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Migration to Canvas at Newcastle University Business School

The roll-out of information and training as we as an institution move from Blackboard to migrate our VLE to Canvas has begun. The main Canvas site for the University is now live (link here) with all academic staff having access to an orientation course their own “sandbox” module to practice with. In addition the Canvas training sessions which will be running from April to June are now available to book (link here).

In addition to the orientation course and the face-to-face training, staff also have on the LTDS Digital Learning site (link here) a large number of highly useful help resources (link here), with in particular excellent written Canvas guides (link here). In addition there are also a large number of extremely detailed and high quality video guides (link here) on all sorts of common features.

This is all backed up with 24/7 help from Canvas itself via live chat within the platform, phone or email for all of your ‘How do I’ questions. I would encourage you to engage with the Canvas help team if you have any platform queries as I’ve found them to be very helpful and quick to respond. Finally if you are interested in using Canvas more creatively I would encourage you to look into the Canvas Communities (link here). The Higher Education Canvas community discussion group for example (link here) is a fast moving discussion group with HE academics and worth looking into.

Within Newcastle University Business School our priority is to support our teams exposure to LTDS training opportunities and access to Canvas support. Starting in mid-May and continuing weekly through to July we will be holding small group and 1-2-1 drop-in sessions start led by David Grundy. These are sessions for those who have received the LTDS training and would like some further advice and 1-2-1 support in.

We also want to make the most of this opportunity to enhance our learning provision with this exciting new platform, and so we hope to be contacting you soon with further details of enhancement orientated sessions in May and June.

If you have any queries or questions please do either drop in to have a chat or e-mail me at david.grundy@newcastle.ac.uk or if you have any questions for the Canvas team themselves please contact canvas@ncl.ac.uk

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Bett 2020 – ExCel London

Overview

I secured funding from the Digital Innovation in the Curricula Fund to attend Bett 2020 at the ExCel Centre in London in January 2020. The event, run over four days, is the largest EdTech show in the UK and as part of the conditions for the funding I agreed to write a brief report (below) and make a short video of the experience.

Project Aims

To disseminate via a short report and video, highlights of Bett2020 that may be of interest to colleagues within NUBS. In so doing, the value of attending future Bett conferences can be gauged, and potentially new teaching and learning technologies can be trialled within NUBS.

Introduction

Established in 1985, the British Educational Training and Technology show (now just known as Bett) has taken place annually at ExCel London every January since 2012. Spread over four days Bett2020 incorporates exhibits and stands from over 800 EdTech providers as well as delivering 150 CPD content sessions for the expected 34,000 visitors. The show is aimed at education providers at all stages – from primary through to university level, and has expanded internationally with Bett shows now taking place in UAE, Malaysia and Latin America.  

I was at the conference for the first two and a half days, during which time I attended ten seminars, talked to many exhibitors, and gained two Microsoft educator certificates! I have structured this brief report under these three themes. 

Seminars

With over 150 seminars and demonstrations taking place there were many interesting talks – some of which I could attend, others I could not due to timing. London South Bank University are experimenting with using voice technology, specifically Amazon Alexa, to simplify how students are obtaining information. University of Surrey have developed in conjunction with students an online feedback portfolio which collates feedback, highlights areas needing attention and helps to produce an action plan. Adobe provided a demonstration on Rush – a simple video editing software tool which could be useful for staff and students and was the software I used to make the accompanying video.  

Cloud based computing was heavily in vogue, with impressive talks from Alex Butler, Chief Digital Officer at Bath University, explaining how the university are using cloud based computing, in particular Azure from Microsoft, to place digital at the core of everything they do. This message was backed up, perhaps not surprisingly by Ken Eisner from Amazon Web Services (AWS), a key competitor of Microsoft Azure, who’s talk was entitled “The Future of Work requires a Future of Learning: AWS Workforce Development in the Cloud.” Both Microsoft, through Microsoft Learn, and Amazon through AWS Educate, produce free content on cloud based computing along with digital certificates which could be of interest to our students.

