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
The Learning & Teaching @ Newcastle University podcast was launched in the 2021 Art of the Possible week Blended learning: effective practice. This monthly podcast celebrates the great things we are doing in learning and teaching here at Newcastle University.
In each episode we hear from a wide range of guests, and guest hosts to discover more about their stories and the work behind their stories. These can be long form conversations, magazine style articles, and much more.
In the latest episode (episode 37), Ben Steel from LTDS sat down with Pro Vice Chancellor Education Professor Ruth Valentine and Dean of Digital Education Dr David Kennedy.
AI text generating technologies have been around for a long time, but they have made significant advances in recent years. Most are trained on extensive data sets and are capable of producing human-like written content quickly and easily. There has been a lot of media coverage of these tools recently (in particular ChatGPT) with concerns raised about the risk they present to academic integrity.
As with all emerging technologies, it is our role as educators to explore and investigate the opportunities they provide to our students’ educational experience, as well as to consider any potential negative impacts. Ben, Ruth and David discuss Newcastle University’s response to these tools, with a focus on the five principles for the use of AI at Newcastle.
You can find this episode (and our back catalogue) at the following places:
Next time we are going to look at our 2023 Art of the Possible week AI in Education, with highlights from our sessions.
So, remember to download, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. If you are new to podcasts, you will see some useful links on each episode page.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly changing landscape, with new and innovative tools emerging constantly. But how can you keep up-to-date with the latest developments and trends in this fast-moving field? In this blog post we will share some of our favourite articles on AI to help get you started:
To find out more about AI at Newcastle University, and keep up-to-speed with new and emerging developments in the use of AI in teaching and assessment, please visit our Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle site.
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
We’ve refreshed our Inspera support guidance materials on the Learning and Teaching site, where you will now find links to our new range of webinars and marking how-to videos. We will continue to expand our online guidance resources over the summer.
H5P, the Canvas-integrated tool, allows you to create more interactive course materials. From simple formative quizzes to complex branching scenarios, H5P is an easy to use, but powerful tool to enhance students learning.
Why should you consider using H5P?
As a busy academic, it can be challenging to find the time and resources to enhance your teaching methods. However, H5P is a powerful tool that can significantly benefit your teaching, even amidst a busy schedule. Here’s why:
Interactive and Engaging Content: H5P allows you to create interactive and engaging content easily, allowing you to increase students’ attention, their engagement, and make the learning experience more enjoyable.
Time Efficiency: H5P provides a user-friendly interface and a wide range of pre-designed templates, making it easy to create interactive content quickly. Once you become familiar with the tool, you can save time by reusing templates, clone and modifying existing content (created by you or shared with colleagues) to suit different topics or courses.
Versatility: H5P offers a variety of activity types, including interactive videos, presentations, quizzes, games, timelines, and more. This versatility allows you to cater to different learning styles and adapt your teaching methods to meet the needs of diverse student groups. Whether you want to assess knowledge, reinforce concepts, or promote critical thinking, H5P provides a wide range of options.
Seamless Integration: H5P is compatible with our learning management systems, Canvas. You don’t even need to leave your Canvas page to create your content, and minimises the need for students to navigate between multiple tools.
Help and support is at hand available: All content types have built-in tutorials. To support colleagues, we are also running additional workshops on using H5P.
Using H5P to Enhance Learning and Teaching Webinar
H5P is a tool integrated into canvas that allows users to easily create, share, and reuse interactive and multimedia content. H5P offers a wide range of content types, such as quizzes, interactive videos, games, and presentations. With H5P, users do not need to have advanced programming skills to create engaging and interactive content, as the tool provides a simple and intuitive user interface that allows them to add multimedia elements, interactions, and assessments to their content with ease.
Using H5P to Enhance Learning and Teaching: Advanced Webinar
A session on more advanced tips on working with H5P – for users who would like to explore more advanced content types. This session is designed to empower educators with the skills and knowledge to harness the full potential of H5P in their teaching practices. This workshop is specifically tailored for academics who are already familiar with the basics of H5P and want to explore advanced features and functionalities. Through hands-on exercises and guided demonstrations, you will learn how to integrate H5P content seamlessly into your existing course materials. The workshop will also provide a platform for collaboration and sharing of best practices, allowing you to network with peers and gain inspiration from real-world examples. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the tools and expertise to create engaging learning experiences using H5P, thereby enhancing their teaching methods and fostering a more interactive and impactful classroom environment.
We have also published a new guide on H5P on the Learning and Teaching Website: Tutorial on Creating Virtual Tours Using H5P. It contains a step-by-step instructions on creating a virtual tour, with some example 360 and static images for you to practice.
