New tool to help create a banner in MOLE

Within MOLE you can personalise your page by adding a banner to it. 

Creating a banner can be an unfamiliar task to some who haven’t had too much experience of editing images.

We’ve simplified this process by providing a banner creation tool in the MOLE help guides. This allows you to choose an image and easily drop it into the banner space. When you save the image it will be the appropriate size for a MOLE banner.

Pixabay is a good source for copyright free images.

The MOLE help pages also provides more information on adding a banner in MOLE.

Inspiring our global learning community

FutureLearn Learner Stories is a collection of personal experiences from a handful of the 5,000,000 FutureLearners from across the world. We’re very happy to recently read of Rachel from Cornwall who, following being made unemployed, took our two courses from the Careers Service - How to Succeed at: Writing Applications and Interviews and found they significantly improved her job-finding skills.

“Being out of work for so long can be very frustrating and disheartening. I attended 26 interviews with no success and could not understand why. I found the Job Centre’s application and interview advice dated and it did not seem to help me. The FutureLearn courses were very impressive, well put together and from reputable universities with up to date tips and latest trends. I attended 3 interviews after completing the courses and they went a lot better than the previous ones”.

You can read Rachel's full story on the FutureLearn Learner Stories site.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, two academics from our Crime, Justice and Society course, Professor Claire McGourlay and Dr Matthew Bacon, recently spoke at the American Society of Criminology Conference where they met Renan, who is an undergraduate from the Federal University of Penambuco in Brazil. He had been a learner on the course and it had inspired him to attend Professor McGourlay and Dr Bacon’s sessions, as well as hunt them down for a photo afterwards. We’ve even heard he is considering taking a postgraduate degree in Sheffield and, if he makes it, we look forward to meeting him.

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Finally, our course on The Musculoskeletal System was celebrated by the MRC-Arthritis UK Centre for Integrated Research into Musculoskeletal Ageing (CIMA) in a recent blog post. The centre, which is part of the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle University, developed the course with Sheffield’s Online Learning Team to showcase their groundbreaking research and raise awareness of musculoskeletal ageing conditions and how the effects of ageing can be mitigated.
We’ve had some great feedback from this course, both from individuals and in terms of the learner demographics, but nothing quite speaks to its success as this comment from Maria on FutureLearn…

“I very much appreciate the construction of the course: each week came with a logical build up of approaches intermingled with opportunities to give our own views. It's the first MOOC I have done compiled by three universities, which gave us, the participating audience, the latest specialised researched insights from three institutions.

So, to the whole team: great cooperation in compiling this worthwhile course which for me, will be life changing since it brought home to me how profound the impact is of exercise, activity and balanced diet for healthier longevity. Not only is it changing my life, I have since recommended the course to my Healthy Walks Coordinator and am helping a member of my family in realising the profound reasons for adopting a healthier lifestyle.”

New PebblePad collaboration tool

A regular problem people have come across with PebblePad was when two or more lecturers wanted to work on the same Workbook or other Resource. Unless all parties were working using the same departmental account (which isn't always possible or desirable to do), there was no easy way to do this.

Today (5th December) a new feature has launched in v5 which allows collaborative items - both Resources and Assets - to be shared. To do this share the item in the normal way ('I want to...' > 'Share' > 'With People') and ensure the 'Collaboration' box is ticked (as in the screenshot left). The other user will get a notification it has been shared via email, and will be able to make their own additions and changes. If another user is editing at the time, it will be locked until the other user logs out or times out.

This also solves the problem of when staff members leave and their PebblePad accounts will no longer be accessible - they just need to ensure they share the material with colleagues to collaborate on before they leave (although it may still be advisable to have the material accessible from a departmental account, rather than just individual accounts). It also allows for students to collaborate on Portfolios or other Assets.

This is another much called-for new feature in PebblePad which shows they're listening to feedback, and demonstrates v5's agility in being able to deliver improvements to the system that were never implemented in v3. If you give collaborations a go please get in touch and let us know how you get on.

Pete

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

UCISA Academic Support Group

Recently, I became a committee member for the UCISA Academic Support Group.

The remit of the group includes:

• Helping university support staff to promote and support the use of new technologies in teaching and learning.
• Providing a forum for the discussion of, and the exchange of information on the development and use of technologies in teaching and learning.

