Jisc Digifest 2023 – Hello Innovator

The Jisc Digifest 2023 was held on 7-8 March at Birmingham ICC (it was also online) and I was fortunate enough to attend this year’s event.

According the Digifest website Digifest is:

‘a celebration of the creative minds who think differently, who introduce new ideas and technologies to their organisations. Whether it’s the researcher at the cutting edge of vaccine development, the lecturer inspiring the next generation or the manager leading digital transformation, Digifest is for the innovators of tomorrow.’

A photo of Ben's name badge and lanyard for Digifest 2023 — Ben, our man on the inside

The two days both had a packed agenda of exciting talks, presentations, discussions, and great catering. The agenda was based around celebrating innovation in all its forms using three key tracks:

Learning, teaching, and resources
Research
Leadership and culture

The agenda was so packed, you couldn’t get around everything. Here are some of my highlights from the event and some useful links to follow up if you wanted to know more.

The event started on the Tuesday with Heidi Fraser-Krauss, chief executive of Jisc, welcoming everyone to Digifest 2023.

Heidi Fraser-Krauss, welcoming delegates to Digifest 2023

This was followed by a great keynote presentation from Inma Martinez, a digital pioneer and AI scientist, and a leading authority in the sectors of digital technology and machine intelligence. Since the 1990s, Inma has been a revolutionary figure within the technology industry and has become well known for her talent to create social engagement through technology. She’s been recognised as one of the top 50 AI influencers to follow on Twitter and one of the top 20 women changing the landscape of data.

Inma’s session was called ‘How artificial intelligence will ignite human creativity and help pave the way to human and machine innovation’: AI is making incredible (and fast) inroads into the innovation processes of many creative industries. This session explored how education will benefit from an AI that enhances human creativity, and how the future of innovation is a collaborative sandbox for humans and machine intelligence. The key takeaway from Inma’s session was not to panic. Although Open AI is here and it’s probably not going anywhere, the question is, how we can use it, rather than how is it going to change everything. AI can’t replicate our own imagination and emotional intelligence. Neoteny (a new word for me) is something that only we as humans go through and this how we can use AI to our advantage rather than panicking about how AI might change our industry.

Find out more about Inma and her work.

Before lunch (which was very good), I managed to catch three further sessions.

Firstly, a lightning talk called ‘Fostering authentic assessment and feedback to hone 21st-century skills’. In this session, Abdulla Dilimi showcased how TU Dublin, OsloMet, and Deakin University cultivated high-quality feedback and authentic assessment with the help of pedagogical technology. The session was very good. As you’d expect, it was giving high praise to authentic assessment, focusing on how authentic assessment could combat some of the negative aspects of open AI technology; and how personalised feedback is a key benefit to authentic assessment.

The second session was called ‘How green is your campus? Supporting a student friendly, sustainable hybrid campus’. In this 30-minute session Anne Robertson, head of EDINA services, University of Edinburgh, gave a presentation of simple and fast location data solutions that:

Support students to find their way around campus, highlighting sustainable travel solutions and helping them find and book study spaces.
Enable estates colleagues to sustainably and safely manage the physical estate.
Assist with effective energy management, in a hybrid working world.

With the use of campus maps and real time analysis, University of Edinburgh helped students to become greener and get the best out of their time on campus. To maximise the use of university spaces and ensure that students could find a space to study with friends or individually across their vast campus.

The final session before lunch was a session about using virtual reality in teaching and learning practical skills. Josephine Grech, biology lecturer and digital excellence leader from Cardiff and Vale College gave a demonstration of how virtual reality is used in training learners for WorldSkills competitions, but also how it is applied in the classroom to increase engagement and learning outcomes. This was really engaging as a viewer and clearly engaging for the students. It is also student-led and student-developed to enhance the learning for others.

The first session in the afternoon was a keynote panel discussion with:

Paul Burne, customer success/service lead – hybrid edge, Amazon Web Services (AWS);
Karen Cooper, senior director – offer management, Honeywell;
Gareth Piggott, major accounts manager, Fortinet;
Richard Jackson, lead cloud security specialist, Jisc.

The title for the panel was called ‘On the Edge’ and was about a cloud-based programme called Edge Computing. This session was quite interesting and went through the benefits of this product.

