Playful Learning Conference

Earlier this month I attended the Playful Learning Conference in Manchester. The idea of the conference is around how play can be used in a learning and teaching context.

The first day opened with a keynote from Katie Piatt from the University of Brighton. She used a series of approaches to engage the large audience including an emoji quiz, design your own beer mat based on your favourite game and a competitive game on Kahoot. Each row of the lecture theatre were teamed together.


Some of the session highlights from the three days were:

Student Created Serious Games - Sandie Elsom and Marguerite Westacott, University of the Sunshine coast

This session looked at a range of serious games created by staff and students at the institution including a real world game that focussed on new students getting familiar with services on campus by undertaking a self guided tour using QR codes. There were also games created by students including Bound by Blood, an award winning interactive narrative game which tells a story around a homeless person who requires sanity products https://dml.itch.io/bound-by-blood (warning some of the issues raised in this can be distressing) and Full of life, a platform game which educates children about the five stages of grief https://elb020.github.io/FullOfLife/.

*Full of life was created using software called Construct 2 and Bound by Blood was created using Twine

A completely Inconspicuous and Normal Human Playtest

This session involved the use of a presenterless presentation taking on the character of a deceased pirate, by somebody controlling it remotely in the room. This made for an engaging session packed with humour and activities to get people up, completing challenges that were set by the pirate character.

#brookscurse #playlearn18 pic.twitter.com/NQLXA2hzIx

— Alex Moseley (@AlexM11) July 11, 2018

The effectiveness of game based learning - Simon Grey
This session looked at how effective game based learning is when developing a new skill. We were given a maths coding task to complete at the beginning of the session. The idea then was to play a card game which uses these principles to see if after playing the game your ability to work out the maths code was easier. The consensus was that it did make it easier to complete.

#playlearn18 the winning hand.@simongrey @jwddixon pic.twitter.com/YJLqg8TuoN

— ThereBe BareBear (@ThereBeBareBear) July 12, 2018

And the Survey says - Using gamification and active learning to enhance didactic lectures - Tom Jolley

This was the session I presented around the use of the game show Family Fortunes (coined Faculty Fortunes) to present data from two sets of users (staff and students) and see where misconceptions arise from the answers each group give.

Really interesting session about using 'Faculty Fortunes' to innovate didactic lectures! 😀 @playlearnconf @tompjolley #PlayLearn18 pic.twitter.com/cZAYNTvmbU

— Maaya (@MaayaModha) July 13, 2018

Libopoly: Explore playful learning’s place in staff training and development - Steve Gray, Cheryl Coverney and Hilary Johnson (Open University)

This session used the concept of the board game monopoly to introduce new staff to working in the library and learn about some of the usual tasks and terminology associated with the job in a fun and engaging way. The idea was that each area represented a module and the money was represented by time.

#playlearn18 Libopoly for staff training pic.twitter.com/E8JNTCN7tV

— Darren Edwards (@DarrenLEdwards) July 13, 2018

Overall it was an interesting conference which showed the scale of people's creativity and gave some interesting insights into how people use playful approaches in their Learning, Teaching and Assessment at different institutions. 

More information about sessions can be found here http://conference.playthinklearn.net/blog/programme and find out the going on's from the conference on twitter with the hastag #playlearn18.

TELFest 2018 - What we did differently

Between 25 - 28 June 2018 we ran our 5th Technology Enhanced Learning Festival, TELFest. Every year we do things differently or introduce some new ideas and here is a summary of some of those things as well as some highlights of the event.

TELFest was opened up to an external audience

Traditionally TELFest has been exclusive to staff at the University of Sheffield and a select number of invited individuals.  This year we opened up most of the festival to external institutions, with the exception of the Monday which was more 'hands-on' or University of Sheffield focused. We were delighted to have over 80 attendees from other institutions, attracting an international audience as far as Cairo and China.

Livestreaming

A parallel of sessions were livestreamed throughout the event using livestream, which we chose because it enabled chat functionality with no login restrictions. Each livestreamed session had an online moderator who facilitated discussion amongst our online audience and ensured that questions were asked to presenters. Throughout TELFest we had over 550 unique viewers from over 50 countries. It was great to see the positive feedback we were getting from people who were unable to attend.

Tweets about the TELFest Livestream

You can catchup on these sessions via the TELFest website and here is a direct link to the list of recordings: https://digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk/channel/TELFest+2018/95272991

Have I got TEL news for you

Keeping up with our game show keynote theme (in previous years we have had Faculty Fortunes, Room 101 and the CrysTEL maze), this years game show was based on Have I got News for You? The session took a competitive quiz-based look at some hot topics in technology-enhanced learning, hosted by Professor Wyn Morgan, VP for Education and featuring a panel of contestants from around the University.

As well as being highly entertaining, the sessions encouraged debate amongst both our teams and our audience, exploring topical issues in the TEL domain.

Best of the Festival

TELFest was jam packed with excellent and varied presentations and workshops throughout, with the festival closing with a keynote on Tightrope Walkers: Social Media, Equity, and Educational Practice by Dave Webster, Head of Learning & Teaching Innovation at The University of Gloucestershire (catchup here). A special mention must also go to our sessions voted 'best of the festival':

• Tuesday Puzzling It Out, Helen Whitehead and Liz Cable, University of Nottingham / Leeds Trinity University
• Wednesday Live-editing The Past, Charles West, University of Sheffield (Catch Up)
• Thursday Using breaks to boost student creativity, Dermot Breslin, University of Sheffield (Catch Up)

Networking

To promote networking throughout the festival, each delegate pack included postcards and stickers and delegates were asked to add their self-identifying stickers of choice to their lanyards to spot like-minded delegates. Below are some of the post cards that had AR built into them.

   

Sponsorship

We were delighted to receive sponsorship for this year's TELFest with the support of our suppliers and sponsors: Turnitin, Kaltura, Blackboard, PebblePad and Echo 360. Their support and support from the University of Sheffield meant that we were able to keep the event free to an external audience. Thanks to Blackboard we also let us pilot Transact, their new product which enabled us to track attendance. Delegates were able to 'tap' in to a session using their new contactless technology. This very reliable technology enabled us to identify those that attended sessions helping us to elimiate our paper based system.

A big thank you to all of our organisers, presenters, delegates and sponsors, who after 5 years continue to make TELFest an ever increasingly valuable and vibrant event.

Exploring Student Engagement with Learning Technologies - A reflection from TELFest

Last week at TELFest myself and Farzana ran a session on how analytics data can be used to understand more about how students are engaging with online tools we use.

We explored what data was available in some of the core systems we use at the university and encouraged discussion around:

• How it would work in peoples contexts
• What was useful about the systems 
• What they felt was missing

To support this I created a series of infographics using Piktochart. For anybody interested in creating infographics I found the creation progress to be really straightforward.

Click on any of the infographics below to see a larger view of what is available in that product.

   

   

Some of the points raised in the session were:

• The confusion flagging in Encore (Echo 360) is a great tool but it would be good if the tool automatically prompted an email to alert the instructor confusion had been flagged.
• There were some comments that the data that comes out particularly in MOLE can be a little overwhelming. Being able to pinpoint a particular piece of content would be better.
• The group felt we need to be mindful about the use of analytics to not create a culture of over-auditing or making students feel they were under surveillance.
• A point raised that analytics looks at the where and what people accessed but doesn't always tackle the why.

The session was a thought provoking one which concluded that whilst there is a lot we can do with the data from the systems, we use there is still a way to go to make it readily meaningful. The tools should be quick and simple to use and the data should be easy to digest.

Thanks to everybody that attended the session and we will ensure any feedback goes back to the relevant suppliers.