Getting Stuff Done with Google Scripts

A while back Jo Gilham wrote a blog post about using Google App Scripts to automate certain process related to the university VLE. App scripts are little bits of code that are inserted into an app such as Google Docs, Spreadsheets or Forms that will trigger certain events: for example, it will send a templated email/document when certain conditions are fulfilled such as someone completing a form. I remember reading it and thinking I would love to try this but I’ve always been put off by anything that looks remotely like programming code.

But recently I really needed to automate certain repetitive admin tasks and so decided to take a look at them again and with the help of this fantastic website and this community on Google+ I felt a bit more confident that a newbie such as myself could still manage to install and use these scripts successfully.

To clarify exactly what an app script is and how you get it to function, let me take you through a concrete example from an aspect of my work:

We run a writing advisory service at the English Language Teaching Centre for distance learning students. Students can submit an extract of their writing on a templated Google Doc and a tutor then comments on it. However, the admin procedures are a bit longwinded for me and the students. They first have to make an appointment on a calendar, I need to then create a personalised template form to share with them via Google Docs. They then need to add text to the document, I check that they have added text and then re-share the document with the tutor who is going to comment on it. This can be very time-consuming if this is happening multiple times in a week.

So, I decided to use app scripts to automate some of these processes. First I wanted to find a way for students to register for the writing advisory service using a Google Form that would automatically send out a personalised email to them explaining the procedure for submitting to it. To do this I created a Form with basic registration details to fill in (name, email address etc). I then went to the Scripts Gallery on the form spreadsheet (under Tools), found a script called FormMule and installed it. This adds an extra toolbar item and it takes you through the set up procedure. 

The drop down menu for FormMule taking you through the set up

It also creates an extra spreadsheet where you can set up your personalised email template and gives you the variables you can insert into your email to fill with information that comes from the form the students filled in. 

Once this was done, any student who filled out the form was immediately sent a personalised email directing them to a website where they could submit an essay to the writing advisory service.

For the next stage I wanted students to fill out a second form when they wanted to submit a piece of writing and for them to receive a personalised Google Doc they could add their text to. Luckily there's a script called Autocrat that can do exactly this.

So I set up a Form and then installed the Autocrat script from the gallery. Again, this adds a toolbar item and you can use that to go through the set up procedure. It's a little daunting at first to understand what's going on but the set up does hold your hand through it nicely. Basically you create a Google Doc template and add fields that will be populated from information entered on the form e.g. dear <<student name >>, you requested information about <<interest one >>.

You then get various options for what kind of document you want sent (pdf or Google doc) and whether it will be editable or not. You can then use the information on the form to personalise which email address the document is sent to and whether the document will be sent automatically or not when someone completes the form.

The settings page for Autocrat where you can set up the file type, email recipient

This works fantastically well. I was doubtful that I had done the set up procedure correctly but a few test runs showed that it was working perfectly. This now means that several steps that before I had to do manually are now taken care of automatically.

I'm now looking at other aspects of my work where I could use scripts to help automate procedures and I think there are many contexts where they could be useful. Here are a few options you might want to consider yourself:

• Using scripts to create, send and organise Google Docs to your students. This might be useful if you have regular project/essay documents to send out to students and want to automate it. There is a script called Doctopus that can do that for you, and this video will give you a walkthrough of how to use it. 
• Create grading rubrics for work students do on a Google Doc. You can do this using a Chrome extension for the Doctopus script mentioned above called Goobric. Here is a video by Jay Atwood giving an excellent concrete example of how this might work. 
• Creating end of class or lecture quizzes using a script called Flubaroo and have the results emailed immediately to the students. 

I am really excited by the possibility of using these scripts to help relieve the tedium of a lot of admin tasks I need to do and to free up my time to focus on the content of my work. And you really don’t need to have any technical programming knowledge to be able to use these scripts effectively if you follow the guides and watch the You Tube videos that walk you through the procedure. It does take a bit of time but I’m finding that it’s definitely worth it. I'd be interested to hear how teachers are using scripts in their work or from anyone who is thinking about using scripts in the future. 

ScHARR MOOC Diaries - Part XI: The faces behind the ScHARR MOOCs

The Faces behind the ScHARR MOOCs

Prior to beginning work on the ScHARR MOOCS, we assembled a dynamic team of experts from within the School of Health and Related Research. We thought it was about time we revealed a little more information about the them, so here's an informal glimpse into the psyches of the key players.

Name: Nick Baxter
Role: Marketing Officer for ScHARR
Background: Journalism, social media, communications and marketing
What excites you about MOOCs: The idea of people from all over the world using technology to participate in the same experience in real time is really exciting. Another amazing demonstration of the power of the internet.
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: A greater understanding of how this type of free online course can be marketed, and how our learners from all over the world consume information relating to them.

