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Posts Tagged ‘Jisc’

  1. Loving the Elevator

    May 18, 2016 by Robin Englebright

    One of the best things I’ve seen Jisc do is the Summer of Student Innovation, SOSI.
    It’s based on a simple idea that students are often in a better position to point out how and where things can be made better in Uni life, and maybe are even best placed to action the solutions in terms of available time, energy and motivation.
    The first stage of the SOSI project uses an online “Elevator pitch” tool, so the overhead for submitting an idea is really low too, meaning even super busy students can grab their phone record an idea, and submit.

    Because it’s such a good idea when we were asked by Holly at Santander Universities for some ideas on how to gather ideas for a “Digital Award” I instantly nagged Paul Bailey and Andy McGregor at Jisc to let me use the Elevator tool. Luckily they were in the process of turning the tool into a service, and our little competition had the potential to provide some useful feedback from a service user point of view.
    I’ll blog more on the pros and cons of the system once we’ve finished the competition, as I want to try the online marking tools.

    digitalaward1920x1080idea1

    Our Digital award has £5k funding from Santander Universities, who do lots of these sort of interventions in their host Uni’s. The award asks University of Brighton students and/or staff to submit ideas that would use technology to improve some aspect of Uni life. We publicised the competition with an “Elevator” based marketing campaign…

    Elevator in an elevator

    Mr_Rob_Work___rob_work__•_Instagram_photos_and_videos

    The top 4 ideas… the #4brightideas each get £250, the chance to join our Entrepreneurship Summer School, and if the idea is the sort that could be developed into an app or a service, then there’s another £1000 available to help build prototypes and whatnot.

    Anyway, our Digital award competition has reached the voting stage.
    So I thought I’d encourage readers of my blog to vote, even if you aren’t at the University and won’t benefit from the ideas. Share the ideas on social media, comment on the site, or send me any feedback.

    VOTE NOW


  2. Teaching Technology Timeline

    June 20, 2014 by Robin Englebright

    At the #Cetis14 conference the final keynote by Audrey Watters @audreywatters looked at the history of learning technology, and how it is shaped by folk to tell their point of view.
    It reminded me of a session I ran at the 2012 Jisc Online Conference called “Looking back to shape the future: The History of learning technology in 100 objects…” which managed to riff on both the popular 80’s film AND a (then) popular BBC series. The setup for the session was that sometimes technology changes the way we can work, and the way we can learn.
    The session aimed to record some of the landmarks in teaching technology by creating a collaborative teaching technology timeline using timeline.js (a fantastic bit of scripting).
    I tweeted a link to the timeline and several folk seemed interested so I thought it might be useful to share the link to the timeline, and the google form, and a recording of the presentation.
    We had a number of submissions and in the conference session we discussed what it was that made the difference.
    You can add to the timeline using this Google form.


  3. Feedback

    January 28, 2014 by Robin Englebright

    “The shrill sound created when a transducer such as a microphone or electric guitar picks up sound from a speaker connected to an amplifier and regenerates it back through the amplifier.”

    One of the biggest items that is highlighted in the National Student Survey (NSS) is the lack of feedback.
    Having been a student recently I can confirm that swift timely feedback is crucial to successful study.

    I also know the idea that they aren’t providing swift timely feedback drives lecturers crazy.

    I was thinking about this the other day when I had a problem with my macbook power supply.

    NSS - student feedback wanted dead or alive

    The problem manifested at 8pm, and I contacted the apple tech support line via an online chat, and was given the information I needed, told how to find the serial number of my macbook (which is on the “About this mac” screen, but you have to click the “Version 10.0.1” text to reveal it) and given an issue number.
    I was advised to go into the store and a replacement would be provided – just take along the two numbers.
    Excellent service, timely feedback – my issues were identified and addressed.

    I nipped into the Covent Garden store on the way to the office and the first apple person I could find told me I needed to make an appointment – I assured him that the previous advice suggested a replacement could be made without any appointments.
    He pointed me at the geniuses – however these took a bit of finding as the old Genius Bar no longer exists, instead it’s a case of asking anyone in a blue t-shirt if they can help. Eventually one group of four employees milling around told me I needed to speak the another group of four employees milling around.
    The final four insisted I needed an appointment.
    I had received feedback, but it wasn’t related to my issue, but the store processes.

    This is how a student feels in the university system.

    Whilst the feedback given by the Apple Genii was accurate and timely, it was also not related to my issue, but to the system itself. Quite a lot of the feedback that students get given doesn’t relate to their issue, but to how they can comply with systems.

    As a customer of Apple I had no desire to work out their arcane rules, I wanted a replacement power supply.
    As a student I don’t want to know about system issues, I want to have my specific issues addressed.

    Next week I’m off to a Conference at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Brighton Uni, which will be covering effective eFeedback amongst other things.
    I’m looking forward to hearing about the systems in place at Brighton, and eventually working on them to try and hit that sweet spot, and who knows maybe improve the NSS scores.

    UPDATE

    Jisc have just circulated a new series of short guides  based on four key themes:

    For a full picture of the challenges, approaches and findings from our recent work please see the full summary report ‘Supporting assessment and feedback practice with technology: from tinkering to transformation’.


  4. A PICTURE IS WORTH HOW MANY WORDS?

    March 30, 2012 by Robin Englebright

    JISC_projects_1_x-games-

     

    …So

    I’m hoping to do this with a degree of regularity…

     

    http://www.jisc.ac.uk/inform/inform33/PlayingtoLearn.html

    Creative Commons Licence
    blog_story by Rob Englebright is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.


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