The ScHARR MOOC Diaries: Part V - The birth of the Sustainable Healthy Diets MOOC

The birth of the Sustainable Healthy Diets MOOC 

Picture the scene: ScHARR common room, on a cold and wet autumnal day in 2012, Michelle
Holdsworth and myself deep in dual brainstorming mode; our conundrum was unique: how could
we reach a wider audience with the essential information on diets which were both healthy and
sustainable? Colleagues at Universities and NGO’s all over the UK and Europe were conducting
exciting research, highlighting new findings every week, but these were mainly being published in
scientific journals, never to be read by ordinary folk. It would take ages, literally years for this info to
be written into policy (if anyone at No. 10 was ever interested!) and even longer for the public to be
able to make changes to their eating habits…….

http://goo.gl/CSjyb

Then, a light bulb moment – “I know” said Michelle, rather excitedly, “we should do a MOOC on a healthy and sustainable diet!”

“Excuse me?” I answered, a little confused to say the least, thinking I must have misheard or maybe Michelle was referring to some scientific term that I had not yet come across.

“Yes a MOOC – these new types of courses, stands for ‘Massively Open Online Course’. They have been done by a few of the American Universities.” Michelle explained a bit more to me and it soon became apparent that we would at least have to give this a try: it was too good an opportunity to miss out on.

A few months later and we are about to convene our first MOOC group meeting. Although I am really excited about getting started, I am also very nervous on a number of fronts!

Firstly, the technological learning curve is going to be very steep for me: reassuringly I am surrounded by experts, so I’m hoping this should ease the climb!

Secondly, I am concerned about including ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that needs to be said on
healthy and sustainable diets, as I know the academics and NGO professionals working in this field
are passionate and will not be all that forgiving of any errors or omissions! Therefore I am going to
try to showcase as much of this fantastic work as I can fit, within learning objectives, to ensure that
this doesn’t happen. This should make for some lively debate! Although we will be covering some of
the basics, which may be ‘old hat’ to some, it should be possible to include cutting edge projects and
research too.

Finally, I am hoping to have real engagement from my fellow MOOCsters: that’s any and all who sign
up to take part in the course. Previous MOOC’s have shown a number of ‘lurkers’, and I would like
this MOOC to be engaging and stimulating in order to generate some meaningful output that can be
used for the future, in particular thinking about how we can communicate this information to even
wider audiences!

Please be encouraged to sign up and take part, I promise it will be fun! If you wish to contribute to
any of the content or tell us about what is healthy and sustainable for you, then I would love to hear
from you. Angie.clonan@sheffield.ac.uk

(Posted on behalf of Angie Clonan)

International Perspectives on Technology in Higher Education

In a previous post, I mentioned that I would be asking the students on my Learning English Through Technology course to contribute their own articles to this blog to give them a chance to express their thoughts on technology in English. Most of the students in the class are on their study abroad year from another country, so I thought it might be interesting to get them to compare how technology is used in their home universities with how it is used at Sheffield. I didn't give them any other rubric than that, so what they write is entirely their own opinion and perspective. I hope you find what they write engaging and also I'm sure they would appreciate any comments/questions you might have for them, this can either be in the form of general questions to all of them or targeted questions to individual students. So, here we go...

Anne (Germany) 

My experience with technology at the University of Paderborn in Germany, which calls itself “Die Universität der Informationsgesellschaft” which roughly translates as “The University of the Information-Society”, had a great start as in 2009 all freshers got netbooks for free as a gift from the university because we had decided to got there. This happened only in our year, so we had to cope with other students giving us mocking names and being mad at us for getting presents, but still I have been enjoying my netbook up to today.

Still, there are some issues, e.g. with PAUL, the “Paderborner Assistenzsystem für Universität und Lehre” or “Paderborn assistent-system for University and education”. PAUL is a VLE, which has been especially set up only for our university by university staff. Unfortunately, sometimes it does not work properly, especially if 15,000 to 20,000 students try to access it at 8 am to sign up for classes in order to get a place. The system of “First come, first serve” applies, but only if PAUL does not have a “nervous breakdown”. As PAUL is not always reliable, we have other digital platforms as well - individual homepages for the library, for uploading materials, and for communicating. Also, we have a very good walk-in IT service and the possibility to borrow technical equipment from the Technology Service. There are less options to get access to a computer, like in the Information Commons, and less printing options, but everything still works well because everyone has adjusted to it.

What I would really like as an improvement in Paderborn is the ability to use one UCard and one user-name for everything you access via technology.

Ales (Czech Republic)

I come from Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science in particular. I am master degree geography student, so I am using technology very often (mostly GIS – geographical information systém – we use them for creating maps, models of surface etc). Because personal licence for this GIS software is usually very exponsive, I have to use it in school – in the computer rooms. In comparsion with Sheffield, I have to admit that here are many more computers, and printers/scanners as well. And they are faster and newer than computers in our faculty, but is getting better in these days. I like the idea of Information Commons building here in Sheffield, we do not have anything similar at Charles University. But Charles Univeristy in Prague faculties are scattered in whole city, University of Sheffield is at one place, so that might be problem when establishing such buiding in Prague (where should it be?). You can borrow there a laptop, or you can get yours repaired there when it breaks, that is very useful – in our faculty is not possible any of these things.

Another thing is WiFi – we use eduroam network as well, but it very complicated to sign in, in here, you just fill in your MUSE username and password and you are done. Speaking of MUSE – at our faculty, we use SIS (Studing Information Systém) and Google Apps as well. SIS and MUSE are very similar, in fact, regardless different look, they are practically same and the have same features. And, of course, they do not work 100 percent and tend to erorrs sometimes. But what I really do not like here, is the UCARD, which uses only barcode, so when you want to go somewhere in the Uni where you have to use it to enter, it never works for the first time, you have to check it again and again, maybe for the fourth – fifth try you are succesfull. In Prague we use ISIC card with microchip, which works perfect and for the first time usually. 

So, in the end, I think University of Sheffield and Charles University in Prague are modern universities which are in general simillar in using technology, at least in approach to it, both schools have the same basic features and options, but Sheffield has more additional features and the basics features are at higher level in here.

