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Visualisations?

To go alongside the summer 2015 run of our Hadrian’s Wall course we held a panel discussion on the theme of “Why do we employ Visualisations“.  Dr Rob Collins chaired the session and posed questions from learners on the course to our lead Educator, Professor Ian Haynes,  and to Bill Griffiths, Head of Programmes at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums.

Transcript for this video

Here is a list of questions asked – the links jump to Ian and Bill’s responses.

 

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Innovation Fund Winners Ask School Students What They Expect From University Life

Researchers from the School of Medical Education have won funding for a project which interviews future students to discover what they might expect from their University learning experience.

Laura Delgaty, Lynne Rawles, Joanna Matthan, Sally Munford and Claire Guilding submitted a proposal to the University’s Innovation Fund in order to complete the work.

The project looks specifically at how young people use technology and the sorts of technologies they may expect from their future learning environment.

The project also ties in with the University’s own five-year strategy to enhance their digital capability to ensure that they are catering to the needs of future generations of students.

Principal Investigator Laura Delgaty said: ‘What was really interesting was talking to these 15/16 year olds and hearing how they actually use technology.

‘We were incredibly surprised by the things that were really important to them because they were not necessarily the things that we thought.’

The project encouraged school students across Tyne and Wear to consider what attracted them to certain types of technology

‘For most of them the most important thing was that all of the software they were being asked to use could work on a number of different devices, allowing them to choose what brand of phone or i-pad etc. they wanted without being tied to a certain brand or model.

‘Obviously they asked for lots of chargers to be available but one really surprising thing was that they said that they expected fresh drinking water to be available in all teaching spaces.

‘That was just something that we’d never thought about, but I think these students are very alive to healthy lifestyle choices and drinking water is something that they expect the learning environment.’

‘It was amazing the amount of time these school students put in on answering the questions and the amount of detail they went into.

‘Some even described how they wanted different spaces to smell!

‘But what really came across was that they don’t think of technology as something new or separate. This will help contribute to the way we think about our five year strategy.

‘They think of it as something that is just there, that is just always part of their lives and which should be easy and functional and barely noticeable.’

The Innovation Fund supports projects which aim to provide innovative approaches to learning and teaching in the University.

This project was successful in the Strategic Project strand the call for this semester’s strategic strand closes on 15th January 2016.

There is also a Postgraduate Innovation Fund competition for innovative approaches to postgraduate learning or to enhancing the postgraduate experience.

Interested in applying for the Innovation Fund? Apply online or contact innovfund@ncl.ac.uk for more information.

 

 

 

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STAR CASE STUDY: Using Industry Professionals in Law

Law School Lecture

Lecturers in the Law School are making use of industry professionals to teach students about ‘real-life’ as a legal professional.

The school makes use of professionals from local practices to assess first year’s interviewing techniques and invites Law Lords and senior judges to meet students in order to help them to establish contacts and feel comfortable in the formal and often cliquey legal world.

Jonathan Galloway, just one lecturer making use of professionals in both law and economics as part of his Competition Law module, thinks that regular contact with those working in the profession gives Newcastle students the edge.

Dr Jonathan Galloway of Newcastle Law School‘Not only is it great to hear from someone who can tell you in a more anecdotal sense how the theory you learn about during your degree works in real world situations, it also builds students’ confidence.

‘For many of them, the world of court, particularly places like the supreme court or Parliament can seem completely out of reach. Meeting a senior judge or law lord can help them to feel more comfortable and confident in applying for jobs or placements at these types of places later.

‘For some Newcastle students, they may never have met a barrister or a judge before. Having people who work at some of the most prestigious firms or in the top jobs deliver elements of their courses helps them to see that these sorts of professions are within reach for them and hopefully encourages them to aim high after they graduate.’

For Jonathan, this works both ways: ‘It also works the same way for the firms themselves. Although many of the most prestigious firms in London, they come into regular contact with students from London-based Law Schools, many may not meet many students from Newcastle.

‘Inviting them to speak means that they already have a sense of what Newcastle students are about and how much they could offer their firm as a graduate.’

The Law School makes use of professionals to assess interviewing techniques in the early stages of the degree and to deliver some lectures on modules such as Competition law and Human Rights law.