The group is responsible for the Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning, a national survey which institutions are asked to contribute to every 2 years. The latest survey results were published last month, making it the eighth in the series of reports. The surveys provide details of the different learning technologies institutions are using, but also explore the drivers behind the adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning within institutions. To support the survey are a number of accompanying case studies, which provide further insight into institutional practice. For a number of years I have found these surveys an invaluable method of benchmarking our practice against that of other institutions.

As well as the survey, the group also delivers a variety of events throughout the year. Last week, I attended the annual planning meeting, were I was given the role of events co-ordinator. During the meeting we discussed some of our activities for the year ahead, so do keep an eye out for some of the topical events we are planning to run in the New Year.

Digital commons session - Lecture capture

UPDATE: We now have materials to support this session which can be found here. This includes the cards, which can be printed as needed, some instructions and the supporting slides. Any questions or feedback please let us know. We'd also be keen to know how the session went if you decide to run it.

As part of the Digital Commons session around lecture capture, following on from informative morning panel, Pete Mella and I facilitated a session around the benefits and concerns of lecture capture.

The aim of the session was to consider some of the points raised from the panel session, discuss these in teams and decide which were the most prominent points.

For this session we put participants into small groups and gave each table to pack of cards. These were coloured red and green.  

Red = Statements which were considered a concern around the use of lecture capture

Green = Statements which were seen as a benefit of lecture capture

In the activity we asked for each team to come up with the card that had the most important point  for each colour and have one backup, in case of duplication amongst teams. We also provided a blank “wildcard” which they could complete if they felt the issue wasn’t covered in the existing deck.

After a short discussion we brought the group back together to discuss our thoughts.

Some of the issues that were considered most prevalent were:

Concerns

Confidentiality (wildcard)

This concern was to do with how and where students may access lecture capture materials. Some of our courses contain particularly sensitive data which students could potentially show to a wider audience either knowingly or unknowingly (e.g. playing the recording in a public place).

This is indeed a valid concern and advice given was to be assured that the video is only available inside the MOLE course by default, with downloads disabled. You have the ability to pause the recording, so the session could be amended slightly to bring together the parts that needed not to be recorded.

Ultimately though it was agreed that not every session is right for lecture recording and some instances it is sensible not to record. Though in most instances minor ordering amendments can allow the session to recorded without affecting the quality of the lecture.

Technical issues

One issue which still concerns people is whether the technology will work on the day and will sessions be recorded successfully. Whilst there have been some instances of failed recordings identified, the service has been going well given its growth this academic year. It was highlighted that many of these issues are being resolved and staff were reminded that if they do identify any issues to contact either the AV or CiCS Helpdesk to help issues to be resolved more quickly.

As with all synchronous technology supported activities, ensuring you have a plan B in place where possible is good practice. This could be making lecture slides available on MOLE and providing any supporting material you can give to students. The system we have in place requires almost no intervention from the tutor and the only setup required is to turn on the microphone.

Benefits

Disabled students

The use of lecture capture was seen to be a huge benefit to students with a wide range of disabilities, and the benefits ranged from not needing to take verbatim notes to being able to access materials if a student is unable to attend in person.

International students

For international students where for many English is a second language, lecture capture can be used to positive effect, giving students another opportunity to view the lecture.

You are able to add subtitles/transcripts to help support the recording too, which was seen as something that could help both international and students with disabilities.

As part of the session we produced a series of slides looking at each topic and some of the research underpinning these, which you can find below.

We then passed over to Dan Courtney and James Slack who gave an overview of the system and gave people an opportunity to ask any questions about the technology supporting lecture capture.

If you have any questions about the session or are interested in running it in your area please contact tel@sheffield.ac.uk

The annual three week ‘Manic’ Period

Obviously the beginning of any new academic year is a very busy time for the majority of us and the TEL help desk is certainly no exception. Each year, the three week period comprising of ‘Freshers’ week and the following two, are by far our busiest. ‘Manic’ is the word I always use.

The ‘Supportworks’ enquiry system which we use, records the volume of traffic we handle and the last five years totals for this period are as follows:

2016-17 - 677

2015-16 - 613

2014-15 - 741

2013-14 - 747

2012-13 - 786

This year as in every year, nearly half (45%) of all the enquiries during this three week period are from folk (staff and students) asking to be given access to their particular MOLE courses.

For students in particular, these requests are mostly unnecessary as the MOLE system is populated with student enrolments automatically by electronic transfer from the University's main student registration system.  Once the choice of courses is completed on their main registration record, student’s MOLE accounts are automatically updated (the process runs four times each day) and the list of courses shown on their MOLE homepage then changes to reflect this.

