The University is carrying out work to improve the digital accessibility of systems and content across the institution. This includes the module content with Blackboard.
This work started with the Art of the Possible week in July 2019. This week of activity showcased some of the great work already underway in this area and provided useful practical CPD sessions for staff to engage with.
This is being followed by visits to academic units during this academic year to inform them of the benefits and ease of accessible content within Blackboard, and other TEL systems. These visits have started and will continue through Semester 1.
The accessibility in practice workshop that has been developed alongside the Student Wellbeing service the helps staff learn how to create accessible and inclusive learning and teaching resources will be offered to each academic unit, as well as being run centrally.
Building on the solid foundations of OLAF provision, and the successful first 2 years of the Diversifying and Expanding Online Exam Provision project, the University’s Technology Enhanced Learning Sub-Committee have approved the launch of a new combined Digital Exams service.
The story so far …
Newcastle University’s Online Assessment and Feedback (OLAF) Service has been running high stakes secure online exams using Blackboard’s test tool since 2007/08. The 13 years since that first exam have seen OLAF come of age, supported by well-established institutional processes that ensured all 132 OLAF exams in 2018/19 went smoothly.
In 2017/18 the Diversifying and Expanding Online Exam Provision project was launched, and the first of some new types of digital exams were piloted using software called WISEflow. Bring Your Own Device was introduced, enabling students to use their own laptops to sit a secure digital exam. Alongside this, moving essay and long written answer exam questions from paper to online has also become possible for the first time.
The spring of 2018 was an unusual period in the life of the
law school. Here, as in most departments, classrooms were left empty and
lecturers relocated themselves to picket lines. My own teaching timetable at
that time would have placed me in our lecture theatre, delivering first year
lectures on a compulsory module. The timing of the strike meant a number of
these would be lost and while I didn’t want to dilute the impact of the strike,
I did decide to run an experiment: I offered one of the affected lectures up to
the students. As usual, I had uploaded the lecture slides (on non-strike days) in
advance of the lecture and I followed that up with an e-mail:
“… while I will not be delivering
the lecture, the lecture theatre will still be scheduled for our use. So my
offer is this: If any of you (or indeed all of you) would like to run the
lecture for yourselves, with the notes that I have given you, you are welcome
to give this a go! Recap will still be recording
for the time, so if anyone is willing to take up this offer then I will offer
to listen to the recap recording when I am back at work and to give you
feedback on what you discuss. … Recap starts at 09:05!”
To improve functionality, and in line with staff and student
requests, there have been some recent updates to the ePortfolio system.
Graduate Framework
The new Graduate Framework was embedded in ePortfolio for
the start of this academic year, and is now the default skill set for taught
students. Students can link blog posts (reflections/evidence) to attributes of
the Framework. Students can download their information as a PDF, including a
summary of number of posts by graduate attribute. The old Graduate Skills
Framework is still available for those who have used it previously.
Supervision Groups
Supervision Groups are used to support projects, placements and other activities. Supervisors can communicate with groups of students, whilst students share reflections and updates with just the supervisors in a safe environment for non-collaborative work.
The groups now support multiple supervisors following requests for this. In addition, the interfaces for Supervision Groups and sharing portfolio content have been simplified and made more efficient.
Placement Support
The Placements sub-system for ePortfolio supports access by external
supervisors as well as students and staff. It includes rubric-based assessment,
custom forms, automated form scheduling, and 3-way file sharing. This went live
in 2018/19 for PGCE programmes and additional programmes are using it in
2019/20.
There
have been numerous enhancements based on requests from different placement schemes,
including additional options for rubric-based assessment, CSV downloads of form
data, admin notes, and quick links to create record meetings.
Other Changes
There have been various other enhancements/bug fixes in ePortfolio, including:
Meeting records – now includes a
duration (requested for Admin recording of meetings and avoiding overlapping
events).
Accessibility – you may notice some
changes, including darker colours for buttons in order to meet accessibility
colour contrast requirements.
Various changes – to support switching
to a new institutional data feed, which is more efficient and sustainable.
If you would like to know more about any of these changes, or
would like to know more about utilising new functionality, please contact Sam Flowers in LTDS.
You might be working on a dissertation, or you may have devised your own topic for an assessment. You might have worked with an external company, or worked with a researcher over the summer to help them with their research project. All types of research are welcome.
