Author Archives: Lindsey Martin

About Lindsey Martin

Assistant Head of learning Services (Learning, ICT and Media Technologies)

Can someone explain what’s going on here?

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The 5th EHU Student eLearning survey still has just over a week or so left to run but I thought  I’d share with you an interesting and unusual finding from the large number of responses we have received so far.

In the survey we ask students to respond to the statements On/off campus I sometimes have difficulties accessing Learning Edge and not surprisingly a lot of students agree or strongly agree. The responses to these statements are important measures of how well or otherwise the Learning Edge systems and student support are performing. They are also indicators of how effective Learning Services have been in identifying and resolving Learning Edge technical issues. So it is reassuring to note that since we started collecting data on this question and used the feedback to inform improvements, that the numbers of students experiencing technical difficulties have declined year on year.

Which brings me to the interesting and unusual finding illustrated in the two graphs below (click on a chart to make it bigger).

This positive trend shows students are experiencing significantly fewer technical difficulties with Learning Edge both on and off campus but surprisingly the most dramatic improvement is the reduction of off-campus technical difficulties. This reduction is even more marked in the current student responses and begs the question ‘What is going on here: why isn’t the rate of improvement as dramatic with on-campus technical difficulties?’

Obviously, we’ll be investigating this anomaly in our continuing efforts to improve the student experience of Learning Edge. As a starting point, it would be really helpful if student readers could use this blog’s comments facility to provide some pointers by letting me know where, when and on what devices you tend to experience Learning Edge technical issues. It would also be helpful to learn more about what types of technical difficulties are experienced both on- and off-campus.

Finally, if you have not yet had your say about your experience of technology to support your learning at Edge Hill, there is still just over a week of the EHU Student eLearning Survey left to go. Give us your feedback and enter the prize draw for £50 and 2 x £25  Amazon vouchers. Every 20th participant also wins an attractive 1G USB wristband.

Lindsey Martin eLearning Strategy and Development Manager

Lindsey Martin Assistant Head of Learning Services (Learning, ICT and Media Technologies)

Students have your say – and win Amazon vouchers #2

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My last blog post focused on last year’s student eLearning survey winners so I thought this time it  would be helpful to explain why we think the annual survey is so important.

The Student eLearning Survey is now 5 years old and is an important means of finding out how technology supports student learning at Edge Hill. It isn’t just a tick-box exercise; we want to know the bad and the downright ugly as well as the good so we can continue to improve the features, access and support of EHU systems like the Learning Edge VLE. Since the last survey we have, amongst other things, improved the look and feel of Learning Edge based on your feedback. We also redesigned the log in page to make access and support easier, made Campus Pack (personal blogs and Wiki spaces in Learning Edge) available and released the Edge Hill Central app.

So what did we learn last year? We already knew that Learning Edge (Blackboard) is heavily used, but thanks to the survey, we also know that many students rate it as important, with 78.7% agreeing that it enhanced the knowledge and understanding they get from lectures, tutorials and practical sessions.

While technical and access issues with Learning Edge still occur both on and off campus, the trend over the past 4 years is, thankfully, downward. Facebook was frequently cited as a student ‘owned’ technology to support informal learning where they can email, send notifications, use instant messaging, share documents and course information – I think of it as the Facebook ‘Hub’ compared to the Learning Edge ‘classroom’.

I could go on … but if you want to know more, have a look at the results of last year’s survey at http://www.eshare.edgehill.ac.uk/1341/

Finally, if you are a student and want to get your views about technology at Edge Hill heard, then why not complete the survey http://surveys.edgehill.ac.uk/elearning2012 Don’t forget there is a prize draw for £50 and 2 x £25 Amazon vouchers as well as a 1G USB wristband for every 20th response – we’ve already given away loads and would love to give away more!

Lindsey Martin eLearning Strategy and Development Manager  Lindsey Martin, eLearning Strategy and Development Manager

Students – have your say and win Amazon vouchers!