Today’s students live in a world where they are used to things happening instantaneously (in an IT sense anyway) and having completed their registration process, if they cannot see their courses in MOLE straight away they tend to assume something has gone wrong.  We manage to answer the vast majority of enquiries the same day as they are received and in most cases in the interim period of the enquiry being sent and us reading it, we usually find that the above automated system has done its job and the student has been given access to their courses. We simply then just need to reply happily confirming this.

Of course no system is 100% perfect and there are times when we have to step in to manually add a student to a course, but thankfully this is not very often in comparison.

Staff are not added to courses automatically unless the same course ran last year and they were a part of it, in which case they are automatically enrolled in this year’s course too.

New or existing staff, requiring access to a particular course for the first time always have to be added manually. We can do this and staff already having the role of Instructor in a course can add other staff to that same course.

Sometimes individual staff members don’t realise they are not added automatically to new courses and they contact us in a panic because they need to prepare material for the first teaching session to be held shortly, only to find they don’t have access to the course.

Sometimes a teaching department’s Administration/Clerical teams send us long lists of staff that need adding to courses. We also receive quite a lot of requests asking us to merge two or more courses together in MOLE. Obviously we don’t mind doing this but ideally it would be better for everyone concerned if we could receive these enrolment lists and merger requests earlier in the summer (courses are usually created in July and even earlier in some cases).

Add to the mix the usual everyday requests for assistance in how to do something, Turnitin queries, technical problems etc and it all adds up to a ‘Manic’ three weeks - but guess what? ...I love it!!!

Teaching Copyright and Creative Commons (featuring the Selfie Monkey)

Last week I led a short presentation for students in the Theatre Department, alongside colleagues Steve McIndoe and Kate Grigson from the Library, about copyright considerations to take into account when using others' materials in recorded theatre productions.

It's easy to spend sessions like this dwelling on the restrictions and getting bogged down in legal minutiae, and making copyright sound boring, overly pedantic and restrictive. While going over some of the necessary basics of copyright law, the main point of this session was to give an understanding of why protecting your artistic work is important, and to give students information about using Creative Commons material that allows them the create work that they can be confident about sharing widely without legal snags. If the work they produce at university has sound copyright thought behind it they can use it as a showreel or share it via social media, reaching new audiences and showing future employers they have the knowledge and attention to detail to use others' work with care and legal consideration (which gives them a head start on many graduates entering the creative industries).

Some good discussion was had in the session. We spent some time examining The Verve's infamous use of an uncleared sample of a Rolling Stones cover on their song Bittersweet Symphony, leading to the band losing all royalties, awards and artistic control from their biggest hit to Jagger, Richards and their publishers. We also discussed the 'selfie monkey' and who owned the copyright of the above image - the photographer who owned and set up the camera, or the monkey who took the picture (it's no-one - the monkey took the picture, but animals aren't covered by copyright law - but the photographer is challenging this!).

Hopefully the students found the session useful, and it gave them some grounding to think about these issues as they progress through their studies. As creators themselves they should know their own rights, and respect the rights of others, but perhaps as importantly know the ways Creative Commons plugs them into a rich source of material to remix and adapt creatively and legally. Teaching about copyright and IP issues, rather than being dry and draconian, can be a liberating way to allow students to work with and repurpose material, adding to their digital and information literacies, and creating more engaged digital citizens.

Pete Mella

Turnitin Summit October 2016

"We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here."

Director of Sheffield Robotics and contributor to our free online course Building a Future with Robots Professor Tony Prescott has written this illuminating article for The Conversation entitled Why watching Westworld's robots should make us question ourselves. In it, Professor Prescott uses the new HBO series Westworld as his basis for discussing how the design of increasingly complex AI must force humanity to look at the morality of creating machines that can, for all intents and purposes, ‘think’ for themselves.



It also reminded us of another article that Professor Prescott wrote last year which bridges the gap between Building a Future With Robots and our most recent free course, The Musculoskeletal System: The Science of Staying Active Into Old Age.

In this article Tony looks at how robotics and developing technologies can aid us as we age; everything from helping with the chores and providing mobility assistance, to designing automatic furniture and combating loneliness.

Along with showcasing the breadth of research taking place at The University of Sheffield, these articles also underline the importance of working in an interdisciplinary way and how academics contribute to a wide range of projects across many subject areas.

Find out more about our open online courses on FutureLearn here. 