Postgraduates are also welcome to apply as long as the research was completed while they were an undergraduate and they graduated within the last 12 months.
Practical, transferable skills! Taking your learning outside the University! CV points!
British Conference of Undergraduate Research
What: the UK’s premier conference for research done at undergraduate level
Where: University of Leeds
When: 6-7 April 2020
How: presentations or posters
Posters in Parliament
What: an opportunity to present your research in the prestigious surroundings of Westminster Palace
There is a need to replace WebPA as the University’s VLE
integrated tool for peer evaluation of group work contribution. WebPA is open
source and this leaves the University vulnerable to system failure with a lack
of technical support. There have been a number of bugs and stability issues
impacting on the usability and reliability of WebPA that have caused disruption
for staff and students.
The viability of a number of options has been considered in
order identify a product that has high usability i.e. has a simple workflow for
setting up and managing an evaluation, and that offers as a minimum the same
functionality that is available in WebPA. Buddycheck has been identified as an
option that meets these essential requirements and offers VLE integration.
Buddycheck has a simple workflow for setting up evaluations and allows
customisation of questions, rubrics, terminology and default settings.
Buddycheck is being piloted during Semester One 2019/20. A
number of Semester One modules have signed up to take part but there may be
capacity to support more. If you are interested in taking part in this pilot
please contact LTDS@ncl.ac.uk with details
of the group assessment.
WebPA will remain available in Blackboard until the end
of 2019/20 and users will be supported by LTDS, however the intention is
that it will not be available once the University moves to Canvas at the
beginning of 2020/21.
It’s recently been announced that Newcastle will replace Blackboard with Canvas as our main virtual learning environment from the 2020/21 academic year. We’ve had a few questions from colleagues about how this will affect Numbas, so this is a short note to say, in essence, it won’t.
Numbas is currently linked to Blackboard using the LTI standard, which Canvas also supports. When we switch to Canvas, links to Numbas will work the same way.
This is what adding a Numbas resource in Canvas looks like.
Multiple institutions around the world are already successfully using Numbas with Canvas. We will of course do our own testing before the switch happens.
During 2019-20, Advance HE will be running a series of one-day Innovation in Teaching Practice Workshops.
With teaching excellence still a major focus of the HE sector, and increasing pressures across institutions to respond to policies such as the subject level TEF in England and challenges such as the mental wellbeing of both staff teams and students, Advance HE’s workshops will provide practical guidance on improving your teaching practices working alongside peers from a range of institutions and disciplines.
As members of Advance HE, staff at Newcastle University are able to receive discounted rates for Advance HE development programmes, conferences and events. Although there isn’t central funding for such events, your school may wish to fund relevant opportunities. Whether you are near the start of your career, an academic, a member of professional services, a senior leader in an executive team or working in governance, Advance HE have timely and tailored development opportunities for you and your teams.
Successful students will represent Newcastle University with a poster or oral presentation at the main BCUR conference in the Easter vacation, or with a poster at Posters in Parliament in February / March.
What you need to know:
You will need to have time the w/c 25 November to review approximately five to ten 250 word abstracts.
Staff from all disciplines are welcome, as specific subject knowledge is not required to review the abstracts. BCUR’s events are generalist, so contributions are expected to convey findings and their importance to a non-specialist audience.
Rating criteria will be provided.
The reviewing panel will not convene physically; it will be done electronically.
This opportunity to submit an abstract to the conference will be promoted to students soon. If you have any questions, or know of any students with some impressive undergraduate research, feel free to contact the organising team at thebcur@newcastle.ac.uk.
Hear from the two exciting keynote presenters and be inspired by the work of your colleagues and students across Newcastle University’s campuses.
Keep up to date with how the day is developing by visiting the conference website.
Call for submissions
Why not share your own practice? The call for submissions is also open.
Proposals are encouraged from everyone involved in learning and teaching at all Newcastle University campuses – students, academic staff, professional services staff, technicians and external collaborators.
There are full details about how to submit, formats, themes and criteria on the conference website.
The deadline for submissions is 10 January 2020.
Spread the word
Tell you colleagues about the conference and how to register – all are welcome.
Are they doing some interesting work that deserves to be known more widely, and just need some encouragement? This is their chance, why not suggest they submit a proposal.
