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Writings on the Wall

We asked some of the Wall experts you have met during the Hadrian’s Wall MOOC to each recommend 5 books on the topic. This is what they came up with. There is duplication and difference in their choices. You can suggest other books or add thoughts/reviews on those below through the comments.

 David Breeze:

1. S. Johnson, Hadrian’s Wall, London 2004  – offers a general introduction (available on Amazon)
2. D. J. Breeze and B. Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, London 2000 – This is the basic text book on the Wall
3. D. J. Breeze, J. Collinngwood Bruce’s Handbook to the Roman Wall, 14th edition, Newcastle 2006  –  this is a detailed guide-book to the Wall (available at www.achaeologyplus.co.uk  and Amazon  – discounts available from archaeologyplus.co.uk to FutureLearn learners – if you contact them by email or phone)
4. P. Frodsham, Hadrian and His Wall, Newcastle 2013 – examines the relationship between the Wall and its builder (available on Amazon)
5. D. J. Breeze, The Frontiers of Imperial Rome, Barnsley 2011 – places Hadrian’s Wall in its international context. (available on Amazon)

Frances McIntosh:

1. D. J. Breeze, 2006. J. Collinngwood Bruce’s Handbook to the Roman Wall, 14th edition, Newcastle (available on Amazon)
2. D. J. Breeze and B. Dobson 2000. Hadrian’s Wall, London
3. E. Birley 1961. Research on Hadrian’s Wall (available on Amazon)
4. P. Bidwell (ed) 2008. Understanding Hadrian’s Wall, Arbeia Society (available on Amazon)
5. P. Hill 2006. The Construction of Hadrian’s Wall, Tempus (available on Amazon)

Lindsay Allason-Jones:

1. D. J. Breeze and B. Dobson 2000 (4th edition) Hadrian’s Wall. Penguin
2. Richard Hingley 2012, Hadrian’s Wall: a Life. OUP (available on Amazon)
3. W. F. Shannon 2007, Murus ille famosus (that famous wall): Depictions and Descriptions of Hadrian’s Wall before Camden. C&W Tract Series XXII. Kendal (available on Amazon)
4. L. Allason-Jones 2005, Women in Roman Britain (2nd ed.) CBA (available on Amazon)
5. L. Allason-Jones 2008, Daily Life in Roman Britain (Greenwood World Publishing). (available on Amazon)

Rob Collins:

1. D. J. Breeze and B. Dobson 2000. Hadrian’s Wall, 4th ed, London: Penguin
2. P. Bidwell (ed) 2008. Understanding Hadrian’s Wall, Arbeia Society (available on Amazon)
3. N. Hodgson 2009. Hadrian’s Wall 1999-2009, SANT & C&W (available on Amazon)
4. R. Collins. 2014. Hadrian’s Wall and the End of Empire, Routledge (paperback ed – a bit of a vanity, but otherwise very little coverage of the most interesting late period of the Wall) (available on Amazon)
5. S. Johnson 2004. Hadrian’s Wall, London: History Press (available on Amazon)

We also have a downloadable reading list (pdf) of primary and secondary sources

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A toast to post-it notes (for learning design)

A learner from the Enterprise Shed (Newcastle University’s third MOOC) shared one of his favourite TED talks, in which Tom Wujec, a designer who has studied how we share and absorb information, explains how he watched many people try to effectively describe and solve a ‘wicked problem’, such as the best way to make toast.

What was the most effective approach Wujec found?  Getting people with a range of skills to work together with post-it notes and paper to perfect the workflow. Interestingly he suggests it is even more effective when they work silently.

MOOC design

This struck a chord with us as we tend to work in similar ways when designing our MOOCs – though our team rarely work in silence (maybe something to try next time). We take cues from the JISC ViewPoints project and constructive alignment to plan and assemble each week of the course. With the academic team, we establish the audience, our motivations as well as those of the learners to clarify the aims and outcomes. We then use rolls of brown paper to create a course timeline, writing down what the learners must be able to do at the end of the course and for each week that they couldn’t do before they started. We ask how we/they will know they have attained this learning (some form of assessment in the loosest sense) and then plan activities and content that will get them to that point.

Post-it notes have the great advantage of being movable, whilst also allowing multiple people to contribute and collaborate on the whole. This is something Wikis aim to allow (though not always successfully). Started with pen and paper, rather than technology, helps us collectively produce something we can use very quickly and without many of the restrictions electronic tools tend to entail. As my colleague Nuala says, technology can get in the way at this stage.