Seven new features in PebblePad v5 you may have missed

We upgraded to PebblePad to v5 in August - and all has gone well. The main difference is a change from Flash to HTML5, which has led to a much more responsive system that is more adaptable to web-browsers, and now fully-functional on mobile devices. With this has come a redesign that is both better-looking and much less confusing.

PebblePad have focused on making existing features better, and v5 does not yet have a lot of new additions. However there are some useful new features in there which make its use more flexible. Here are some you may have missed.

1. Placeholder Pages in Workbooks
Workbooks are a great way to give learners structured reflection, but there was never the ability for them to add their own assets into the page structure (this had to be done by attaching assets to evidence boxes). Now tutors can set placeholder pages - effectively a blank page in the Workbook where the learner can insert their own page, collection, blog or activity log. This allows more flexibility for the learner to pick their own material to submit as part of a structured Workbook.

2. Media Picker
Similar to the Placeholder Page, there was previously no way for a learner to embed their own media into Templates or Workbooks, and this had to be attached as assets on an evidence box for the tutor to download. Now a tutor can add a Media Picker element to a Template, allowing a learner to add their own images, audio or video directly on to the page.

3. Rubrics
Rubrics are a major new feature added in the September update. These can be added to Templates and Workbooks, and allow for learners to rate their own abilities against a rubric, with optional weighting giving a tallied score. When it comes to marking, the option to turn this into an assessor field in a Template/Workbook page isn't there yet, but the rubrics can be incorporated into Feedback Templates for tutor use in ATLAS.

4. Contents menu
One less popular element of v5 was the new horizontal menu structure on Workbooks and Portfolios, which makes great sense on mobile devices but caused a lot of scrolling if tutors had set up their asset with many menu items. The good news is the September update saw a pop-out contents icon on the far left of the menu, allowing users to view a vertical index if more convenient.

5. Page-level comments and feedback
There have been very few changes to ATLAS so far, but one useful recent feature is the ability to add page-level comments, feedback and grades in Workbooks.

6. Create subsections in Workbooks more easily
It was always possible to create subsections in Workbooks, but this was a bit fiddly in v3 - you had to create a second Workbook separately, then add this as an existing template page. Now you can create stacked Workbooks easily in the Workbook editor, by clicking on the '+' on a menu tab, and selecting 'Convert to Workbook'. This means you can create your 'Workbooks in Workbooks' in one place without going in and out of the Resource Store. (This can also be done to create subsections in in Portfolios)

7. YouTube embed in Portfolios
Finally YouTube videos can now be added to Portfolios, allowing learners to add videos hosted outside PebblePad. This isn't yet featured in Workbooks, but will hopefully be added in a future update.

If you have any questions about any of these features, or anything else about PebblePad, please get in touch at tel@sheffield.ac.uk. Also keep your eyes on the PebblePad Release Notes for news of future upgrades.

Pete

Everything You Wanted to Know About Ageing But Were Afraid to Ask

“We all get heavier as we get older because there’s a lot more information in our heads. So I’m not fat, I’m just really intelligent and my head couldn’t hold up any more so it started filling up the rest of me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” - Garfield

I was always one of those people; over 6ft since age of 14, chronically skinny, able to drink and eat with wild abandon, never gain an ounce of weight and, crucially, never suffer from the effects of such living. And then, as twenty moved to thirty, and thirty moves towards forty I began to realise the adage is regretfully, painfully, sadly, utterly true - I really am not as young as I used to be.

My lifestyle had changed but my habits hadn’t; I no longer charged around the country, walked everywhere, danced all night - I’d had a family, taken a desk job, inherited a long, car-based commute. It was a perfectly natural part of moving into middle age; I still felt young and healthy, but my reflection disagreed.

I’d seen friends realise this earlier and take the appropriate measures; they’d joined a gym, cut down their drinking, gone vegetarian. I applauded their efforts but those actions always seemed abstract to me. Surely lethargy was my reward for hard day of work and parenting? It didn’t seem right that I then had to give that up as well? “Healthy living” culture was at odds with all that I’d known; it was something that other people did. Why couldn’t a casual approach to ‘everything in moderation’ be my saviour?

“I'd quit smoking if I didn't think I'd become one of you.” - Bill Hicks

The wonderful thing about my job producing online courses is that you get frontline access to some very passionate, interesting and knowledgeable people in all areas of academia. It was during the production of our latest free, open, online course The Musculoskeletal System: The Science of Staying Active Into Old Age that we travelled to Newcastle University to work with Professor Mike Trenell and I had a small, but effective, eureka moment.



