Charlie Lea | SASS Teaching and Learning Blog

Need help with the new technologies?

Hello fellow SASSers!

I’m sure many of you wake each morning thinking “will today be a SASS Teaching and Learning blog day?”, and that lately every day has been a crushing disappointment. Not today though! The blog crashes back into your life bringing ~~joy~~ links to training opportunities.

The blog has previously highlighted the core technologies that should support and facilitate our teaching in the coming year, you can click here for full descriptions of all the new tech, but now they are no longer abstract – help is available…..

For “go at your own pace” guidance, and how to get started with Panopto, Blackboard Ally, or Teams, please follow this link: the new tech and how to use it
If you want further support, there are also workshops coming up for Ally and Panopto. Find out when, and how to access, here: Remote Teaching and New Tech Workshops. If you’re feeling like you’ve missed out on anything other sessions are available on demand, so take a look at the page to see what’s being offered.
As meeting accessibility requirements is going to be important this year there is also training available in creating accessible documents, which you can sign up for here: IT training including Accessibility
If you were unable to attend the either of the Online Learning Strategy Workshops in July/ August, the videos, slides and other resources from these are available in the Teams area which you can join using this code vxq2nlx
Before you start planning and preparing for the new academic year you may also find the CLT resource Digitally Enabled Learning Resources useful. I summarised each section in a previous blog post; there are plenty of useful things there.

I know this is yet another list of stuff to do, during a busy time, and it is far from ideal. The start of term looms like storm clouds and, sadly, there is nothing I can do in my Pedagogy and Practice pyjamas ( remember them?) to stop it. Nevertheless, support and guidance is available in new tech, and module re-design, as and when we need it.

If you can think of anything else that could help you with your teaching and learning provision, please let me know in the comments below or email me.

Take care all,

Charlie

What’s in the Digitally Enabled Learning Course from CLT?

Sparkling image with Digitally Enabled Learning Principles in Practice text on top

Hello, hello, hello!

I thought I’d just pop on to flag a few hot, top tips from the Digitally Enabled Learning Course and provide a brief summary of, and links to, the sections. While the first point is more vital for Module Coordinators, the rest really relate to general teaching for lecturers, and seminar tutors as online facilitators.

For ideas about alternative to exams or presentations it’s definitely worth looking at the Assessment and Feedback section. There is a whole document listing alternatives, and another document with worked through examples of how some alternatives would look in practice. There is also a really helpful Planning Checklist document – handy for anyone planning changes. There are useful points about the potential for academic dishonesty in open book exam formats and suggestions as to how to get round this issue.

Creating a Sense of Belonging provides guidance on how to help students feel included in the online teaching environment, the idea being that this will increase their motivation to engage. There is guidance here on simple, fun activities to do, early on in the semester, that aim to encourage a sense of belonging and provide scaffolding for more sophisticated or complex online work later on. One key idea is that sense of belonging isn’t just something to think about early on though, it’s something we have to bear in mind right the way through a module and there is guidance for this too.

Well organised learning provides guidance on how we can present online materials. There are loads of useful things in this section! Two top tips from this would be:

provide lectures in small chunks, direct students to do relevant activities in between – this might be a good use of activities that were previously done in a seminar environment
direct all module queries to a discussion board – this could reduce the correspondence load on individual tutors

This section provides some great ideas and useful tools; again a useful checklist document is provided to help with planning.

Planning and facilitating student interaction covers some ideas that are touched upon in other sections but in more detail. There is guidance here on using discussion boards, blogs, wikis, quizzes, and other activities, to encourage engagement. Importantly there is a section on accessibility too. Something I took away from the accessibility section was that I will have to avoid leaving uploading lectures to Student Central till the last minute and try to plan to upload them much earlier to allow time for Blackboard Ally to do its accessibility reporting, and to allow time for me to respond to the report.

Finally Teaching Presence provides really helpful pointers on facilitating group work synchronously and asynchronously. I found this handy having previously had difficulty encouraging students to engage with discussion boards and group video chats on Teams.

As ever please feel free to instigate chats in the comments below. Additionally, in the About section of this blog, there is a form you can use if you would like to share any ideas or plans you have for your teaching in Semester 1.

Take care all,

Charlie

Everything all in one place

Ey up, SASSers!

I thought it might be handy to try and put all the recently emailed documents and links relating to planning for semester 1 all in one place.

Here are the SASS core Learning and Teaching principles for planning – these lay out some guidance and provide actions for staff according to role:

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download

Here are the guidelines on how you can reimagine “contact hours” for a module:

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download

A direct link to the Digitally Enabled Learning Course from our CLT

https://studentcentral.brighton.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/execute/modulepage/view?course_id=_115277_1&cmp_tab_id=_328325_1

Much more help here on how to make your materials accessible and inclusive https://staff.brighton.ac.uk/clt/inclusive/Pages/default.aspx

Finally, for guidance thinking about how to modify your teaching, or your module, you can sign up for an Online Learning Strategy workshop with Fiona MacNeil available on Tuesday 14th July 10am -12noon OR Wednesday
12th August 2pm – 4pm

Please sign up here https://forms.microsoft.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=kLsAqf6UWEaLNN1yCExQZDImsLUF7KJEiH0i8GUXeKpURDM3NUFRM001Q1o4RDVMVTZCN0UyNDVUUy4u

I appreciate this is quite the list, and a lot to engage with, but hopefully now it has been corralled into one place.

Take care,

Charlie

Engaging our students with active research

Students enrolled on University of Brighton psychology degrees complete compulsory research methods modules in the first and second year. These modules involve the teaching of quantitative and qualitative research in terms of study design, methods and analyses. The teaching, learning, and assessment of psychological research methods is vital: it is a key requirement for accreditation of psychology degrees by The British Psychological Society (BPS), and it provides students with the necessary skills and knowledge to complete their Psychology Dissertation in the final year, as such it reflects a significant part of the degree course for a large cohort of students.

In 2016 a programme of “study participation” for students was implemented for the first time which requested that all Psychology degree students take part in research studies conducted by final year dissertation students or staff. Students were encouraged to obtain at least 10 participation credits each academic year, with book vouchers offered to the students with the largest number of credits. Study participation encourages direct interaction with active research, in accordance with the University Strategy 2016-2021 and the Research and Enterprise Strategic Plan 2017-2021.

Based on student feedback, whilst only in its first year, this initiative can be viewed as successful. Importantly the accrual of credits was not a module requirement, nevertheless approximately 60% of first years, and 80% of second years took part and despite being asked to only obtain 10 credits some students gained over 100. Study participation was described by students as “addictive” and “lots of fun” and being a participant “made the prospect of conducting my own research less scary”. Most students who provided feedback strongly agreed that study participation was “a useful experience” and agreed that “taking part in studies will help me when it comes to my dissertation”.