Name: Claire Beecroft
Role: Course tutor on the HTA MOOC and Deputy Course Director of the MSc in Health Technology Assessment, Pricing and Reimbursement.
Background: I started out in health libraries and that lead to becoming a ScHARR Information Specialist, and eventually into teaching. I teach on online learning courses in ScHARR and am interested in health economic decision making and the media representation of it.
What excites you about MOOCs: The chance to teach to a very wide audience, to widen awareness of health technology assessment and its methods, and to reach hundreds or even thousands of students!
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: To learn about healthcare systems internationally from those that work in them and/or are users of them, and to 'meet' our students online via forums/twitter/hangouts.



Name: Chris Blackmore
Role: Distance Learning lead for ScHARR
Background: I am a researcher in mental health with a special interest in research around e-learning
What excites you about MOOCs: The potential diversity of participants, and the opportunity to engage with people who might otherwise never have the chance to study at the University of Sheffield
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: A glimpse at where education may (or may not) be headed in the future



Name: Dr. Chris Carroll
Role: Senior Lecturer in Health Technology Assessment (HTA)
Background: Conducting HTA for NICE; methods research for HTA
What excites you about MOOCs: We all encounter health technologies (drugs, devices, diagnostic tests) in our lives. A MOOC offers almost anyone anywhere the chance to access some of our course materials for free, and begin to understand how and why health technology assessment is performed
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: To give those with an interest in the topic of health technology assessment a good overview of the whole HTA process; to explain how we get from industry developing technologies to healthcare services and providers deciding whether or not to pay for them; awareness raising; a first step in the creation of an informed audience for health care decision-making



Name: Dr. Angie Clonan
Role: Research fellow in ScHARR; Course leader for Sustainable diets MOOC
Background: Public health nutrition research
What excites you about MOOCs: Engaging with a global audience made up of people from all walks of life....
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: Participation, debate, shared learning and lots of fun along the way!



Name: Dr. Michelle Holdsworth
Role: Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Course Tutor for Sustainable diets MOOC. I am also ScHARR's Director of Learning and Teaching.
Background: I have over 25 years experience in public health nutrition, including developing nutrition policy, lecturing and researching public health nutrition. My research is mainly focussed around the global obesity pandemic, and I have been working on the nutrition transition in low and middle-income countries for a number of years.
What excites you about MOOCs: allowing students from all over the world to have a taste of ScHARR's courses
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: I am looking forward to an enriching experience, learning from the different cultural perspectives of students enrolled on the course- and how this influences the debate on sustainable eating patterns.



Name: Luke Miller
Role: Learning Technologist
Background: Supporting the adoption of technology enhanced learning with a school and with the creation and delivery of a suite of new Distance Learning programmes. These MOOCs share similarities with the kind of work I've been involved in previous but have a slightly different flavour in that they are open and not formally assessed.
What excites you about MOOCs: The idea that you can sign up at the press of a button for free and begin learning with no barriers. The idea that online tutors can reach almost an unlimited number of willing students. The fact that MOOCs can potentially provide educational benefits to those who may otherwise for various reasons struggle to participate in something similar.
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: One thing I'm really keen to do from a technical stance, is assess the platform we've chosen (coursesites.com). This is an open platform with which our institution's workforce is already familiar. It includes lots of rich tools to support collaboration and learning. I'm hoping that my suspicion that the chosen platform is well suited to providing a rewarding cMOOC experience is proved to be true. I'm also keen to engage with people from all over the globe and to hear about the stories and experiences shared on these new learning journeys.




Name: Dr Katie Powell
Role: University Teacher in Public Health
Background: Sociology Masters and Research into social initiatives to improve health.
What excites you about MOOCs: The opportunity to start a conversation about health inequalities with so many people from across the world
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: Meeting some people with an interest in this topic and hopefully, some interesting ideas about understanding and addressing health inequalities. I'm really looking forward to trailing our online teaching activities in an open access forum



Name: Dan Smith
Role: Learning Technologist
Background: Long-term keyboard jockey and general compu-bod that's spent far too much time working with virtual learning environments.
What excites you about MOOCs: the possibilities... they're still not particularly defined at the moment, and the idea of having an open platform that thousands can get to freely seems like one that offers a lot of potential. The platforms we use for running most of our online courses at them moment are very locked down - with good reason, but this makes them very constraining for many things, such as cross-institution work, peer networking or post-graduation revisiting. Could we use an open course as a pre-registration induction resource for students? Maybe the jumpoint for a personal learning network? Hopefully running one will help give a realistic insight into what is possible.
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: It's a new way of running an online course for me, and will be a brand new experience. I'm hoping to learn a lot! Maybe it will become a new regular part of the university experience, maybe we can discover new options and limitations available through using an online platform.