We were recording the voiceover for the above animation and Mike made a very simple point:
“If I was to eat half a Mars Bar a day without changing anything else and came back in 12 months time do you think I’d be bigger? Well, likely, yes. But the important thing there isn’t just the food but the things around me that are changing; things that I haven’t really thought about.”

Well, that was me. Literally (I like Mars Bars) and figuratively (my lifestyle has changed considerably). As Mike says, the difference between a sedentary and an active lifestyle can be up 20 years of independent living. I was already at an age where I was slowing down and this could negatively affect my musculoskeletal health for the rest of my life. The conclusion was obvious; things had to change, and change properly, without it feeling like a form of punishment.

First up was exercise; instead of spending much of my commute stuck in traffic, I decided to use that time to a more productive end. Now I leave work and, instead of sitting in rush hour traffic, I go and swim for half an hour or so and then tackle the drive once the roads are clearer. I still get home at the same time and I still see my family for the same amount of time, but I spend less time in the car and I feel better having done some proper, focused physical activity.

The second issue to tackle was the desk job; a recent Norwegian study found that total sitting time (no matter if you were sitting watching TV or at a desk) was a potential risk factor for chronic-ill health and mortality; independent of healthy physical activity. It seems it's in your best interests to stand, stretch and walk around as much as possible. A great deal of my work is creative and often I don’t want to break concentration or flow by leaving my computer to take a break. Enter the VariDesk which allows you to raise your working environment to standing height and avoid hour upon hour of sitting. This discovery was so popular among our team that the majority of the office have adopted using one…


“Why are all the good things so tasty?” - Homer Simpson

Finally, I had to look at eating. This was the hardest to tackle but the simplest to measure. I downloaded a free app called My Fitness Pal which, in many ways is just a glorified calorie counter, but it still gave me enough fundamental understanding of what I eat to see patterns. Entering into my phone what I put into my body each day also forced me to be more consciously aware of my own consumption and made sure I didn’t fall into the old trap of continuous snacking. It also allows me to add my exercise data, as well as a step count, to get an overview of the day’s activity.

I’ve now been living this healthier lifestyle for a  hundred days now and the effects have been remarkable; on my body, certainly (I’m now about a stone or just over 6kg lighter) but also on my psyche - I’ve discovered that I actually like exercise and that, far from being a chore, is actually something very enjoyable that I now look forward to. My fitness levels are better, I can swim and walk further and for longer without getting out of breath; I can even swim 1km in 30 minutes without stopping…



Standing at work has improved my posture and reduced my belly, I don’t slouch or creak when I get up. I’ve also discovered that not eating a treat can be as rewarding as eating it; in the last hundred days I’ve very rarely gone over my calorie allowance and there is a satisfaction to knowing that I am making visible, incremental progress.


These online courses don’t just change the lives of the learners, they also significantly affect ours too and we’re privileged to be in such a position. If you are interested in understanding the science of staying active as you age, and to learn this from those with academic prowess and rigour and not just ‘me’ then I urge you to sign up to the course.
Find out more and sign-up to The Musculoskeletal System: the Science of Staying Active into Old Age here.

Reflections on Exploring Play

Being a Lead Educator on Exploring Play was my first experience of being involved in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This way of working appealed to me for a number of reasons - by Elizabeth Wood

First, I was new to the University of Sheffield and developing the MOOC provided opportunities to work across Faculties and disciplines. Play is naturally a multi-disciplinary field of research and, whilst play scholars may not always agree with different ways of theorising play, I think an area of agreement is that play is endlessly fascinating. Working with many play scholars in the University was enriching and stimulating and took me into areas that I had not previously considered. Looking at play across the lifespan also took me out of my specialism, which is early childhood education, but at the same time threw up many continuities and similarities. Play as disruption, challenge and provocation seems to emerge quite early in life and is then manifest in many different ways (even in adulthood).

Second, play is universal in that different forms of play are found across different cultures and communities (in animal as well as human experience). This mean a MOOC exploring play was bound to prove interesting across many different countries, which did indeed prove to be the case. The discussions on FutureLearn brought together reminiscences of play in childhood and, how play develops across the lifespan, and the different forms of play (notably digital) that have emerged over time. Individual memories of play became collective as learners compared their experiences across time, and commented on concerns about contemporary play with their own children (at home or in their professional lives). The sections on digital play created some heated debates, but learners did understand more about how traditional and digital are not separate, but can be blended.

