Both of these draw on the outputs and findings from our Assessment and Feedback Sprints. These brought together student, academic and PS colleagues to tackle common issues that student experience with assessment.
In this post we’ll fill you in on the background to new resources.
On Friday, at the end of this Art of the Possible event, we got together with Dr David Kennedy, Dean of Digital Education, to look back over the main themes and to find out his views on some of the common questions and challenges running through the week.
Many thanks to David for this conversation, to all our speakers and presenters who have contributed over the week, and to colleagues who have come along and shared their insights and questions.
Let’s keep these conversations going!
You can catch up on recordings and resources from links on this blog:
In this Art of the Possible presentation, Jack Ennis and Jo Robinson-Lamb from NUIT’s Digital Adoption Team walked us through some of the AI driven productivity tools that are already available in Microsoft products and then whetted our appetites with previews of Microsoft products being developed now.
What is possible now – Editor, PPT Designer, MS Designer, Bing Chat
What is coming – Copilot
The Copilot videos that Jack played in the session were omitted from the recording – to see them follow the links we have added in the recording or go to them directly with the links below:
On Wednesday morning as part of our Art of the Possible week, we heard from three colleagues who have been working with and using AI. They brought very different perspectives:
Dr Stephen Parnell, from APL, described his experiments with Midjourney, an image generating tool. Stephen outlined and illustrated how he has used AI generated images to explore his own research interests and catalyse creativity with his students. (View Steven’s slides).
Dr James Stanfield, ECLS presented reflections from his students’ use of AI in a Masters module, revealing their sophisticated multi-tooled approaches. For his students of Technology Enhanced Learning, James encouraged experimentation and positive use of AI to help support their learning. Acknowledging the use of AI was an integral part of their assessment. (View James’ slides)
Dr David Grundy, NUBS, described his own use of AI as a productivity tool and walked us through how he uses AI to produce audio podcasts feeding the output from ChatGPT prompts into his own AI generated cloned voice to make MP3 files. (View David’s slides)
You can catch up on this session from the recording below:
Use the contents page in the recording (^) to jump to specific segments or scroll to the following timestamps: Stephen 0.00; James 16:16, David 34:24
We were delighted to welcome Debbie Kemp, MBA director from Kent Business School to open our Art of the Possible week. Debbie described her practical experience of openly embracing AI in her module on “Delivering Innovation”. She shared her initial fears and concerns and reflected on the response of students and the wider impact of AI use on their programmes.
We said to the students “we have taught you how to use AI in an ethical way… use it”
Many thanks to Debbie for such an engaging talk and for giving permissions to share the recording. It generated many questions and comments.
This year there have been many conversations about AI in Education – at School level, with our students and between colleagues. Next week we have further opportunities to keep the conversation going and learn together. What’s clear is that no one person is the expert in this fast moving space.
Over the week we have a number of in-person and online events. We will also be adding to this blog over the week. Come back to see posts about AI, outputs from our events and the next AI themed episode of our Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle podcast.
Add your thoughts
Throughout the week we will be collating questions and opportunities and adding them to two Padlet boards. Get involved by adding your own thoughts to these boards or upvoting ideas that resonate with your own. At the end of the week we’ll revisit these with our Dean of Digital Education, Dr David Kennedy.
We have a few places left on many of our in-person and online events:
Monday 26 June
Embracing the AI Landscape: Debbie Kemp from the University of Kent will open our week, sharing and reflecting on how she has incorporated AI in her teaching and assessment. Online 10:00-10:45
Introduction to AI: a one-hour overview from LTDS and FMS TEL colleagues. In person 14:00-15:00
Wednesday 28 June
AI and Assessment: a one-hour session exploring the impact of AI on assessment. In person 10:00-11:00
Embracing AI @Newcastle: find out how colleagues at Newcastle University are embracing AI in their teaching and learning. Online 14:00-15:00
Thursday 29 June
Hands on Explore AI Tools: Join us in the Herschel Learning lab to try out a range of AI tools. In-person, bring your own device: 10:00-11:30
Microsoft 365 and AI: Join the NUIT Digital Adoption team for an overview of what is currently possible, and what the future holds, for AI in Microsoft 365. Online 14:00-15:00
AI in Education Retrospective: Dr David Kennedy, Dean of Digital Education will present his thoughts on the week and comment on outstanding challenges going forward. Online 14:00-15:00
As part of our Assessment and Feedback Sprint Series. A small team of students and colleagues have been investigating the question:
How do we articulate a meaningful programme experience that ensures a cohesive assessment journey for all of our students?
Feedback (Stage Surveys, NSS etc.,) tells us that students and colleagues struggle to see assessments from a programme perspective and this disconnection can lead students to feel like assessment isn’t part of a wider programme and that their skills/feedback don’t link across modules and assessments.
Being able to visualise the assessment journey across a stage or programme is important because, as one colleague said,
“An assessment journey builds confidence in the education (and the education provider) and underscores the importance of each individual assessment towards an overarching goal. Articulation of assessment journeys allows for broader reflection and helps explain the skill development (rather than focussing on siloed, module specific content).”
