Enhancement Academy

by Derek Morrison, 21 May 2010

Many thanks to everyone who attended the residential event at Northumbria University on Monday and Tuesday. There’s also a ” special mention in dispatches” to those colleagues who managed to overcome the logistical difficulties of getting to Newcastle posed, yet again, by our dispeptic Icelandic volcano. We much missed our colleagues from Belfast but fortunately QUB were very well represented by the one member of their team Nuala Toman who had been on this side of the Irish Sea for the weekend. We are also grateful that Simon Horrocks had travelled to Newcastle the night before to ensure that Trinity St David was represented because the closure of Cardiff Airport prevented the rest of his team getting to the event on Monday. And finally, thanks to Northumbria University for hosting the event; I thought the quality of the catering was first rate. And now to business. Here are a few follow-up items arising from the event. Read the rest of this entry »

by Derek Morrison, Northumbria University, 21 April 2010 (updated 22-26 & 30 April 2010)

Northumbria University’s Chris Turnock invited me to give a presentation on the future uses of technology to enhance students’ learning experiences as part of his university’s internal workshop “Technology to Enhance Learning in 2015″. The following posting offers a synopsis of this presentation. Please note that this is a work in progress and so it may be updated. Note also that any views expressed in this posting are those of this author alone and should not be construed as necessarily representing those of any other individual or organisation.

What can, should, or will, we offer the digital generation by 2015? Read the rest of this entry »

by Derek Morrison, 1 April 2010

Enhancement Academy 2009 institutions are invited to attend or disseminate information about the next event being offered by Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG).

This free one day event is titled “It’s not about recording lectures” and it is being hosted by the University of Sunderland on 21 April 2010. The event will consist of a mix of workshops and presentations with sessions for beginners and the more experienced. Sessions include examples of how media is being used by practitioners to enhance pedagogy.

Details about the programme are available on the MELSIG wiki.

To reserve a place, please contact Carol Beattie (formerly Carol Comer) at carol.beattie@chester.ac.uk

MELSIG was formerly known as the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes SIG (PPPSIG). It was originally one of the three Network Projects which arose from the 2005-2008 Pathfinder Programme; all of these SIGs continue to enjoy widespread sector support and their self-directed work is much valued by their memberships.

by Derek Morrison, 23 February 2010

Podcasting in Assessment: New Technology in Higher Education Research (PANTHER)

The HE Academy and the Beyond Distance Research Alliance are offering a joint seminar to be hosted by the University of Leicester on 3 March. The focus is assessment and feedback enhancement through technology.

Delegates can attend the face-to-face seminar (35 places) or join online (35 places). Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no charge for the attendance but a penalty fee may be applied for non-attendance. Lunch is provided for face-to-face participants.

by Derek Morrison, 28 January 2010

Although the Benchmarking & Pathfinder Programme officially concluded in July 2008 its influences, outcomes and deliverables continue. For example, the recent publication of the book “Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning” was stimulated by the programme.

Terry Mayes adds to the mix with a very helpful piece of work in the form of the Users’ Guide to the Pathfinder Briefing Papers. Terry’s annotated resource offers a very effective portal to the rich set of documents contained in each participating institution’s package of resources (zip file) and should be of interest to scholars, practitioners and HE managers. The Users’ Guide can be freely downloaded below.

Download
Users’ Guide to the Pathfinder Briefings (PDF, 148 KB)

The European Commission supported ReVICa (Reviewing European Virtual Campuses) Project has recently published the book Reviewing the Virtual Campus Phenomenon: The Rise of large-scale e-Learning Initiatives Worldwide. The book provides a glimpse into global managed initiatives that seek to transcend the walls of physical institutions in order to realise a lifelong learning and skills agenda.

by Derek Morrison, 14 January 2010

Tag clouds (or weighted lists) offer a visualisation of a word’s frequency in a document. As well as providing an aesthetic and navigation artefact for web sites they may also provide useful meta information about the relative emphases in the content of a document, e.g. the textual analysis of a political speech. One service which makes the job of creating such visual artefacts really easy is the online Wordle service. Although the Wordle service modestly describes itself as a “toy” it appears to be being employed in some interesting ways by some interesting people. For example, in Wordles, or the gateway drug to textual analysis (ProfHacker, 21 October 2009) and Using Wordle in the classroom (ProfHacker, 13 November 2009) both describe Wordle as a useful pedagogical tool. In the UK, Aberystwyth University which is one of the HEIs taking part in the Academy’s Gwella initiative is also employing Wordle in several contexts, e.g. Welsh and other language teaching.

So for this posting I’ve employed the online service at Wordle to generate a visualisation for each chapter of our new book Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning. You can either click on each thumbnail to view a full-size image or I have aggregated the text, hyperlinks, and all the images into a PDF file available for download at the end of the posting so you can then zoom the images for offline display purposes. Hopefully, there won’t be any surprises for the authors about the relative emphases of what they have written. Read the rest of this entry »

by Derek Morrison, 11 January 2009

The long awaited book has now been published and is currently being disseminated.

Click here for further information about the formats available.

by Derek Morrison, 11 January 2010

PPPSIG starts 2010 with has a new name, i.e. the Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group – MEL SIG, as well as offering the first event of the year which is being hosted by Queen’s University Belfast on Monday 18 January.

The event offers a rich set of practical workshops and discussion groups that should offer plenty of networking and development opportunities for new and current members. There is also a keynote by Professor Norman Jackson, (University of Surrey), who will talk about ‘Creativity in higher education: educational media and life-wide learning through a life-wide curriculum’

There are only a few places still available so sign up quickly if you are interested. There is no charge for attending the event.

The programme is the new MEL SIG wiki (http://ppp.chester.ac.uk/index.php?title=PPP:Current_events)

For enquiries please contact Carol Beattie Comer at
c.comer@chester.ac.uk

To book a place, please contact Tracey Thornton-Reid at
t.thorntonreid@chester.ac.uk

ELESIG is now organising its eighth face to face symposium with contributions from key colleagues who have been researching the varied use of tools and technologies and have developed insights into the future digital learner. The event will include presentations and activities on the future digital learner and mobile technologies, news of the second round of ELESIG small grants awards, a members’ corner to share and exchange experiences of researching and evaluating the learners’ experiences and an organising group meeting. Read the rest of this entry »