Category: Digital Technologies

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Buddycheck Updates

There has been a system update to Buddycheck which alongside some improvements to the student view has opened up some new functionality when creating evaluations. The major changes that users will notice are described below. User guidance available on the Digital Learning webpages has been updated to reflect these changes.

Creating an evaluation and reusing questions

When creating a new evaluation you will now be asked to add a title before moving to the full evaluation set up page. There is now the option to use a previous evaluation as a template. To use existing questions in a new evaluation you now need to select an old evaluation as a template.

Buddycheck create evaluation screen with title entry and template selection hihglighted

Student introduction

There is now an option to add in an introduction to the evaluation for students. This will appear to students before they begin an evaluation alongside some new additional guidance on the question types included in the Buddycheck evaluation.

Student introduction test entry

Question ordering

Question order can now be updated by using drag and drop. You can preview, edit or remove questions from an evaluation using the appropriate icon.

question ordering alongside edit, preview and delete icons

Adjustment factor cap

It is now possible to set a minimum and maximum value adjustment factor cap for an individual evaluation.

The adjustment Factor is the average rating of the student divided by the overall average rating for all members of the team. This is used to adjust the individual student mark

It is possible to use either the capped adjustment factor or the original factor with no cap applied when deciding final marks.

For more information on how the adjustment factor may impact marks see the adjustment factor guidance and the adjustment factor excel example.

adjustment factor amendment options

Adding team questions

Alongside the existing ability to create scored questions, it is now possible to create team questions that ask students to answer a 5-scale question about the team as a whole (strongly agree to strongly disagree). Team questions do not contribute to the adjustment factor. 

Team question creation screen

Option to ask students to ‘motivate’ peer question score

When creating a peer question it is now possible to ask students to optionally motivate  scores, i.e. provide a comment as to why they have selected a score for their peer. This is now possible as part of the question rather than through the use of open questions at the end of the evaluation.

Motivation selection toggle and student view of question

For any queries on these changes please contact LTDS@ncl.ac.uk or see the guidance at the Digital Learning webpages.

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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.

Three roadmap examples

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.

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Be Course Ready on Canvas

Canvas logo

To help you to check that the Canvas course for your module is ready for your students, we have created a handy checklist which can be found on the Canvas section of the Digital Learning Website. You can also view our downloadable pdf version.

Remember, your Canvas course must be published for your students to be able to access it. This also applies to archive courses from 2017-18 to 2019-20. 

If you need help with Canvas you can access the following channels of support: 

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Online Assignment Submission Principles

In 2014  University Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Committee agreed a set of principles which stated that all appropriate assessments should be submitted through Turnitin. 

Now we have moved to Canvas as the Virtual Learning Environment, this has opened up some new options for online submission. Alongside the Turnitin tool it is now possible to create Canvas assignments, which offer features like double blind marking, group submission and moderated marking, whilst still using the Turnitin similarity checker.    

Given the new functionality now available, this is an appropriate time to revisit the principles.  The updated Online Assignment Submission Principles were approved by University Education Committee in August 2020.   

These principles are guidelines for how to get the most from submissions, advising that the Turnitin Similarity checks are carried out on Canvas and Turnitin assignments. If you allow students to submit multiple drafts they should not be allowed to see the similarity score, unless the assessment is focused on improving the students’ academic writing. Where appropriate the students’ work should be added to the Turnitin repository.   

The principles recommend that Schools communicate to their students when their work is going to be put through the Turnitin similarity checker.    

Full details are available in the Online Assignment Submission Principles document Online-Assignment-Submission-Principles.pdf  

If you require support creating assignments, or using the marking tools, please see our list of Canvas webinars https://services.ncl.ac.uk/digitallearning/canvas/colleagues/training/ 

or the Flexible Learning 2020 Webinar programme https://services.ncl.ac.uk/digitallearning/contactandsupport/dropins/ 

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What tools should i invest in?

3 interaction types

We start 2020 with our new VLE, Canvas, and a rich array of digital learning tools that can be used to support teaching. There are so many possibilities and it could easily be overwhelming.

This is a short post to begin to answer one of the questions I heard last week “What tools should I invest in?”.

But, let’s back up a bit,  before considering tools we need to think about what we want these tools to help us to achieve? Way back in 1998 Anderson and Garrison described three more common types of interaction involving students:

  • Student-content interactions
  • Student-teacher interactions
  • Student-student interactions

Let’s use this to come up with our list…

Student-content interactions

Your starting point here is Canvas itself. You can present information on pages, embed documents, link to resources on library reading list, include videos, audio and ReCap recordings.

Go to tool #1 has to be Canvas itself.

Linked to this is tool #2 Canvas quizzes.

Canvas support a wide range of question types: multiple choice, gap fill, short answer, matching, multiple answer.  Quizzes can help students practice skills, check their learning and encourage them revisit material.

For short PowerPoint narrations the easiest place to start is the recording features that come as part of ReCap.  We tend to think of ReCap as a lecture recording tool, but there is also a fabulous ReCap Personal Capture tool that you can use to record yourself, and publish in Canvas.  There are several bonuses with using ReCap – you have the ability to do make simple edits, you can use automatic speech recognition to generate captions, and students have the ability pause, rewind and make notes on the recordings that you publish.  ReCap personal capture comes in as tool #3 – you can install on your computer, or if you prefer you can use the new browser based recorder – Panopto Capture (beta).