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EHU’s fifth student eLearning survey was launched this week and in exchange for your  views and experiences of technology we are offering one £50 and two £25 Amazon vouchers in a prize draw. We know how precious your time is, so as an additional thank you for completing the survey, we are also giving away a Learning Services 1G USB wristband to every 20th student who takes part.

Here are a couple of photos of last year’s prize draw winners – note the wristbands too!

Matthew Cooper and Lindsey Martin

First prize to Matthew Cooper, Human Geography and Management pictured with yours truly.

 

Daniel Campbell

Runner up, Daniel Campbell, Computing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current students, you can complete the survey. It will close on Friday 25th January 2013.

Here is the link http://surveys.edgehill.ac.uk/elearning2012

Keep an eye out for a blog post coming soon on how we use the feedback from the eLearning survey to make a difference.

Lindsey Martin eLearning Strategy and Development Manager Lindsey Martin, eLearning Strategy & Development Manager

Making things happen: behind the scenes (part 2)

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In our last post we focused on the Learning Services team and their roles in the technical development and staff training for Blackboard 9.1. This time, we thought we’d introduce the colleagues who work with our Learning Technologists, David Callaghan and Adrian Cain: Kevin English (Assistant Registrar, Data Management & User Support Team, Academic Registry), Kevin Molyneux (Senior Business Systems Officer, IT Services) and Victor Iriarte (Complex Hosting Manager, Blackboard).

This cross-University/Blackboard group have been working over the past few months to ensure that integration between existing University systems and Blackboard 9.1 has enabled the automatic creation of course areas and student enrolments in Blackboard. The collaboration has resulted in a robust integration and provided timely and consistent availability of courses and student enrolments into Blackboard. It wouldn’t have happened without the excellent teamwork from all involved.

Our offer of a high-quality group photo to accompany this post was gently refused so we have included an image of the 9.1 ‘concept’ highlighting the integration aspect instead. The aim is to illustrate that without effective systems integration, none of the other benefits of Blackboard 9.1 can be realised.

The final post in the ‘Behind the Scenes’ series will introduce you to faculty colleagues who have key roles in the roll out of Blackboard 9.1 to staff and students …

Making things happen: behind the scenes (part 1)

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Previous blog posts have focused on the technical and staff development activity involved in moving to Blackboard 9.1. This time, we thought we’d introduce the teams who are making all this happen. First off is (most of) the team from Learning Services pictured below:

Standing L-R: Peter Beaumont, Carol Chatten, David Callaghan, Lisa Farnworth, Martin Baxter, Meg Juss. Seated L-R: Lindsey Martin, Rachel Bury, Katherine Richardson, Elaine Czotter.

David Callaghan, Mark Ayton and Adrian Cain (both not pictured) have been working extensively with colleagues in IT Services, Academic Registry and Blackboard to ensure that the Student Information Database and Blackboard talk to one another as seamlessly as possible to ensure that the courses and student records in Blackboard are always up-to-date.

Peter, Carol, David, Martin, Lisa, Meg and Adrian have been responsible for training staff in the use of Blackboard, supporting migration from Blackboard CE8 and creating all new guides and resources. To date, they have trained over 400 staff and will continue training and providing support over the summer. They will be joined in late August by Elaine, ICT Staff Development Co-ordinator. Elaine will be responsible for the ongoing training of Administrative staff across the faculties who will be working with Blackboard for the first time.

A special thanks must go to Katherine who has pulled all of the staff training schedules together and created order out of chaos!

Last but not least, Rachel and Lindsey (who have brought you the blog from the days of the VLE Review) who try to ensure that everyone knows what they need to know, when they need to know it, in the format that is most appropriate for them!

