BLE-Bulletin Rounding up E-Learning News for the Bloomsbury Colleges

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BLE-Bulletin Rounding up e-learning news for the Bloomsbury Colleges

Contents Autumn 2012 1. Bloomsbury News 2. Other News Please forward to any colleagues who might 3. Regional & National find this useful Events 4. Resources Your comments and contributions are invited. 5. Funding Please contact the BLE Officer: Opportunities [email protected]

1. Bloomsbury News i) Blackboard Shut Down

We’re nearly there… After several years of deliberation, consultation, evaluation, planning and migration to Moodle, the Bloomsbury Blackboard servers will be officially shut down on 31st October 2012. After this time, access to content, courses, grades and student information within Blackboard will not be possible, even for BLE Technical staff. There’s not much time left, but make sure you’ve taken what you need from the site before it’s too late. And here’s to many happy years of Moodle J ii) Arrivals and Departures At the end of the summer, we bid a very sad farewell to Yanna Nedelcheva, the BLE Officer, who took up a post as a learning technologist at the University of Westminster. We wish Yanna every success in her new role and are pleased that she isn’t too far away from Bloomsbury to visit us. In November, Brigitta Goedhuys will be joining the BLE Team to take up the reins. Brigitta joins us from the IOE, where she has worked as a Programme Administrator and so brings a combination of Moodle, pedagogic and administrative experience. Providing interim support to the BLE has been Clare Downes – a recent veterinary graduate from the RVC. Clare has been an invaluable support at this crucial time as the new academic year saw the introduction of a new platform, Moodle. Clare will be spending six months working abroad before (she thinks!) taking a job as a vet. iii) Web-conferencing review During last academic year, the BLE reviewed several types of web-conferencing software. The Colleges are making growing uses of web conferencing, for example to deliver distance learning, continuing professional development and seminars. As a result of the review, we signed a three-year licence for Blackboard Collaborate (formerly known as Elluminate) and updated to the latest version. Over the coming year, the BLE will be re-launching the platform and providing hands-on training sessions to support existing users and encourage new users.

2. Other News i) ALT-C 2012 The Association for Learning Technology’s annual conference, co-chaired by the BLE Service Manager Sarah Sherman, took place at the University of Manchester between 11th and 13th September 2012. Over 500 learning technologists, practitioners, researchers, managers and policy-makers from education and industry came together for two and a half days to share innovations in practice and discuss the opportunities and challenges that learning technology provides. The Bloomsbury Colleges were well represented and included presentations by Tim Neumann (IOE), Martin Oliver (IOE) and Nick Short (RVC). Leo Havemann (Birkbeck) was on the ALT-C Programme Committee. Conference Publications from the ALT-C, including the Conference Proceedings and Abstracts, are available online at http://goo.gl/Xuaxo ii) Janet6: Securing the next decade of e-infrastructure for UK research and education An initial £30m e-infrastructure investment from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the higher and further education funding councils has secured high performance computing for research and education until 2022. The investment will build Janet6, the next generation of the UK’s national research and education network, adding value across the sector from high-end research to universities, colleges and schools. The full article is available here. iii) UCISA Survey shows progress in access to mobile services at universities This sixth and latest TEL report from the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) demonstrates that UK higher education has made notable progress in helping students and staff access library services, email and course announcements from their mobiles. The report focuses on current provisions within universities and colleges, and the emerging and planned patterns of learning technology use across the higher education community. Universities can benchmark their own work against the national trends using the survey results available here. iv) The Higher Education Academy's Education for Sustainable Development Leading organisations from across the further and higher education sector have joined forces to create the ‘Sustainability Exchange’ - the UK’s first centralised information portal and online community for the sector, sharing a wealth of information, experience and resources that are available to everyone.

3. Regional & National Events

30/10/12 Making the Shift from Classroom to Online Course Design; online 30/10/12 Better Blogging; London 30-31/10/12 Internet Librarian International: Re-image, Renew, Reboot – Innovating for Success; London 31/10/12 Making Wordpress work for you, London 06/11/12 Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme, London 06-08/11/12 Global Learn: Global Conference on Learning and Technology, offered online by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) 06-09/11/12 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference; Denver, Colorado - also offered online 09/11/12 Mozilla Festival London 12-16/11/12 Global Education Conference, 3rd annual conference; offered online 14/11/12 Augmented Reality: Hands-on Workshop; London 15/11/12 Project Management for the Education Sector; London 15-16/11/12 Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA): Excellence in Teaching – Recognizing, Enhancing, Evaluating and Achieving Impact; Birmingham 19-22/11/12 London International Conference on Education (LICE); London 19-23/11/12 Innovating e-Learning 2012 JISC e-Learning conference, (preliminary activities week: Tuesday 13th – Friday 16th November); offered online 30/11/12 HEA-HeLF workshop: Managing an institutional transition from paper-based to online submission, marking and feedback; London 06-07/12/12 mLearning: Making Learning Mobile; online. 12-14/12/12 Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Annual Conference; Newport 30-31/01/13 Technology in Higher Education at Bett 2013; London 18-21/02/13 MoodleMoot Dublin 2013 11-13/06/13 International Enhancement Themes Conference: Enhancement & Innovation; Glasgow 10-12/09/13 ALT-C 2013; Nottingham

JISC Netskills workshop programme - updated The JISC Netskills autumn programme of workshops runs from 15th October to 27th November, with workshops in London, Manchester, Newcastle, and online. The updated listing is available from: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/products/workshops/public/index.html

4. Resources i) Innovating Pedagogy 2012 This report produced by the Institute of Technology at The Open University, proposes ten innovations that the authors consider have the potential to shift educational practice in the near future. They include massive, open, online courses (MOOCs); badges to accredit non-formal learning; learning analytics and new pedagogy for e-books. ii) JISC Briefing Paper: Extending the learning environment Many providers are reviewing their current virtual learning environment in the light of changing pedagogical requirements, improved administrative integration and the emergence of new classes of social media. Whether you are reviewing your learning and teaching strategies, want to streamline your admin processes, respond to student feedback or simply provide better quality support for smaller groups within your institution, this briefing paper will help inform this review process. iii) First World War: are we getting the complete picture? The First World War is one of the most widely covered topics in further and higher education and schools, but according to a new JISC report, little is known about what aspects of the War are being taught, the key research questions or indeed the digital content available to support education and research in this area. The new survey report by the JISC- led Strategic Content Alliance, Digital Content for the First World War, based on a study by King’s College London, addresses these questions for the benefit of people managing digital resources in universities, libraries and museums. Access the report at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/digitisation/www1r esourcesreport.pdf

5. Funding Opportunities i) JISC http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/futurecalls ii) The Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/funding

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