Student to Teacher interactions

Outside the limited amount of PiP time you are likely to be meeting your students online.  For synchronous meetings there is increasingly little to choose from between Zoom and Teams – the only significant factor being that Zoom permits people to connect by phone – so supports those on lower bandwidth.

Now is a great time to become confident with the online meeting tool you are planning on using throughout your module.  I’ll leave it to you if #4 for you is Teams or Zoom – it would be sensible to settle on one, for you and your students.  Teams could be a strong contender if you plan to use this as a collaboration space over the module/stage, in which case do review the article on Building an online community using Teams.

Once you setting on your meeting tool, now is a great time to explore options for using whiteboards, polling, breakout rooms in these spaces and to begin to plan active online sessions.

For tool #5 I’d go with Canvas Discussions – these are easy to use, work really well in the Canvas Student and Teacher apps and are great for Q&A sessions, introductions, crowd-sourcing activities, and of course discussions!

Student to Student interactions

Learning at university is a social! There are huge limitations on what we can do in person – but what can we do to help learning be as social as it can be?  This isn’t so much about tools, but about the activities we design in: break out room discussions, group tasks, peer reviews, debates – things that might start in a timetabled session and then spill out.

For synchronous meetings and study sessions all our students have access to Zoom and Teams.  We can model how to use these, build students’ confidence in these spaces and show them how they can collaborate in Microsoft 365 collaborative spaces (Word documents, OneNote…).   I’ve already mentioned Teams and Zoom (#4), so for tool #6 I’ll pitch for Microsoft 365 with an emphasis on collaboration.

What do you think?

These are my top 5 tools, you may have a different list.  What have I missed out?

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be Canvas Ready

Canvas logo

We are getting closer to the 31 July 2020 when all access to Blackboard ends for colleagues and students and we go fully live with Canvas.

​​There are 5 key steps which will help colleagues to prepare for the transition date and for course delivery next academic year:

bit.ly/becanvasready

More information about each of these steps, as well as links to support, can be found on the Canvas website.

​​Don’t forget Canvas 24/7 support is available to all colleagues and students for any of your ‘How do I’ Canvas questions direct from the Canvas Help Menu or via telephone on + 44 808 189 2336.​

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New Canvas Webinar: Communication and Collaboration

Canvas logo

Continue your Canvas journey with this webinar which will explain how to use a range of collaboration and communication tools within Canvas.  

You will learn about:

  • how to use calendar and inbox
  • how to set up groupshow to use discussion boards, wikis etc
  • how to use some of the integrated tools such as Office 365 and Zoom 

Who should attend?

This workshop would suit all staff who are required to use Canvas to communicate and collaborate with students and/or other colleagues.   

Book your place on Communication and Collaboration

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Numbas and the migration to Canvas

This post provides some further information on how the move to Canvas affects Numbas tests.

Will my Numbas tests roll over to Canvas automatically?

Numbas tests are attached to a particular course in a VLE, and therefore will not be moved across when we change from Blackboard to Canvas. Tests will need to be set up again for the new academic year, which is no bad thing as you will need to make some decisions about the set up in Canvas. See the section How do I create a Numbas test in Canvas? below.

Remember that Numbas tests are prepared on the Numbas Editor (the Public Editor is at numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk). This means that you can redeploy your existing test in Canvas.

How can I access scores from Numbas tests deployed in Blackboard?

If you require scores from Numbas tests deployed in Blackboard then you should access these before the close down of Blackboard on July 31st.

However, the Numbas LTI tool will continue to have a record of attempts. A request can be sent to numbas@ncl.ac.uk if you need access to data after the close down of Blackboard.

How do I create a Numbas test in Canvas?

Numbas can be deployed in Canvas in two ways:

  • as a module item, alongside other learning resources; or
  • as an assignment.
Numbas
module item		Numbas
assignment
Add Numbas content ✅ ✅
Record student scores ✅ ✅
Hide from calendar, to do list, etc ✅
Restrict by date ✅
Add scores to Gradebook ✅
Use as a pre-requisite ✅

The following videos demonstrate the set up of each. For full step-by-step instructions see the Canvas Orientation Course.

Adding a Numbas test as a module item

In the following video, I add a Numbas test as a module item in Canvas:

Adding a Numbas Assignment

In the following video I set up Numbas as an assignment in Canvas:

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E-Assessment in Mathematical Sciences (EAMS) 2020 Conference

The Numbas team in the School of Mathematics, Statistics & Physics is running the third international conference on E-Assessment in Mathematical Sciences (EAMS), taking place between 22nd June and 1st July 2020. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners with an interest in e-assessment for mathematics and science.

Following successful events here in Newcastle in 2016 and 2018, EAMS 2020 will be an entirely online conference, featuring a mix of live sessions and web-based activities, with plenty of opportunity for discussion and collaboration.

As many of us prepare to continue delivering teaching and assessment online, EAMS 2020 presents an opportunity to hear from experts in the field and get hands-on with software, including Numbas, which is used extensively across the University, in subjects that include Biomedical Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, Maths, Physics, Psychology and Sports Science.

Live talks will take place over Zoom at 9am or 4pm BST (UTC +1) each day, with recordings available later. We hope that the online format and longer timescale will allow participants to engage more deeply with the material presented.

The call for talk and workshop proposals is currently open. If you have some research or an innovative technique related to mathematical e-assessment that you would like to present, then please submit an abstract at https://eams.ncl.ac.uk/call-for-speakers.

To attend the conference, please register for free at https://eams.ncl.ac.uk/register.