The next three months are going to be very busy as we work with the faculties to make sure all their courses are ready for September. We are here to help so please get in touch via the blog or email to any of the team. We look forward to hearing from you …

Our next blog post – Behind the scenes (part 2) will introduce you to our wider team – some of the key staff who we have worked with across the University …

Working under the radar … Blackboard 9.1 update

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One of the lessons I am learning about implementing a major technology project is that there are quite long stretches of time when nothing really newsworthy happens – there is a huge amount of work going on but very little of it is of interest to the majority of our readers. I could write more about how Blackboard 9.1 now integrates with our student information database, or similar  … but I won’t.  Instead, here are a couple of snippets on progress in general.

As we move towards July, the number of academic and administrative staff  receiving training in the essentials of Blackboard 9.1 is picking up. All academic departments have arranged to attend workshops that will enable them to build their courses in 9.1. We are also timetabling mop-up sessions between now and the end of July for those colleagues unable to attend. If you want to arrange a place on one of these additional sessions, please email ltdsupport@edgehill.ac.uk for information on dates, times and availability.

There are currently 110 modules in 9.1 that are ‘live’ with 1,624 registered users. We’ve been monitoring all requests for support and to date, the number of technical issues reported have been pleasingly low. I don’t think this is a matter for complacency, however, so if you are a student or a member of staff who is currently using Blackboard 9.1, or who used it last semester, your feedback would be very welcome.

As Blackboard has now achieved mainstream adoption across the University, the Learning Technology Development Division (part of Learning Services) have completely reviewed the processes that were in place to communicate with and support staff, students and other customers in the event of occasional dips in service or the system being down. Again, this activity is essential, largely invisible and only really of interest when there is a problem. Having completed the review, tested and introduced new, robust processes, we can now start publicising them. Staff can access the guidance from the  How do I report a problem? section (Blackboard) from the Learning Services wiki. Feedback on this is also welcome. I just hope we don’t have to put it into practice anytime soon!

Blackboard 9.1 is now out of the box!

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With the systems integration (described in the last blog post) now complete, the Blackboard 9.1 project has achieved a further two milestones and finally moved out into open view.

All three faculties are now running a small number of 9.1 pilots and ‘touch wood’, are progressing well. We’ve deliberately kept to a small number of early pilots so that we can be effective in supporting them and at the same time learning about what is new or different while learning  ‘on-the-job’.

It almost goes without saying that for Blackboard 9.1 to be successful in supporting student learning it is essential that course teams regard their virtual environments as integral to the student experience. To this end, each faculty’s Senior Solstice Fellow is working closely with Learning Services Learning Technology Development Division (LTD) to organise faculty training plans. An extensive 9.1 awareness, support and training programme tailored to each faculty is now in place and being advertised in the faculties. Key to the programme are the hands-on workshops where  participating teams construct their courses in 9.1 through a range of supported activities . Feedback from workshop participants has so far been very encouraging and if you would like more information on the workshop content, timetable, or how to book, please contact ltdsupport@edgehill.ac.uk

The LTD team continue to work closely with colleagues in Academic Registry and the faculties as we begin to review the course and module lifecycle in Blackboard – we are calling this activity a ‘people systems integration’. The reason for this review is that following the successful data systems integration between the Student Information Database (SID) and Blackboard, SID has become Blackboard’s ‘parent’ system.  All Blackboard courses and student enrolments are now a direct reflection of master records in SID. This will impact on LTD and Faculties as they will no longer have the ability to create courses in Blackboard or add students directly to those courses. The various teams involved in the different stages of the module lifecycle will be collaborating in the aforementioned “people systems integration” to identify and implement changes to existing processes.

Finally, it needs to go on record (again) that none of the major changes we are making could be achieved by any team working in isolation. The success of Edge Hill’s move to 9.1 to date is a direct result of the multi-professional team approach that has emerged between and within faculties and departments.

Journey to 9.1 … the first milestone and a big Thank You

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The week leading up to the end of the last semester saw us achieve a big milestone in the move from our current version of Blackboard to the latest version (Blackboard Learn 9.1). Colleagues from each Faculty, IT Services, Academic Registry, Learning Services and Teaching and Learning Development came together to work with Blackboard Consulting to map out how key University systems would integrate with Blackboard. I didn’t get a chance at the end of the week to express my thanks to everyone who was involved, so Thank You All!

