Social media are channels that “allow users to share information about themselves and their interests” (Cunnane, 2010). These include sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. These channels are reasonably new to the world, and the effects of interacting with them are not always clear to users. To help address this, we now have guidelines about…
The Technology Enhanced Learning team are looking at different approaches to improving the way staff access quality, online self help information with a focus on supporting learning, teaching and assessment (LTA). The starting point for the project has been to identify resources currently available across the University, initially concentrating on assessment and feedback, employability, inclusive practice…
You may have noticed that a new Content Collection area appeared as the top sub-menu in the Control Panel yesterday. Most staff can ignore this area, as it is not necessary to manage your site. We have enabled it to allow those staff who use package files (zip files of learning objects) to more easily add…
Date and time: Wednesday 23rd November 12.00 – 13.00 Venue: Stoddart 7509 – no need to book ahead of time Description: The social media platform LinkedIn presents a valuable opportunity for students to gain insight into the working world. There are already 1394 people registered with it under the Company name ‘Sheffield Hallam University’. Some…
This is a reminder that deadlines for assessments in Blackboard (such as Assignment and Turnitin submissions, Test attempts, and Self-and-Peer Assessments) should not be set after 4:00pm on Fridays, or at any time on Saturdays, Sundays, or when the University is closed for holidays. These times are considered ‘at-risk’ periods when essential systems maintenance on…
Many staff are using Turnitin with their students to improve referencing or teach about academic integrity. However Turnitin has a different interface than Blackboard which sometimes leads to staff confusion about how to set it up and how to access and interpret the reports it generates. To help with this, faculty e-learning advisers have created some screencast tutorials about…
This is a reminder that when you set up an external link to a website, you should change the setting for ‘Open in a new window’ to Yes. Recently we’ve changed our Blackboard installation so that the webpages inside of it are more secure. This provides our students with a safer environment and improves our protection of student data. An unfortunate…
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. Turnitin is an online text-matching service available via Blackboard at SHU. Users of the service can submit work in…
The archiving of 2010/11 organisation sites has now been completed. Please keep in mind that most organisation sites will need a new version each academic year, so it may be that you need to start using the 2011/12 version of the site. However, if an organisation site has been mistakenly archived which is still being used…
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…