Ai (Japan) 

The technology in Sheffield and my home university is at a similar level. In my home university in Japan, we have our own password like Sheffield students and can use the university computer system by typing in the password. But at the same time, we can see several differences between the two universities. Today I'll introduce the differences below:

1. Computer room

In our Japanese university we have a large computer room where there are some technologically knowledgeable people sat waiting to help us with any computer issues. So everybody in the room can do their work smoothly. If you want to learn about the usage of computers, there are many books related to computers there. We need our own ID card (UCard at Sheffield) to enter the room.

2. Other places available for us to use computers

In the room for job hunting, the library, the literature studying room and the magazine room, we can use a university PC. Or if we bring our own laptop, we can use it in one of the LAN areas which lie hither and thither about my university.

3. Free printer

Although there is only black ink, we can use printers freely if we are in the computer room or job hunting room. It is very helpful when we write a thesis or essay.

4. Technology classes

To keep up with the IT era, our university has several classes related to computer usage. There are around 5 levels and students can choose the level depending on their level of knowledge. These classes are quite popular, so if the students wish to take them, they always have to be decided by lot. Fortunately I could take two classes before and they were really nice to learn how to use Word and Excel stuff.

Blanca (Spain)

First of all, I must make a distinction between the University of Granada, my home uni, as a whole and the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, which is the one I belong to and also one of the oldest and, let the truth be known, most beautiful.

In spite of its beauty, the fact that it’s really old leads to suppose that the facilities are not exactly up-to-date.

The most used technological devices are the projectors, most of the teachers use them to illustrate their lectures.

We, the students, are not provided with netbooks - nor any kind of personal computers - by the University, but we are meant to bring our own material to work, either the classic notebook or our own laptops. Nevertheless, those who choose to use laptops will have to cope with an important problem: there are very few sockets per class. So you can either fight your way to one of them at the start of the class or carry an adaptor around the faculty, which is not the best plan, is it?

As well as Sheffield, in Granada we also have our own VLE or “Campus Virtual” (no need to translate, I assume) and it’s also the official communication link between the lecturers and the students. Through this platform we can book sport facilities, check our examination results or apply for courses and grants apart from sharing work related to the modules. Depending on the lecturers and on the nature of the module, the assessments must be handed via this “virtual campus”, the official university email or in person.

Other features:

• The university, as a whole, is not equipped with interactive whiteboards, and I don’t think it will be in a near future either.
• You can access to the University's official WiFi in any of the faculties by typing your credentials.

Misato (Japan)

There are some similarities and differences in how the technologies are being used among The University of Sheffield and Hosei University, my home university in Tokyo, Japan.

I think there are two key points which affects the use of technologies in Sheffield and Hosei. One is the campus size. Sheffield’s campus is big, covering one whole area of the city itself. On the other hand, since Hosei is located in the centre of Tokyo, the campus is very small consisting of only four buildings including 31 floor tall building. Another key point is the amount of money two universities can spend for technologies. Since Hosei is a private university with expensive tuition fees, they can put more money on technologies at the university.

In Sheffield, it is almost necessary to use email to make a contact with university offices and teachers. However, due to the size of the campus, it is very easy for Hosei students to go and see university offices and teachers in person, making fewer needs to use email to make contact with them.

Due to the campus size, the computer room in Hosei is very small compare to Information Commons. However, Hosei lends out two different types of laptops to support students’ studies. One is the one-day laptop, literally lending the laptop for a day, which students are only allowed to use in the campus. The other one is the short term laptop, which lets students keep for up to one week. For short term laptop, students are allowed to take it back home during the borrowing period.

Borrowing laptops are free but there will be penalties to those who returns late or breaks the laptop. As well as free laptop lending, there are free Wi-Fi and free printers in the campus.

Audrey (France)

Technology is used very differently in my own country, and more specifically in my own university of Versailles St Quentin, than the way it is used in the University of Sheffield. Of course, they do share some similar aspects, such as the use of internet to check information, the existence of the official University webpage or the use of email address to contact teachers …

However, the technology is nowhere near as important in my university in France as it is in Sheffield. Our teachers send us emails very rarely (most of the time, only to tell us that they are absent or that a class has been canceled), our homework are given in class, and our essays must be written on paper. Also, the relationship with the teachers, students and technology is quite different: in comparison to British Universities where teachers are very open and easily reachable, in France we don’t feel quite as comfortable to send a simple question to a teacher by email. Most of the time, it is preferable to wait and ask them in person. We do use internet as a source for certain of our background work for essays, but we definitely don’t have as much internet related work or debates (most of the time the discussions in class are based on essays or books given during class). The importance of the university website is also radically different: in Sheffield, the university site is at the center of most courses, it is very developed (with different parts likes Muse and Mole2), and there is a lot of content and useful information posted on it (many teachers post texts or links on their course’s Mole page). However, In France, we very rarely visit our university website (except during exam periods when our grades are posted on it), and we can easily spend our whole university years without ever really using it … Most students bring their own laptops in class, as the university has a free wifi access, and our library has many computers that can be used.

Jesús  (Spain)

Here I am going to compare the University of Sheffield and the University of Granada. However, being a second year student, and living in England this second, my experience in my home university is short and I can only talk about my faculty. My faculty is placed in an old building and is used mainly for language students so technology doesn’t have to be very present.

One thing that is similar to Sheffield is that in every class we have projectors so teachers can use presentations or technological tools. However, we don’t have smartboards, which are quite used here. In Sheffield there are many computers available in every faculty. In my city you can find a few of them in the libraries of the faculties. Speaking of library, we don’t have a building like Information Commons, full of computers and so much space where students can do self-study, group work, print things or have their personal computer fixed (in Granada that would be almost unthinkable). Besides, here you can see many students in class with their own laptops or tablets. In Granada, people take notes using paper and it is not usual to take your laptop to class, unless a class requires it. Another difference is that in Sheffield teachers prefer if you to email them with your concerns whilst in Granada it’s more normal to ask for a tutorial. The MUSE service is something that I really like here. You can access your email from there, as well as the material from your modules (MOLE), or important links related to exams or timetables, fees, or revising your personal details. In Granada we have a similar service, but it’s not this advanced and you can’t access all the important services for a student from there. Moreover, we don’t use that much Google Apps. Another difference is the UCard. We also have a UCard but, although it can be used there as a bank credit card, is much more useless than here.