Perhaps the most interesting talk, with the exception of course of the Newcastle University talk on MS Teams (!), was entitled “DigiLearn: Empowering Transformational Change in Education.”  Presenters Chris Melia and Kevin Williams (Technology Enabled Learning & Teaching Manager) discussed the transformation of digital skills at UCLan. Their pitch was in order to create work ready graduates then you need to start with staff. Introduced MS Surface pros for all staff with docking stations (to replace work station, laptop and tablets), delivering many training sessions and utilising MS Teams provided a digital community. They are piloting a program for staff – DigiLearn, incorporating three different levels (Practitioner, Advocate & Champion) to provide recognition for promotion purposes, and progression for CPD. They plan to roll out a similar program for students, DigiReady, next year. There is also a DigiLearn Sector Community run through Teams which anyone can join – looks really interesting and they also run mini conferences and events. Anyone interested in EdTech should join their community.

Exhibitors

With over 800 exhibitors the following caught my eye as potentially being useful to us at NUBS (some of these I know are already used here).

  • ClickView – Sold as Netflix for education. They produce original educational videos, mainly for secondary schools but a growing number for HE. One function I really liked was the access to freeview TV recordings which you could search using key words, edit and keep. ClickView can be embedded within Canvas and is available for a free trial.
  • Zoom– a video conferencing webinar tool, similar to Skype.
  • Quizlet – a good mobile revision tool app with flash cards and quizzes. They are linked to some book publishers eg McGraw-Hill.
  • Sli.do – App that enables an audience to raise questions on their mobiles which are displayed anonymously on the screen. This was used extensively at this conference and was really impressive.
  • Unity – A coding company that provides free on line coding courses, starting from complete beginner.
  • Revas Business Simulation – They demonstrated a travel agency business – choosing staffing including wages and HR issues, impact of marketing, finance, and general profitability. Other businesses were available. It was difficult to assess the level but a free trial is available.
  • MindView – The University currently have this software which can be accessed in the app store and is predominantly used for producing mind maps. Useful for students, and potentially for staff as the mind maps can be exported to Word and also Powerpoint to produce a presentation.  
  • Whiteboards – there were many, many smart whiteboards on show including Samsung Flip. These could be useful for seminars and also for staff meetings eg Boards of Study, Board of Examiners as the whiteboards offer more flexibility than projection. They are expensive though.
  • Magic Whiteboard – a Dragons Den winner! Paper thin whiteboards that stick to any wall through static electricity – cheap and could be useful in seminar rooms, offices etc.

MS Office 365

There were numerous presentations demonstrating the full potential of Office 365 – quite an eye opener. They have a monthly electronic education newsletter which is free to sign up. The following are some of the features of direct relevance to NUBS.

  • MS Teams featured heavily in many seminars, especially as a tool to bring together individuals from different organisations. It is great for group work and apparently can now incorporate Turnitin. Need to be careful though that Teams is used in the right context – no one wants to be a member of 50+ Teams.
  • OneNote – is in effect a digital notebook but there was a great demonstration of OneNote Live Capture where students can get an instant transcript of a spoken lecture – they can highlight, add notes, pause, rewind then catch up again. Looked amazing. Demonstration can be seen from 12 min 40.
  • Immersive Reader – is included in OneNote and helps support students with dyslexia
  • Flipgrid – facilitates a form of video discussion. A good example can be found within Teams.
  • Powerpoint – Demonstration of Powerpoint (from 11 min 33) live that is coming soon. Students log into a session and then the presenters slides appear on their devices, together with in time transcript.   

Digital Education Certificates

Microsoft were the headline sponsors and as a result had the largest presence at the conference. There are other providers of free digital education certificates, notably Google and Amazon, but I only had time to look at the Microsoft offerings.

