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Up Up and Away! (guest post)

By Janina Dewitz, on 19 March 2024

The following is a guest post by Lucy Porte who is studying for an MSc in Health Informatics at UCL. In January, Lucy travelled all the way from Manchester to join us at #LearnHack in London. Here is her report:

 

Up Up and Away! 

I had the best weekend recently at #LearnHack 7.0, sponsored by the UCL Centre for Engineering Education and hosted by the School of Management. A distance-learning student, I could not resist the temptation to do a research based hackathon from the centre of Canary Wharf and so headed down to London for the weekend. When we got to the 50th floor of One Canada Square, I knew my decision had payed off. 

evening view of London Docklands with One Canada Square in the centre.

One Canada Square. Credit: Janina Dewitz

 The themes this year were Generative AI and assessment and feedback, to tie into #LearnHack’s overall focus on innovation in a research and education setting. There were so many different parts of the event, from board game sessions to brainstorming workshops, pizza breaks to Brewdog pints, an evening seeing the winter lights display and even a competition to see who could make the best AI-generated artwork. This was all alongside the main activity, the creation of our #LearnHack artefacts, which we would get to present at the end of the three days. 

a seminar room where the first two rows of chairs are occupied by colourful balloons with faces drawn on them

Everyone having fun. Credit: Janina Dewitz

Having only attended one hackathon before and being fairly out of my depth, I was quite apprehensive about this element. Luckily there was a range of amazing project topics to choose from, including game design, UX design, qualitative research pipelines, a tool to perform automated marking and a tool to summarise biomedical research papers. I really struggled with choosing one of these, and spent a lot of the first two days discussing projects with people and gathering ideas for implementation. In the end I chose the last project because it tied into my studies in Health Informatics. 

Project Presentation Slide, Protocol Optimiser by Amy Li

Protocol Optimiser. Credit: Amy Li

Amy, Jenny and myself soon got to work creating a prototype for our idea. Thanks to Amy’s extensive background work, we were quickly able to focus on our objectives and train a ChatGPT to extract method steps from biomedical papers according to a framework we had found online. Because of ChatGPT’s learning capacity we could iteratively improve the tool to create better results and even evaluate its own performance. We were all very surprised to be granted first prize, which included $1000 of AWS tokens and UCL Changemakers funding to continue the project! 

 

The team: Jenny, Amy and Lucy

The team! Credit: Janina Dewitz

We are going to be presenting a poster about our idea at the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium in April, and can’t wait to see what comes out of the Changemakers funding, but will be sure to feed back! I honestly didn’t realise I could get so much out of one weekend with the Digital Education team, and would encourage everyone to subscribe to the #LearnHack mailing list, so you can be first in line for next year! 

Lucy Porte 

Initial release of Marks Transfer available on UCL Moodle!

By Kerry, on 18 March 2024

What is it?

A new UCL Moodle integration is now available to facilitate the transfer of marks from Moodle to Portico, aimed at improving the overall process. The marks transfer integration has been tested during two pilot phases and has received very positive feedback.

You can complete marks transfer for the following assessment scenarios:

  • One Moodle assessment activity is linked to one assessment component in Portico
  • One Moodle assessment activity is linked to multiple assessment components in Portico

Using the following Moodle assessment activity-types:

  • Moodle Assignment
  • Moodle Quiz
  • Turnitin Assignment (single submission)

In addition, the following conditions must be met:

  • A Portico enrolment block must be used to create a mapping with a Module Delivery to your Moodle course.​
  • An assessment component (or components) exists in Portico to map against.​
  • Assessment marks are numerical and 0-100.​
  • The assessment component(s) in Portico is compatible with SITS Marking Schemes and SITS Assessment Types.​
  • For exam assessments, the Portico assessment component is the exam room code EXAMMDLE. 

The flowchart below provides a visual overview of when you can use this initial release of Marks Transfer.

Flowchart indicating when you can use the initial release of Marks Tranfer.

How do I use it?