Denitsa  (Bulgaria)

I am currently studying English language, Culture of the English speaking world and translations in the University of Versailles and Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines, France.

My faculty is based in two relatively new buildings. I can`t talk about the way technology is used in general in my university. However from what I have experienced in my faculty I would rather say that technology is not used as much as in the University of Sheffield.

First of all, in my Home University we have no smart boards- a tool which is used quite a lot here- we just have white boards. If most of the seminar rooms are equipped with projectors then back in Versailles the teacher has to bring a projector from the reception if he/she wants to use it for a presentation.

Secondly, we don`t have a library as The Information Commons-opened 24/7(a very important aspect in my opinion), with so many computers, printers and scanners. Our library is opened only from Monday till Friday from around 9am till 8pm. However we have a big area with computers-not as many computers as in the IC in Sheffield but it is still something. Moreover in my Home University almost no one is taking notes on his/her lap top because teachers are not always happy with it. Therefore we take notes on paper.

I have never exchanged so many e-mails in my Home University as here in Sheffield. As a student in Sheffield most of the work I had to submit was to be directly submitted on MOLE. This is definitely not the case in my Home University where you have to hand every paper in class or to the office of the teacher.

Something in common between the two universities is the online internal system MUSE which in my Home University is ENT. The two systems are functioning almost in the same way- having your university e-mail, student record, exam results… Except the fact that ENT is out of use much more often. We also have an equivalent of MOLE called E-campus which is used by teachers to share various documents, materials or lectures with students.

Michal (Czech Republic) 

Regarding the differences in the use of technology here at the University of Sheffield and the Charles University in Prague, I think there are not significant differences. At Charles University exists internal system SIS, which is quite similar to the University of Sheffield system MUSE. Within this system it is possible to log the exams, view test results and find out information about the courses. When I compare the interface of these systems, I have to say that the system MUSE is clearer. I think it's due to properly chosen colors that do not distracted as well as the overall structure of the system is clearer. System SIS at Charles University uses a combination of several colors, such as blue, red, which in turn makes it difficult to orientation on this system. One aspect is common to both systems, both systems do not work sometimes. At Charles University exists ISIC card as alternative to Sheffield University student card - UCARD . Within this card, you can copy, borrow books in the library and go to lunch. Here I must mention the great quality Sheffield University library. Selection of books here is very diverse. It is possible to borrow books concerning various subjects. 

Another positive aspect is opening time - 24 hours a day. Even here it is not so cold as other people warned me. I like the opportunity to sit here and look at the book. That's a pity that rental period is only a week. Especially for foreigners is hard to read a book a one week. When I compare other technological systems at the University of Sheffield and Charles University, I will mention two software programs: SPSS (statistical program for creating analysis) and GIS (for creating maps,cartograms). Both programs I use very often. As in Prague, there are computer rooms with computers that are available to students. The only difference in this respect is that the rooms there are probably greater with multiple computers than computer rooms at Charles University. Regarding performance of computers, I think they are comparable.

 In conclusion, I would like to say that in terms of the technologies used are the University of Sheffield and Charles University in Prague similar. The only difference is probably some higher level University Sheffield, which is due to higher financial resources University of Sheffield. I think computer technology is a useful feature that facilitates the work of not only students but also tutors and other university staff.

ScHARR MOOC Diaries: Part IV - Will size matter?

Will size matter...?  On MOOCs and going 'massive'.

First of all...

I'm excited by our ScHARR MOOCs project, because it is pulling onto centre-stage all sorts of questions about learning - and about what (and who) universities are for - that we often allow to drift away into the wings (or out of the theatre altogether).  In the last few years, my own role vis a vis teaching has increasingly been to lead and manage, more than delivering, and to be the place where the buck stops if something goes wrong.  And now here comes the opportunity to get on with some fresh new thinking about teaching and learning online, without US-style million-dollar investment, but with a huge fund of staff enthusiasm.  And with lots of interesting questions to answer, not least how 'massive' should we plan for our first MOOCs to be? How much will size matter?  Will any kind of innovative, interactive learning techniques survive a context in which there may be thousands or tens of thousands of people logging on? As outlined below, what started as a speculative set of questions and Google searches about size quickly led to other, broader questions.  I have found some useful, reflective articles while browsing - three of which are listed in the comments below. Each, in turn, opens the door to more resources and debates.

Before moving on with those themes, let me welcome the two members of staff who will be joining the team from now on to help get the ScHARR MOOCs up and running:

Angie Clonan:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/sections/ph/staff/profiles/angieclonan

and

Katie Powell:  
http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/sections/ph/staff/profiles/katiepowell

Angie and Katie will each be working with the MOOCs team half-time, over the spring and summer - and will soon be posting their thoughts and suggestions in the Diaries.

MOOCs: size and other issues - some useful links

A little online browsing quickly tells me that the first MOOC was formally offered in 2008 in Canada, drawing on earlier collaborative online learning initiatives.  Technological innovations don't generally come out of a vacuum: there is always a context, usually populated by various jostling ideas and initiatives.  So MOOCs are not quite the new kid on the block that the current buzz of discussion in UK Higher Education circles might suggest.  For more detail on this point and others raised below, there is a very useful 2012 article here by Sir John Daniel, in the Journal of Interactive Media in Education:

http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/jime/article/viewArticle/2012-18/html

Further browsing quickly brought up a distinction that has some relevance to the 'how massive?' question and related pedagogical themes: "cMOOCs" vs "xMOOCs"...         cMOOCs  emphasising a 'connectivist' and participatory approach, and xMOOCs adopting a more obviously commercial and 'broadcasting'  style and format:

"cMOOCs focus on knowledge creation and generation whereas xMOOCs focus on knowledge duplication."

(for the full discussion, see George Siemens' reflections at   http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-a-platform/)

My first reaction to this distinction was to reflect that of course I (we?) would much prefer the 'connectivist' emphasis, with its roots in concepts of student-centred and participatory learning.  If  that means being less 'massive' but more 'creative and collaborative' - then good.  Quality rather than quantity.