Although much of this takes place later in the course and Jonathan is keen to stress that students always already have a theoretical grounding in the area which professionals come to discuss, he thinks it is inherently valuable for the students:

‘We’ve had some really excellent people, not just lawyers but economists too to help the students get a more rounded sense of how wide-ranging legal studies is and how many different sectors the law touches upon.’

To read more about what Law is up to see the Case Study Database.

Or if you have an example of really effective teaching practice in your School do get in touch with Katherine.cooper@ncl.ac.uk.

 

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What fascinates our FutureLearn educators about Hadrian’s Wall?

With the third run of our Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman Frontier free online course in full swing on FutureLearn, we asked our Lead Educator, Professor Ian Haynes and Educator, Dr Rob Collins what fascinates them about the World Heritage site, here on our doorstep in Newcastle upon Tyne. Here are their responses:

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Professor Ian Haynes, Lead Educator on Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman Frontier, and Professor of Archaeology, Newcastle University.

Now I must confess that there are times when a walk along the Wall lifts my heart and moves me to poetry. I shall not offer a sample here; my spontaneous compositions would only disappoint, but there is something about the Wall in its landscape setting that is so dramatic it is hard not to be moved by it all. This poetic impulse of course wrestles with another darker perspective. The Wall witnessed many acts of brutality in its long history; in a profound sense it monumentalised division.
Yet if I were to discuss what I find most enduringly intriguing about the Wall, I would have to say that the answer lies somewhere between a love of the Border Country’s beauty and an awareness of its savage past. And it may not surprise you at all that this fascination would concern one of my particular specialities, the auxiliary units and their families, the communities that sustained Rome’s presence on the northern frontier. The place the auxilia occupy not simply on the Wall, but in the wider story of the Roman Empire is something I sought to convey in my book Blood of the Provinces. I can put my fascination with these groups no better now than I did when I wrote that book back in 2013:
‘Marginalised even in many studies of the Roman army, themselves marginal in so much of contemporary scholarship of empire, auxiliary soldiers and the formations in which they served are both classic products and vital instruments of the empire’s ongoing capacity to incorporate the diverse into the whole. They are, furthermore, the invisible made visible. Our knowledge of rural settlement has grown dramatically through major survey projects and innovative excavation in the last few decades, but all too often, students of the empire find themselves at a loss when they seek to address the fate and experience of the mass of the provincial population. In many provinces, the lives and beliefs, homes and graves of the majority have received scant scholarly attention. Yet those who enrolled in even the humblest units of Rome’s armies – the auxilia – become much more accessible to modern researchers. Partly as a result of the very nature of material culture in the provinces and partly as a result of academic fashion, there are vastly more data currently available for these men and their families than those they left behind in the empire’s villages’. Hadrian’s Wall provides some of the richest data for these people, so often treated as the poor relations to Rome’s celebrated legionaries and to my mind so much more fascinating. Working on the Wall, I am constantly encountering their legacy, and repeatedly intrigued by Rome’s capacity to build an empire out of such diverse peoples.

If Ian’s enthusiasm for his subject isn’t enough to get you interested in studying archaeology more, or joining one of our Hadrian’s Wall study tours then perhaps Rob’s passion for the frontier communities in the late Roman period will inspire you?

rob_collins
Dr Rob Collins, Educator on Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman Frontier, and Research Associate, Newcastle University.

Try as I may, I’m not sure I can clearly explain why I love Roman frontier studies and Hadrian’s Wall in particular. For me, it is an interplay of many different aspects. At the foundation is a passion for archaeology – I like the puzzle-solving element of it, and the fact that there are new discoveries every year. Added to this is the frontier element. I know people are astounded by the huge temples and aqueducts that the Romans built, but I find the mix of Roman and native that you find in the provinces much more intriguing – the interplay of imperial culture and local tradition and understanding of this important foreign power. And the army magnifies this aspect, but all in the crucible of a military institution. And finally, I’m particularly keen on the later Roman Empire. I find it to be richer and more interesting than the early imperial period, with new forms and expressions of power and culture emerging as a pre-cursor to medieval Europe. So if you add all these separate strands together into an ‘intellectual rope’ – you get my real passion: the limitanei of Hadrian’s Wall (a frontier and its soldiers) in the late 4th and 5th centuries (late Roman Empire). From the outside, the whole scenario looks a bit like a tangled mess, but being able to wade in with research and tease out solutions to problems, or identify how we can solve a problem stimulates both the creative and the analytical. It’s great!