How do you use H5P?
What is your experience H5P? Do you have examples of content you would like to share? Comment below and let other colleagues get inspired!
This blog post outlines how to use Ally to improve the accessibility of your teaching materials within Canvas.
Ally is a built-in accessibility checker that is integrated into Canvas which automatically checks course materials against WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards.
From an instructor perspective, it delivers guidance to improve the accessibility of their course content. For students it provides accessible alternative formats such as audio, electronic braille, epub and more.
Alternative Formats
Ally automatically generates alternative formats of your course files, so students can access the information they need, in the way that they need it.
Formats includes:
Electronic Braille
Audio
Immersive Reader
PDF – OCR
PDF – Tagged
HTML, Semantic
ePub
Translated Version
BeeLine Reader
For more information on these alternative formats, visit the Alternative Formats section of the Ally website.
The below video explains alternative formats in Ally, demonstrating how they are accessed and used.
Alternative Formats in Ally – Explanational video
Instructor feedback
Ally provides you detailed feedback and support to help you make your materials more accessible.
The below video explains the instructor view of Ally and how to improve the accessibility of your materials:
Instructor Tools in Ally – Explanational video
Further Resources
For more information on Ally in Canvas, please visit our Ally For Canvas pages on the Learning and Teaching website.
All learning resources we create should aim to be accessible as possible and this includes video content. For the purposes of this blog, we will be looking at video captioning in the Panopto (also know as Recap) system.
When discussing video content, we are referring to recordings that are provided to students for educations purposes (that is delivered via Canvas), for example lecture recordings, teaching presentations etc.
Captioning in Panopto
The ReCap service (Panopto) provides the ability to add ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) generated captions to your recordings.
The University recognises that automatically generated captions are not 100% correct and have published a captions disclaimer for viewers.
We recommend reviewing automatically generated captions and making light-touch edits before making them available.
For further guidance on captioning video content and FAQs, please visit Captions and Transcripts pages on the Learning and Teaching development website.
This blog post outlines how to make Canvas pages accessible using the Rich Content Editor (RCE). Many of the techniques and tips are similar to those discussed in creating accessible documents.
The Rich Content Editor within Canvas is a powerful tool for create engaging content, blending text with multimedia resources. With a built-in accessibility checker, you can make some great content that not only looks good but is also accessible.
1. Text Headings
Use a hierarchy of headings such as Heading 2, Heading 3 and Heading 4. The heading options are limited in Canvas compared to other software, with the highest level of heading starting at Heading 2. Using headings allows easier navigation for all users, as well as allowing screen readers to identify and describe the structure of a document.
When selecting a font size use a minimum of font size 12 (which is the default font size setting in the Rich Content Editor in Canvas). For the main text of the page, use the Paragraph setting. It’s also best to keep your use of bold and italic text to a minimum
If lists are used in the page use bullet points for items that aren’t sequential or numbered lists for sequential items.
When using colours in a Canvas page, do not use colour alone to convey meaning. If someone has a visual impairment, including colour blindness, the emphasis you’re trying to create by using colour will be lost.
Please also be mindful of the colour contrast. This means the colour contrast between background and foreground content should be great enough to ensure it is legible.
Always use alternative text (or ‘alt text’) to provide a meaningful description of an image. Alt text allows screen readers and text-to-speech tools to read aloud the content of an image to the user.
Alt text should be clear and concise (1-2 sentences) and explain the relevant content of an image. Alt text is limited to 125 characters, so use that wisely and try to describe the key elements of the image.
If your graphic has text in it, this should be added to the alt text also.
If an image is there only for appearance, you can mark it as decorative.
Tables can be great for organising information. However, if used incorrectly, they can be difficult for people to navigate using assistive technologies.
If you add a table to your document, be sure to use it for data and not for layout or document design.
It’s important to ensure that your table has a header row that repeats itself when the table extends beyond a single page. When deciding on a structure for tables, remember they are read from left to right and top to bottom.
Use hyperlinks to describe where the link will take the user. It is recommended that you create descriptive text about where the URL will take the user so it can be easily read by a screen reader. For example, the “Semester 1 – Assignment Brief” details can be found in the Assignments section of Canvas, where “Semester 1 – Assignment Brief” is the hyperlink. Avoid using ‘click here’, ‘read more’ or ‘for more info’. Also avoid underlining text for emphasis, but rather use the bold function.
Guidance on how to create, edit and remove hyperlinks can be found in the following guides:
Use the built-in accessibility checker in Canvas to identify any accessibility issues on a page. This tool can help identify any accessibility issues in your pages, ensuring they meet the necessary standards. They will guide you, step by step, on how to make your pages more accessible.