Name: Andy Tattersall
Role: Information Specialist
Background: A mixture of journalism and informatics which means I'm naturally nosey, inquisitive and like to test the water in whatever I do, teaching, research or supporting my colleagues. My role is primarily to watch the skies for new and exciting opportunities to engage with technology and get my colleagues to embrace the Web whilst keeping an eye on pedagogy.
What excites you about MOOCs: Several things, but in a nutshell their potentially altruistic value, technological experimentation, the feeling we are on a journey into the unknown and that this could be part of a brave new world in education. I think education should be fun (where possible) and engaging, MOOCs have that potential.
What are you hoping to get out of running a MOOC: This is one large learning curve for everyone involved and that in itself is value. I think it's always important to test yourself and evolve where possible, I'm lucky enough to be involved in this project with such a great bunch of like-minded people.

Mobile devices and language learning: the students' perspective

In a previous post, the students taking part in my Learning English with Technology course gave an international perspective on how technology is used in their home universities. Over the last few weeks, we've been looking at how mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets could be used in education and particularly for English language learning. We talked about various ways that they could use these devices for improving their English and they went away for a week and tried some of them out. To summarise their experiences, each of them wrote a short blog post detailing what they did. I thought you might be interested to read their reports:

Ales (the Czech Republic)

My first encounter with "learning" English using technology occured, when I was young and I have accidentaly switched my father´s mobile phones language into English while playing with it, and because we both didn´t speak English that time, he had to reset the device to the factory settings, which has restored the default language (it was one of the first Nokia device).

Now I have new Nexus smartphone and I use it for learning English very intensively. I have set English as a default language (this time not by accident J), and I use all apps in English as well, which is good for everyday practise. I have internet access on my phone, so can I read news and everything else which interests me on the internet, and it is actually the very first thing that I do when I wake up in the morning – I read the news and check Facebook, and also the last thing before I fall to asleep. I like reading and I read a lot, so I have used an Kindle app in my phone for reading E-books, but I have recently bought an genuine Kindle device and now I use this instead of mobile phone, because it is more comfortable and its battery also last significantly longer then the battery in the phone.

But I also use apps with learning purpose only, the one that I use most is Czech-English dictionary – because of the large display with Swype keyboard, searching for words is convenient and quick, and I can use it for example during lectures for finding words which I don´t understand and still keep up with lecture topic, which would be almost impossible with classic dictionary.

Another very useful app is Google Translate, which enable the user to translate whole sentences or take a picture of some text using phone´s camera and then translate it, and it is working very good – of course, it can´t translate the sentence 100 % correctly, but for getting a basic idea what is going on about, when I´m competely stuck, is more than enough. Another good feature of it is that it can pronounce the sentences or words, with slightly "robotic" accent (which is more noticeable when it speaks Czech), but again, for basic idea it is good.

Instead of dictionaries, I use for example Flashcards for practise vocabulary and some other apps for grammar or general English practise (namely Test Your English, iPractise and some others). Also, I find very useful that the music player in my phone show lyrics while listening to music, which is good for listening and English understaning training (good thing is that the lyrics doesn´t have to be embedded in the song, it can find the lyrics on the internet when its missing).

So my mobile phone has become almost irreplaceable device for me, and I´m going to continue using all apps and features mentioned in this post after my return home.

Anne (Germany)

Using a smartphone for studying English seems to me a handy way of improving language skills. I tried this week to listen to podcasts via the “Beyond.Pod” App and also I used my memo feature on the phone to remember a new word a day. Before this homework, I only used the dict.cc and leo.org-dictionary-apps in order to look up words, but never actually saw the smartphone as a means of enabling me to succeed in my second language.

I listened to “Shakespeare’s Restless World”, a series by the BBC and “BBC World News”. The podcasts were a great way to increase my listening skills, as their level of language were appropriate for a fairly advanced student. Especially the news increased my cultural knowledge as well as my language skills. Also, I could pick up unfamiliar words and immediately after listening to the podcast on the topic of my choice I could type the vocabulary into my phone and check them whenever I had time.

In general, I find smartphones motivating to pick up more reading and listening in a foreign language, but not so much writing and speaking, unless to stay in touch with friends from another country, which is not automatically related to language improvement. I found amazing that there are even fun-apps like hangman, which can just be played on the bus or whenever there is a little time.

Denitsa (Bulgaria)

Few days ago it came to my mind that this is actually not the first time I am using my phone to learn English. I have never set up my phone in other language than English, except for a while in French.

My very first mobile phone, one of those lovely old-fashioned monochrome display Nokia, did not have a menu in my native language therefore I had no other choice than to get used to its menu in English. It`s been many years from now so I cannot remember if I got some major troubles with the menu. However, I reckon I was quite curious and I loved changing the settings and then by seeing the result, I learnt what meant the option I had just clicked on.