But as George Siemens points out in the www.elearnspace piece cited above, there are many unresolved issues here.  He comments that learners from contexts and countries where there is little affordable access to high-quality learning materials say they welcome the accessible "xMOOCs" provision, often delivered by high-status US universities with global reputations.  Restricted access to bandwidth can also make the more interactive styles of online learning far less 'open' than we may think.  That thought, of course, immediately raises another question: will MOOCs  just entrench the domination of the big US players, marginalising other perspectives, networks and organisations?  Walmart/Asda/Tesco drives out not only the educational corner shop, but the deli, the butcher, the baker and the wholefoods cooperative too in a familiar pattern?

These points and others are raised in a recent piece on MOOCs published on the Institute of Development Studies website (To MOOC or not to MOOC'... see link after the quotation below) . This Insitute is a charitable organisation based at the University of Sussex. It attracted a comment from a current MOOC user that encourages a more optimistic and less polarised interpretation of MOOCs' potential, though also one that reminds us of the online accessibility issues:

"I live in Liberia and have organized a discussion group for people who are taking Banerjee and Duflo's 'Poor Economics' course online. The course is at https://www.edx.org/courses/MITx/14.73x/2013_Spring/about. We have a group of half Liberians, half expatriate development workers. It's really interesting for us and eye-opening for the Liberian students who have never been exposed to cutting-edge, rigorous thinking in development before. It would be fantastic if IDS could do something similar. Bandwidth is a real problem for us, though, so it helps to keep online lectures and audio materials to a minimum, or, if you feel you must be 'multimedia', at least include a transcript of the lecture, and the slides. "

(http://www.developmenthorizons.com/2013/03/to-mooc-or-not-to-mooc-that-is-question.html )

So you may have a genuinely 'massive' MOOC; there may be thousands of people logging on who simply lurk and browse or consume the content without interacting online; and at the same time, there may be local groups who use their individual online learning as a springboard for shared agendas and creative ways of working.

Perhaps, then, we need to relax about the 'size' issue.  We will need to make sure that our MOOCs offer a range of levels of engagement: browsing, lurking, posting responses and course work, engaging in online discussion with peers and tutors, perhaps getting formal credit eventually (for some). We will need to experiment in order to find out what does work for our kinds of topics  on a very large scale, and what kinds of options we can build in for collaborative learning/working within that context.   We'll need to revisit and test that distinction between "cMOOCs" and "xMOOCs" and take our own thinking further. Watch this space.

(posted on behalf of Dr Jenny Owen)

Event Report - MELSIG special focus event: Smart Devices for Learning, Sheffield Hallam University, February 8th 2013

A few weeks ago I was very fortunate to help organise and run the latest of our events from the Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group, MELSIG. The event was titled “Smart Devices for Learning and took place at Sheffield Hallam on February 8th. Before discussing the event itself, I should provide a bit more background info about MELSIG.

Around 2007, I was tasked with looking into developing the use of podcasting as an educational technology within the University here at Sheffield. In early 2008, I became aware of the formation of a new special interest group funded by the Higher Education Academy, entitled Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes (PPP), and I was able to attend their inaugural meeting. As a result of this I joined the steering group  and so have been involved in running the group ever since. One of the main thrusts of our activity over the last four years has been the running of events at Institutions around the UK, and this last one was our 15th so far.

Typically our events will have some core elements, which are based around the fundamentals of the use of media (particularly audio) in learning and teaching, and are presented as a day long series of workshops and presentations. These would include a basic introduction to the pedagogical concepts and opportunities afforded by the use of audio, and then would be followed up by some more specific workshop type sessions focusing on pedagogical principles that can be used in designing podcasts, and some more practical guidance on how to create them, often with some hands on training being provided in Audacity by our colleague Alan Carr from the University of Chester.  We would also feature a keynote, addressing a particular theme.

One area in which we have been particularly active is in promoting the use of audio (and media more generally) as a means of providing effective and meaningful feedback to students.  With feedback being a sector wide issue, this has been a recurrent theme in a number of our events as well as being the specific focus of a couple of events too, including the “A Word in Your Ear” conference in December 2009. A list of links to more information about these events, and the resources that arisen from them is provided below.

February’s event has marked a slight change in focus for MELSIG.  The link between the use of podcasts and the broader field of mobile learning has been implicit in my mind since I first became involved in it. What has changed enormously in this relatively short time period however, is the nature of the devices with which we envisage students will be learning, in increasingly more diverse times and spaces.  So *all the way back* back in 2008 (a whole five years ago) we were focusing on students downloading and transferring audio to personal media players - there had been no massive convergence of devices that has led to the almost ubiquitous smartphone we see today, and certainly no really credible attempt at producing tablet devices. So for this event we decided to turn our attention to these amazing portable devices, and to start to really look at some of the affordances they can offer......

After our welcome and introduction to the day, given by Andrew Middleton from Sheffield Hallam, who is also the Chair of MELSIG, we had our first keynote session - “Focus on Fieldwork- Opportunities, problems and solutions”, delivered by Professor Brian Whalley (Universities of Belfast and Sheffield) and Vicky Powell (University of Chester).  Coming from a field based disciplines myself (biology and archaeology), this is a topic very close to my heart, and we’ve made some significant investment in developing mobile resources to support archaeology students here at the University (more about below).  

Brian and Vicky talked us through a number of different fieldwork projects, and discussed how they had made use of different type of mobile technologies over a number of years.  In their first iterations they were using netbooks, which would allow the use of fully featured Geographical Information Systems software such as ArcGIS, and Open Office. Although these devices were offered much functionality, the students didn’t always appreciate the choice of software and disliked sharing the devices with peers. They also used LiveScribe pens to assist their students in note taking, which seemed popular.

After these earlier preambles, they moved over to using the iPad2, and one of the particular areas in which Brian was interested was to determine how exactly these potential game-changers could match up to using a traditional field notebook, and to provide a personalised learning environment for the students It may sound a  bit self evident that of course one of the most revolutionary aspects of the new revolution in mobile devices is the ready availability of cheap apps that support a huge range of activities. This point is significant though because it means that we can very effectively support students in the field using these devices without necessarily having to develop large quantities of content ourselves, instead enabling the students to work more effectively with certain tools that allow greater ease of note taking, data recording and communicating amongst the group, via a few inexpensive Apps. Fieldwork is a very expensive resource so any intervention that makes it more productive is worthwhile.