For guidance on how to use marks transfer, you can view our general overview, how to guide and FAQs.

There will also be demonstration and drop in support sessions: open to all to find out how to use the wizard / ask questions (note – you are welcome to “drop in” to these sessions with questions and do not need to stay for the whole duration). Please use the links below on the specified date / time to join the sessions (alternatively, if you would like to receive a calendar invitation to join one of these sessions, please email currentstudent@ucl.ac.uk specifying which session).

What should I do if I require support?

Please review our detailed FAQs, if you cannot find your answer there, please use one of the following contact points:

  • For any issues with using the marks transfer tool, please contact digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk
  • For any issues with Portico data eg. incorrect assessment or student information, contact lifecycle@ucl.ac.uk
  • Please provide any feedback about the Marks Transfer Wizard to your Faculty Champion.

What next?

Following this initial release, we will continue to develop the integration by adding further marking scenarios and functionality.

Current development priorities are:

  • Grade Book items and categories including external LTI resources
  • Handling of SoRAs, ECs and LSAs
  • Turnitin Multipart Assignments

This is a very exciting development for assessment administration at UCL. We hope you find the new Moodle Marks Transfer integration beneficial!

Many thanks,

Digital Learning Environments and the Student Records Team

UCL Moodle theme update – Thursday 14th March

By Eliot Hoving, on 8 March 2024

The Digital Learning Environment team have made a number of changes to the UCL Moodle theme to improve the functionality, speed and accessibility of UCL Moodle for students and staff.

The planned update is scheduled for Thursday 14th March between midnight and 4am. There will be a small outage of 15 minutes during this time. The period is a very low usage period so should have minimal impact on students and staff.

A highlight of the key improvements are outlined below.

Course search

Each course now includes a content search in the course index menu (left hand menu on course pages). Students and staff can search by content name or activity type.

 

Left hand activity menus

Book, Lesson and Quiz menus no longer show on the right side of page where they can easily be hidden by students and lost. Instead they now appear on the left hand side which should improve the readability of the navigation menu.

Footer search

The search for courses and for UCL Moodle content (known in Moodle terminology as Global search) has been moved to the footer and is now available on every page.

Course breadcrumb improvements

The course breadcrumb will now appear fixed on the top of course pages and includes the course icon for easier navigation.

Additional changes:

  • Course index menu (left hand menu on course pages) set to closed by default to avoid distracting students.
  • Notifications redesign with links to view source of notification, images, and persistence of notifications (i.e. not disappearing once read).
  • Messaging UI improvements.
  • Footer user menu.
  • Course section indentation on large screen to create visual hierarchy.
  • Colour changes to course section toggles, expand / collapse all sections button, to create better emphasis.
  • Back to top on all pages.
  • Large tables (e.g. grading) fill full available screen width.
  • Site admin links (those found most used in survey) moved to user menu.

Feedback or questions?

Please get in touch with the DLE team to provide feedback at digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

Develop your Digital Skills: Term 3 training courses and more

By Katy O Foster, on 7 March 2024

Image of two badges on a blazer. One of them says Digital Skills

From training and support to helping you improve your digital capabilities, read below to find out what exciting opportunities Digital Skills Development can offer UCL staff and students in term 3.

Term 3 training courses

To book, follow the links below or find more information here: How to book a course on MyLearning.

Mastering Excel

General
30/04/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: In a Nutshell: Excel functions we should all know Online
28/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: In a Nutshell: Excel functions we should all know Online
28/05/2024 13:00 14:30 DSD: Pivot tables in Excel – Workshop Online
29/05/2024 13:00 14:30 DSD: VLookup in Excel – workshop Online
30/05/2024 13:00 14:30 DSD: Charting with Excel Online
Excel Essential Skills Workshops
08/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: Excel Essential Skills – Workshop 1 (campus-based) In-person
22/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: Excel Essential Skills – Workshop 2 (campus-based) In-person

