Technology

Blackboard Midlands User Group report

Julian Beckton Blackboard, Technology

The other day, I braved the elements and took a trip to Birmingham University Medical School in order to attend the Midlands Blackboard User Group. This is quite a useful way of getting to find out what colleagues in other local universities are up to, and indeed to find out what Blackboard’s plans are. On this occasion, it seemed to be a little less well attended than usual, which was probably related to the weather. To make matters worse I wasn’t feeling at my best, so I probably didn’t get as much out of it as I usually do. Still, it wasn’t without interest.

First up was Alistair Brook (Blackboard Collaborate) to talk about the incorporation of Wimba and Elluminate into the product – there’s a nice introduction here (needs Flash) which tells you what Wimba can do. Essentially it’s a way of adding relatively rich media to Blackboard, and providing online tutorial support to remote students. While it is expensive, we do have to consider how much, for example, the recent weather related snow closures cost the university. Of course, users need web cams and microphones to participate but the hardware costs are relatively low.

Alistair argued that in fact there were very few universities not using any collaboration tool at all, and talking to colleagues, most of them do in fact appear to be making some limited use of these things.  Another quite interesting aspect, (which is something Blackboard, who have recently acquired Wimba, seem to be pushing is emphasising the potential for using these tools in a cross institutional role. That is, using it for what we might call administrative support, which we’ve always tended to use the Portal for. Reading between the lines, I wonder if Blackboard are going for the Sharepoint market, although I must be clear that nobody said anything along those lines. We’ve always said that Blackboard is a “teaching and learning” tool and have resisted adopting it as a more general portal. That might be more convenient for us, but from a student point of view, it certainly makes sense to have single points of contact for students and I am coming round to the view that Blackboard may be a rather more effective communication system than Sharepoint. Clearly, we’d need to do a lot of work, (and spend a lot of money) on thinking this through before making any decisions, and there’s no getting away from the fact that the problem with the Portal is less to do with the technology and more to do with weak information management (no version control, different departments putting different versions of the same story, in slightly different places). Blackboard are keen to push the technology as a tool for engaging with first years etc, and identifying those students that are at risk of dropping out. (But, in order to do that,  there had better be someone on the other end. I suppose that’s an example of technology changing working practices)

As Alistair said, Blackboard are planning to create a more integrated product, which they are calling Project Gemini. (Which isn’t going to be the product name.) The reason is that they believe student experience & expectations are more diverse, students will be entering worst employment market in 30 years, there are increased business/industry expectations of university graduates. Students use technology every day, they’ll be leaving with huge debt. As a consequence they’ve been looking at the technology first year students bring with them and how they use it. Project Gemini is the result of this – they want a system that is much more mobile friendly, and multimedia oriented.

One slightly more controversial point was that given that HE is likely to become price sensitive can we justify charging an extra tenner for technology access? I guess BB would quite like it if we did, although, to do that we’d have to become a genuinely private sector institution, rather than reliant on state subsidy through student loans.

Getting back to the point, I raised the issue that collaborative seminars are a good idea in many ways,  but they can easily shut out the less articulate or confident. That’s not a reason not to find ways of doing them and reducing that of course, but I seemed to get a standard issue answer that universities needed to be more efficient, and that we had to find ways of linking strategy and technology. Which we do, but there was quite a lot of scepticism about the reliability of the technology.  Especially out in the field which raises further issues about what we  are doing about planning for poor infrastructure in the future? (e.g how can we provide advice for users to check their computer, or if it’s not up to standard, what alternatives can we provide?) That is our responsibility.