Some of the Apps mentioned were:

Notability - a note taking app that allows a great combination of sketching, handwriting, typing and pdf annotating tools. It also allows audio recording and the ability to link recordings to objects on screen, which would make it very powerful in classroom settings.

Skitch - from the famous Evernote stable, Skitch is another drawing and annotation tool. It allows you to take a photo from the devices camera and very easily annotate it. Like Evernote it automatically syncs to the cloud, and has desktop computer versions of the software too (PC and Mac). This App was cited as being particularly useful for helping doing field sketches, which are very important to aid students’ understanding of the geographical features they study.

GeoID - those who have ever had the need to use a Compass-Clinometer will be on familiar ground with this. It is an App version of a physical device used to measure angles of slope, and is very useful for mapping geomorphological structures.

GPS Log - this App uses the device’s GPS to enable the creation of geo tagged images, which can then be tagged, annotated and shared out to services such as Google Earth.

Twitter (assorted clients thereof) - this old faithfull (see again how we refer historically to something that dates all the way back to July 2006) was used by students to communicate rapidly to the whole group - something again that is a real challenge in conventional fieldwork.

Brian and Vicky also discussed a few broader issues, which would be relevant in supporting fieldwork with mobile technologies in any discipline. Generally speaking, certainly the iPads were a great success and seemed very popular with the students - in particular the ability to capture images and video and use them either for reflection, or to assist in their note taking. Not surprisingly for field work uses, it may be necessary to consider some protective cases for the devices, although sometimes these may provide a bit of a barrier to their use (for example accessing the camera). Quite surprisingly it seems that a carrier bag provides  fairly effective waterproofing for an iPad through which one can write with a stylus...... 

Even the apparent complexity of playing the harp can be vastly simplified using Skitch. Copyright Graham McElearney 2013

Another significant issue addressed was that of device ownership - with much attention being given to the notion of “Bring Your Own Device” recently, Brian was keen to find out his students’ attitudes towards this. Many indicated that they would like to use their own devices as they feel they are personalised to them, easier to handle, and that they are less apprehensive about damaging their own device rather than an University owned one. It does seem that there would be management issues involved though - students would need access to the Apps and the devices would need to be set up in advance. This could also raise issues such as age of the devices and available storage. So there’s probably more to the debate than the simple issue of cost, and whether having a BYOD policy would disadvantage certain learners.

The next session presented another broad scale use of mobile devices in a specific context - with Robin Gissing and Tom Jolley  showing us a range of projects from the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at Sheffield Hallam University.  Their broad approach was to evaluate the potential of these devices in supporting learning in the faculty, and they explored the use of Motorola Xooms. Apple iPod Touch and iPad2 devices as part of this, so as to explore the experience of using both platforms. The devices were all owned and managed by the Faculty, and there interesting lessons to be learned here. The Motorola Xooms seemed to present some management problems due to the way that they needed to be linked to specific Google accounts, and some difficulties were also encountered ob getting onto the Google Play app store via the campus network.

Seemingly more successful were the experiments in using the iPads. They went from an original collection of 6, to over 30, which they issued to staff on a loan basis as part of their trial. Management of these loan devices, also used by students in classes, was more easily achieved using the Apple Configurator, in conjunction with an iPad “cart”. The Configurator software allows multiple devices to be managed in terms of Apps and user data, as well as other important profile information such as WiFi settings, and the cart allows up to 30 to be connected, charged and configured at once.  Procuring bulk copies of Apps that may be required (such as those mentioned by Brian above) is now in theory quite simple using the Volume Purchasing Plan (VPP). The VPP enables multiple copies of the same App or iBook to be purchased via Redeem codes (not dissimilar to the gift voucher idea), and the Configurator software handles mapping the Redeem codes for the individual Apps to the individual devices.  Robin and Tom are also looking to apply the same principles with Nexus devices, although on the surface there appears to be a smaller number of Apps available for these.

Robin and Tom then showcased some of the specific initiatives they had been working on across the Faculty. The first example featured videos that had been made by some of the students, along with their lecturer Mel Lindley, on teaching techniques to physiotherapists. They had focused on quite a specialist topic, cardio and respiratory treatment, which is an area students don’t often get to practice on placement. Some of the students who had worked with Mel were able to come and relate to us how positive their experience of making the videos had been, and served as a very potent reminder as to what a great contribution our students can make to events ostensibly aimed at staff. This example was also the first one I had seen created in TED Ed, and looks something well worth pursuing further.

Also demonstrated was an Augmented Reality (AR) App they had developed to enhance the use of their SimMen - these are mannequin like simulated patients used extensively in nursing education. Whilst the SimMen are excellent at replicating various life signs that can be monitored with authentic bedside equipment (pulse, blood pressure, respiration etc), they do less well at representing an authentic experience of interacting with a real patient/ The AR App, created using Aurasma, superimposes the head of a real person over that of the simulated patient, and is able to give the students their patient history. Early evaluation shows that the students engaged with the “patients” far more, being able to remember their names and conditions weeks apart between classes, which hadn’t happened previously.

A final case study demoed the use of Coach’s Eye. This App, which they used with student teachers studying physical education, allows for very simple annotation of videos filmed within the App. Videos can be viewed in slow motion or reverse, along with the annotations. Students were very engaged by using the App and requested its use more and more. Although ostensibly designed with sports coaching in mind, it’s not difficult to imagine using it with many other forms of content such as experimental lab phenomena or animal behaviour. As the videos can be exported it’s also possible to see how they could be used within a TED-Ed or AR environment.