The whole week stands as an exemplar of the multi-professional team in action. At the end of the process, consensus was reached that demonstrated a good balance between wants and needs and that consideration of the student experience was our constant benchmark.

Why is achieving effective systems integration a milestone? Underpinning Blackboard as a vehicle for teaching and learning is a database of student, staff, programme and module information that draws source data from the student information database (SID). Getting the right students into the right Blackboard modules at the right time has never been a simple or automatic process. There are of necessity more course and module records in SID than are taught face to face or online – considerable mediation and manual processes are required to ensure that courses and modules in Blackboard match the taught curriculum. Simplifying and automating the creation of Blackboard courses and the enrolment of students into said courses will significantly speed up and improve the process of developing courses in Blackboard. This can only be A Good Thing!

Having now achieved consensus on integration, the next key milestones are (i) the managed roll-out of Blackboard 9.1 to a handful of courses in January, (ii) the implementation of a comprehensive staff training and 9.1 development programme and (iii) the introduction of a separate repository for teaching and learning content. More on each of these to follow …

Students, have your say – the EHU Student eLearning Survey #3

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Where does the time go? The third EHU student eLearning survey went live last Friday and lots of you have already been taking time out to fill it in. Telling us your experiences and expectations of technology to support your learning helps us to understand what works and what hinders. Last year we had 775 completed questionnaires and this year it would be great if we could top that as the more responses we get the more influential the survey is in continuing to improve current services and inform future direction.

The survey isn’t just an academic exercise, it informs change – have a look at last year’s survey. Since the survey report was published we have completed the VLE Review, drawing upon views, comments and suggestions contained in the 2009/10 survey – the new version of Blackboard we are upgrading to in September 2011 will contain lots of features you told us you wanted – like blogs, wikis, mashups with Facebook and other Web2.0 tools. We have also overhauled how we manage staff and student queries and problems with Blackboard to ensure a proactive, speedier, more joined-up service.

If you are an Edge Hill student, please (please!) complete our survey. We realise that your time is precious – especially with end of term assignment deadlines looming – and so we have added a sweetener of a prize draw of one £50 and two £25 Amazon vouchers.

The survey may be accessed from Blackboard, from email or from http://surveys.edgehill.ac.uk/ehu_elearning_2010. We plan to close the survey on 29th January 2010. We look forward to hearing from you …

Welcome to the LearningEdge

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Regular readers might be forgiven for wondering what has become of the VLE Review blog. With the review now over an implementation project has taken over. To reflect this new focus,  the blog has been renamed and given a makeover.

The name change isn’t just for the blog, it covers the whole virtual learning environment (VLE). The role of the VLE is rapidly changing to become more than a single technology ‘product’ – Blackboard 9.1 is now only part of the picture as it becomes a ‘hub’ or core learning system capable of being extended by other systems and learning technologies that integrate seamlessly with it. Staff or students should from September 2011 only need to go to one place (Blackboard) in order to access blogs, wikis, announcements, TurnItIn, podcasts, videos, conferencing, digitized content, discussion and so on. In recognition of this expansion, Edge Hill’s virtual learning environment has been given a new name where symbolically learning comes first and foremost. Welcome to LearningEdge!

While things have been quiet on the blog front recently, there has been a lot of activity going on behind the scenes – think of a swan gliding along the water in a stately fashion whilst its legs are paddling like the clappers below – that’s a good description of the LearningEdge implementation project team!

We’ll be posting updates on progress and inviting your comments and suggestions on a regular basis as we work towards going fully live with the LearningEdge by September 2011. We’ll also be adding pages to the menu which will give you information about how the implementation is being handled in your Faculty. Like the strapline at the top of the page says … the journey continues …