Microsoft Educator Centre contains a wealth of online free to access training resources. As mentioned above UCLan integrate these into a formal CPD programme for staff and at a time when we are trying to engage our students with digital literacy then we as educators should look to upskill. This resource provides a fantastic opportunity to do this.  

Conclusions   

This short report with embedded hyperlinks I hope disseminates what I thought to be useful ideas for colleagues within NUBS. On reflection I was a little bit underwhelmed by the exhibitors at the conference, with the exception of perhaps ClickView and the new hardware. I think its encouraging that many of the apps I saw we are already using. I found the seminars really informative and new this year was a theatre dedicated to HE/FE presentations which was a welcome addition. In the past and still to some extent the conference is geared more towards Schools than universities but this is gradually changing. I was blown away by the current (or soon to be introduced) functionality of the apps within MS Office 365. I also think the digital education certificates are another avenue to investigate further, both in terms of staff CPD and student engagement.

Should staff from NUBS go next year? I think anyone with an interest in EdTech would be wowed and energised by attending and as the conference is free (travel and accommodation still needed) I think it’s a great opportunity to see what is on offer, both from EdTech providers and from other universities. It is also a great opportunity to see the classroom technology our future students are using in their secondary education as this will establish expectations for their university experience.

Andy Holden 28 Jan 2020

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Education and Technology Forum Seminars (S2 2020)

I’d like to take the opportunity to invite NUBS colleagues to the Education and Technology Forum seminars for Semester 2 2020. I think we have a broad array of different types of seminars focused on practise, projects and pedagogic research planned and I hope you’ll come along and join us.

The details are:

Wednesday 19th of February: “Theory Hub: Creating an online theory resource” – presentation by Prof. Savvas Papagiannidis & colleagues – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 2.10

Wednesday 4th of March: “Starting out in teaching-focused research” – Presentation by Dr. Tracy Scurry – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 2.10

Wednesday 18th of March: “Office 365 – Engagement, inclusivity and accessibility” – Presentation by Gill Holden – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 4.23

Wednesday 29th of April: “Online development & assessment of student’s academic practice skills” – Presentation by Sarah Carnegie – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 1.14

Wednesday 6th of May: “Creating a Digital teaching case study using simulation” – Presentation by Dr Rebecca Casey- 11am till 12noon NUBS room 2.10

You can find the sign up form here and I will be following up with booked individuals with an Outlook Booking Request for the session a week before as a reminder. The presentations will be for 30 minutes allowing for around 10-15 minutes Q&A and discussion.

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JISC Report: Digital Experience Insights Survey in HE 2019

JISC recent published the Digital Experience Insights Survey 2019, which is well worth a read through of the findings for HE in particular. It takes 3,485 responses of both HE staff and students from 26 different Universities and so probably represents the best contemporary snapshot of the HE Digital Education Landscape. I don’t want to replicate the reading of this document in this Blog post, but I thought I’d instead pluck out a few figures which I think are worth highlighting and disseminating further.

From my own point of view the amount of staff engaged in digital teaching activities is quite insightful. 62% of HE staff say they would like to be using digital technologies used more in their teaching practice, yet only 11% say they use live quizzing or polling in their teaching practice and only 24% say they’ve been involved in creating digital learning materials for their students in their teaching practice. Far from being disheartening, I would hope these findings would give many lecturers who are involved in those activities both a sense of perspective as to the fact that they are doing more than most. To those who aren’t currently involved in those digital teaching practices I think it also gives a strong message that many are also at starting points on a digital journey.

Classically the main barrier to integrating more digital teaching practices into the classroom is time. This is pretty much confirmed across the sector with only 13% of HE staff agreeing that they feel they feel that have the “headspace” or time to do so. Clearly this figure strongly contrasts with the 62% of staff who say they’d like to do so, and gives perhaps some support for the idea of specifically allocating time for digital development of teaching materials into staff workloads.