It struck me that all this had a clear value for  the sort of curricula offered, for example, at Holbeach – but I’m a bit more sceptical about the value of these tools for on-campus use. The presenter’s answer to that was inevitably “snow” (and later, Icelandic volcanoes). And I guess closing the university did probably cost more than a subscription, although I’m also fairly sure, that there’d be a large proportion of staff and students who wouldn’t know how to use it – there’s probably an element of strategic incompetence in that. But, I’d have been prepared to run the PGCE session that was cancelled as a webinar if we’d had the technology. And there’s a lot of value in the ability to record lectures, Wimba video is not streamed but chunked into 2 minute segments. (Can be linked to slides, as in Echo 360 which I’ve blogged about before) Amusingly the presenter didn’t seem to understand why students would want to look at a portion of a lecture, rather than the whole thing. (Until we explained it to him)

  • Chat
  • Audio conferencing
  • Video conferencing
  • Desktop sharing
  • Whiteboard
  • Virtual Classroom

There then followed a brief discussion of  other collaborative technologies that are out there. Northampton, for example, were informally supporting Skype, but there was an interesting point made that if you’re charging students for a free service (e.g. Second Life) (as we might have to do)  then you have no control over what you’re providing, and you won’t be able to fulfil your contract. Well, of course, Blackboard would say that wouldn’t they? But it doesn’t make it any less true.

The afternoon session was devoted to the support that Blackboard offered. Frankly this was of more interest to technical support staff, than to user support staff, and was largely concerned with upgrading to version 9.1 (If you’re interested they provide a web site here: http://www.blackboard.com/upgradecenter. which offers Webinars, documentation, Upgrade kits which tell you what you need to look for. There’s also an on demand learning centre at http://Ondemand.blackboard.com  containing vver 90 resources which show you how to use different parts fo the system – and you can use them to introduce staff to BB9.1. Finally there’s “Behind the Blackboard”, which is more for technical support staff  http://behind.blackboard.com.  If you have a question about Blackboard you can post it on Behind the Blackboard. It’s not just for problems but for any detailed question,  There’s also a knowledge base which may prevent you needing to ask the question in the first place. Questions are ticketed so you can follow the progress of your ticket. However, there are only two accounts per institution on Behind the Blackboard though.  An interesting sign of the times is that Blackboard moving their European Support team from Amsterdam to Sofia.  We don’t yet know what effect, if any, this will have on support.

Finally, they admitted that there is no plan for a version 10  or even a 9.2. The implication is that users are expected to move to version 9.1. In fact they’ve now announced that previous versions, including our version 8, are only now supported “operationally”. This means that requests for new features will not be acted on. – Or rather the answer is that if you want a new feature, you should ask for a it from a base of being a 9.1 user. That means that we are going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade sooner or later. From a Lincoln point of view, this is going to be quite a large change, as the interface is visually quite different.

Blackboard 9.1: The control panel

Julian Beckton Blackboard, Technology
Blackboard 9 control panel
The new control panel

For me, one of the most interesting, and potentially problematic, changes in release 9.1 is the way the control panel has been integrated into the course menu. Instead of a link to a new page, instructors have everything available to them on the same page, provided of course, that they’re in Edit Mode.  As in version 8, students still don’t get to see the control panel.

What this means in practice is that most control panel tools are now accessible through sub menus.  (Note, in the illustration that all the menu options have a rather indistinct double chevron pointing down, to the left of each option). Some also have a rightward pointing double chevron. In both cases these open up further options, the ones on the left offering further sub menus, and those on the right taking the user to a page, (which opens up in the site “frame” where sub menus are inadequate for the tools’s functions).

Some features that were accessed through the control panel in previous versions have been rendered more interactive. An example is the menu manager. If a user wants to add buttons to a site, they do so from a tab above the buttons. Moving buttons is now done through drag and drop, rather than the rather cumbersome numbering system used in previous versions.

One feature of the new look menu that may have some potential to confuse users is that if an area is empty, then it won’t be visible to students. So if you create a button called “learning materials” and then don’t add anything to it, the button will not appear at all in display view. It will of course appear on the menu in Edit mode, along with a small grey square icon, which is presumably meant to represent emptiness.

There’s not a lot more to say about the control panel at this stage, as many of its features are integrated into specific tools and also into specific course navigation and content tools. The architecture of the control panel does not appear to have been profoundly altered in that most of the functions are still there, and are accessed through it.  But I thought it was worth its own little post since it has been such an important way into the back end of Blackboard in previous versions, and we need to be aware of what is visually, if not conceptually a rather different way of controlling a site.