For this homework I tried two m-learning English features. Firstly, I set up a BBC news application, BBC Iplayer as well as another two handy applications- QuickDict and Spelling Bee. More or less what I have done is that I have listened to various radio shows and I have read articles and the News online. Meanwhile when I spotted an unknown word I checked it in QuickDict- a quintessential application which gives you access to Macmillan Online and Oxford Online dictionaries. Moreover, during this experimental period I have been watching intensely BBC TV online on my phone in addition to listening to the radio. This helped me improve my listening skills for a very short time and also made me feel more comfortable while listening. Furthermore, I used Quizlet in order to create flashcards to memorise the new words.

As I have been travelling a lot over the last 5 days I realized how handy it is to have a smartphone with you all the time. This was the perfect opportunity to try learning English using my smartphone. I am not sure whether or not I will be able to spend that much time in future to learn English using my smartphone. However, I feel like going on and I will continue using my phone as a tool to improve my English.

Missy (Japan)

I rarely use my mobile devices to improve my English skills since I mostly use my mobile devices for messaging, using social networks and to play on game apps in my mother tongue. However, I do have some apps which are somewhat related to improving my English skills.

First one is the BBC News app. I find this app useful since it keeps me updated with the latest news as well as making me read English articles in different topics. I think one of my weakest aspects of my English is the reading skills therefore I try to improve it by checking this app when I have time.

Second one is the dictionary app. It is helpful when I quickly want to look up the meaning of a word. However, I find dictionary apps not useful enough since they usually do not give me the full definition to understand the word correctly. I always end up looking up the word again in an online dictionary or a paper dictionary to check what it means so it is only helpful when I need to check the definition of a word in a desperate situation.

Last apps are the game apps in English. For example, I have an anagram app which I sometimes use during my free time. However I get bored quite easily when I cannot figure out the right answers so I do not think it is helping me much.

As I have mentioned above, I do not use my mobile device for proper study purposes. I find mobile devices more like toys to use in my free time rather than devices to support my English language studies. I think my stance on using mobile devices for English acquisition purposes would not really change in the future since they did not help me much for me to improve my English skills in the past. However I do believe that there would be more chances for apps and features on mobile devices to be enhanced and to be supporting more English learners in the future.

Audrey (France)

Before this week's assignment, I already used my smart phone as a way to improve my language skills: I made a point to set my phone in english in order to get used to the language, and i also have a couple of applications such as "Ihandy translator" or "Ivoc audio" which come in very handy when trying to translate words or sentences. Also, since coming to Sheffield, I have exchanged text messages with British people, which has helped me in learning new useful vocabulary. However, this week, i decided to try and use my phone's mcrophone and record myself while reading difficult words, in order to understand my mistakes and try to modify my pronunciation. I also used the app "Flashcards +" and created small flashcards with new vocabulary and grammatical points. I was pleasantly suprised to see how helpful it was, and will definetely use it again in the future. This week's tasks made me focus more on my language learning, and the new apps that I downloaded have really helped me on this path. Mobile devices are a great way to study while still having fun, and I think that It's something education should focus on more in the near future.

Jesus (Spain)

My mobile phones have been helping me during most of the years I have been studying English. I remember the last one I had, had a dictionary app and it was so much useful. It was a very good dictionary, although not very manageable.

I guess I could also include here my Ipod Touch. This mobile I had (Samsung Onix) didn’t even have the Android system so I couldn’t download apps. My Ipod Touch made up for not having an advanced mobile phone. I used to have two dictionaries, one was a Spanish – English one and the other one was English – German. They were very useful because every time I found a word I didn’t know the meaning of I could look for it everywhere and anytime.

This week I wanted to try using my phone camera to take pictures of interesting words or articles/texts that I could find. I didn’t quite like it. In the end it was taking up memory from my mobile phone and I rarely checked later on the Internet. It is a very annoying task for me. I guess I can use for the same purpose the memo/note-taking app without taking up that much memory. Besides, I think it’s easier because you use interesting expressions every time you want to just checking your phone.

Another thing I have tried has been listening to the radio app. This is clearly, one of my favourites. Always having native speakers talking to me by my earphones helps me a lot to keep focused and my English goes more fluent. Moreover, once I leave Sheffield, using TuneIn Radio App or similar, it will make me keep practicing my listening skills and not forgetting the accent. And I can always learn new daily words or expressions even without being in England!

Ai (Japan)

I don't use smart phone and I've never used English learning website through the mobile phone so I can’t say how useful it is. The one I’m using doesn’t have a big screen and doesn't suit to use for language learning so I always use my laptop for English learning.

Now I’m thinking buying a new smart phone. After getting it, when I find it is useful to language learning, I think I’ll use it. I can learn English outside as well!