An overview of some of the visuals we found from within Newcastle University and other HE Institutions are shown below. In summary, we found a range of approaches, often highlighting the ‘journey’ through the stage or programme, making it easier for students to reflect on progress.
What have we created?
Using these findings, we created some template visuals which were then validated by colleagues and students along with feedback incorporated from our first showcase.
We decided to create a variety of templates to reflect diverse practices/skillsets across programmes and areas. Some are more suitable for Semester-based programmes and others for block-taught programmes.
We started by looking at a standard linear stage one programme – V400 BA Archaeology. We initially had a large amount of text on the visual explaining each assessment and how it aligned to the wider programme learning objectives. However, it quickly began to look overwhelming.
We then started to explore using H5P as a way to keep the visual relatively simple but incorporate pop up boxes to make it more interactive and engaging. The version below has dummy text – click on the questionmarks to see how it would work.
We also considered how to visually represent a block-taught postgraduate programme and incorporated feedback from a Degree Programme Director (DPD) to represent larger-weighted modules with bigger circles. The DPD said this would be a useful tool for both staff and students including at recruitment and Induction events.
The intention is that these editable templates will be useful for both students and programme teams to visualise assessment across a programme or stage. The visual could be produced as part of a workshop reviewing programme level assessment or could be a standalone tool designed to be student-facing.
Find out more about our Sprint
We presented our Sprint adventures at the Sprint Showcase event on Friday 10 March, and you can watch the recording here:
To find out more about the Assessment and Feedback Sprint Programme contact Conny.Zelic@ncl.ac.uk in the Strategic Projects and Change Team.
Adding engaging and interactive content to your online course materials just got easier with H5P.
This new online tool allows you to create custom learning resources such as branching scenarios, accordions, interactive images and videos, 360 degree virtual tours, simple formative quizzes, and so much more.
The feedback we have from colleagues is that it is easy to use and that the built-in tutorials walk you through what to do. No coding or software is required – all you need is a web browser.
In Canvas you can work with H5P from the Rich Content Editor.
Example H5P Hotspot item – click the + to try it out
Adding engaging and interactive content to your online course materials will get easier very soon. The University has bought an enterprise licence for H5P for use by colleagues for a year. Towards the end of August we’ll be making it available to all Canvas and MLE Teachers giving them the ability to make accessible interactive widgets, like the ones on this post. H5P isn’t just restricted to Canvas and MLE, it can be used on web sites too.
We’re particularly excited about H5P! Once it is turned on there will no longer be a need to be an HTML guru to do things like:
Add accordions
Add single question formative quiz questions
Generate branching scenarios
Create 360 degree virtual tours … and much more
H5P has been successfully used by our friends in other universities– it’s very well documented and each content type has its own tutorial.
We will be using the fully supported (H5P.com) version of H5P and, while we are plumbing this in, if you would like to have a peek at what is in store do check out H5Ps web pages for their documentation. We would recommend holding fire on creating accounts on H5P.org and wait instead until we have our Newcastle H5P site up and running. It won’t be long!
How you can help us?
We have H5P for a one-year pilot initially – so we will need feedback on how you are using it, how your students are finding it, and how you would like our H5P support to develop.
If you would like to get early access to H5P, receive updates, or help our evaluation please JOIN OUR H5P COMMUNITY by filling out this form.
Sample H5P Course Presentation – try moving between the slides and answering the questions
All colleagues who have a Teacher role in Canvas can access and contribute to a huge repository of content in Canvas Commons. You can use Commons to share content with the global Canvas community or choose to restrict its visibility to teachers at Newcastle University. You can also share content with yourself!
For the Art of the Possible we hosted workshops to explore Commons with Colleagues. Our participants got stuck in enthusiastically.
What we liked:
Commons is a great way to access generic content e.g. getting started with the library, or to share content across programmes. (Our induction project team are using Commons to share induction materials with schools this year.)
Even if you don’t want to use the content it’s helpful to see how others have approached teaching your subject – it can give ideas and inspiration
The ability to gather quiz questions to adapt
It could help improve consistency between modules / courses
Commons is a good way to hold content that needs to be included in all/some courses – assignment templates, school policies, supports consistency.
You can use Commons to hold content that is private to you – making it easy to add content into multiple courses.
It makes it easy share content across the institution – rather than importing/exporting or adding permissions
A way of sharing effective practice, building your reputation, and that of the University
Evidence your impact / influence for promotion
Building in consistency
When you don’t know who specifically will need to access the content
By sharing you are contributing to the educational community
To share knowledge and expertise
Some Cautions
Several participants commented on the huge amount of material in Commons, we saw how we could filter this by stage (UG/PG) or restrict our searches to content shared just with the Newcastle University. We saw how we could share permalinks to content elements in Commons to make finding resources easier.
Canvas Commons content isn’t policed so we had good discussions about the need to check content for accuracy, and also to look out for international differences (eg prescribing guidance, legal regulations etc…). We spoke about how different creative commons licenses could be added to support reuse and about how to give attribution to Commons Content shared with CC licenses.