The final session of the day was around Micro Credentials and how these have been utilised at Abertay University. They have seemed to get the best out of micro credentials using them across multiple courses in stage one and providing students with skills outside of their discipline.

The second day opened with a truly inspiring keynote presentation by Dr Sue Black, entitled ‘If I can Do It, So Can You’. Sue told the story of her life and career, the ups, the downs, and how by putting herself out of comfort zone, she was able to achieve so much and support so many other women.

Dr Sue Black, delivering her keynote presentation at Digifest 2023

Sue talked about her passion for getting everyone excited about the opportunities that technology offers, how she brought her family out of poverty and built a successful career through education, and a determination to succeed.

This was a great way to start day two of the conference on International Women’s Day.

Here are some links to find out more about Sue, her work and how she saved Bletchley Park:

sueblack.co.uk/
Tech Up – retraining women from underserved communities into technology careers.
#Techmums – #techmums is here to take the mystery out of technology. Whether it’s helping you to reconnect with old friends via social media, chatting to your child about online safety or finding out how to use technology to help you at work, #techmums can help!
And what impressed me the most, she’s been on desert island discs.

The rest of day two I managed to take in these sessions.

Firstly, Richard Buckley and Kate Whyles from Nottingham College delivered a session called ‘What does that button do?’ Shifting digital culture and growing innovation, engagement, and attainment at Nottingham College. The presentation went through how a small but perfectly formed team of six is at the forefront of developing and promoting a culture of digital curiosity, innovation, and increased collaboration to help drive up standards in teaching, learning and assessment in one of the UK’s largest FE colleges. My key takeaway was the phrase Positive Nuisance, I like that concept. How can you be a nuisance to others but in a way that will positively affect our students.

The second session was about how good AI and using things like the WHO5 can be for supporting students with their mental health and allow us to safeguard our students. Professor Peter Francis, deputy vice-chancellor (academic), Birmingham City University, took us through how their project developed a ‘predictive analytic system’ that integrates data from across university sectors and generates a predicted likelihood score for students experiencing poor wellbeing in the following month.

Implementing a model of student consent for this system, approximately 70% of the student population consented and this predictive system has shown over 80% accuracy in identifying students at risk of poor mental wellbeing. Through this identification they were able to intervene proactively through tailored messages to students that highlight wellbeing services that are proportionate to their level of risk.

The final session before I braved the snow and the long train journey home was about why you should consider student-led learning for your future education.

The session focussed on four key areas to fuel activity and deepen learning for our students. These were:

Challenge
Curiosity
Control
Fantasy

This will help students to develop job-readiness and learn to take responsibility themselves.

Digifest 2023 was a fantastic conference, and I would recommend getting along next year if you can. Please get in touch if you would like to know more, and thank you for reading.

21 April, 202221 April, 2022

Learning and Teaching Conference: Review

Education for All: Learning Together

The Newcastle University Learning and Teaching Conference took place on March 31. This year’s theme was all about learning together, sharing effective practice, and exploring an education for all.

The event was opened by Professor Tom Ward, PVC Education, and was followed by a keynote presentation from Professor Paul Ashwin, Professor of Higher Education and Head of Department for Educational Research at Lancaster University.

As a result of the fantastic response to our call for submissions we ran several parallel sessions throughout the day, including over 40 workshops, lightning talks and presentations. Video recordings of the event presentations are now available to view via ReCap.

Conference poster and video winners
A massive congratulations to Ashley Reynolds and Eleanor Gordon who won our video competition with their demonstration of how animations can be used to enhance teaching and learning, and to Anna Reid and Vicky Gilbert who won our poster competition with Learning dogs; a winning ‘pawtnership’.

Thanks also to everyone who entered and voted for our winners. All posters are still available to view and video submissions are available in a ReCap playlist.

Conference feedback needed
If you attended the conference, or if you registered but were unable to attend, we would greatly appreciate your thoughts and feedback. This will help us improve our Learning and Teaching Conferences in the future.

28 September, 202128 September, 2021

Learning Communities Toolkit

Working alongside student interns, Newcastle University HaSS colleagues have developed a new Learning Communities toolkit – a range of accessible and reusable ice-breaker and community-building resources. Available via Canvas Commons, this toolkit is ideal for educators looking for ways to encourage and facilitate effective learning communities within their module groups.

