TELFest 2019

Last month saw our annual TELFest, the University of Sheffield's festival of technology enhanced learning and innovation.

We had a great four days, with nearly 400 delegates attending, from over fifty institutions (with some attending from as far away as Egypt), taking part in a packed programme of talks, case studies, demonstrations and workshops.

Monday saw our University of Sheffield-only pre-conference day, with some learning technologies essentials sessions, and workshops and talks covering topics including distance learning, lecture capture, media assessment, student analytics, and programme-level approach.

Tuesday kicked off the first day of the full conference, starting with a thought-provoking, entertaining and hugely popular opening keynote by the University of Hull's Prof Becky Huxley-Binns, on Generation Z and Graduate Futures.

 

The day continued with sessions covering such topics as escape rooms, analytics, online learning, lecture capture, gamification and much more.

Wednesday's keynote saw TELFest's now traditional game show slot. Following on from our shameless rip-offs affectionate homages of Room 101, Have I Got News For You, Crystal Maze and Family Fortunes, this year saw Would I TEL A Lie To You, in which a panel of academics told learning and teaching stories which could be truths our outright fibs. Prof Tony Ryan did a great job of taking on the Rob Brydon role.



This was followed by another packed day, with topics covered including inclusive design, digital literacies, student collaboration, animation, audio feedback and eportfolios.

That evening also saw the first TELFest evening social, at which a group of delegates enjoyed a night of food and games at the Treehouse Boardgame Cafe.

Finally, Thursday began with our 'Multi-coloured Technlology Swap-shop', and a morning of sessions including ABC Learning Design, virtual reality, student satisfaction, lecture recording and assessing online learners.

Our closing keynote was by Nigel Smith, with an insightful talk on the lessons he's learnt about online learning from his time as Managing Director of Courses and Learning at FutureLearn, before we ended with an exhibition of immersive environments in our Inspiration Corner.



A big thanks to all our presenters, our keynotes, our sponsors (Blackboard, Echo360, Kaltura, WondaVR, Turning Technologies and Turnitin), the staff at the Diamond that make everything run so smoothly, and of course to all the delegates who help make the festival such a success.

Below is a highlights video from journalism student Nick Cassidy which gives you a feel for the festival. We're doing it all again next year, on 29th June to 2nd July 2020. Save the date!

Online Learning Design: What the data told me

How do we know that what we're doing works?

As a designer of online learning experiences, learning analytics and data are my best friends.

Working with the FutureLearn platform to produce courses from University of Sheffield academics gives me access to a world of data stories. We have evaluated and reshaped our course design using this data to publish our short courses (aka MOOCs) and our practice as supporters of the FutureLearn activity has improved no end over time using this approach.

I spent last year drilling into a new set of data that we had previously not analysed and came up with some new and informative results for future learning design.

Are MOOC learners potential online degree students?

I wanted to know if people who take our short courses seriously enough to complete them are also likely to be interested in other online learning experiences we might offer now or in the future, like online degrees.

And, if so, how do they compare their experiences and what do they think about the way we design both types of courses?

I asked those who had completed our short courses about their experience of the learning design and about their experience and interest in online degrees. 

The report is a brief summary of some of the key findings and illustrates what elements of learning design help our learners the most, from their perspective. 

Download the report.

The learners told us that they appreciate bite-sized content, instant feedback on assessment tasks, video demonstrations, insights form experts working in the field and more. They also overwhelmingly advocated for this type of learning design for online degrees, stating that the bite-sized nature of the courses and the design would help them to learn and that previous experiences of degrees had been 'overwhelming' in comparison.

I hope you'll find something useful within the report. If you'd like the full findings, you can request a copy here.