Blanca (Spain)

"As the device I currently own is far from being a smartphone, I will write about the things I used to do with my former one (a BlackBerry 9300). Then again, most things might not seem very clever compared to all the possibilities that any owner of a smartphone, specially Androids and iPhones, have.

In my case, I am constantly trying to write things in the languages I am learning. So, for example, if I feel inspired while waiting for the bus and something creative comes to my mind, I would try and write it in English or German instead of Spanish (my mother-tongue). That makes me remember a certain word more easily. Precisely because of that, the feature that I found most useful was having a dictionary. Then again, that is my way of learning.

For some people it might be very useful to have interactive apps to learn languages, but in my case, I am not very fond of learning with games.

So, for me the main tool was the browser. I used it to read articles in online papers, I would have two tabs open, one for the article and one for an online dictionary to look words up (I might have Facebook open as well, not going to lie).

Podcasts can be very useful as well. There are all kinds of podcasts around, about politics, philosophy, some monologues by comedians or even audio-books. You can download them, put them on your phone and open the notepad on your phone while listening to it to take some notes of interesting vocabulary. My English friends have recommended I listened to Karl Pilkington podcasts. I have done so and they were right, he’s hilarious and his English accent is very challenging to practice your listening skills!"

Michelle (Holland)

The last week the homework was to take two ideas how to use your mobile device to improve your English. There is a large range of options to choose from, for example record native speakers, make your own flashcards or take notes from difficult words or phrases. I choose the following two options:

- Taking notes from difficult words or phrases

- Taking pictures from difficult words or phrases

The first option fit perfectly into my everyday life, because I talk daily with English native speakers and often words crop up that I don’t know the meaning of.

The main positive thing about this option is that you will learn words that are really used in the everyday language of native speakers and you will learn a much broader range of words covering an infinite variety of subject matter. It would be different if you would read a text about one specific topic and you will only learn new words about this topic.

The main issue that arises is that I have to interrupt the native speaker to take notes from the words I don’t know, and often ask the native speakers to repeat, spell and explain the words. It is not very conducive to a fluent conversation. But I still think I would continue asking and interrupting native speakers because the native speaker I talk most to, says she doesn’t mind when I’m interrupting her and that I should. This stimulates me to ask if I don’t know any words or phrases and stimulates me to continue using my mobile device to take notes or words I don’t know.

Everywhere you look, you will see written English language. So everywhere are opportunities to improve my English. For the second option I took pictures of difficult words or phrases. Most of the time I took pictures of flyers. The good thing about it is that I always carry my phone with my. Furthermore I don’t have always to time at the moment to look up the definition and it just takes me a few seconds to take a picture of the word or phrase so I can look the definition up later. I think I would remind to word better if I look up the word or phrase right away and then maybe write it down (somewhat like option 1). Another issue that may arise is that I sometimes forget that I took a picture and forget to look up the definition later. I still think I would continue taking pictures of difficult words because I like to improve my English by looking at language that is used in daily life.

Michal (The Czech Republic)

The world is becoming more and more modern, more globalized, more linked. When I got my first mobile I could not imagine how immense technological change will occur in the next 13 years. I never could imagine that I will be able to use the phone for study purposes. Now, I really can. Dreams came true. I can use the phone for reading presentations, articles and other important files. I can share and discuss my essays with friends even with tutors. It is very useful because you I get a feedback immediately, hence I can incorporate comments into essays. Through the phone is also possible to be aware about current events not only at the university. It doesn’t matter where you are at the moment, you can see your exam results online, you can sign up for your exam wherever you are. It is also possible to do funny things that atd the first glance look unrelated with study – listen BBC, watch films…but it is important to note that these activities are a great source of information. In my opinion, mobile phones, rather smart phones today, are very useful for study purposes. Honestly, who could imagine the study without using your mobile phone?

 

The ScHARR MOOCS Diaries: Part X - The cost of developing a MOOC

The cost of developing a MOOC

So by now, we have got the idea that MOOCs are (usually) free for students. But what about the costs of developing them? How much does it cost to create a MOOC? And what benefits (financial and otherwise) do they bring to ScHARR?

By Isabelle Grosjean ZA (Self-published work by ZA)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
/File%3AMontreGousset001.jpg

The most obvious cost to ScHARR is the amount of staff time that is being devoted to the MOOCs. But what counts as MOOC development time? Some things are obvious- time spent in planning meetings, time spent scripting, setting up and recording audio and video resources for the MOOCs. Other activities are more debatable- if I spend a bus journey to work looking for MOOC-related tweets, and retweeting interesting ones, should this be included in calculations? What about time spent by staff actually studying on other MOOCs? Time spent chatting about MOOCs with University colleagues here in Sheffield? Time spent writing “ScHARR MOOC Diary” blog postings...?