Why is a learning community needed?
Developing a learning community amongst a group of students can be hugely beneficial. Not only does it provide students with the opportunity to come together in a safe place to share opinions and ask questions, but it also allows them to feel a sense of belonging and connection with other students (this is particularly useful where minority groups are concerned). Learning communities also provide academic benefits: encouraging attendance at lectures, active engagement, and group collaboration. This toolkit provides a range of ideas to get you started and support you along the way in the development of your learning community.

How to use this toolkit
We’ve published our Learning Communities toolkit on Canvas Commons to make it easy to find, download and reuse in your own courses. To help you find activities quickly, we have organised them into three separate categories: Icebreakers, Building Community Activities, and Maintaining Community Activities.

You can preview and download the toolkit here:

https://lor.instructure.com/resources/bb4c049eeff34e15b2091c6fd4755651?shared

22 March, 202117 September, 2021

Sharing video – ReCap or Stream?

In an earlier post we showed demonstrated how to host videos on ReCap and Stream and then add them to Canvas. But how do they compare?

Let’s take a student perspective what are the differences between these two as a consumer? If you are making notes from video you’ll value things like variable playback speed, the ability to view full screen and the option of viewing or searching the caption/transcript — all of these are easy to find whether video is hosted on Stream or ReCap.

ReCap

ReCap has a handy rewind facility – if you miss something you can go back 10 seconds with one click. It also lets you make private timestamped notes on the video – so you can mark places you want to go back to. If the video is long you can help students find their way around by adding Content items.

Stream

Stream videos can be added to a watchlist, they can be liked and, if you permit it, students can add comments to the videos. These will be visible by anyone with permissions to view the video. Stream helps you find your way around content by converting any timestamps you put in comments or the video description into clickable links.

There are good reasons to turn comments for particular circumstsances – eg are providing feedback, pointing out helpful sections or taking part in peer review.

Permissions

Stream videos are only available to people with @newcastle.ac.uk email addresses, so you’ll need to sign in to view the content above. ReCap videos are normally shared with those on a particular course, but you can make them public as we have done with the first video here.

10 February, 202110 February, 2021

Digital Residence

The blog post was written by Dr Lucy Hatt, Senior Lecturer in Leadership at Newcastle University Business School.

Have you ever wondered how many places you can be at once? Before Covid19 lockdown homeworking, the most places we could manage to be at once was two. Unless we happened to be a Time Lord, most of us could only be in one place physically, and perhaps another place mentally, at the same time.

However, online learning requires us to inhabit a third space – the digital space. As well as the incongruence and mental stress that’s created by being physically at home and mentally at work, we need to be present on-line in the digital space too. And, in order for our students to engage fully in on-line learning, we need to support and encourage every student to establish a digital residence as well as a physical residence.

Dave White, Head of Digital Learning at the University of Arts, London, researches the phenomenon of digital residency and came up with a framework to describe and analyse people’s approach to online spaces. In this framework, we can choose to be present professionally and personally online across a continuum that ranges from visitor to resident.

Take Gemma, a fictional student of a post-graduate executive education programme. In her professional role as marketing manager, Gemma is a visitor of the digital space, seeing it as a collection of tools she can use to gather information useful to get a particular job done. However, in her personal life, she has created a digital residence in the form of her Facebook and Twitter posts and in Zoom calls with her friends and family. In her personal life, Gemma sees the web as a series of spaces or places where she chooses to be present with other people.

When we are in the digital space in “visitor mode”, we leave no deliberate social trace of ourselves. We might be searching for information on Google, reading product reviews, watching videos, shopping, or “lurking” on social media reading the posts of other people. When we are in the digital space “in resident mode” we are living out a portion of our lives online. We leave a social trace, which remains when we go offline. To be a digital resident requires a digital identity, which we create and develop by making social media posts, participating in discussion boards, making comments, giving reviews and feedback and responding quickly to direct messages.

In order for our students to engage fully in the learning experience, as educators we need to engage with them in all four quadrants of the framework. In order to encourage digital visitors, our digital learning platforms need to be aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate, so our visitors can easily gather the information they need. In the past, we have contented ourselves with students who are digital visitors, because we have been able to engage more fully with them when we have shared the physical space of the classroom.