More thoughts on Blackboard 9.1

Julian Beckton Blackboard, Technology , ,

As I promised a couple of days ago, I said that I’d continue to review Blackboard 9.1 to help us make our decision on whether to upgrade.  I said in my last post on the subject that 9.1 was not all that different from 8 in terms of its underlying architecture, and while I broadly stick by that, there is one new development that may have considerable potential to enhance the student experience of using BB. This is the “page”. Basically the instructors in a site will have the ability to create a much more “designed” site. Each page is linked to by a menu button, so that every topic in a course can have its own page. Blackboard have also provide subheaders so that course menus can be structured much more like a menu on a web page. 

We shouldn’t get too carried away about this – Apart from the subheaders you could do this in Blackboard 8, if you’re prepared to limit each content area to one or two items, but for people who are used to building web pages, it may be a little more intuitive. (although of course, it has nowhere the near the full flexibility of HTML coding)

Another feature I quite like, is what Blackboard refer to (inaccurately) as “mashups”. What they mean is that you can search Flickr, Slideshare and Youtube from within the page (or content area) editor and link to material from those services – which are streamed directly from the appropriate service rather than stored on Blackboard. It also displays metadata from the hosting service. You might think this will be a licensing nightmare, but since you’re not actually copying the picture,  and you are displaying attribution, I suspect it might be less of a problem than downloading and re-uploading content.  Anyway here’s a picture with some examples

A Blackboard 9 page
A page in Blackboard 9

One thing that did puzzle me a bit at first was how to add a button in BB9. If you’re used to 8 you know you have to go into the menu manager, accessible through the control panel. In 9 however, this is simplified because they’ve simply added an icon to the menu itself – which you only see if you’re in edit mode. 

BB9 menu controls
Note the plus sign above the button

The other buttons across the top of the menu control the way in which the menu appears – It can appear as a site map in the position where the buttons are, or, much as in version 8, as a navigable map in a separate window. What the illustration doesn’t show is that they’ve also simplified the control panel somewhat, which now appears as a set of expandable menus below the main site buttons. Which is nice in one way, but you have to expand all of them, if you can’t remember where the particular tool you need is!

I think the new look control panel may be the topic of my next post.

Technology enhanced assessment for learning: Case studies and Best Practice. Seminar report

Julian Beckton Assessment, Technology

Quite an interesting visit to Bradford University for an HEA seminar on using technology to enhance assessment. As is often the case with this sort of event, I came away with more questions than answers, and perhaps the biggest question we face is how can we devise forms of electronic assessment that encourage students to use the feedback we do give them? There appears to be something of a national consensus that, in general, the feedback we give to students could be improved upon. Students certainly feel that way, if the results of the National Student Survey are to be believed, but it is far from simple to come up with a definition of high quality feedback that everyone agrees on.

Two academics from Bradford demonstrated their practice, both of which were around multiple choice style quizzes, although, the examples of feedback given in the first, in biological sciences, were I thought, quite impressive (We’ve been promised an e-mail link to the slides which, if they’re prepared to share them publicly,  I will post here when I get it, rather than write a long description of what was said.) A slight disappointment was that there was virtually no discussion of e-submission of written assignments and the nature of feedback on those, although I did raise this in the breakout group part of the day. However, I was interested to see that Bradford had bought Question Mark Perception, and incorporated it into Blackboard. According to the presenter, this is better able to handle question banks and personalisation than Blackboard’s native tools (In other words, if a student gives a particular answer to a multiple choice question, they can be directed to a specific next question.)

There was some discussion of the role of formative assessment in the second presentation. Apparently Bradford’s engineering students have a bi-weekly formative multiple choice question, but the presenter, who had just inherited this course was finding that they seemed to lose interest after a couple of weeks, and raised the very valid point, that since this was a very low, (or no) stakes assessment, the students just clicked through the answers to show that they’d done it. As he pointed out, this was unlikely to promote much in the way of learning. He’d also had feedback to the effect that the students didn’t really like this kind of involvement, which contrasted with the biologist, who had found that stronger students tended to use it as a learning resource, (as you might expect) but even weaker students engaged with it as a revision tool. (Clearly, there are deep and surface approaches to learning going on there!)