Personally I find some of the student responses some of the most interesting to read as well. Given what I’ve already discussed for example it’s quite interesting that on a course/modular level 75% of students rated the digital teaching and learning they were receiving (p.61) as good (45%), excellent (27%) or the best imaginable (3%). Clearly despite the frustrations that staff have over time, what is being produced is, on average, of good quality.

But what do students want, what perhaps is of the most impact to students, and which digital education resources do HE students regard as the most useful to them? That’s sometimes the biggest quandary for lecturers about where to invest their time into digital teaching development, and p.63 of the report helpfully gives some decent insights. HE Students rank as most useful; practice questions to be available online (35%), course related videos (23%), readings and references (20%) and interactive polls and quizzes in-class (15%). This is both useful and perhaps needs a bit of dissection at the same time. I’m not surprised for example by the low ranking of in-class digital interactivity for example given only 11% of HE teaching staff are responding that they do it. At FE level in contrast for example, where the lecturer usage of interactive polls and quizzes in-class is much higher, the FE students rank in-class interactivity as by far the most useful useful and desired digital education approach. Could this be a case of the HE students simply not knowing what they’re missing? Or an indication of a serious divergence in what HE students find the most useful from FE?

Useful data then, but not necessarily to be taken “as read”.

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Resource Review: HS Talks – Overview Video

A Newcastle University Business School we have full access to all the Business and Management talks on HSTalks. This is a useful additional resource for students that can add considerable depth to the digital resources that they have available. To summarise the resource provides access to video lectures and case studies delivered by qualified academics or practitioners. The videos can be directly embedded into Blackboard or Canvas, and there’s a very useful guide which shows you how to do this.

I’ve put together a short overview video of the HSTalks, which goes into basic functions and how to insert the content into Blackboard in a few easy steps. Please do leave below any comments or feedback that you may have about the resource below and your use of it.

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Opinion: The Highly Differentiated Digital Campus?

So I dialled into an outstanding BGA/AMBA webinar by David Lefevre yesterday on “The future digital Business School campus: using digital learning to scale impact”. It was thought provoking and had a number of challenging ideas, but one in which I simply still find it difficult to square the circle on.

In the talk David outlined an ambitious (though possibly necessary as we move more online) step-change in how we need to view ‘The Digital Campus’, suggesting and highlighting that current decision makers seem very willing to sign off on buildings that cost many millions and suddenly question hundreds of thousands being spent on Digital infrastructure. In this I think he may have a point, and certainly as we move towards a 5G environment I think expectations will possibly greatly change as to what digital infrastructure (and level of investment) is necessary to remain at the forefront in Executive Education. It’s difficult to predict what the overall impact will be in 10 years time that revolutions in speed new technologies will bring (it’s possibly like trying to look forward before the first smartphone hit the market and trying to predict the impact of that product) but one certainty is that change is coming and Business Schools need to be aware of that change and keep abreast of what the leading edge of the competition is up-to.

I found that aspect of the talk all very agreeable. The next less so.

David went on to argue for the need for highly differentiated digital infrastructure to appeal to Exec Education. Effectively arguing (quite reasonably) that the expectation’s of individuals paying the high prices of Exec Education would expect some kind of differentiated high-end (dare I say, more plush?) Digital Infrastructure offering that more suited their status, fee’s paid and level of expectations. David highlighted this with photo’s of high end Business hotels (which had very nice websites indeed) arguing that the standard university VLE delivered to undergraduates perhaps is not the same VLE that you’d want to use your Exec Education for, yet most University’s do.

And this is the area of contention and disagreement that I have.

I’ll happily accept that the level of investment in Exec Education in terms of resources created, intensity of blended learning, etc. within a VLE will be very different. But I would question why a different Digital Infrastructure + VLE itself would be necessary.

To give an analogy, you have two paintings, both of them are very different, and perhaps even use different painters, but they still use the same canvas and paints as long as the canvas and paints are of a high enough quality. (that we’re just about to move to Canvas may have been the direction of that analogy).

