The UCL E-Learning Champions initiative is actually now a bit over a year old – we launched on Valentine’s Day in 2013. At the Summits & Horizons event on Monday we took the chance to review progress so far.

We have certainly grown over the last year, we now have over 130 members. Nearly all UCL departments and divisions are represented and although there is work to be done (not everyone knows who their Champion is!) in some areas the initiative seems remarkably well established.

I opened the session by reminding the sizeable audience that the Champions were key to our ambitious institutional target to develop departmental e-learning plans. Pairs of departmental E-Learning Champions – one academic and one teaching administrator (TA) – had been identified to help develop local e-learning statements articulating departments’ expectations and priorities, highlighting good practice, and identifying support needs.

Fourteen months into the implementation plan, this type of engagement with the champions has been excellent. Champions are well embedded in UCL’s learning technology strategic and support initiatives and are now beginning to be regarded as an important group of change agents, with the support of ELE.

This approach has already helped ELE benchmark e-learning activity, develop local plans across two of our schools and has led to the emergence of faculty-level e‑learning Champion groups. During the event our three E-Learning Facilitators, Jess Gramp (BEAMS), Natasa Perovic (SLMS) and Mira Vogel (SLASH) explained how the Champions had helped with a wide range of local initiatives and projects, in areas such as Turnitin, multimedia group work and enhancing Moodle provision.

The Champions’ role is also evolving. Mira reported that SLASH Joint Faculty Departmental Teaching Committee Chairs had been asked to ensure that their departmental E-Learning Champions were either members of the DTC or had a direct reporting link to it. SLASH has also convened an E-Learning Forum to discuss the issues of the day, identify support needs and plan future directions. Likewise in BEAMS there are now regular E-Learning Champions Faculty meetings in MAPS & Engineering. In SLMS Natasa has been meeting with meetings with all faculty tutors and now divisions. She reported the E-learning needs in SLMS  are also related to collaborative tools (for content delivery and learning activities), media rich interactive resources and ‘beyond the baseline’ Moodle activities.

We asked attendees if the Champions’ role should be more ‘formally ‘described but the audience was split. As one participant said, it was the informality of the group that made it successful.

We believe UCL is at the forefront of recognising that the complexity of e-learning provision in a modern university requires the development of a digitally literate community comprising a wide range of colleagues. We therefore discussed the personal development of Champions and Rosalind Duhs from CALT explained how the UCL Arena Fellowship programme could be an excellent route. Being a Champion and involvement in local projects would provide a sound basis for the development of portfolio case studies.

The session was concluded with an engaging presentation from Dr Adrien Desjardins who explained his role as a Champion in Medical Physics and Bioengineering. This was followed by further contributions from the audience and a lively discussion. We are planning a more formal review of the programme and this was a great start. Many thanks to all who contributed.

The first electronic examination utilising the Electronic Bluebook secure software program ran yesterday at UCL Qatar.

The three hour exam was attended by the class of nine students who all chose to complete their exam electronically using the computer, rather than writing their answers by hand. Students were provided with instructions beforehand and attended a short briefing explaining how the system worked and were able to ask questions about the electronic format immediately prior to the start of the exam.

The software was launched in “blocked” mode, meaning no other software could be launched for the duration of the exam, apart from the secure examination system itself. That means students could not access the Internet,  any files on the computer or other programs like the Windows calculator.

Staff launched the program (which required Windows Administrator access) and chose the BLOCKED mode and students then entered their candidate numbers,  chose their module from the drop down list and selected the number of questions they were answering.

Students were spaced with a spare computer between them and the next candidate where possible. Partitions sat between each desk and staff confirmed in earlier tests that text could not be read by neighbouring students,  even when the text was zoomed to the maximum size.

Once the exam questions were handed out, students were permitted to turn over and read the questions, then start the examination software by clicking Start Exam and confirming the number of questions they were to answer.

Students were asked to type around 3,000 words during the exam in answer to 3 questions chosen by each student from a total of 9 questions. The word count for each tab was visible in the left hand column of the software to help students manage the time they spent on each question.

A large electronic countdown timer was displayed on monitors in 3 corners of the room and students were asked to disregard the timer shown in the software, since they were all slightly different depending on when students stopped reading the questions and clicked the [Start Exam] button.

Timings were announced verbally to students with 1 hour remaining, half an hour remaining (at which point students were no longer permitted to leave the room) and these times were also written on a flip chart for students to reference.

The interface of the software is similar to that of a simple text editor like Windows Notepad. Students can cut and paste (but not copy) to move elements of their text around. The software saves each student’s work every minute, both locally and to the exam server on the network. This means in the event of a computer failure the exam can be retrieved either locally or from the server and the student can continue with the exam,  with additional time granted to compensate for the disruption.

In the event of a power failure, or another event that prevented the entire cohort from completing the exam electronically, students would have been permitted to continue by hand writing on paper, with special consideration granted to them not being able to reference their work to that point, although attempts would have been made by the staff to print the electronic element of their answers and provide these to the students as quickly as possible to reference and modify by hand.

Students were asked to indicate the question they were about to answer at the top of each tab. Each question was answered on a new tab. Students were provided a notepad and pen for taking handwritten notes during the exam and were also permitted to write on the question sheet. All of these materials remained in the room after the exam. The exam adhered as closely as possible to traditional handwritten examination procedures as per UCL’s e-examination guidance.

One student asked whether they could write notes electronically within the software and were advised that notes should be deleted before submitting, as everything remaining within the exam script would be considered part of their answer and marked accordingly.