We asked staff members to decide what activities should and should not be included, accepting that the final figures may end up being approximations rather than accurate measurements of time. We then needed a simple process for recording these hours. Rather than recording time on separate activities, we invited staff to keep a note, on a weekly basis, of time spent on “any activity which contributes directly to the development of our 3 MOOCs”. In addition, we made the decision not to keep the 3 MOOCs separate, because so much of the development work has involved all 3 courses, or has been done as one larger group of staff. To make this an open and collaborative process, we set up a google form, with data shared amongst all the MOOC staff- hopefully no-one has felt threatened by sharing details of their input in this way. When it became apparent that it was difficult for all staff to keep the google form up to date, we decided that at our fortnightly MOOC meetings, an iPad would be passed around at the start so people could update their figures then if needed.

Interim figures are shown below- names have been anonymised, although you can see, bottom left, a highlighted table with the contributions thus far of different staff groups. Whilst we would currently treat these figures with some caution (and after this blog is published, I imagine there might be some retrospective updating of the numbers!), the data so far collected suggests that it is the two members of staff leading the forthcoming MOOCs (“Healthy sustainable diets” and “Health Inequalities”) who have put in the most work so far (around 30% each of total number of hours recorded).

Logging the hours

In due course, we will be able to put some figures against the recorded hours, based on staff salaries, and to arrive at an overall figure for developing and running our 3 MOOCs. How closely this corresponds with other estimates remains to be seen. The University of Edinburgh’s MOOCs, run in early 2013 via Coursera, cost an estimated £30,000 from development to delivery whilst  the University of Pennsylvania’s MOOC courses (also developed on behalf of Coursera) cost $50,000 each to develop.

There is plenty of ongoing discussion about the costs and benefits of running MOOCs, and much speculation about different models for monetization. At ScHARR, we will only be able to make an informed comment on these issues once the first courses are complete, and we’ve had a chance to estimate how many MOOC participants converted to postgraduate study at ScHARR, and what value the other benefits- such as the networking opportunities for ScHARR and the impact on our reputation- might have. Nevertheless, we are quietly confident that the investment we are now making will bear financial and educational dividends, for students, staff and ScHARR.

Sign up for the ScHARR MOOCs here.

By Chris Blackmore

ScHARR MOOC Diaries: Part IX: Pressing On - Using press packs to spread the MOOC message

A few months into developing and supporting the ScHARR MOOCs, it has become obvious that the task of promoting MOOCs is an onerous one. We had set out early to build a list of who we should be promoting our courses to on a local, national and international level. Even though we have years of experience and expertise in promoting our courses to our traditional and distance learners, MOOCs are very different in that the entrance level from that of a taught or research masters is lower. MOOCs act as tasters for a topic and a course or be ‘lite’ versions designed especially for those who just want to dip in and out of education and development. So the market for promoting them is, well, massive; anyone from school-age to a pensioner can take our MOOCs and that’s where the marketing focus shifts.

The ScHARR MOOC team have their own personal contact groups and resources they can promote the course, but unlike our established courses there is a need to get the message further afield and with that it means more work, repetition and refinement of where that message is channelled. This is where the press pack comes in handy as with promoting a MOOC there is the need for refinement and repetition which amongst all of the content building, support and meetings means that promoting the courses can be neglected. A press pack allows us to share the course in a quick and simple way by covering the basics of the courses in a way that it can be shared by others without any explicit knowledge.

The pack contains these items:

• Word and PDF one page releases for each of the three courses - their objectives, learning, outcomes, about ScHARR and what a MOOC is, as the purpose of these courses is to reach as far beyond the academic firewalls as possible.
• Colour posters promoting the three courses, one generic and another focused towards the NHS.
• The ScHARR MOOC Business Card
• QR Codes for each course - as with the press releases allowing others to sharealike and help promote the courses within their own organisation.
• A one page ‘copy and paste’ document for adding into message bodies of emails and other communications, with the intention of saving time in writing a welcome for each mailout.

The automation process is not devoid of a human aspect as the majority of communications via Social Media, discussion forums and emails will still remain bespoke communications. Nevertheless it became obvious for our team early on that promoting the MOOCs to larger, sometimes unfamiliar communities required something more than piecemeal communications that had the potential to lack in uniformity and cohesion. The press packs are not exclusively directed at the students, but also those who champion learning in organisations, communication officers, librarians and teachers to name but a few.

By putting in the work now we potentially save time further down the line and have a consistent flow that matches content on our website and the CourseSites platform.

The press packs can be accessed and downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5_ESlzUVzmLdllQXzdjLVJCcFE&usp=sharing

The ScHARR MOOC Diaries - Part VIII: Developing a template for structuring weekly MOOC content

'Where MOOCs and online dating sites collide' by Luke Miller

Last week, members of the ScHARR MOOCs team met to decide on how we could best deliver the content for each of our MOOCs. If you have been fortunate enough to participate in a MOOC already, then the chances are you will be aware of the many differing modes of delivery available (see Jenny’s post for more information on xMOOCs vs cMOOCs).

