In this case study, the teaching team in a Sport and Exercise Science module used an Excel spreadsheet with automatic functions to speed up the process of providing consistent feedback to students. The output produced a personalised feedback sheet for each student, with specific pointers intended to help each individual improve next time, which were…
In this case study, the module leader in an Engineering module used a peer-feedback activity to encourage students to self-reflect and make use of the feedback provided by their peers to improve the quality of their placement job applications. The approach developed the students’ employability skills and engagement with assessment criteria. Although the activity was…
In this case study, a tutor in a final year Research Methods module provided an audio recording for each individual student as feedback on a formative piece of work. Recordings were created using a simple recording device that could be plugged in to the computer or free-standing, and then uploaded to the module’s Blackboard site…
re: Search is a new self-paced tutorial to guide and teach students about searching for information for their university work. re: Search recognises that students now come to university with a wealth of searching experience. It emphasises that searching for academic material is different to their previous searching experiences and guides students through the information…
Recently some of the team members had a journal article published which focuses on an innovative, cross-disciplinary teaching experience at the University. Students in computing designed prototype educational games based on the needs of students in other subjects. Participants were interviewed to understand the pros and cons of this approach. Given the recent discussions around encouraging employability…
Last month we had a blog post which discussed some draft guidelines for staff about the use of externally provided tools, such as social media websites, for teaching purposes. As mentioned in the previous article, there can be advantages to using the newest and most up to date tools for teaching and learning purposes, but…
External websites such as social media are increasingly being used for teaching purposes. Staff doing so often want to take advantage of new opportunities not available inside of Blackboard, use more feature rich versions of tools like blogs or wikis or experiment with opening elements of their teaching or research up to the wider world. Staff have also used such external…
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring some of the terms used in e-learning (view other articles in the series). We’ll do our best to break down the jargon and explain what things are from a basic perspective. Today’s topic is RSS, which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. However, just knowing what it means is not terribly…
In this case study, the leader of a level 5 Sports Physiology module preceded lectures with a weekly task or activity in order to make more effective use of contact time. Details of each task or activity were automatically released to students one week in advance of the lecture itself via the module’s Blackboard site.…
In this case study, a 16-strong teaching team on a level 4 nursing module provide a spoken word audio recording for each individual student as assignment feedback. Recordings were created with easy to use digital tools available to all SHU staff, uploaded to the module’s Blackboard site and released to students. Students were able to…