So i asked the question “why can’t all our students be driving Rolls-Royces?”. In other words, if you as an University possessed a high quality differentiated VLE that was simply better, why wouldn’t you use that for all your education? UG, PG everything?

I think David’s answer perhaps didn’t completely grasp the nuances of the point to be fair to him in a fast flowing webinar situation. His reply was, “well just like in the real world as to why everyone doesn’t drive a Roll’s-Royce. Not everyone can afford one”. That, I think, misses the point of what digital allows you to do.

In the real world the reason we’re not all driving Rolls-Royces is the cost per unit of production. In a digital environment this issue is overcome. If you have an amazing Digital infrastructure or VLE already it would be a matter of adding users, not creating new (hand-crafted) products from scratch like the car scenario.

So, I disagree somewhat. David Lefevre ‘s quite strong arguments for the need for a highly differentiated Exec Education digital infrastructure are very appealing, but ultimately I think that the VLE itself is just a canvas (sometimes literally) that, if it’s good and robust enough (and there’s perhaps always going to be question marks on that front) should be able to be serve multiple audiences.

That said (and in counterpoint to my own disagreement!) it seems that some leading Universities are already travelling in this direction with David highlighting that Imperial has joined a coalition of other university’s to produce a differentiated VLE product for Exec Education. Which brings me all the way back to my first point about “Business Schools need to be aware of that change and keep abreast of what the leading edge of the competition is up-to” and certainly if this is the direction of travel in Exec Education, any market participant would not be doing themselves any favours to ignore it.

Thought-provoking and overall an excellent webinar.

If you have any thoughts on this, please do leave a comment below, and if you’d like to write an Blog post for the forum please do contact me.

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How-to Guide: Financial Times Headline API

At Newcastle University Business School all staff and students have free access to the Financial Times through the library . This allows staff and students to access a number of features of the Financial Times, including developing article lists which can be shared with students, having keyword news alerts for stories on certain subjects, high quality newsletters e-mailed to your inbox on a selection and range of issues.

One of the more powerful tools at a lecturers disposal is the ability to use the free FT Headline API functionality to embed a scrolling and live, constantly updated feed of news stories into a VLE (Be that VLE Canvas or Blackboard). This potentially puts alongside your lecture materials a large amount of contextual, real world, news stories about what is perhaps happening regarding the issues explored in your lecture that week.

The above picture is an example of a widget you can embed into your Blackboard site. The rest of this Blog post will lead you through the three main areas to embed this into your Blackboard site.

How to get your free FT Headline API Code

The first thing you’ll need is a FT Developers Key for creating a Headline API. This sounds a lot more grandiose than it really is, and takes just a few straightforward steps:

  • The first thing you’ll need to do is go here: https://developer.ft.com/portal/ and sign in. Enter your e-mail address and press next, on the next page saying sign in press under the box saying SSO Sign In “Or use your FT password”, press that. Then sign in using your FT password.
  • This takes you to the FT for Developers page. On the right hand side under dashboard it says API Catalogue, click that, the click “Request an API Key”.
  • Your new API Headline key will now be shown to you, it will look like a very long line of letters and numbers. Save that and keep it safe. FT will also send you an e-mail with it in to make things easier.

Using Openft.org

Openft.org is itself is a straightforward and surprisingly user friendly website for creating FT Headline widgets. The first thing you need need to do is copy and paste you FT API Code into the box saying API Key and then press reset to clear the form. Pressing reset after inputting the API key is important, and problems can occur if you don’t.

The website should now be ready to create widgets for you. The website has two clear sides to it. The left hand side is the input side in which you’ll input all your desired search options. The right hand side is the visualisation of the output, and contains all the tools to further adjust and customise the widget you’re creating.

You now have a number of different search options. The main three you might use are Basic Search, Menu and Multi-search.

Menu is useful if you have particular themes you’re interested in. Just Click on Menu and then you have a number of tick boxes you can click to create a custom widget on Brexit (or similar). Basic Search is useful if you have a straightforward concept or issue you’re wanting to drill into.