In the final part of the session, Robin and Tom unveiled their “101 Ideas” project - an compendium of 101 potential use cases for iPads in learning and teaching. All in all the session was an excellent review of how an initiative could be pursued across a whole faculty. Examples of the AR App, and

After lunch it was over to Alex Spiers and Chrissie Nerantzi for the Killer Apps Workout joint session. In this session the whole group divided up into two groups in separate rooms for an interactive workshop challenge. This workshop used an ingenious  combination of Twitter, with the World Cafe format. Divided up into 6 groups, each group was allocated a pedagogical theme to discuss, and then choose which Apps, from the members’ experience, could be used to facilitate these. The themes were communicating, collaborating, sharing, creating, staying safe, and curating. The group in which was working had collaboration as the theme.  Some of the Apps we listed were perhaps quite obvious choices - Google Drive, Google + Hangouts, Blackboard Collaborate, Dropbox, Facebook and a host of Twitter clients. But of course the great thing about a gathering such as this were what new things we learned from each other. So new ones to me were Woices (a geo referenced audio recording and hosting service), Pearl Trees (a visual social bookmarking tool), Linoit (a social post-it note sharing tool), and Nearpod (a collaborative presentation tool).  And in tracking down some of these Apps in writing this I also found a great Pinterest page looking at educational Apps at http://pinterest.com/marambad/i-pad-app-world/. A list of Apps in the other categories is provided by the series of links at the bottom of this article.


The rest of my day at the event was taken up by delivering a couple of presentations myself. In the first of these Andrew Middleton and I described our recent experiences in producing our first eBook. One of the medium term deliverables that we’ve been working on at MELSIG central has been the production of an edited volume, looking at a range of various aspects around educational podcasting, ranging from infrastructural issues through to the use of audio feedback, and many points in between.  We are going to produce another article about this before long, but in summary, it was an exploration for us both into the issues in taking existing content and delivering via eBook format. Andrew opted for getting the book prepared in standard epub and Kindle formats (which are now available - see details below), whilst I went down the Apple iBooks route, as it was related to some other work I’ve been doing on delivering video based content to mobile devices.  The one take home message we can share here is that given that most people will create their text using Microsoft Word, keeping the formatting simple, and sticking to the use of basic Word “styles” is the key to a relatively painless migration to all three formats.

The final presentation of the day for me was to do a quick demonstration of creating a simple App using the Buzztouch framework. I will again make this the subject of its own post soon, but will still summarise here. Some of you may have seen a discussion of Buzztouch in a post about the White Rose Learning Technologists’ Forum in April last year, where we reported on a fairly mind blowing development from Robin Gissing and Peter Walder from Sheffield Hallam. In essence. Buzztouch is a framework that facilitates the development of native Apps (for both IOS and Android), and after seeing the Robin and Peter’s presentation I’ve been looking at producing some myself. These have largely been motivated by my need to get a way of getting some video rich content onto a mobile device for use in teaching archaeology field techniques, which often take place in locations where there is no Internet connectivity. Sadly I missed a couple of the presentations that were being conducted in parallel, although my colleague Neil Everill reported very positively back from the Post PC - Shift Happens session in which the student voice was represented again, from the perspective of which Apps they had found most useful.

In conclusion I find myself reflecting again on what a fantastic experience being involved with MELSIG has been. It has been so influential on my current thinking and practices, especially those around student creativity and media production, and has seen me take a complete journey away from viewing students as consumers of media we produce. through to being producers of a wide range of media as tools for constructing their own knowledge and understanding.

We are also now looking at repeating this event and so if you would be interested in hosting a similar event at your own Institution, do please contact either myself (g.mcelearney@sheffield,ac,uk) or Andrew Middleton (A.J.Middleton@shu.ac.uk)

Useful Links and appendices.

Presentations from the day can be found at

http://melsig.shu.ac.uk/?page_id=52

Be sure to check out the activities as part of the Swap Shop, and also the Twitter narrative as captured on Storify (also available at http://storify.com/CMcEwan_SHU/melsig-smart-devices-for-learning?utm_source=embed_header)

An edited list of Apps that he group identified in Alex and Chrissi’s session has been put together at

http://melsig.shu.ac.uk/?page_id=170

More information about our book, Digital Voices, which we announced at the event, edited by Andrew Middleton and the MELSIG Steering Group, can be found here:

http://melsig.shu.ac.uk/?page_id=33

Sales of the book will go towards funding future events

An emerging body of Apps from Robin and Tom’s “101 Ideas...” can be found here

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/hwbtel/app-catalogue/

The Physiotherapy resources can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/respphysiointerventions/
Graham

#cicsltt

Learning English Through Technology

At the English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC) we recently started an interesting new credit-bearing course called Learning English Through Technology...actually it’s official title for technical reasons is EFL Language and Culture (Technology) but I prefer the unofficial title and that’s how it’s known to the class.

This is primarily an English language course but with a topic focus on technology. So, during the course students will look at different ways they can communicate using technology and online media such as blogging, microblogging, social networks and mobile platforms. Students will have the chance to analyse how language is used in these different genres and then have a chance to practise them, ideally in an authentic setting. So, for instance, they will look at the language of blogging and then write blog posts themselves to demonstrate how much they’ve understood.

Inspired by Gary Wood’s award winning idea to get students to create their own public-facing website, I decided that we would create our own site throughout the course and students would contribute articles, videos and presentations to it as a record of their learning.

Our course website

As a learning technologist, I was particularly excited to work on this course as it was the first time I could commit fully to using technology with my students and find out what it would mean to have a genuinely paperless classroom. On other courses I teach on I have to respect the course content and the students’ needs and wishes. Some courses don’t lend themselves well to tech integration and some students don’t always want to use technology in the classroom. But this was the first time where the course content obviously demanded the use of technology and the students were interested in the topic.

So, what does this mean in practice? In the classroom we use Chromebooks to access websites and material, these are really useful devices to have, they boot up in no time and give students instant access to their university accounts through Google. Throughout the lesson I often have to send them links and information to look up on the internet and for that purpose I set up a Google+ Community for the class.

Google+ Community

Early in the course I introduced students to Google Documents as a way for them to work collaboratively and remotely on the articles and presentations they would post on our website. Most of them were unfamiliar with Google Docs, but they really took to them quickly and I noticed a lot of them are using them now as a way to make notes generally during the lesson. I also wanted a place where we could add collect and share vocabulary we learnt on the course so we have a Google Doc they can edit and add to and that’s embedded in the website.