The event finished with a visit to the university’s e-assessment suite. This is a room with 100 computer terminals, which allows for invigilated examinations. Since all the computers are terminals, rather than PCs, there is not an issue with machines being inadvertently turned off, since the students’ work is all on the server. If a machine crashes, you just switch it back on and the student is returned to where they were. (although a few invigilators had not realised this in the past, and had given students paper copies of the exams! While these are always provided as back up, and have sometimes been used they have never actually been needed)  They had also provided a separate area for students with disabilities, who may need extra time. When the suite is not being used for assessment it serves as a basic computer lab, with office products and a cut down internet browser, and apparently it takes about half an hour to reboot all the terminals into assessment mode – where they just have a single icon with the assessment.

All of which goes to show, that e-assessment is not simply a matter of giving students a test even if you do provide feedback. Bradford have clearly thought quite hard about their infrastructure as well, although we ran out of time, and unfortunately, I had to hurry off to catch my train, which was a shame, as I would have liked to ask them if they had any policy on giving feedback after exams.

Blackboard upgrade. Should we go or should we stay?

Julian Beckton Blackboard, Technology ,

We’re beginning to think about whether we should upgrade Lincoln’s implementation of Blackboard to the current release of the software. We’re currently using version 8, and Blackboard are now on version 9.1. I should stress that no decision has been taken yet, and this post is just the start of a longer process of reviewing and considering the relative advantages and disadvantages of such a move.

The question of whether to upgrade a piece of software, especially one that has a relatively large user community such as Blackboard is often tricky. It’s made more so by the fact that Blackboard is considered by many members of that community to be mission critical. Frankly I’m not so sure about that, but I’m prepared to accept that if many people believe it is, then, for them, it is. It’s going to take a long time to review this in full, but here are some preliminary thoughts. Most of this comes from reviewing what other users have said on the web site, and Blackboard’s own publicity material. There’s no substitute for diving in and getting one’s hands dirty, which I will be doing over the next couple of months.

One of the most compelling arguments for upgrading is that as software develops and the manufacturers bring out new versions, support for older versions diminishes. This is made worse when the software is delivered on-line, because web browsers too get updated and become incompatible with different versions of the software you’re trying to use. We’ve recently had one or two problems reported by users which we’ve managed to identify as being caused by this sort of thing. But when I say “one or two”, I do mean one or two – the numbers, so far anyway,  are still in single figures. Furthermore, we can’t really exert any control over what off campus users have on their computers. If they must use IE6 (for example), I don’t see what we can do about it – other than to strongly advise them to upgrade. It’s a fair bet that if Blackboard 8 is incompatible with an old browser, then Blackboard 9.1 won’t be either. I suppose having the latest version of both should provide a solution.

Which is all very well, but a powerful argument against upgrading is that people will be unfamiliar with the new version, and have to relearn their way around the interface. In this case, for instructors at least, the Blackboard 9.1 interface does look rather different. Blackboard themselves claim that the new interface is more streamlined, and easier to navigate. Well they would, wouldn’t they, although, it looks to me like the underlying architecture has not changed, so conceptually, it’s not all that different)