During the exam students had some questions about how to begin their exam, how to reference the question they were answering within each tab and how to save and move to the next question, which were all quietly answered by the invigilators. One student was unfamiliar with the UK keyboard layout and needed help locating the quotation marks.

Some of the benefits expected by the staff marking the exam scripts included better legibility of answers, compared to handwritten exams, and less strain on students’ hands given they are no longer used to writing for extended periods. Another expected benefit was the possibility of being able to move text around within each answer.

After the exam, the majority of students reported that they liked being able to type their answers, and that this was faster and more effective than hand-writing. Two students said they would have preferred to handwrite the exam in future, as they felt they were faster at handwriting and could therefore write more in the time and one student was unsure which she preferred. A survey will be used to gather further feedback from these students.

As an observer I noted the noise in the room of tapping keyboards was less distracting than I expected, although there were a small number of students in this case. Some students hand wrote notes and others opted to type directly into the software. I observed many of the students taking advantage of the ability to readily edit their previous writing. Most students appeared to type their answers out directly as they would likely do in a handwritten exam, although I noted one student who appeared to plan the answer in summary form on the computer first and then filled in the details later.

At the end of the exam, students were asked to stop typing and click the FINISH EXAM button and confirm. The system then was expected to send their encrypted responses to the exam server and each screen turn bright green to indicate the exam had been successfully submitted. Although extensive testing was undertaken prior to the exam, there was an, as yet undiagnosed, network failure on the day, which prevented the exam scripts from automatically submitting to the exam server. Despite this issue, the software failed gracefully by providing a descriptive error message (on a blue screen) and explaining the following process. The default web browser was launched automatically upon hitting the [CANCEL] button and loaded a page describing how to locate the encrypted exam script file. The file was then able to be manually selected and uploaded to the examination server. As a precaution, each encrypted exam script was also saved to a USB stick.

The exam scripts were then retrieved by the technical team, then decrypted and printed for marking using the Electronic Bluebook decryption tool.

Overall I was impressed with the simple interface, customer support received and relatively straight forward technical implementation of this secure exam system.

The full size screen, ability to change background colours for visually impaired and dyslexic students (via built-in Windows accessibility tools) and the ability to zoom text to make it larger means it is widely accessible to the majority. However, further tests will need to be carried out to see whether the software is compatible with screen readers and other enabling technologies.

Small improvements that I would like to see implemented in future versions include an option to turn off the system’s timer; having the number of questions pre-populate for each exam (with the option to override the number perhaps); the ability to allow particular, pre-defined programs to run (e.g. the Windows calculator, or Excel); and having a drop down option on each question tab, so a student can select which question they are answering i.e. tab 1 answering question 7.

Overall I think this tool is intuitive, accessible and simple enough to be used effectively by students to complete essay style examinations electronically and I was especially impressed by the graceful way it failed when it encountered network connectivity issues.

Many thanks to Jessica Gramp and Vicki Dale of E-Learning Environments for their contributions to our Digital Skills event!

This event was for first, second, and intercalated undergraduate students in the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering. It was an opportunity for these students to gain greater awareness about digital skills that are useful for their learning at UCL and their careers beyond UCL.

Jessica Gramp gave a presentation that included live polling with clickers.

In an anonymous survey, we asked students about the devices and websites that they find useful for learning at UCL, both in terms of receiving information and contributing to the learning of their peers. We are grateful to Vicki for her insights to create the survey.

The event closed with a semi-structured networking part, with a view to connecting students outside their academic years and to exchange advice on e-learning.

Based on the positive feedback that we received from students, we plan to extend the event to include third and fourth year students next year. We’ll follow-up on this blog when we have data compiled from the anonymous survey.

– Adrien Desjardins / Mohini Nair

Fifteen academic and support staff from across UCL met for the first UCL Digital Literacies special interest group (SIG) on Wednesday 27th November.   Jessica Gramp, form E-Learning Environments, delivered a presentation prepared in collaboration with Hana Mori, giving the Jisc definition of digital literacies.

We’re not sure about the term – some find it demeaning.  A better term than Digital Literacies is clearly needed so that it doesn’t offend and imply a deficit. There’s also a need to differentiate between kinds of digital literacy. Some areas that have been used at other institutions include: digital identity, managing studies; working in team; using other people’s content responsibly and digitally enhancing job prospects. There was a general consensus that digital literacies need to be embedded, not tagged on as a separate thing to do.

(more…)

Today a group of 15 enthusiasts representing all three schools met for the first Media and Video SIG. This special interest group has been established to explore the growing role of video and audio in teaching, create a community of practice and offer practical solutions. Clive Young (E-Learning Environments) and Paul Walker (Centre for the Advancement in Learning and Teaching) led a brainstorming activity to identify opportunities, problems, areas of interest and potential activities for the new SIG.

(more…)

The UCL Moodle Baseline that was approved by Academic Committee in June 2009, has now been updated after wide consultation on best current UCL practice.  The aim of the Baseline is to provide guidelines for staff to follow when developing Moodle courses in order for UCL students to have a consistently good e-learning experience. They are intended to be advisory rather than prescriptive or restrictive. These recommendations may be covered within a combination of module, programme and departmental courses.

Changes include the addition of a course usage statement explaining how students are expected to use their Moodle course. A communications statement is also now a requirement, in order to explain to students how they are expected to communicate with staff, and how often they can expect staff to respond. It is now a recommendation for staff to add (and encourage their students to add) a profile photograph or unique image, to make it easier to identify contributors in forums and other learning activities.

New guidelines for including assessment detail and Turnitin guidance have been added for those who use these technologies.

See the new UCL Moodle Baseline v2

Find out more about this and other e-learning news in the monthly UCL E-Learning Champions’ Newsletter.