Traditional formats appear commonplace in the current MOOC offering, for example, having delivered content, the course leader will sit behind a desk and discuss some of the concepts and debates raised by MOOC participants that week. Indeed there are approaches which are even more ‘hands-off ‘ than this!

The MOOC mob all agreed that we wanted to be innovative and offer something that would differ from this traditional approach. We wanted to foster a greater degree of interactivity and engagement. The challenge here of course is that like everyone else we don’t have an unlimited resource of tutor time to plough into it.

Recent discourses in online learning have offered a replacement to the concept of the ‘sage on the stage’, and the notion of a ‘guide on the side’ has emerged as one alternative for the role of the tutor in online distance learning.  Again, this notion didn’t quite capture our vision for the dynamic we were hoping to foster with our MOOC participants. We spent some time playing with words which encapsulated our fresh approach to MOOC hosting, and we have arrived at the following mission statement: 'the architects who project, collect, dissect and connect’

To expand on this:

• project (broadcasting / presenting content to stimulate the discussion),
• collect (collating resources, responses and discourse)
• dissect (unpick the discourse and identify the key issues of importance to the subject and our participants)
• connect (we are all about connections - building and fostering links with and between participants and areas of interest to further the subject understanding)

The notion of subject expertise is, for many, becoming less widely held. Certainly, having completed four years of research into a particular field, culminating in a thesis , one is likely to have a greater understanding and knowledge of their specific subject than the average person. However in this age of ‘information overload’ it never fails to amaze me just how informed and engaged the ‘average’ person is on food issues – even if sometimes the information obtained is not so accurate. Combine this with the global context of student populations (we have participants enrolling on our MOOC from all corners of the globe), and the often specific cultural focus of academic research and it soon becomes apparent that as course leaders there is the opportunity for vital information exchange. For a subject area like healthy and sustainable diets, this provides a learning experience  for us as course tutors, but also between our MOOC participants, and could enable new links to be forged, providing a platform to connect interested parties for future research projects.Therefore arguably the research field is developed as our global understanding of how scenarios impact on different communities in different ways is built upon through participant discourse.

So back to our meeting. The big question of how we were going to deliver our content loomed and we talked about the different options, the tools at our disposal and the pedagogical benefits or different avenues. We settled upon a template which we could apply to each MOOC’s weekly content. Having such a template would hopefully mean the students would quickly become orientated with the structure and how to study each week. It also meant that staff working on developing the MOOCs had a ready made mould into which they could poor materials and so on. Being the first MOOC offered by the university, we wanted to keep the outline format as simple as possible, and not commit ourselves to anything we wouldn’t be confident in delivering, or which may overburden our participants. We finally settled on a weekly template, shown below:

Our Weekly template:

We will be presenting weekly content in the following format.

1. First of all the week’s intended learning outcomes will be shared with the participants just to formalise what we’re hoping the achieve during the week.

2. We will then provide a short video (approximately 2 minutes) which will take the form of a talking head from one or more of the MOOC leaders. The video will introduce the key course content for each week, and highlight any other significant tasks or exercises so the participants will know exactly the scope of their week’s learning and what is being expected from them.

3. We will then provide a series of pages of content which will be varied and may include one or more of following:

• Pages of guided reading (either onscreen or by pointing to openly available articles and reports online)
• Screencasts or videos (pointing to resources such as youtube, vimeo, echo360 and screencast-o-matic)
• Weblinks to interesting and relevant website or policy documents etc.
• Opinions from multiple academic staff or subject experts
• Self-assessment questionnaires to check as participants progress through the week that they are understanding.
• Formative “reveal box” activities whereby participants are asked a question and invited to type an answer before being provided with a ‘model’ answer with which they can compare to their own response.
• Images, diagrams and tables of information

4. We will provide weekly topic areas giving participants the opportunity to post reflective blog entries. These will be shared with the cohort. Participants will be encouraged to engage in the ‘community spirit’ by reading and responding to each other’s reflections.

5. A synchronous “live” Blackboard Collaborate session will be scheduled at the end of each week in which the MOOC tutors will present consolidatory slides on the week’s learning, discuss the blog topic area and pull out interesting posts and comments. These sessions will participatory (we will use the chat window for comments during the session) and will also seek to answer any questions that the MOOC team have received during the week and also give a preview of what will be covered in the following week.

6. In addition to the Collaborate session, we will be opening a weekly discussion forum where conversations can be continued outside of the live session. Due to the potential volume of posts in these forums, we will be offering a ‘loose’ moderation style, ie the MOOC team will monitor posts for appropriateness however will not guarantee that tutors will respond to threads.