I’ve been having a look at 9.1 and I think these are the main differences:-

  • You can drag and drop modules around your front page, rather than use the rather ponderous dialog box that version 8 offers. I haven’t seen this functionality much used in version 8, but then, I don’t get to see what individual users have done with their front pages. But we don’t get many enquiries about it so I suspect most users are happy with the default provision.
  • It requires fewer clicks to accomplish common tasks. Again, that’s nice, and it was a bit irritating to have to click “submit” and then “OK”, to get something done. You might say that clicking two buttons instead of one hardly constitutes Stakhanovite labour, and I’d agree, but I have come across a few instances where people have not posted things that they thought they had. So that’s a plus point.
  • Blackboard claim that 9.1 has a more intuitive interface. Perhaps it is, if you’re starting from scratch, but most people will have learned the interface for 8 and thus will have to unlearn that first. Yet, it doesn’t look too demanding to me. The change that will have most impact on users,  I think,  is that you can switch “edit mode” on and off across the whole site, rather than having to turn it on in each individual content area.  In effect it looks as though it could be used as a default state for instructors and teaching assistants.   It also looks as though Blogs, wikis, tests, assignments etc are easier to create and integrated into the system (This may save us some money, as presumably we won’t have to pay for the Learning objects LX plug in which provides them now). I haven’t had chance to test this for myself yet though.
  • Again, I don’t know how true this is, but it seems that the Grade Centre functionality has been improved. Group assignments and and grading are now possible, but not having had the chance to create a dummy course yet I can’t really comment. There is also (they say, again, I haven’t tried this) the addition of Enhanced Feedback with VTBE (whatever THAT might be) for feedback and comments, grading of interactive tools; and also the ability to give feedback for tests, (which is in 8 isn’t it?) assignments, and group assignments. Finally they have enhanced My Grades Feedback so that provides students with the ability to view VTBE feedback from instructors in My Grades.
  • Multimeda such as YouTube videos and Flickr Photostreams can be more easily embedded into a site, although I need to check this there seems to be an embedded search tool built into Blackboard. Also Bb claim that videos have “built in, accessible controls” (Need to check what they mean by this.)
  • Another new feature is a course “Home page” allows users to easily see and navigate to newly posted materials. Currently, in version 8, most sites default to the Announcements page. (Although you can change this with the control panel). In 9.1 they default to this new home page, the content of which is controlled by the instructor.
  • The group tools look more sophisticated (now Groups tasks and Group Journal are available).
  • Looking at the web site they also claim that Blackboard Learn (what we call the Learning system is now integrated with Blackboard Connect (whatever that is) and interestingly suggest that Mobile Learn is included in BB9.1. We have had a few requests for this, but currently it is rather expensive, so it might be another plus point if we did go to Blackboard 9.1
  • Finally and importantly, Blackboard claim that 9.1 has been certified as accessible to visually impaired people, by the National Federation of the Blind (presumably in the US) to Gold level. I have no reason to doubt that, but again, we need to find out what that actually means.

Educational Technology (Non) Adoption

Julian Beckton Technology ,

Oh dear, I have been lax haven’t I? My last blog post was September 21st. Tut tut.

Anyway, as the University is closed for the day, and I’ve actually practiced what I preach for once and put today’s PGCE session on the VLE, and given the students some virtual discussion topics to get their teeth into, I find myself with a little free time again.  Anyway, what’s got me going is a post from Joss about a paper by one N.Selwyn (2010). Now, don’t get me wrong here. I like the paper, and broadly agree with the sentiments expressed in it – the argument is essentially that research into educational technology is too often uncritical, focussing on idealised cases. Rather it should focus on studies of what is actually happening in the world of ed. tech., and explaining why things are as they are. No argument from me there.

Well, all right. Just a little one. I think there’s actually quite a lot of critical research into educational technology out there, and it has been quite helpful to me in preparing teaching sessions on technology. Just one example for now though, Masterman & Vogel’s chapter (Practices and processes for learning design)  in Beetham & Sharpe (eds) (2007 “Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age”  discusses the influence of the academic department on individual’s  choices about whether or not to adopt technology and goes on to show that there is quite a complex network of influences at work when academics design of digital learning activities. Admittedly it is largely theoretical, but that section of my session on technology in learning usually draws nods of recognition from PGCE colleagues.

Which leads me to my point. It is sometimes argues that technology changes working practices. (e.g. Cornford & Pollock, Putting the University online (2003). I sort of agree, but one of the things that I’ve always found quite interesting in my role in supporting the university’s VLE (We use  Blackboard, but I don’t suppose any other VLE would be any different)  is how much effort some colleagues (a minority, but enough to be interesting) will put into making it work in a particular way that suits their existing practice. Where this can’t be done, they’ll abandon the VLE, complaining that “the university” shouldn’t have bought something that doesn’t work. They may then either not use the tool at all, continuing with a pre-technological practice or, much more rarely, use a different tool, such as one of the web 2.0 tools. (Or occasionally using something within Blackboard that wasn’t designed for what they want to do, but sort of fits their purpose.)   It wouldn’t be appropriate to give examples, here since to do so would identify individuals, and I am not suggesting that anyone is short changing students, or indeed that my impressions are anything other than subjective at this stage.   Nor should this be read as making any assumptions of the sort that academics are inherently resistant to adopting technology, or insufficiently skilled to adopt it. (Although those might be dimensions that could be considered in a potential research project). Other dimensions would include; –

