Turnitin & Electronic Marking Awareness with Adrian Cain
12^th June 19

Following an overview of all the EMA (Electronic Management of Assessment) tools used at Edge Hill, the session will then concentrate on Turnitin Feedback Studio the most widely used of all the EMA tools. It will look at EHU Guidelines, consistency of set-up and practice, student formative use for academic writing development, and it will offer a hands-on practical where attendees can mimic some of the electronic submissions process from both a tutor and students’ perspective.

Academic Staff Development Fortnight

From the 17th to the 28th of June Library and Learning Services invite you to a fortnight of events designed to update your skills and knowledge of the support we offer – from Research Support to Student Engagement, and everything in between. The full event timetable is available here and sessions can be booked through My View.
The Learning Technology Development (LTD) Team will be running the below sessions:

Give Your Course a Digital MOT with Adrian Cain
17th June 1pm-2pm & 27th June 11am-12pm

A supportive peer review session aimed at helping you audit and fine tune your Blackboard course area to maximise its effectiveness and impact on student learning. Gain an objective assessment against critical agendas, such as:
-Inclusion
-Baseline
-Electronic Marking of Assessments
-Consistency of students’ experience
-Retention
Members of the LTD team will help you develop an individual action plan to help enhance your course areas now and in the future.

Using Panopto and Ally with Martin Baxter & Mark Wilcock
26th June 11am – 12pm

This session will review and offer insight into Inclusive/Accessible learning and the tools availability within the institution. We will demonstrate the benefits of Blackboard Ally and Panopto to enhance the student learning experience.

• Review the level of content accessibility and systematically prioritise where improvements can be made.
• Auto generated ‘Alternative’ formats and how they can support different learning styles
• Going beyond lecture capture with Panopto

Catalyst 1^st Year Anniversary Celebration

On Wednesday 19th June we’ll be celebrating a full year of Catalyst (already!!) with a celebratory day of competitions, exhibitions, activities and more from all of the teams based in Catalyst.

The LTD garage and show room will be located behind the help desk – visit us and find out why LTD have all your motoring needs covered.

Build the ideal course car (involves lego!), race it and win a prize.

Leah Wilson – Operations Coordinator

The Learning Technology team are running two new essential training sessions Turnitin & Electronic Marking Awareness and Panopto – Recording and Utilising Video for Learning.

Turnitin & Electronic Marking Awareness
Facilitator – Adrian Cain (LTDO)

Following an overview of all the EMA (Electronic Management of Assessment) tools used at Edge Hill, the session will then concentrate on Turnitin Feedback Studio the most widely used of all the EMA tools. It will look at EHU Guidelines, consistency of set-up and practice, student formative use for academic writing development, and it will offer a hands-on practical where attendees can mimic some of the electronic submissions process from both a tutor and students’ perspective.

21/05/19 13:00-14:00 & 13/06/17 13:00-14:00 in Catalyst Oak Room. 

Panopto – Recording and Utilising Video for Learning
Facilitators – Mark Wilcock (LTDO) & Andrea Wright (Senior Lecturer/CLT)

This session aims to go beyond the generic use of lecture capture, with focus on the other pedagogical ways to develop content that all students can access in a way that enables them to be more effective learners.  We will demonstrate the different ways in which Panopto can be used.  Specifically, around generating media for weekly round ups, general revision, student recordings and online video submission.

Ideally your will have prior experience of setting up and using Panopto to benefit from this session.

20/05/19 10:00-11:00 in Catalyst Oak Room

Book through MyView (can be found under Learning & Teaching Technologies)

Email ltdsupport@edgehill.ac.uk for more information or to inquire about specific training for your Department.

Leah Wilson – Operations Coordinator

The summer 2018 upgrade has been quite a big deal for the Learning Technology Team.  We have been months in planning for the latest upgrade with the idea in mind that if we do it right then you shouldn’t see any difference!  It does make sense… honestly… let us briefly explain;

For a number of years Blackboard Learning Edge has been provided from a ‘hosted service’ but we have now moved to a SaaS (Software as a Service) model.  This means that, whereas before we had to carefully manage modifications, updates, bug fixes and upgrades this is now handled at the core by Blackboard and so we will have significantly less downtime in the future as updates and upgrades can happen subtly with less end-user inconvenience.

So as mentioned, you shouldn’t actually see any difference but what this will allow us to do is introduce more interesting features and functions over the next year or so rather than one big summer bang!

So what is there to come?

We’re aiming to bring in an improved way of managing content within Learning Edge which should make it easier to manage files and share them across courses and modules.  Also on the timeline are tools such as Panopto quizzes, improvements to Qwickly (with Qwickly Attendance Pro) and also the potential for a (basic) portfolio tool within Blackboard.  We are also beginning pilots with a few users to try out some new accessibility tools to give students the best possible experience when studying in your course areas and modules.

What can I use now?

There have been a few noticeable changes, like you now have access to an improved Grade Centre view including:

• An ‘expand‘ button in the top right-hand corner so you can see more Grade Centre ‘real-estate’:

• also responsive column headers so that they will stack if they are long and need to go onto two lines or more:

• and a tool that we think will come in very handy is the new ‘Availability‘ button for quick on/off access to the course or module.

If you would like any further help or advice on your use of Learning Edge, Blackboard or any other learning technologies then please get in touch with your departmental Learning Technologist.  Details can be found within the Staff and/or Help tabs within Blackboard:

…or you can drop a line to ltdsupport@edgehill.ac.uk