Data analysis and visualisation

Choosing the right software
16/05/2024 14:00 15:00 DSD: Software for success: Winning with charts Online
R
24/04/2024 10.00 17.00 DSD: An Introduction to R with Rstudio (campus-based) In-person
01/05/2024 14.00 17.00 DSD: Data visualization in R with ggplot2 (campus-based) In-person
23/05/2024 10:00 17:00 DSD: An Introduction to R with Rstudio (campus-based) In-person
06/06/2024 10:00 17:00 DSD: An Introduction to R with Rstudio (campus-based) In-person
Stata
15/05/2024 10:00 17:00 DSD: Getting started with Stata (campus-based) In-person
21/05/2024 14.00 16.00 DSD: Scripting Stata Graphs Online
05/06/2024 14:00 17:00 DSD: Scripting Stata’s Tables and Collections (Campus-based) In-person
Nvivo
09/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: In a Nutshell: Starting an Nvivo Project Online
Excel
30/05/2024 13:00 14:30 DSD: Charting with Excel Online

Interaction and collaboration

General
30/04/2024 13.00 15.00 DSD: Software for success: Survey tools Online
14/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Mentimeter – improving feedback and interaction Online
REDCap
08/05/2024 13.00 14.00 DSD: Introduction to REDCap for research Online
09/05/2024 12:00 13:00 DSD: Data import and export in REDCap Online
09/05/2024 15.00 16.00 DSD: Managing participants in REDCap Online
14/05/2024 12:00 13:00 DSD: Options in designing consent forms in REDCap Online
14/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: Using conditions and filters in REDCap Online
21/05/2024 13.00 14.00 DSD: Setting up User Rights and Data Access Groups in REDCap Online
Qualtrics
02/05/2024 13.00 14.00 DSD: Qualtrics Tips and Tricks Online

Multimedia content: Creating and editing

Graphic design and photo editing
30/04/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Design an impactful research poster using UCL templates Online
07/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: Basic image editing using free tools – demo Online
16/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: An introduction to free graphic design tools – Inkscape Online
21/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Photo editing with Pixlr X – workshop Online
30/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Creating infographics using free web based tools Online
Film and video
02/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Make a short film using your iPhone Online
07/05/2024 10.00 11:00 DSD: Planning and filming advice for a short film Online
08/05/2024 14:00 15:30 DSD: Introduction to stop motion animation – workshop Online
23/05/2024 14:00 15:00 DSD: Explore the potential of UCL Mediacentral  Online
29/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Best practice for video captions and transcripts Online
Podcasting
25/04/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Podcasting made easy Online

Writing, presenting and referencing

Mentimeter
14/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Mentimeter – improving feedback and interaction Online
Microsoft Office
23/04/2024 10.00 12.00 DSD: Format your Thesis (Windows) – Manage long documents in Word Online
23/04/2024 14:00 15:00 DSD: Creating accessible PowerPoint presentations Online
07/05/2024 13:00 14:00 DSD: PowerPoint for Researchers and Presenters: Words, Images and More Online
08/05/2024 10:00 11:00 DSD: Word Tips and Tricks Online
04/06/2024 14:00 16:00 DSD: Format your Thesis (Windows) – Manage long documents in Word Online
Zotero
29/05/2024 14:00 17:00 DSD: Kick-starting your literature review with Zotero (Campus-based) In-person

Accessibility and assistive technology

Social media
28/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: Creating accessible social media content Online
Film and video
29/05/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Best practice for video captions and transcripts Online
Powerpoint
23/04/2024 14:00 15:00 DSD: Creating accessible PowerPoint presentations Online

Programming

Git version control
04/06/2024 13.00 14.00 DSD: In a Nutshell: Git version control Online
05/06/2024 10.00 13.00 DSD: Dive into Git version control Online

Social Media

28/05/2024 14.00 15.00 DSD: Creating accessible social media content Online
04/06/2024 10.00 11.00 DSD: Managing your digital profile and social media presence Online

LinkedIn Learning

In addition to the above, UCL staff and enrolled students can access over 16,000 courses for free on LinkedIn Learning.