  • Social pressures – if your head of department doesn’t show any interest, why should you?
  • Student pressures – “My mate’s got his course on this thing – why haven’t you?
  • Management pressure – We spent a lot of money on this. Why aren’t you using it?

I’m sure there are plenty of other dimensions. And, from a crudely Marxist perspective can we see this as the proletariat resisting Capitalist exploitation?

Hmm. Anyone got a research grant going spare?

Lecture capture, and other e-learning issues

Julian Beckton Technology , ,

ELESIG, or the evaluation of E-learners Experience of Learning Special Interest Group has a Midlands Group, which met at Loughborough University on Friday 17th September, which I attended. The main topic was a discussion of “Lecture Capture” software, which is now being used quite extensively at Loughborough. However, before we got onto that there was a general discussion of the future of the group, and some of the issues that we are concerned with. Firstly, and anyone from Lincoln who is reading this should take note, ELESIG needs more committee members and more people to attend its meetings. They also offer mall grants – up to £500 for literature reviews and case studies for example, and it is well worth putting in a bid for these. The Loughborough meeting was of the regional group, but there is a national group meeting in London on 6th October. If you’re interested you can find out more about the group at
http://elesig.ning.com/

As is often the case there was quite a wide ranging discussion of issues that members were interested in. First we got on to formal methods of evaluation that were being used. This provoked quite a lot of debate including considerable scepticism about what are sometimes called happy sheets, since these usually end up in a drawer, on their short but inevitable journey to the paper recycling bin. Members described interesting projects using video, Twitter, and mobile phones, the informality implicit in small devices in general being thought to be better at engaging students in completing them, and in some ways delivering more impact to staff. Video was thought to very useful for delivering evaluation reports to senior managers

The second issue was around the accessibility and the question of how to change VLEs. What do dyslexic students think about their experience of their learning on Blackboard. http://www.lexdis.org.uk was highlighted as a useful resource. Some colleagues exporte a blackboard course onto a disc, so that partially sighted, or people with low/no speed connection can access it. (needs some software, but a good idea)

There was a brief discussion of a product called Xerte and it’s ability, or not, to produce accessible materials. Loughborough reported problems with running it, that had, eventually led them to abandon it. Camtasia was also discussed, but users had found that there was a need to produce multiple versions to maintain accessibility.

Discussions on LinkedIn about various alternatives to Xerte (e.g. My Udutu) were mentioned, but I haven’t had time to follow these up yet, which was also true of Kineo.com, which apparently contains lots of reviews of tools for creating learning materials, and apparently something called Clive Shepherd’s 60 minute Masters is worth looking at

A slightly left of field idea was that of having standards for Blackboard sites. One institution has bronze, (absolute minimum) silver and gold standards for BB sites (However, they haven’t yet succeeded in getting any sites above Bronze!)

Lecture Capture at Loughborough

Origninally, there was quite a lot of resistance but now it’s fairly mainstream in that most people experimenting with it. They have 10 fixed and 5 mobile installations, the latter being entirely software based. They’re using a product called ECHO 360. It’s expensive at £3,000 p.a. for a single installation (Plus £1750 one off cost for the fixed boxes), but their may be a way to reduce that, which I’ll get to later. There are alternatives. Some open source products were mentioned one called Matterhorn was singled out as being particularly worth a look. Essentially the system shows a thumbnail gallery of the slides with the time each is displayed. Captures are normally ready 5-6 minutes after lecture completed. Lectures are editable – so you can choose where slides are displayed within the lecture, and of course you can paste the URL into the VLE, so it’s easily accessible. Students can click on the slide and go directly to that section of the lecture. An incidental benefit was (apparently) that the system has dramatically improved academic sartorial standards at Loughborough!