Once planned on paper, we have found that using Trello is a bit like using post-it notes online, but with added ‘to do list’ and project management functionality. After planning on paper and in Trello, we then create the shell of the course in the FutureLearn platform. This helps visualise and restructure further, before testing on willing guinea pigs, and changing the design again. The bits we change and iterate the most tend to be the highest quality and most positively received elements of our courses.

MOOCs and collaboration

MOOCs themselves can become great collaborative spaces. We had many wonderful contributions from learners on our courses. For The Enterprise Shed, this was one of the lead-educator Katie Wray’s aims. The whole course was a bit like a World Cafe. We did as much as we could with the tools available to aid collaboration.  We crowd-sourced ideas links and videos (including favourite TED talks such as the one at the start of this post) . Learners also shared  designs through Padlet, another free collaborative technology which is a bit like paper and post-it notes. This is a great tool for sharing, but it could do with a commenting feature to facilitate feedback on posts.

Learners were able to gave each other feedback on ideas through comments in discussion and through the peer review tool in the platform.This was a really valuable element of the course, and something we would like to do more of.

Making MOOCs more collaborative

One of the tension for us with our courses at present is that the busier they are (the more active users) the harder it is to track what is going on in discussion boards, both for us and for the learners. It would be great if learners could tag posts so that people could find like-minded people and relevant posts more easily.

Small group discussions are coming in FutureLearn, but it will be wonderful if tools within MOOCs could be developed to aid the formation of groups around shared interests. Better still if we could have tools to collaborate in a way more like being in a room with paper and post it notes. We could really make a virtue of the Massive in MOOCs if we had these tools.

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What else can you do with e-portfolio?

E-portfolio is not just for helping to manage personal tutor groups and keeping track of supervisions.

Did you know you can also use it for assignments?

Graeme Redshaw-Boxwell explains: ‘You can use it to set up supervision groups for classes you teach.

‘the students would use the blog and link evidence against particular competencies (including the GSF).

‘They can also use tags to filter the blog posts and export as a rich text document so that you can mark them.’

This is an easy and informal way of assessing how students interact and gaining a sense of how much they understand outside more formal assessment techniques.

Graeme’s running lots of workshops over the summer so you can either refresh your knowledge of using e-portfolio for supervision and personal tutoring or think about new ways of using it for assignments.

Workshops will take place:

Mon 29th June

10am – Supervision Groups

2pm – Supervision Groups

Wed 1st July

10am Supervision Groups

14.00 Supervision Groups

Mon 13th July

14.00 Personal  Tutoring

Thurs 16th July

14.00 Personal Tutoring

Friday 17th July

10.00am Assignments

Tuesday 21st July

2.00pm Assignments

Thursday 23rd July

10.00am Assignments

You can sign  up here.

 

 

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Having problems viewing the blog?

Some people appear to be having problems with viewing the blog.

This is due to a centralised policy applied by Newcastle University’s IT Service that forces any intranet site viewed through Internet Explorer to be displayed using “Compatibility Mode”.

This will render any site as if you were using Internet Explorer 6 or 7, which is why you are unable to see some parts of the blog or get an error message.

IT Servicedesk responded, “Internet Explorer is going to be rolled relatively soon and then SAP will support the relevant sites in standards mode, at that point that flag will be flipped.”

If you want to view the blog in Internet Explorer you can disable this setting by following these steps in the browser:

Tools -> Compatibility View Settings, then uncheck ‘Display intranet sites in Compatibility View’

Compatibility

Or you could use a different browser to Internet Explorer.

 

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Certainty

In the first week of this course we have been delighted have our distinguished Visiting Professor David Breeze, as a guest expert. As many of you will know, David’s jointly authored classic ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ (written with Brian Dobson) and his edition of the ‘Hadrian’s Wall Handbook’ are the most widely read studies of the Wall ever published.  You’ll see David’s contributions in steps towards the end of week 1.  We particularly liked his statement “…part of the fun of the study of Hadrian’s Wall is that certainty is difficult to achieve..” – no doubt a theme we will revisit as the course unfolds!

To hear more from David you can view the panel discussion we recorded last year on “Why build the Wall?”

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Video length

On location at The Wall.

On our second run of Hadrian’s Wall we’ll be using this blog to address some of the frequently asked questions that arise on the course.  A couple of learners have asked about the length of the videos.

You’ll find that all of our videos are under 5 minutes in length. That has been done intentionally so that no single step requires too much time. While this can be disappointing for a topic you are interested in, it works very well in practice, particularly if you consider the course in full with approximately 20 steps in each of 6 weeks.  The short videos also force the educator to distil in a clear way what the main points are.