However, now Covid19 has restricted that possibility at least in the short to medium term, we need understand how to encourage and support our students to be digital residents too. If our students only “visit” online learning spaces rather than residing in them, we are failing to engage them fully. Learning is likely to be more superficial and less transformational – and altogether less satisfactory. We need to find ways to allow and encourage our learners to develop a digital identity in which they feel safe to integrate their “shoes-off” self and establish digital residency.

We can do this by such behaviours as acknowledging, sharing and relating to domestic intrusions, encouraging “off grid” student WhatsApp groups, having regular check-ins at the start and end of synchronous teaching sessions, using music and ambient sounds, integrating wellbeing activities, incorporating playful tasks and maintaining a sense of humour. In order for professional learners to integrate their work identities, its important to design activities that require the integration of theory and practice, perhaps reflecting on how theory has informed practice encouraging students to identify opportunities to use practice to develop their theoretical understanding.

As with many of the ways that Covid19 has forced us to change our educational practices; being aware of the various ways our learners engage with the digital space will benefits that will last long after we get back into the classroom. Recognising and valuing the “reality” of the digital space will enable us all to establish our own digital residence more consciously, and in doing so, we will encourage more learner engagement and become better educators.

Read our Case Study to find out how we applied the Digital Residency Framework to the design and development of the online spaces for learners on the Executive Education Programmes.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Helen Webster, Head of the Writing Development Centre, Newcastle University, whose presentation in the HaSS Education Community Room, introduced us to the work of Dave White on Digital Residence, and to Rosalind Beaumont and Dr Tracy Scurry who lead the HaSS Education Community Room.

6 January, 202117 September, 2021

Getting ready for semester 2

We’ve pulled together a helpful list of new and existing resources for colleagues preparing for semester 2. There are lots of quick tips, ideas from colleagues as well as guides, courses and webinars.

Getting ready for semester 2 digest

An easily skimmable digest of ideas, resources and useful links covering Canvas, assessment, synchronous online sessions and more.

What works?

Get ideas and inspiration from colleagues who have generously shared how they redesigned and delivered teaching in Semester 1. You can read about what has worked in their short accounts on our effective practice database.

See how modules have been redesigned, how fieldtrips have gone virtual and how lots of achievable ideas have kept students engaged.

Webinars

View and book onto available webinars. We know time is short, so we are adding digests to the webinar listings to make it easy for you to pick up key messages from the sessions. New webinars include Digital Polling and NUIT will be offering some revamped Zoom sessions.

Canvas

We have an ongoing programme of Canvas webinars and have updated and extended the Canvas Orientation course. These will be vital for colleagues new to teaching this year. Remember too that all staff and students can pose questions to Canvas 24/7 support.

Flexible Learning Online Course

All colleagues also have access to the Flexible Learning 2020 Canvas course which articulates changes needed under the Education Resilience Framework.

Join a Community

Share ideas, ask questions and find out more from your colleagues

You might be interested in the Zoom Community, Teams Community, Canvas Community and Numbas Users.

NUTELA (Newcastle University Technology Enhanced Learning Advoates) and Newcastle Educators also run regular practice sharing sessions and have Teams sites that you can join.

Visit the Digital Learning Site

We continue to improve the guides and resources on the Digital Learning Site and have noted important changes in the site’s newsfeed.

Get in touch

Let us know if there are any other resources you would find helpful or if you would like to share some of your teaching practice. You can get in touch at LTDS@ncl.ac.uk .

2 December, 202017 September, 2021

Guiding students through your Course

When you are working remotely it is really easy for students to be confused about what needs to be done and what’s important week by week.

Here are 3 simple ideas to help.

1. A module “roadmap”

Here are examples of roadmaps from a number of modules – they show what is happening week by week and help make connections between what is happening.

View examples from Law, NUBS and HaSS PGCert in more detail or read the case study from Ros Beaumont to find out more.

2. Use Canvas modules to set a flow through your course

Use your Canvas modules to direct student’s activity week by week or topic by topic. Every Canvas course has a sample structure that you can adapt to match your teaching pattern. You can hide or lock materials that aren’t yet relevant and even set requirements so that student need to view or complete certain conditions before they can move on.

See our updated information on Canvas modules in the Canvas Orientation course.

3. Suggest timings for activities

Without the normal structure of face to face time on campus it’s harder for many students to structure their time.

