SoSS eLearning Newsletter Issue 2 - APRIL 2022

Contents

• SoSS Teaching and Learning website
• Being Organised, Structured and Communicating Effectively - Teaching Online Workshop
• Camtasia and Snagit - new screen capture tools
• Using 'Meeting Owls' for hybrid sessions
• Gradescope training - marking coding assignments, including auto-grading
• VoiceThread training - new features training session
• Möbius training - online adaptive assignments
• Institute of Teaching and Learning open workshops
• Staff Development training available
• Meet the SoSS eLearning Team

SoSS Teaching and Learning website

March saw the launch of the new SoSS Teaching and Learning website. We would love to receive contributions to the site and it would be great to hear from you for any of the following:

• Information about research you are conducting into pedagogy
• Any materials which you think might be of use to colleagues
• Examples of innovative practice
• Anything else related to Teaching and Learning that you think should be captured by the website

Please send any contributions for the website to robert.oneill@manchester.ac.uk

Teaching Online Workshop

Being Organised, Structured and Communicating Effectively. Tuesday 10th May 2022, 10:30am.

With Arif Khurshed (AMBS), Caitlin Henry (SEED), and Paul Tobin (SOSS)

Arif, Caitlin & Paul’s students describe their courses as perfectly organised and varied, talking about how obvious it is that their lecturers have spent a great deal of time and effort into designing the overall structure of the courses, as well as their raving about their straightforward explanations – how being clear makes their learning more efficient, as well as providing an interesting experience.

• Book via the University Training Catalogue
• Previous workshop recordings can be accessed here

Camtasia and Snagit - what are they?

To support teaching staff with the creation of video content for blending learning delivery, the University has purchased a 3000 user site licence for Camtasia and Snagit from TechSmith. The licence agreement is limited to use for teaching activities only and may not be used by students. Staff involved in teaching activity include those working in research who also support teaching activity (i.e. postgrads); admin/PS staff including eLearning staff; and academics/lecturers.

Camtasia is an all-in-one screen recorder and video editor for both Windows and Mac users which enables you to record your screen. Features include:

• Interactivity and quizzing
• Annotations and animation
• Video table of contents
• Closed captions added directly to the recording.

Read the University's Guidelines for the use of Camtasia or request a licence.

When requesting a licence for Camtasia, you will also receive an activation key for Techsmith's Snagit.

Snagit enables you to quickly and flexibly capture images (and silent video) from a screen, and is supported by a powerful but simple-to-use video editor. Snagit provides many tools to annotate, edit and enhance image captures but, for a more powerful set of video editing tools, we recommend using Camtasia.

Read the University's guidance on Getting Started with Snagit or request a licence.

Using 'Meeting Owls' for hybrid sessions

The Meeting Owl Pro is a 360-degree camera, mic and speaker combined into one, easy to use device. It has an automatic zoom function that responds to who’s speaking, automatically cutting between people verbally contributing to the meeting / teaching event. The camera is fully HD, has three speakers and microphone array, with an 18-foot audio pick up radius. Simply connect the owl to your laptop or PC in the meeting room via USB and select the owl as your camera and audio choice.

How will it benefit me?

The Owl is perfect for supporting hybrid meetings for Professional Support staff and small group teaching if dual teaching is required. The Owl creates the experience of in-person participation and integrates seamlessly with both Zoom and Teams. You can see an example video of how the Meeting Owl works here.

Gradescope Programming Assignments - Training Session

The makers of Gradescope are running an online workshop on using Gradescope for coding assignments and how to auto-grade student assignments. Wednesday, 27th April, 10am - 10:45am.

Registration is at https://info.gradescope.com/manchester-workshops

VoiceThread training - new features training session

VoiceThread (VT) will be running an online demo and training session open to all staff across the institution. This session will cater for both academic and PS eLearning teams who know or are already VoiceThread users. Monday, 25th April, 4-5pm.

Registration is at https://attendee.gototraining.com/r/1526065386757953794

The session will be covering major feature updates:

• Lesson and assessment design
• Effective use of VT for group presentations
• New features such as interface, fixing mistakes, content organisation

Once you register, you will receive an email with the login information for the training as well as reminders one day and one hour before the session.

Möbius training – Adaptive Assignments

Möbius is an online testing system, integrated into Blackboard. It is includes many types of online questions, but has powerful functionality for questions involving maths and stats.

Building Student Confidence in Maths | A Novel Approach. Wednesday, 4th May 1pm

Some of this session is maths-specific, but the focus on Adaptive assignments will be of broader interest to those using online tests.

