Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe) – is the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning based at Oxford Brookes University Business School. It was set up in summer 2005 with a £4.5 million award (spread over five years) from HEFCE in recognition of good practice based on pedagogic research into aspects of assessment carried out by staff in the Business School and the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development.
ASKe runs a series of seminars and workshops that staff can attend. They are delivered and organised in a variety of ways – all information can be browsed on their website: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/
A colleague of mine recently delivered a presentation using http://prezi.com/. Probably. like you I’ve sat through and delivered many presentations using Powerpoint and I’m probably suffering from ‘PPT fatigue’. It was interesting to see this tool used, It uses Flash, so there are accessibility issues with using it, however it gives you a novel way of presenting and also thinking about how you are going to present. Some examples of presentations from the Prezi website can be seen here:
The tool allows you to ask questions in a usual spoken manner rather than search terms and receive answers in a similar way. For example who was the UK Prime Minister in 1968 would return Harold Wilson. BBC news article here
From my own personal point of view, here are the highlights.
The demonstration of the Open Source e-Learning tool – XERTE - by Gill Fourt and Pat Lockley from The University of Nottingham. Here is an online tour of the tool. A simple e-Learning tool to use, very enthusiastically delivered by Pat
The explanation and demonstration of Yorkshare by Wayne Britcliffe and Richard Walker. The way in which they have developed this area and the high standard of presentation is a leading example to many HE VLEs
Trevor Batchelor (Uni of Birmingham), Adrian L. Powell (Uni of Sheffield), Susannah J. Quinsee (City Uni London) and Vicki Simpson (Uni of Surrey) spoke about the move from Bb Vista to Bb 8 or 9 and how each of their institutions are approaching this move. Most of the HEIs have taken the opportunity to review what the institutions currently provides and evaluate their staff needs for the immediate future.
John Couperthwaite and Rob Jones (University of Birmingham) explained and demonstrated thier use of the lecture capture software, Echo360. A clear and engaging explanation of thier work to date, similar to that we have done at Newcastle University. Good to see John login live to the system, always a big plus in my book. They have used the system to capture lectures on an ad hoc basis and again as was our experience students find the resource extremely useful and lecture attendance has hardly decreased.
A great opportunity to visit the city of Barcelona and meet some of the Catalan people. A shame I didn’t get the chance to see more of it.
Wordle.net is a tool for generating word clouds from text that you submit to it. You can do this via a RSS feed or select text and paste it into a text box on their site. It then generates a word cloud, with the highest repeated words displayed in larger text. You can alter the images that are produced by altering the font, layout and colours.
I’ve seen this used at conferences and during presentations. It gives a useful snapshot for activities like gathering feedback, responses and online discussions.
In true Blue Peter style here is one I created today from the WP blog feed.
Received confirmation a couple of weeks ago that I now have CMALT status!
It was a useful exercise for me and brought a few work related issues into focus. Although I submitted on an individual basis all of the aspects of the application were projects and tasks that I’ve under taken as part of a group of people. I basically wrote it up and thought about it a little. I can also use it as post mominal letters, if I wish to do so.
I attended the ninth annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference on January 8th and 9th. This was my second attendance at the conference, however, this time I presented at one of the sessions along with my colleague.
We presented on a project I am involved with at work which is about lecture and event capture implementation and use (ReCap). From the feedback we’ve received it was a successful presentation, with several questions fielded afterwards. I think in the near future we will be welcoming several visits from other HEIs and FEs about our service.
Full details about the conference can be found here.
The facilities offered by Durham University for the event were first class. The Calman Learning Centre was a great venue, well equiped, spacious and a great vista of Durham City with the Cathedral being the focal point. I look forward to the next one in January 2010.
Lots of Q and As on how to use PDF without actually having Adobe Acrobat as well as tips and hints on how to use and manage files. Worth a look in my opinion.
The issue of DRM is a complex one. An alliance has been created (The Digital Watermarking Alliance) to promote the value of digital watermarking to content owners, industry, policy makers and consumers.
From their website:
“With movies, music and photos increasingly being distributed and shared digitally across numerous mediums, and printed value documents such as IDs and financial
instruments at risk to counterfeiting, fraud and theft, protecting therights and integrity of these assets and enabling legitimate uses has become critical.
At the same time, consumers are demanding instant access to entertainment content – any time, any place and in any format.”
As is usual with this list Oxbridge are at the top. Newcastle are placed in joint 20th spot alongside glasgow. Our nearby North East neighbours of the 1994 Group, Durham and York are 8th and 9th respectively.
League tables are not ideal in my opinion at measuring how Universities perform. However, prospective students and their parents need some form of measure in order to make a comparison. Although if you look at some of the indices used the “older/traditional” universities are heavily favoured. For example look at the Services and Facilities spend, and Research Quality columns.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.
Received confirmation a couple of weeks ago that I now have 