Alongside all of the above, we will be encouraging participants to engage with the MOOC tutors in tweeting using the hashtags we are associating with the MOOCs. For the diets MOOC we will be using #dietsmooc. The MOOC welcome pages will contain an embedded twitter feed filtering in all tweets which use this hashtag. Participants are welcome to start tweeting amongst themselves prior to the course commencing, and indeed to respond to Tweets posted by course leaders.

All in all this is an exciting prospect for us as course leaders, but also for all our participants who have enrolled on one of the ScHARR MOOCS. The prospect of being part of such an exciting project which combines learning, participation and research all in one is waiting to be embraced, and we encourage everybody to get on board!

Angie and Luke

6 Week Media: What have we learned?

Back in February, Pete blogged about the launch of the 6 Week Media Course, which was devised and led by the Creative Media Team in CiCS, and Charlotte Watts, who is student intern working at the Information Commons.

The course was a new experience for us all; we had a good idea of what (we thought) the content should be, but in terms of administering, delivering and managing a programme like this we were starting from scratch. It's fair to say the administrative tasks of the course took longer than expected, but this is a learning technology blog so I'm not going to bore you with the minutiae of attendance monitoring.

One of the ideas we had was to create a dual purpose Google Site, which would be used extensively during the course. Our plan was to create a repository of information about the course, so timetables, additional resources and session recordings would be hosted here. We used tinyurl.com/6weekmedia to make the site easily memorable and accessible during sessions.

However, we also wanted students to contribute to the site. Students would use the Google Site to blog (using the 'Announcements' page template) about their experiences on the course, and also embed their completed media artefacts. In the first introductory session, students were split into pairs, and assigned a University of Sheffield building to research. Throughout the 6 weeks, students would research and produce media about their assigned buildings.  Students had free reign to tackle any topic they were interested in; subjects included the perceived lack of social space in Jessop West, to uncovering the story behind the Paternoster lift in the Arts Tower.


The introductory session also allowed students to create their own YouTube & Soundcloud accounts. We chose YouTube for video hosting because all University of Sheffield students have a Google Apps account, which makes it very easy to create a channel and start using YouTube. Students and staff who are interested in uploading videos to YouTube can follow the information on this CiCS page. In terms of audio hosting, Soundcloud was used because it's very easy to embed Soundcloud content into a Google Site. Soundcloud has a simple registration procedure (students could sign in with Facebook or Twitter if they wanted too), and it has a 2 hour upload limit - which was plenty for the scope of this course.

There are some gaps in the blog entries on the Google Site, and there are various reasons for that. Unfortunately, some of the students had to drop out of the course. Others had IT issues in the audio editing session, which meant students were not able to successfully edit, upload and embed their finished audio pieces. I am not going to discuss every week here, but you can read Charlotte's evaluation of those specific IT issues, as well as every other session over on the Information Commons blog.




So, what have we learned? Well, there is clearly a demand from students for these type of media production skills. The course was oversubscribed within 4 hours of details being announced, and we had a waiting list. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of students (almost half) were unable to finish the course because they couldn't attend all of the sessions. This highlights the problems when trying to schedule a course that is designed to appeal to all undergraduate students from all faculties; it is nigh on impossible to identify a realistic timetable slot which will suit everyone.


Another factor we had to consider was that the course was part of the Sheffield Graduate Award, and we had to ensure students attended 10 hours of workshops. This would be very easy to manage on a more traditional course, but meant we had to factor in filming / audio recording into our workshop sessions. All of the students managed to do the practical work in the allotted session time, but the course feedback almost unanimously said that students would have preferred more time to do these tasks. This time limitation also means the quality of the finished work isn't as high as we might have hoped for.


One interesting point that came up from our feedback was that students appreciated learning about different aspects of media production, such as copyright regulations and audio editing. I think before the course started, we felt the students would be really keen to learn about video production, but perhaps less enthusiastic about other elements. This was clearly not true, and in fact lots of the students said they would have liked to know about image manipulation and graphic design. This was beyond the scope of this pilot course, but is certainly interesting to consider if this type of course were to be run again.

If we were to run the course again, it would be great to maximise the amount of students we could reach, without dramatically increasing the amount of staff time required. One way of achieving this would be to offer the theoretical elements of the course online, and require the practical work to be done outside of a formal session, in much the same way that a MOOC is structured. This would mean the course wouldn't be able to be part of the Sheffield Graduate Award, as it would be impossible to audit attendance hours.

Additionally, the Google Site would have to be re-evaluated. It may be that for a larger number of participants, another hosting / blog platform may be more suitable. Thinking aloud, the admin time in creating different page level permissions in a single site for a large cohort would be considerable ....

We will let you know what is decided about the future of the course, if you have any experience of running something similar I would love to hear them!

Tom