A recording will also be made available if you cannot make this time.

The webinar will cover how to use Möbius to meet students where they are, to re-build their confidence and unlock their potential.

• Why [some] students hate Maths
• How Adaptive assignments can be used to boost confidence
• How to tailor material based on individual student performance

Register here: https://go.digitaled.com/Building-student-confidence-in-Math.html

Institute of Teaching and Learning open workshops

Two 1-hour open workshops related to assessment are coming up in the next few weeks:

Connecting Assessments with the Curriculum. Wednesday, 27th April 2022, 10–11am

Led by Sally Hickson, Deputy Head of Student Operations, School of Health Sciences

Book via the University Training Catalogue

How can we make our assessments meaningful and properly connected with the curriculum and the teaching and learning activities that students have undertaken? This old chestnut of ‘constructive alignment’ might be familiar to many, or not at all familiar to some.

In this session we will explore how improve alignment of our assessments to the curriculum so that students will be more enthused to engage in an assessment that enables them to demonstrate their learning in more meaningful ways.

We’ll also look at authenticity and formative assessment for learning under the umbrella of constructive alignment.

This session will hopefully open the treasure chest of different forms of assessment for your students.

• Explore how to improve alignment of our assessments to the curriculum
• Explore authenticity and formative assessment for learning under the umbrella of constructive alignment
• Consider different forms of assessment for your students

How to Design Cheat-Proof Multiple-Choice Exams to Improve Higher-Level Thinking Skills. Friday, 29th April 2022, 2-3pm

Led by Professor David Schultz, Chair in Synoptic Meteorology, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and ITL Fellow 2021/22

Book via the University Training Catalogue

“How old is the Earth?” “Define homeostasis.” “Derive the wave equation.” “Solve this differential equation.”

These types of questions are staples of many types of exams in science and engineering modules. They are the foundation of the module content, they are easy for the instructor to develop and mark, and they meet students’ expectations. In online exams, some of these questions can even be written in multiple-choice format, making marking even easier, if not completely automated.

These questions, however, are also prone to cheating by students, especially in online exams. Students can quickly google the answers or exchange answers via messaging apps. This problem has grown worse due to the lockdown and online assessments, even for courses that otherwise would not employ such types of assessments.

Moreover, the ease of writing such questions often leads instructors to aim too low on Bloom’s taxonomy, falling short of the level descriptors in the UK Framework for HE Qualifications. Here, the risk is depriving students of the opportunity to learn the material at a deeper, more conceptual level and confirmation by students that assessments are a barrier rather than an opportunity for learning.

I envision a future where such assessments facilitate higher-level thinking skills and minimize the potential of cheating by the students. Doing so helps develop the skills in colleagues to support assessment. Attempts to improve assessment in this manner also allows for more creative and different types of assessments, even in exams that do not facilitate such creativity or diversity (e.g., multiple choice).

• Understand why many exams consisting of multiple-choice questions facilitate easy cheating
• Employ natural assessment and research-informed teaching approaches in assessment design
• Write improved multiple-choice questions for the participants’ specific discipline

You can find the full list of ITL events on the upcoming events webpage

More Staff Development and Training Courses Available

Regular scheduled and self-paced online sessions. For further info and dates, please follow the links below.

Self-paced learning options:

• HUMEL0115 Introduction to Blackboard
• HUMEL0152 Introduction to Turnitin feedback studio
• HUMEL0215 Dual Delivery Teaching (online self-paced)
• HUMEL0227 Using Camtasia in Your Teaching

Online sessions delivered via Zoom:

• HUMEL0219 Humanities Teaching Approaches for Dual Delivery (online synchronous Workshop)
• HUMEL0196 Adobe CC Express (formerly Spark) (teaching content & presentation)
• HUMEL0187 Blackboard Collaborate (real-time video conferencing)
• HUMEL0204 Turning Point Web (classroom interactivity)
• HUMEL0188 Introduction to VoiceThread (multimedia slideshows, interactivity & assignments)
• HUMEL0207 VoiceThread for group presentations
• HUMEL0208 Microsoft Teams for teaching & learning
• HUMEL0209 Assessments with integrity: Blackboard Tests and Pools
• HUMEL0205 Blackboard Tests for School PS Teams

Meet the SoSS eLearning Team

The team provides advice, guidance and demonstrations to academic staff on the opportunities for using technology in teaching, learning and assessment, and also supports the use of Blackboard and other supported tools.