Digital Skills Support: Office hours

To make them more widely accessible, our drop-ins have been changed to an office hours format, with slots available each day. If you have a question or would like individual support on a specific issue, book an appointment with one of our team: Digital Skills Development Office Hours

Upgrade your skills with the Discovery Tool

In partnership with Jisc, the Digital Skills Development team have put together a Discovery Tool to help UCL staff and students identify gaps in their knowledge and improve their skills. Use the self-assessment questions to start your journey towards better digital skills today: Discover your digital

Now with AI questions added for staff

The Jisc Discovery Tool now has a question set for staff on Digital skills in AI and Generative AI and a lot of new resources on AI skills have been added to the tool. Find out more in our blog post.

Contact us

For any questions on Digital Skills Development at UCL, email isd-digiskills@ucl.ac.uk

Starting up Stata with personalised options

By Jim R Tyson, on 4 March 2024

There are often things one can do to personalise and improve ones experience with software that involve some cusotmization, and that may be easy on your own machine, but less easy if your machine is managed by the organisation (in this case UCL).  My Laptop is managed by UCL (although I do have some elevated rights).

In an effort to improve my Stata workflow and output, I have several graphing options that I want to apply to all graphis I produce in Stata.  Typically, I want the Title left justified, in black, to take up the whole width of the graph (rather than the plot region) and to appear top left (at 11 o’clock).  The graph region colour should be white with no axis lines for x or y axes and with no fill-colour or border colour.

To simplify this I put these in a global macro ‘graph_opts‘ and add the macro to the start of any graphing command as $graph_opts . Anyone who knows how lazy and inconsistent I am, will already be guessing that while I may aspire to do this, I more often just hack away at my graphs until they look (more or less) as I want.  This is the worst kind of laziness because a little effort in setting this up would make for less work.

So I decided to investigate – could I automate this?  And I can.  At first, my heart sank slightly when I realised I would have to deal with the system paths on my managed machine, but it turned out to be very straight forward.  You can use sysdir on the stata console to find your stata program files folder.  When you navigate to this folder, use dir *.do to check for the presence of the file sysprofile.do -this means you are in the right directory.  Now, create a new do file called profile.do  Any code you add to this file is executed on Stata start up.  Knowing that I added these lines to my own profile.do (I used the Stata do file editor, but any plain text editor such as Windows Notepad would do as well):

// For -twoway- graphs
global graph_opts ///
  title(, justification(left) color(black) span pos(11)) ///
  graphregion(color(white)) ///
  xscale(noline) xtit(,placement(left) justification(left)) ///
  yscale(noline) ylab(,angle(0) nogrid) ///
  legend(region(lc(none) fc(none)))

// For -graph- graphs
global graph_opts_1 ///
  title(, justification(left) color(black) span pos(11)) ///
  graphregion(color(white)) ///
  yscale(noline) ylab(,angle(0) nogrid) ///
  legend(region(lc(none) fc(none)))

Of course you will want to change these to meet your own preferences – which may mean a deep dive into the Stata documentation.  It is however worth it given the time and effort you will save in hacking at graph code (or [shudder] gph files) to ensure that your graphs are all consistently presented in your reports.

Removal of obsolete Zoom recordings stored in Lecturecast (Echo360) on 11th March 2024

By Silvia Giannitrapani, on 4 March 2024

As per the UCL retention policy, any Zoom-recorded content in Lecturecast will be deleted if it meets the following criteria: 

  • Zoom recordings that have never been shared with a Lecturecast course section 
  • Zoom recordings that have never been viewed.

Staff members impacted by this will be contacted with further details. Should they wish to retain these recordings, they are advised to ensure a copy is stored in their Zoom account, unless they have manually deleted them. Alternatively, a copy of the recording can be downloaded before the 11th March 2024 by following the instruction below.  

 Please note: Teaching events captured or uploaded to Lecturecast (Echo360) will not be affected. 

If you have any questions regarding this matter, please get in touch with the Lecturecast Support Team and we will respond as promptly as possible.