I also introduced them to Google+ Hangouts - an online video conferencing tool - as a way for them to discuss and collaborate on their projects outside the classroom and some of them have used this effectively.

A strong focus of the course is encouraging them to use technology to develop their English autonomously outside of the classroom. For that reason, I wanted to build up a list of useful websites they could access, share and recommend. I’ve been a user of the social bookmarking site Diigo for quite a while and found it a great way to quickly save and share websites I liked so on the course we’ve been using that to share and discuss sites to help them with their English.

Diigo social bookmarking site

What’s it like to teach on the course? As it’s a new course there’s a lot of preparation involved in coming up with the course content and searching for appropriate material on the internet. I’m also finding that I have to be really well prepared with the tasks I want them to to do in class. I use a Google Doc to jot down ideas for the lesson, but I also have a section on that document for portions of text and links that I need to quickly paste into the text box on our Google+ Community.

I’m also finding I need to be careful not to let them get too stuck behind the Chromebooks, they are great tools to work with, but any screen in front of them is likely to discourage communication between each other. l try to build in activities that don’t really require them to look at the screen - such as discussion questions - or encourage collaborative work by sharing one device between two of them.

It’s been great to see the students taking so quickly to the online tools and experimenting with Google Docs and Hangouts and the contributions they’ve made to the website have been really well researched and interesting.

And how have the students responded to the course? Well, I’ve yet to get any substantial feedback from them so far as we’re only four weeks into it. However, I was hoping to use this blog as a way of getting them to give me some formative feedback on the course and also to give them a chance to practise their blogging skills. Our topic at the moment is blogging and microblogging and their homework task will be to write about the course and also about how students use technology at the university. I’ll publish their blog posts here next week, I hope you’ll be able to read them and ask them some questions.

The ScHARR MOOC Diaries: Part III - What's it like to be a MOOC Student

Image used under a Creative Commons By Attribution Licence  © Claire Beecroft

Time for a bit of reflective practice, four members of ScHARR have just completed the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC. The course was hosted on the MOOC behemoth Coursera and was facilitated by Jeremy Knox, Siân Bayne, Hamish Macleod, Jen Ross and Christine Sinclair, all from the University of Edinburgh.
The MOOC looked at the contrasting ideas of utopian and dystopian futures and how technology impacts on learning and culture and the concept of what it means to be human in the modern world.
The course was run over five weeks and was a mixture of synchronise content in the form of Google Hangouts by the course tutors reflecting on the previous week’s materials. While most of the content was delivered as asynchronous learning with the idea of students self-directing their learning. This was mostly formed around a core collection of videos and text, with supplementary reading for students wanting to delve deeper into a topic.

The course had over 41,000 students enroll, although evidence seemed to show that about 20% were active participants; active being that they had communicated using one of the various social platforms associated with the course. The majority had some form of higher education background and were based in the U.S or Western Europe. Communication by the course hosts and students was predominantly via Social Media, in particular Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. More formal communication by course leaders and students occurred within the Coursera discussion forums for the EDC MOOC.
After five weeks, students were expected to submit a digital artefact that captured an idea or concept from the course materials. The artefact could be anything from text to video, from images to audio, including such as YouTube and Prezi as dominant mediums of delivery. Each submission was peer-reviewed by three students, although each student had the option to review more than three artefacts. Each ScHARR participant marked four submissions; the marking system was as such:
0 = does not achieve this, or achieves it only minimally
1 = achieves this in part
2 = achieves this fully or almost fully

Students who got a mark higher than 1.5 received a distinction.


Claire Beecroft @beakybeecroft

I really enjoyed the MOOC and it appealed to the way I like to learn - it was largely video-based and the workload was as heavy or light as you wanted it to be. I aimed to do all the ‘core’ activities, but didn’t manage much of the optional stuff, such as participating in forums and blogging, though I did use the Twitter hashtag and found this very useful - one evening while scanning the tweets I noticed a just-tweeted  tweet about a programme starting on BBC4 about ‘Google and the World Brain’- I tuned into iPlayer just as the programme started and watch all 1.5 hours of it - it was so interesting and eye-opening and frankly, worrying. I’d have never heard about it without that tweet.

I was a little surprised at the initial reaction of many students who complained about feeling ‘overwhelmed’ by the volume and diversity of content being generated by the MOOC - we knew that 40,000 had registered, so I wasn’t really surprised at all - I was happy to take a random/scatty approach and to stick to key platforms (mainly Google+ and Twitter) that I use regularly and like.

I would have like to have hung-out at the Hangouts, but these were timed just as I usually start the Friday-night scramble to get to nursery and after-school club before they fine me and call social services.
Although I did watch a little of them on the recording, I think watching live and being able to participate (or at least try to) would have been much more fun.

What I liked the most was that the course really emphasised theoretical perspectives around e-Learning - anyone hoping to learn ‘skills’ would have been disappointed, but that’s not what I need - I wanted to be forced to use my tired, lazy brain- and I was! I also felt they did a good job of hinting and guiding us towards the links between the videos/readings and online learning, but never spelt them out - that was our job and the ‘digital artefact’ task was our chance to provide some proof that we’d gotten our heads around the theme of the MOOC. I also liked the very loose format of the assessed work, and for me the peer-marking system worked well and seemed reasonably fair- having 3 markers gave most of us a fair hearing from our peers I think (but then I got a 2, so I would say that...).

There is lots that we can learn from how they ran their MOOC, from their canny approach in ‘curating’ rather than ‘creating’ content (they didn’t give away any of their own materials as such, just signposted us to existing web-based resources authored or produced by others), to their assessment methods. I also think they were actually pretty brave to stick their head above the parapet and take on a properly Massive, Open and Online Course - the incident at Georgia Tech, just days after the MOOC started, shows just how wrong a MOOC can go, and how immediate and public the consequences can be.

I worked mostly in the evenings, and almost entirely on my new iPad (I had a problem with my iPad-produced Prezi so I fell at the final hurdle of doing the MOOC entirely on it, dang!) and although it was hard to fit it all in, I’ve signed up for 2 more Coursera MOOCs and I’ve got my eye on an edX one too - I just wish the OU would hurry up and launch Futurelearn- something to look forward to...
 



