owned by the Royal College of General Practitioners. It was a far cry from
Read more