It’s not without disadvantages, of course. Installations have to have duct tape on floor to indicate to the lecturer where to stand, although, apparently the space is quite generous. There is still a rather murky understanding of IP and particularly, performer’s rights, which hasn’t been fully resolved. Newcastle apparently has a policy of no reuse except to cohorts other than that to which it was originally delivered. Most of the members thought that was unduly cautious, but it did provoke a question about how long a captured lecture might last.

Initally it was hard to engage staff with it, for fear of students not attending, the argument that it perpetuates an outdated delivery mode and of course, the suspicion that it’s a way of replacing lecturers. Further, you do need to be very careful what you say! One way of dealing with the non-attendance issue was to rebrand it as ReView (emphasis on the first syllable) to stress that it’s not an alternative to attending, rather it’s a revision tool. Loughborough’s evaluations suggest that this has proved very popular with students.

Finally, and related to the rights issue, is the question of what to do with lectures once they’ve been captured. A few universities are signing up with iTunesU. It was suggested that Apple may be persuaded to contribute to the cost of lecture capture systems if people prepared to post content thereon, although, of course that will not cover the cost of the ongoing licenses.

All in all a very useful and interesting meeting, and I’d certainly recommend ELESIG to colleagues.

A new look for Turnitin

Julian Beckton Tech Tips, Technology , ,

Turnitin, the Plagiarism detection service, will be getting a new look on Sept. 4th. While it’s not been easy to get previews, a few screencasts have now been released and can be seen at http://www.screencast.com/t/NTVjYWExY

I thought I’d briefly summarise the main changes here. There are some changes to the user interface, which seem to me to largely cosmetic, although still useful. Navigation is now across the top of the screen, rather than down the left hand side, which brings it into line with most other applications, and the assignment inbox has been simplified.  Unusually, Turnitin don’t seem to be giving users the opportunity to revert to the old version, something they’ve always done in the past.

However, the real changes are in the way in which originality reports are viewed.  Users do still have option to revert to the previous viewer for originality reports and grademark, if not for the interface.  If you do choose to do this comments and marks are maintained if you move between the different versions of grademark.  There’s a nice new “column viewer” for the originality report. Users can change the size at which the student paper is displayed.  (Up to about 3/4 of the screen seems to be available for this.)  The sources from which students have (allegedly) copied are now simply listed, and clicking on them opens a new window which floats around over the original source.  Another new feature here is that users are be able to see multiple sources (where the item the student has lifted is in more than one source). I’m not all that convinced of the value of this, because I’d have thought it’s main function would be to show how much web sites plagiarise each other!

The colour co-ordination between text and sources has been kept although, it’s now confined to a barely visible stripe against the source name.  But this new way of viewing the sources also offers opportunity to manually exclude sources from the originality report. You can also re-inlcude them if you change your mind. Doing either will recalculate the total originality score. So if you have asked students to take material from a web site, you can then exclude that particular site.

The final improvement in the videos is the introduction of a common viewer for originality reports, Grademark and peer mark. Essentially grademark and originality reports can be now seen in the same view.

What’s not yet clear is whether or how this will affect the Blackboard plug in. Relatively few users at Lincoln use the Grademark feature, so I doubt this will be an issue for now. However, with increasing moves to electronic forms of assessment, it is something that we’ll need to keep an eye on.

Technology for public teaching again

Julian Beckton Teaching in Public, Technology , ,

Still haven’t sorted out my theme – but that’s not my text for today. I’ve been reading  “The e-revolution and post compulsory education: Using e-business to deliver quality education” edited by Jos Boys and Peter Ford, and I wanted to make a couple of brief notes about chapter 2, which portrays scenarios of the “e-university” from the perspectives of students, researchers, teachers, administrators, and senior managers. The scenarios are designed to be provocative, rather than predictive, so I’m not going to take issue with their accuracy.  Clearly technology changes, all the time, and speculation always reflects the era in which it takes place.