Increasingly I find myself using Multi-Search. Multi-Search allows you to search a range of keywords which could bring up articles you’re interested in. So for example if I was giving a lecture on Ethics and CSR. I may have a range of 4-5 different search terms which I might want the widget to bring back results on. The second search box is a categorisation box which is helpful look at a particular search term, it defaults to “All”.

On the right hand output panel the element you’ll definitely want to use is Widget Title to give your output search box a name, however there are a wide range of other customisation options for you to explore.

Once you have the widget just how you want it. Simply click Get Embed Code and copy the bottom box (don’t worry at all about how complex it looks, you don’t need to know any coding at all, this is simple copy and paste of this code).

Embedding your Widget into Blackboard

Deciding where to place your widget it perhaps the best place to start. I personally place it beside the lecture materials to add some context. The process now you have your embed code is very straightforward. Simply click Build Content, then Create Item.

In the text box now press the HTML Button (see below):

Now simply paste your embed code from the Openft.org site into the box which pops up and then press Update.

Then just name your Item (Context: Business Ethics in the News or similar), and press Submit. You can now move this item around just like you would any other Blackboard or VLE item.

I hope you’ve found this “How-to” Guide useful! Please leave any tips or comments in the comments section below.

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Resource Review: BoB, Box of Broadcasts/Learning on Screen

Bob, Box of Broadcasts, or Learning on Screen (they’ve gone by many names over the years) is a tool which I’ve used for a number of years on my modules. As a resource , when you pick the right programmes and documentaries, it can add considerable depth to the resources available to students to contextualise the subject matter you’ve been exploring in lectures and seminars.

The main benefits of using BoB is that all the material is pre-validated for teaching use so there’s no tiresome checking with the library for permissions etc. If it’s available on BoB it can be inserted into your module as a teaching resource. Possibly more useful for a generation used to Youtube and iPlayer, the BoB controls are highly intuitive.

BoB themselves are continuously improving the site and over the last 2 years have added much better VLE integration, so it’s possible if you’ve reviewed this resource before and found it “clunky” it could have had a sizeable improvement since then.

Some of the most useful improvements (which will also carry over to Canvas) is the improved share options which BoB now has. Including one of the share options being a direct iframe code which can be inserted straight into a VLE. This user friendliness means that with a very short copy and paste into the VLE you can add a video using an pre-setup embed code. WAYFless Links are also available to speed students directly to the resource (see some useful Youtube’s below from the Learning Technology Development team of Edge Hill University).

One of my favourite uses of the resource is to set up playlists for students which will lead them to a range of resources from which they can pick from.

In terms of integration with the learning experience I’ve used this resource in a number of ways including getting students to watch documentaries and write reflective blogs comparing and contrasting what we’ve taught them in the classroom with their views after watching some real world practise. I’ve also used it in a flipped classroom technique for a seminar, where students were to watch after a lecture a documentary on Mercedes’s merger with Chrysler, and the seminar was very much them debating the issues arising.

The downsides of the resource are that it can take a little time to curate and find the videos you want. There is a little set-up time here. A quick time saver can be though to search through other peoples playlists in the search function, you can do this by selecting “search public playlists” on the search function instead of just searching programmes. The last downside is that while it does have a great deal, it doesn’t have everything. I’m still waiting for Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room to show up sometime.

Academic research which has been published regarding the integration of BoB into the curriculum is sparse (and potentially an area for pedagogic research). However JISC have published some insightful guides on using video in teaching and learning, within their larger “Using digital media in new learning models” guide. My favourite part of the guide being one of my favourite views of the use of technology in teaching overall:

“Technology should never be used for ‘technology sake’. There should always be an underlying pedagogical reason for its use.”

Please do leave a comment below if you yourself have had any positive/negative experiences with BoB, or would like to share any further resources or help guides associated with this resource.