We know from research (eg this paper from Philip Guo) that when videos are longer that learners can lose interest.  If you’d like to read a little more about some of our thinking on building the course have a look at our blog post on Educational Vodka.

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NUTELA Peer Recognition Awards – Winners Announced!

NUTELA is pleased to announce the winners of its 2015 Peer Recognition Awards.

The awards are designed to recognise University staff who go above and beyond the call of duty to help their colleagues, schools and units to adopt forms of TEL (technology-enhanced learning).

This year’s winners Gigi Herbert (Development Officer within the Curriculum Development team at the Careers Service) and Graham Patterson (Computing Technician with Sage Faculty IT) have both been integral to helping other staff to adopt innovative technologies in their teaching.

NUTELA Peer Recognition Award winner Gigi Herbert [Right] with Salome Bolton, who nominated her.
NUTELA Peer Recognition Award winner Gigi Herbert [Right] with Salome Bolton, who nominated her.
Gigi was responsible for helping Careers Service staff to adopt technologies such as Grademark and Turnitin in their year-long Career Development Modules.

She was nominated by her colleague Salome Bolton. Salome said: ‘Gigi has been fundamental in developing the team of six to help manage the complexities around student assessment and enhancing learning through the innovative use of technology.

‘[She] helped each team member work through these issues and address any problems using individual support and training.

‘[We] have received very positive feedback from students informally and via our student-staff committee about the additional benefits of being able to access their feedback online via this system.’

Graham has worked tirelessly helping staff in the School of Civil Engineering (CEG) to use mobile technologies in their teaching.

For this a tablet devices (Android based) were issued to each all incoming students in CEG from 2012.

Henny Mills (Senior Teaching Associate, CEG), who nominated Graham said: ‘Graham has been central to the introduction and management of the PEARL project and without him, the use of tablet devices within the teaching environment of CEG would not have been such a success.

‘When I was not able to deliver the tablet inductions sessions due to other teaching commitment, Graham run the sessions for up to 100 students, which is well beyond the scope of an IT Technician.

‘The use of these devices has revolutionized teaching delivery in CEG and improved student experiences. This would not have been possible without Graham’s support and enthusiasm for technology-enhanced learning.’

Graham Patterson
Graham Patterson Peer Recognition Award Winner

 

Graham added: ‘Using these mobile devices is great because it encourages interaction between lecturers and students and means that lecturers can poll immediate feedback during classes.’

NUTELA Chair, Laura Delgaty, who helped to choose the winners, said: ‘We had some great entrants this year and it was tough deciding on the winners.

‘I think everyone at Newcastle can be really proud of how staff are working together to support each other in using these innovative new methods in their teaching.

‘We are excited this year to offer these awards. The focus was on recognizing colleagues that have gone out of their way to help others at the University learn about or use technology.

‘We asked for peer nominations focusing on how these individuals contributed to the advancement of others using technology and how this related to NUs LTSE.’

Do you have an extra-special colleague who has helped you with incorporated TEL into your teaching practice? Do you want to recognise someone who has provided excellent support or advice on TEL to your school, unit or faculty? Watch out for details of next year’s competition on the NUTELA blog or email: nutelaops@newcastle.ac.uk for more information.

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Sugata Mitra – two kinds of entrepreneur

We have had so many words of wisdom and so much great footage from the Enterprise Shed. One clip we didn’t manage to include in the course is Sugata’s explanation of two very different kinds of entrepreneur: the aggressively directed entrepreneur and the reluctant entrepreneur.

Which kind are you?

 

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Jack Fisher’s story – becoming an ultra-lapse film maker

Jack

We feature clips from many enterprising people in the Enterprise Shed. We haven’t always had the opportunity to expand on their stories and how they made their ideas happen. One person featured is Jack Fisher (jackfisher.org) a Newcastle graduate who now specialises in motion-based Time-Lapse photography.

We love Jack’s work. See Newcastle in Motion for example.

Jack has always been interested in films and time lapse photography. His hobby has become his business in the last year. So how did he make it happen?

His advice is to just get out there and do it. Jack noticed that there were not many people making time lapse films in the UK and Europe. He was given a new film camera for his 21st birthday which he used to make a short film about the town he grew up in (Bath). He showed it to some city councillors who were so impressed that they commissioned a longer version which went viral. Jack has been inundated with work since then.

Jack used the Internet to research how to make these films. He says he was then in the right place at the right time, but the important things were having a go and showing people what he could do.