I think there are three problems identified by the scenarios which are more problematic than might appear at first. One is data interoperability. In the chapter, Ford seems to assume that data will be easily interoperable between different systems, and I’d agree that is a pre-requisite. Yet it seems to be proving very difficult for large corporations, who are still big players in the sector (like Blackboard) to share data. I can understand the desire to protect intellectual property, but it seems to me that what is most likely to happen is that those organisations that do expose their APIs will increase their market share. (Look at the various apps that work with Twitter, Flicker, YouTube and so on, and there are some very interesting uses of WordPress in the international sector).  Those that don’t share data will become increasingly isolated.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t share the view that the VLE is dead. At least, not yet. For now Blackboard clearly meets a need, that open source tools don’t, (although I have very little experience of Moodle, and I’m sure users will rush to assure me that it is wonderful).

That brings me to my second problem, which can be summarised as “Human nature”. My colleague, Sue Watling frequently blogs about how the rush to technology often excludes as many people as it includes. Some people are physically unable to read on a screen, some do not have the appropriate infrastructure available to them, some do not have sufficient economic power, and some do not want to work on line. In a free society, as Philip Ramsey has argued is that that is a choice that must be respected.  So even if you get the data interoperability right, you have to find ways of supporting different human needs.

Finally, and emerging from the first two points is the rather institutional nature of the technologies described in the scenarios. This is admittedly a bit more problematic for any institution. There are quite proper concerns over student privacy, so clearly students’ (and staff’s) personal information needs to be protected. At the same time though there is a persuasive argument that getting students to write for a public audience actually improves the quality of their writing.  There’s also the issue that different institutions, and different organisations have different ways of doing things that have evolved out of their own particular circumstances. It can also be argued, quite plausibly,  that technology tends to mandate particular ways of doing things, that require a significant effort on the part of those using systems, because it obliges them to rethink their practice. One might conclude that from that, the best approach for institutions that want to become e-institutions is for them to develop their own systems that reflect their way of doing things. That of course is expensive, but if institutions begin to develop particular ways of doing things, and share their data and procedures than it may be that other institutions will be able to build on this work.  That doesn’t really address the issue of digital exclusion of course, but the concept of sharing can be extended to ideas in that field too.

Technology for teaching in public

Julian Beckton Technology , , ,

I’ve been asked to contribute a chapter to a book on teaching in public, specifically concerned with how we can use technology to do this. Now, I could probably knock out something on the commons, open educational resources, web 2.0 and that stuff, but a) it’s been done, and b) I want to make it a bit more theoretical. I’ve been reading quite a lot about the neo-luddite movement,  which isn’t about machine breaking, but about critiquing the role of the machine in modern society. (So put that sledgehammer down THIS MINUTE!)

Anyway, I’ve just been reading about Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and that crowd, who began to protest about the effect that mechanisation was having on culture and the general intellect, and developed a philosophy that I understand (bear with me, I’m new to this)  is sometimes referred to as American Transcendentalism, evidently to distinguish it from more religious forms of transcendentalism.  Like the neo-luddites, they weren’t particularly anti-technology, but recognised that the changes it brought weren’t always beneficial.

I really haven’t got very far with this, but I’m dimly beginning to make some connections with Marx’s notion of mass intellectuality. We often hear claims that universities aren’t producing graduates with the skills that the economy needs, (although no-one seems to be able to describe those skills in any detail), but the kind of critique of industrial thinking that the ne0-luddites and the American Transcendalists were indulging in seems to be a profoundly useful counterweight to the idea that there are a set of tips and techniques that ensure national well being.

The problem is of course, is that if this is done in public, then it is vulnerable to critique  that if universities cannot directly benefit the state, or at least demonstrate how they are doing so, then there is no logical reason for the state to pay for them. Not that there’s anything wrong with critique and debate of course. But just as the Devil has all the best tunes, that’s an argument that has simplicity on it’s side. The rebuttal of that argument is complex, involving well rehearsed arguments about blue-sky research, the value of critical graduates, (both of which the state does benefit from) and  accepting that there might indeed be alternative funding streams . On the bright side, I guess the use of open shared technologies promotes the creation of far more ideas.

But I accept that I need to think a lot harder about this, and find some evidence of how universities are engaging with open technology.