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Facts and Figures about Mobile Technology
Over the last 40 years, mobile technology developments have changed the way we engage with content, communicate, collaborate and learn. Device ownership has reached a critical mass globally, with CISCO (2013) reporting that by the end of this year there will be more mobile-connected devices than there are people on earth!
In the UK, 61% of over 16s use a smartphone (Nielson, 2013) and at Edge Hill, our 2012 annual student eLearning survey revealed comparable results – 63% use an internet enabled mobile phone and 32% use tablet devices. This increasing ubiquity of access to advanced mobile technology is important to us as educators, as we strive to leverage the benefits for teaching and learning, through improving our infrastructure, services and support. Huge advances have been made at Edge Hill in reccent years, and staff and students now have a mobile rich environment to work in. Here are some of the highlights:
The Blackboard Mobile Learn app, introduced in September 2011, has proved a real hit with our students. They tell us that easy access to announcements, lecture notes and grades is really important to them and usage data backs this up, as we can see the app is being used now more than ever – visits to Learning Edge via the app in September 2013 totalled 53,785 compared with 17,703 in the same period in 2012 – a 204% increase.
Users of Blackboard Collaborate have enjoyed taking advantage of the Collaborate Mobile app to participate in live web-conferencing sessions from their iPhone and iPads, and in May 2013 we upgraded the service to support Android and Kindle devices as well. In October 2013, an inbuilt recording conversion feature was also added, allowing instructors to easily create industry standard MP4 and MP3 formats of their session recordings for playback on mobile devices.
During the summer, the EHU Central app (also known as Edge Hill Central) was redeveloped to include a number of improvements including three fantastic new tools: computer availability, campus map and Ask Us. The new release of Edge Hill Central is available for Android users (with iOS and web app versions to follow) and early feedback has been incredibly positive. Students love that they can find a PC, find their way around campus and ask for help from wherever they are.
Students have also found the mobile-friendly library resources invaluable. As well as the mobile compatible catalogue search tool, we now have Discover More on mobile and over 80,000 downloadable eResources – from Ebrary, DawsonEra (on iOS / Android) and MyiLibrary.
In August the Turnitin for iPad app arrived allowing academic staff using iPads to access student assignments and provide feedback, with options to view originality reports, grade with rubrics, and annotate with QuickMark, highlights, bubble, inline, voice comments. Assignments can even be downloaded to enable offline working.
Students are regularly using their smartphones in EHU’s WIFI spaces (65% of respondents to the 2012 student e-Learning survey) and student enquires suggested connecting to campus WIFI had presented some challenges. As a result, Learning Services initiated a #EHUGetConnected campaign which has seen 16 roadshow events in the first term help around 2000 students access the Eduroam WiFi service and learn all about our fabulous mobile facilites!
The next #EHUGetConnected event is this Friday, 29th November, in the University Library, where we’ll be talking about using apps and eBooks. Get your questions ready, we’re looking forward to seeing you (both staff and students) there!
If you’d like to discuss how you could exploit the potential of mobile technologies in your practice, leave a comment below, contact your learning technologist or come to one of our staff development sessions.
Meg Juss, Learning Technology Development Manager
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Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards…Journals for reflection
Reflection in UG and PG programmes has become a very important element of assessment and one that is often regared as a key skill in teaching and learning by leading educational theorists (Schon, Kolb, Brookfield etc.)
With this in mind, I thought that a short blog on one of the commonly overlooked tools in Blackboard was in order: the Journal tool.
The ‘Journal’ tool in Blackboard allows an area to be created where students can reflect on an activity, process, project or their own progression and development during a course.
The student can then see how they have developed, in their own words, from where they started from and help them identify strengths and weaknesses, learning strategies and improvments that can be made; think of it like a diary where key points in a learning timeline can be recorded online.
When creating a Journal in Blackboard, there are a few things to remember;
- You only need to create one ‘instance’ of the journal but each student will receive their own copy or template of that journal to complete.
- The journals are private so no student can see another’s journal entries.
(unless the setting is chosen to allow this*). - Settings can also limit the ability to allow editing if required.
(so students can’t alter an entry at a later date).
Tutors can also choose to leave ‘comments’ in response to a student’s entry to help with development, personal progression, motivation or guide their direction of thought. Additional supplementary documents can be attached such as PDFs or images.
Journals could be the starting point in formulating assignments, dissertation ideas, films, performances or CVs. Collating thoughts and ideas along the way helps students when they reach the final output to collect and focus their thoughts about what they have learnt and how they wish to best present it. Bite-size chunks are always easier to swallow!
The journal tool is available from any content area in a Blackboard course or module under the ‘Tools’ button. Create the journal activity and then create the link in the chosen area to that journal. A journal can be created and ‘saved for later’ if you’re not sure where you would like it to sit in the course or module initially. *It can also be edited at any point if you need to change any elements. Journals can also be set to be gradable should it be part of a formal assessment.
‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’, David Levithan
Carol Chatten
Learning Technology Development Officer
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iOS SOS: mobile users need your help!
As more of our students are using devices such as iPads and iPhones – which do not have Microsoft packages installed – we need to change the way we save items in eShare so that students can view them whichever device they are using.
PDF is the way forward!
There’s a simple solution – save your document as a PDF, then upload it to eShare.
If you already have a document saved in eShare in a Microsoft package such as Word follow these step-by-step instructions to swap the document without losing the URL.
Remember, if you want students to access documents, you must set the Viewing Permissions to ‘University’ or ‘World’.
If you have any queries regarding eShare or would like to arrange a group or 1:1 training session please contact [email protected].
Michelle O’Connell
Academic Liaison Librarian