Third, the participants’ motivations for engaging in the MOOC ranged from professional development, to parents wanting to know more about play, to those with a passing interest that developed into a deeper fascination. The multi-modal nature of online learning means that people can engage in different ways according to their preferences. We found that even though some of the readings were quite challenging, learners were engaging with them in ways that provoked new ideas and ways of thinking. So whilst the ‘educational’ potential of MOOCs is uppermost, this concept can be stretched according to personal choices, time available and interests.

In many ways, doing a MOOC is a bit like playing in that we can never be sure where play leads us in term of longer-term outcomes. However, the opportunity to take play seriously, and to learn in playful ways, clearly has international appeal.
Visit an example course step from Exploring Play, 'Exploring the V&A Museum of Childhood's collection', here.

"If you were a piece of fruit, what sort of fruit would you be?"

I first became a MOOC Mentor on the How to Succeed at: Applications and How to Succeed at: Interviews online courses, which first ran in 2014. It was a great experience. Each course attracted thousands of learners, including University of Sheffield students and graduates. This was a fantastic outcome, as it enabled them to access Careers Service resources in a new way. But, that was only the start of it - by Judith Greenall

What also happened was that learners from far and wide joined the course and participated in fascinating discussions about applications, CVs and job interviews. At times, conversations moved beyond that, to give us a glimpse of the context in which people were situated. It was inspiring to see that, despite some difficult circumstances, people felt motivated to focus on their skills, and make plans to move, develop and take up new opportunities. There were also some amusing anecdotes about unusual interview experiences!

Following the success of these first two courses, they have been repeated several times since, always attracting a similarly high number of learners. The learners are a surprisingly diverse group, ranging from those who have yet to apply for a job and those long-retired; the newly qualified looking for their first job and the recently redundant considering a career change; job seekers and recruiters; sixth formers, undergraduates and experienced professionals.

Where else could all these people meet, converse and learn from each other?  This is one of the interesting aspects of a MOOC for me. Learners from every continent of the world have taken part, and this diversity enriches the interactions immensely.  It is interesting to observe the online interactions between members of this community. So many people are prepared to reach out to others to offer words of encouragement, to share experiences and give opinions. The learner input is overwhelmingly positive.

My role, as a mentor, is to facilitate discussion and to look out for specific queries which require a response. As a mentor, it is important not to jump in and answer questions posed by the learners. This can be difficult as, in my usual role, I work in an information team, where answering questions is a key part of my duties. The emphasis in a MOOC is the development of an online learning community. This can be done in a variety of ways. By ‘liking’ someone’s comment or by acknowledging it with a brief remark, I hope to encourage learners to continue taking an active part in the discussion. Some learners are taking part in an online course for the very first time, so I think it is particularly important for them to know that there is someone ‘out there’. If their contribution receives a positive response, they may be more likely to continue to post comments.

To open up the discussion, it is sometimes as simple as asking: ‘What do others think?’ Or: ‘Has anyone else been in this situation?’ This changes the emphasis of the discussion, so that more of it takes place between the learners. Often, learners just need to be directed to another section of the course, where their question will be answered. If the discussion takes a worrying turn at any point, mentors keep an eye on proceedings to see if the community manages to resolve issues. Sometimes, it is necessary to step in with a response of some kind. But more often than not the discussion reaches a natural end, or changes to another topic. Careers Advisers and other colleagues are on hand to help when difficult issues are raised, or when a specialist opinion is sought.

Overall, I would say I have learned a lot myself from this experience of a new interactive learning platform. I love the egalitarian structure, where all contributions are valid. I think it is great that the University is opening its doors to learners in this way, and from the learners’ feedback I know that this view is shared by many others. Many learners concluded that they had increased in confidence and had become more aware of the number of skills they had. Some were able to tell us of application and interview success, as they were engaged in the recruitment process during the course and could put their learning to immediate use! MOOCs are a great example of the University extending its civic responsibilities, leading to a truly international experience. I am sure they will continue to prove popular with learners around the globe.

So, where does fruit come in to all this? During an interview, you should always expect the unexpected. So you may be asked to think about what kind of fruit you would be, if you were a piece of fruit, in an interview! If you participate in the How to Succeed at: Interviews, you will find a suggestion of how to structure an answer to this and similar questions, which will demonstrate that you are the ideal candidate for the job.

TELFest 2016 - Things we did differently