Google forms update - file uploads & answer suggestions

If you have used Google Forms recently you will notice a couple of new features have arrived.

The first one is the ability for people completing the form to be able to attach a file using the new File Upload option. Simply select this as a question type to allow people completing the form to upload a file.

In the tool you can limit the size of the file uploaded (the highest is 10GB) and limit to particular file types if you want to. The person completing the form will see a prompt to add a file.

To access the collected files, go to Google Drive and you will see a folder created, named “name of form” (file responses). Each file upload question has its own subfolder and inside is the files, which handily collects the name of the person completing the form in the file title. You can then share the folder with anybody that needs access.

The second feature which has arrived is around Google form questions and offering suggestions on the answer. For example if you start a question “What day of the week…” forms will bring up answer suggestions for the days of the week and give you the option to add these in. If you ask a particular question it will try and anticipate which answer type you will need. E.g. If you start a question “On a scale…” it will change the question type to linear scale.

See a couple of examples of this below.

Days of the week prepopulated

Linear scale answer option automatically selected

Sat on fjord, surrounded by Björks...

Harpa Concert Hall, Reykjavik

So I hadn't even been in Iceland for 48 hours, and I was already sat on fjord, surrounded by Björks.

No, I hadn't been snacking on a bad batch of fermented shark, I was at the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, at Björk Digital, an installation of virtual reality videos of songs from Björk's 'Vulnicura' album. These ranged from pleasant 360° video of Icelandic beauty spots, to trippy CGI explosions of colour and surreal imagery, to one disturbing excursion inside Björk's mouth.

The exhibition showed how VR can be used to create an immersive trip inside landscapes, both real and computer generated, and how an experimental and creative mind can utilise this technology effectively to evoke a wide range of emotions. While it showed some of VR's great strengths, it also showed its weaknesses - current headsets can still have a level of slight discomfort (especially for glasses-wearers) that can drag you out of the immersive experience somewhat, and parts of the exhibition that were conventional screen-based HD video showed up that while modern VR is impressive, it has some way to go in resolution. But taking all into account, it was a captivating look at how VR can be used to transport the wearer into beautiful, evocative and even disturbing places.

Although very different of course, it reminded me of how recently the same technology was used by colleagues at Festival of The Mind to show the Virtual Hole In the Road, showing the iconic Sheffield landmark to both nostalgic locals and those who never got chance to see it. VR gives people the power to travel through time, through space, and into the minds of others - which is a particularly fascinating when it's the bonkers minds of artists like Björk.

Horizon Scanning - Enabling more effective STEM Assessment

We receive feedback from certain parts of the university, that despite the fact that the MOLE test engine is extremely powerful and useful for both formative and summative (including formal exams) the question types don't allow for more varied assessment for STEM Courses.

Following some research that we conducted - we found a product called Maple TA. On further examination this software allows for questions to be created that would require the students to answer if some of these formats

• Mathematical Free Response
• Adaptive Questions
• Graph Sketching
  
• Free Body Diagrams
• Gradeable Math Apps
• Numeric response with margin-of-error

At the moment we are looking at its possible uses, and will be contacting several departments to get their opinion as to how useful this software would be. If you would like to be able to do more advanced STEM assessment, and would like to contribute to the analysis of this for the institution, please contact myself (Simon Warwick)

TEL - It's not just MOLE & Turnitin

Although we are responsible for perhaps the most visible of all the digital resources at the University, the VLE, in the TEL team we do like to work with our academic colleagues on a whole variety of projects. 

With the recent launch of the new Learning & Teaching Strategy at Sheffield, it's crucial that we understand how digital learning can help us to realise the aims of the strategy. To help share some of our work in this area, we have made a video that highlights some of the developments over the past 12 months. 

Some of the projects may be quite familiar to many of you already, like TELFest. Newer developments, such as rolling out Adobe Connect across campus, or installing tablet computers in labs will be of interest to those colleagues experimenting with new methods of delivery. 

The video also details the very latest projects the team are working on, such as rolling out a new Digital Media Hosting service across the University - we will be able to provide more details about this soon.

We're always exploring and applying new approaches to digital learning in the TEL Team, and we will continue to share updates via this blog. 

If you would like more details on anything in the video, please contact tel@sheffield.ac.uk

Turnitin Feedback Studio

Update: Given early semester two is a busier assessment period we have decided to hold off on this update til the summer 2017.

Earlier in the year, Turnitin released an update to their feedback tool which brought about a change to the look and feel and added a couple of new features.

Some of the changes it will bring includes:

• Improved navigation, bringing together the originality reports and feedback tool. The combination of these is called Feedback Studio.
• More formatting options for the comments tool. Now includes bold, italic, underline and hyperlinks.
• Easier to add annotations to the assignment. Clicking directly on the page will show the different annotation types available. You previously had to toggle between the comment types.

For more information on these changes please see the overview of changes.

You can also try out a demo of Feedback Studio.

If you have any questions please contact tel@sheffield.ac.uk