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Can anyone be an entrepreneur?

We had the chance to ask Sir Richard Branson a question at a ‘Mentor Me Branson’ event held at Newcastle University in March 2015.

Katie Wray asked the panel: ‘do you think any type of person can be entrepreneurial?’

After Jimmy Cregan and Sir Brian Souter answered here’s what Sir Richard Branson said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlPd1i5cGHE&feature=youtu.be&t=21m36s

I’ll try to be a bit more controversial.  I think that if you have got an idea that can make other people’s lives better, but you think I’m not necessarily entrepreneurially bent, I would say just forget that thinking and just try it. And I do think that, most people, if they try it, they’ll learn about it, and they may not become a serial entrepreneur, which is not necessarily a good thing, they may just want to specialise in that one thing that they have got a passion for.   So I think most people ought to be able to become entrepreneurs, if they put their mind to it.

We love this answer and will be exploring the theme of “enterpreneurial mindsets” further in the early stages of our  Enterprise Shed: Making Ideas Happen course.

Katie Wray (Lecturer in Enterprise) is the lead educator for the four week course starting early in 2016.

 

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PIZZA POP AND PRACTICE: SOUND AND VISION IN TEACHING

NUTELA 3PS 111115NUTELA will hold it’s first Pizza, Pop and Practice workshop of this academic year in the Tees Cluster at the Robinson Library on Friday 27th November 2015.

The workshop, entitled Sound and Vision in Teaching, will showcase techniques to use video and sound editing software to create short film sequences and audio recordings for teaching.

As well as vast quantities of FREE PIZZA and POP over lunchtime, the event will offer a series of short workshops to show participants how to use Microsoft Mix to put together or mix up words and images, Vine and Animoto to make short animations and Audacity to record short sound clips.

See Animoto in action and learn more about the event:

https://animoto.com/play/YcUFoKFhQkZG2Z8817siog

Participants must register for catering purposes.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

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School of Biology Gets National Recognition for Innovative Assessment Feedback

Do your students complain about the feedback they receive on assessments?

Are you interested in a more efficient marking process, which engages students and increases student satisfaction?

Alison Graham from the School of Biology, was a runner-up in this year’s Turnitin Global Innovation Awards because of her innovative use of GradeMark and Turnitin.

Alison integrates marking rubrics written specifically for each assessment into GradeMark and produces libraries of comments for that assignment.

She was a runner-up in the Student Engagement Category of the international competition.

These comments can be added directly to students’ work, noting how they can improve and providing more detail than possible on pro formas. Alongside these assessors can add free text comments specific to the individual student’s work.

AlisonGraham
School of Biology’s Alison Graham

Students like it because the can quickly see the areas which they need to improve on. Integrating the marking rubric into GradeMark gives the students a visual indication of where their work is at on each strand of the marking criteria, giving a useful level of detail to the single overall mark.

[The rubric] was the most useful aspect of the electronic feedback as this helped me to gauge which areas of the assignment I was lacking and therefore where I would need to focus my improvement for future work. It also helped me to understand why I had received the mark I had in relation to the marking criteria for each section and thus why my overall grade was within a certain grade boundary.Student feedback on the system

For staff the system, once in place, made marking quicker and more efficient. Online marking removes the logistics of lugging around paper copies of work, and the bank of library comments mean that common issues on the work can be quickly responded to with detailed, relevant and specific feedback.

Alison notes that “Markers are not restricted by the space in the margins and online marking removes any issues with students being unable to read handwriting”

Using GradeMark also leads to a greater consistency of marking on modules which are team-taught.

Alison has found that engaging students in the marking process, through timetabled sessions, helps them to understand the reasons for the marks they are getting. Modules using GradeMark consistently perform highly on the module feedback surveys, and on the National Student Survey there has been an increase in students agreeing that “The criteria used in marking have been clear in advance”.