Chris Blackmore @chrisblackmore
The size of the cohort was an interesting factor - as a learner, I felt rather anonymous, and unconnected to fellow learners. I made very few postings to the discussion forum, and there was little or no sense of community from the forums, in my experience (there was more of a community from the twitter hashtag #edcmooc). This may have been exacerbated by the fact that I wasn’t able to attend the scheduled Google Hangouts. Notably, a group of us set up and attended our own Hangouts to reflect on the course.
The assessment task was to create a digital artefact, which was a wide brief and gave sufficient leeway to create a submission at the last minute! My submission wasn’t as closely related to course materials as it might be, and that was probably a reflection of insufficient time devoted to watching videos and reading texts - I did find it difficult to put in the requisite amount of time to my studies. This is a reflection of the fact that I was primarily doing the MOOC out of curiosity, to see what doing a MOOC felt like, and that I was fitting it in around work and family life.
The peer assessment seemed to work quite well - my own feedback was interesting and informative, and hopefully the feedback I gave was useful. I did find myself being quite generous in my assessments of peers’ submissions.
It was nice to receive confirmation that I had “passed” the MOOC and would receive some kind of official confirmation of this; on reflection, I am not convinced my low level of participation merited a pass, and I presumably wouldn’t have passed a credit-bearing University module with this level of participation. So there are question marks for me on how to monitor the engagement level of students in a valid way and give appropriate feedback and credit.

Angie Rees @angiefelangie
When I signed up for this MOOC it sounded interesting and really relevant to me but I wasn’t at all sure that I had the time for it. However I decided to sign up and see how things went and now I’m very glad I did.

From the first week I liked the format of the course - and the Coursera software it was run in. The format of four weekly videos plus some core and optional reading wasn’t too demanding and the content on the whole was relevant, interesting and often entertaining.

One area of the course which I didn’t make the most of was the social networking side of things. I posted just a few times to twitter, didn’t blog and wasn’t able to make any of the hangouts. I signed up for the facebook page but didn’t really use it. I think this was mainly due to time constraints but also the fact that the huge array of tools people where using to communicate was a bit bewildering and I often didn’t know where to start or what was the ‘right’ place to be participating online. That said within the University we got our own mini network of MOOC-ers going and our online Friday google hangouts where a very useful way of staying connected with at least some of the other participants on the course and getting some sort of feedback and peer comment etc.

I had a huge disaster with the final assignment - I had chosen to do an animation using the online tool Xtranormal. Unfortunately some changes I made to it in the last hour before the deadline failed to render in time and the whole thing was lost. With 12 minutes to go before hand in I frantically created a Prezi using the dialogue from my animation and uploaded it.
The peer comments I received were broadly positive which I was pleased about - especially considering how last-minute the whole thing was. I was delighted to get a distinction but feel it was not quite merited in my case. But hey, I’m not complaining.

My participation in the MOOC was as much about trying out a MOOC as it was about actually learning something - and I think I got a lot out of it on both counts. I’m certainly interested in doing more MOOCs and would love to be involved in designing and teaching one.
The bottom line: a really good learning experience and I would love to do more. 
 


Andy Tattersall @andy_tattersall
If someone had asked me what to expect from this MOOC in terms of delivery and communication I would have been wide of the mark. I expected there would be an awful lot of communication using Twitter, especially taking into consideration the course material. I certainly didn’t expect that it would be so self driven, and that there would be so many students enrolled. 41,000 is a tremendous number of students, but then again MOOCs are badged as being massive. Even though only a percentage of students were active it still made for a lot of white noise. In amongst all of the Twitter, Google+ and Facebook chatter, there were the discussion forums, which was at times could feel overwhelming if you allowed it to. Add the hundreds of EDC MOOC specific blogs and posts on other blogs it soon became apparent that even the most efficient and time-rich of students would struggle to stay on top of it all.

Nevertheless, conversations did take place and people did respond and retweet some of my communications and thoughts, whilst I found myself Tweeting at fellow students in the live Google Hangouts - these were moments that broke down the non-stop stream of edc consciousness into useful chunks. These moments brought the whole course back to the human/student perspective as we shared ideas and resources. The blog posts were very useful in that some captured the week’s material and ideas in one succinct piece of writing, the only downside is that you were open to ‘Chinese Whispers’ and could misunderstand what was being delivered on the real EDC platform.

The Google Hangouts were very useful as the five course tutors reflected on the previous week in a very informal and friendly manner. It gave a useful dimension to the course in that you got to see and communicate with the course tutors. It lead the four of us in ScHARR - alongside another colleague in Law, Ian Loasby -  to host our own Google Hangouts to chat about the course, and MOOCs in general.

The assessment was interesting, and I really enjoyed creating my digital artefact as it gave me the opportunity to try a new piece of animation software out. I was able to put in experiences and knowledge of my own alongside what I had learned from the MOOC. The artefact took longer than I would have liked, and it was soon evident some students had put greatly varying amounts of time to make their artefact, which again reflects the nature of the course. Unlike a paid for traditional course, there was no obligation to create a large piece of work or any kind of work for that matter, with some creating outstanding artefacts and others not so. The peer review process was interesting and the guidelines to the review process fairly easy to follow, so those who had never assessed academic work were aided somewhat. I was impressed not by what my reviewers had said of my work (although it was mostly very positive) but the standard of the reviewing, I felt like I was being assessed by university teachers.

I found the whole experience a bit of an eye-opener, not just for how the course was run, but how many people participated and how they communicated. From the work I assessed to how I was assessed and how many fellow students I communicated with, I got a real feeling I was studying alongside mostly fellow university staff and students. It left me thinking of the potential of MOOCs as I feel they have yet to breakout beyond the academic firewall, and go far beyond the West geographically. It also had me contemplating the downside of MOOCs, in that the bigger they are, the more potential for noise and a feeling of being overwhelmed. It left me with more questions than answers, but also a feeling of excitement as something great is going to happen. Each MOOC will be different from the next one, to how it is run to how students engage with each other. The range of tools and abilities do not make for a level playing field, but it does allow students to contribute what they like, and that the more you put in the more you should get out, even so you don’t have to feel obliged to put a lot in to get something out - this is no bad thing right now.