HSS8007 indicationg timings on activities

Add a weekly overview to give students an idea of your expectations for how much time to spend on the activities for a given week. This will help them plan their time, and make sure they give their attention to the things that you signpost as being most important.

From overwhelmed to ordered

It will take a bit of time to consider ordering, signposting, and setting a flow in your modules, but this need not be onerous and it’s one way you can help your students feel less overwhelmed in these strange times.

13 November, 202017 September, 2021

Learning and Teaching, New ideas and resources

Ideas and Inspiration, Flexible Learning 2020

Find out more about what colleagues and students have been working on in some of the Flexible Learning case studies and resources.

Social spaces for students

This online resource will provide you with examples of how to use social spaces for students in a digital virtual environment. The resource includes documents highlighting examples of practice and how to use them. As well as cases studies from our university and other institutions taking you through what has worked well and what to maybe avoid.

Canvas tips and favourite features

Hear from academic and professional services colleagues who share some of their Canvas tips, favourite features and positive feedback from students.

Read more on the Digital Learning website

Synchronous online sessions

Top tips from the Academic Practice Team.

The team cover how they planned synchronous sessions, how they used them to build community, and what they did to keep these Zoom teaching sessions engaging and accessible.

Peer assisted learning

Carrie, a peer assisted learning leader, chats with Zoe, a student, to share the challenges and successes of moving to online learning.

Hear more about the Language Resource Centre PAL Scheme.

New resources and support for teaching online

Maintaining Student Engagement Workshop

In this 60-minute workshop, we will explore together ideas for how you can engage students in online learning including:
• Some dos and don’ts of online learning;
• Methods for setting expectations;
• Alternatives to lectures;
• Keeping students engaging with you and each other;
• Keeping students involved week-to-week.

View dates and book your place.

Considerations for teaching and studying with poor internet

Colleagues and students alike may well be affected by slow or variable internet connections which in turn will make many aspects of online teaching and learning troublesome.

Some helpful strategies to help minimize difficulties.

New Online Training Course for Personal Tutors

A new online course, An Introduction to Personal Tutoring, is now available on Canvas.

Existing webinars and resources

Colleagues have been taking part in webinars and online courses over the last few months and we are continuing to run a lot of our more popular sessions. Find out more about webinars, drop-ins and online courses.

Guides

An extensive range of guides and further resources are available on the Digital Learning site.

5 November, 20205 November, 2020

Getting the most out of Synchronous Online Sessions

Like the rest of the University, our colleagues from the Academic Practice Team in the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) have redeveloped their face to face small group teaching sessions for online delivery. Their learners are postgraduate research students taking  the Introduction to Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE) and academic staff new to Newcastle University who are engaging with Newcastle Educational Practice Scheme (NEPS) Units en route to UKPSF fellowship.

“In order to make a session engaging online, you have to think about what it is that you’re trying to achieve.”
Dr Rosa Spencer, Professional Development Manager

I met up with Dr Rosa Spencer, Emma McCulloch and Chris Whiting to ask about their top tips on how they planned these 1-2 hour sessions, how they used them to build community, and what they did to keep these Zoom teaching sessions engaging and accessible.

Helpful Hints and Tips

Keep group sizes relatively small, 20 people max.

28 October, 202028 October, 2020

Questions about online learning- you are not alone!

There’s loads to learn to get ready for teaching this term, Canvas, synchronous online teaching, guidance in the ERF all of these are new. If you are puzzled about the best place to start you aren’t alone!

Questions about online learning?
I'm thinking about....is there a better approach?
How can I encourage students to engage in online sessions?
How can I make the best use of Canvas?
Drop -in to our Zoom room for friendly pointers http://bit.ly/talktoLTDS — http://bit.ly/talktoLTDS

LTDS’s Learning Enhancement and Technology Teams are here to help. We are running regular drop-in sessions each week where we can chat through options with you, give pointers to resources we know that will help and suggest ideas for you to consider.

We don’t know much about thermodynamics, cell biology or philosophy but between us we have loads of experience with online learning. If we don’t know the answer we can phone a friend and get back to you.

No question is too basic!

We run hour long drop-in sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You don’t need to make an appointment. Each drop-in has two members of our team to help answer your questions.

See http://bit.ly/talktoLTDS for our drop-in and webinar schedule and information about how to join.

Category: Digital Learning