This approach is now being used by a number of staff in the School of Biology and elsewhere, and online marking through GradeMark has clear potential to be used by staff in all departments across the university.

If you’re interested in finding out more about GradeMark and integrating it into your own teaching, we can help you. Get in touch with LTDS at ltds@ncl.ac.uk, you can see other examples of good practice using Grademark and Turnitin in our Case Studies database.

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Inserting an Office Mix into a Blackboard Module

Follow these steps to use an Office Mix Placement inside a module in Blackboard:

  1. Go to the module you’d like to use.
  2. In the Tools menu, select Office Mix.
  3. In the Link Name box, type a name.
  4. Configure any additional settings you’d like.
  5. Click Submit.
  6. When you return to the Module, click the item that you just added.
  7. When the item appears, use one of these methods to select a mix:
    • By URL: A simple way to select a mix is to visit the Office Mix website, watch a mix, and copy/paste the URL in the dialog. This method makes it easy to include mixes that have been created by other people.
    • My Mixes: Select a mix from your My Mixes page. In order to prevent students from having to sign in to view a mix, only those mixes with permissions set to Unlisted or Public are shown. You can find our how to set these preferences here
  8. After you have selected a mix, click Yes to confirm that this is the mix you’d like to use.
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Wallsend’s Wonky Wall

In between posting comments on our Hadrian’s Wall course,  Dr Rob Collins has been out and about on the Wall itself.

segedunum2

“Yesterday I had the privilege to visit and examine recent excavations outside of the Roman fort at Wallsend, Segedunum. A recent grant has allowed Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) and the WallQuest project to explore a stretch of the Wall curtain just northwest of the fort and the bathhouse to the southwest of the fort.

The stretch of Wall curtain is extremely interesting. As you can see from the photo, this stretch of the curtain is best described as wonky!   But this wonkiness, and detailed examination of the stonework reveals vital information. For one thing, there was a stream that the curtain crossed (which thanks to recent rainfall is very visible in the photo) and which ran behind the Wall. This stream seems to have destabilised the land on the eastern side of the stream, and made the Wall lean and probably collapse. You can see this from the very sharp angle of the lowest building courses in the picture. Subsequently, there were a number of rebuilds of the Wall curtain in this area, which canbe broadly dated with pottery. This seems to show that the curtain of the Wall was repaired and refurbished until at least the later 3rd century.

Wall excavations

The bathhouse has been excavated over recent weeks, and this is the first bathhouse along Hadrian’s Wall to have been excavated under modern standards. Only the lowest courses of the building remain, as the bathhouse seems to have been dismantled or demolished around 1814 when it was encountered by builders. The remains of the walls of the structure reveal a number of phases of activity,  proving that the Hadrianic bathhouse – that is the original bathhouse – was in use and adapted over at least a century, possibly more.

Results will be published in due course (though this can often take many years from completion of fieldwork), but for those that live locally, there is a conference in South Shields on Sat 14 November, where Dr Nick Hodgson will present the results of the excavation to date.”

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Scotland’s QAA Focus on Student Transitions

Using the findings of a recent project focused on student transitions, Scotland’s QAA will build resources to help students with transitions at University, from a sense of ‘belonging’ to their institution to the development of graduate skills.

The project, led by Dr Ming Cheng, a Lecturer in the Academic Development Unit at the University of Glasgow, examined models of transition and their applicability to HE.

The study’s findings and a range of resources are available online.

The aim was to provide students and staff with resources to help them to gain an insight into these processes but also to highlight transition, and a continuing process of change, as an inherent part of the University experience for students.

The project formed part of QAA’s Scotland’s Student Transitions Enhancement Theme.

The work is likely to feed into future projects looking at how transitions skills can be beneficial at university but also in alter life.

In recent years a variety of institutions and research bodies have been focusing on student transitions, as a way of improving students’ experiences at and after University, both academically and personally.

These transitions also take into account the movement from school, college or work to University and can contribute to processes of recruitment and widening participation.

At Newcastle this has led to the appointment of a Transitions Officer in Computing Science, who helps undergraduates and postgraduates to adjust as they move through the different levels of their academic courses and out into the world of work.

Are you doing research into student transitions at Newcastle? Tell us about it: ltds@ncl.ac.uk or @ncllt.