Teaching with synchronous technologies symposium Dec 2017
Friday 15th December 2017
This one day online symposium will explore best practice in using synchronous technologies for learning and teaching (including Videoconferencing and Blackboard Collaborate Ultra) to engage our students and meet their diverse needs within the distributed context of the university.
Delivery
The symposium ranentirely online on Friday 15th December, and offered a series of short parallel sessions, and guest speaker sessions, delivered through videoconference, Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, and potentially also other synchronous technologies.
Resources
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Good Practice Showcase: Mixing it up in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra: Online synchronous communication Tara Morrison, Inverness College UHI |
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Good Practice Showcase: Mastering Online Chat: The ‘OK’ Protocol Michael Smith, Lews Castle College UHI Recording - To follow |
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Seminar Session: Reviewing Yesterday’s Bright Tomorrows; Two Decades of VC Teaching in UHI Simon Clarke, Shetland College UHI Recording - To follow |
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Keynote: Teaching and learning with synchronous and mobile technologiesSarah Cornelius, The University of Aberdeen |
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Good Practice Showcase: Teaching in the here, there and then: BA Applied Music programme Simon Bradley, Lews Castle College UHI Recording - To follow Slides |
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Good Practice Showcase: A marriage made in heaven or hell? Virtual teaching and learning for practitioners in socially engaged art: MA Art and Social Practice Anne Bevan Orkney College UHI, Lindsay Blair Moray College UHI, Siún Carden Centre and Roxane Permar, Centre for Rural Creativity Recording - To follow Slides - To follow |
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Seminar Session: Exploring HISA research into the VLE at UHI William Mohieddeen – Student Association Co-ordinator HISA Perth, Helen Doyle – Student Association Co-ordinator North of Scotland, Callum Stephen – Vice President Further Education Recording - To follow Slides - To follow |
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Digital Proceedings - To follow Useful Links Support Portal - This suite of resources has been developed by the Educational Development Unit to support staff and enhance learning and teaching practice. There's a particular focus on skills relating to the use of technology to enhance the student experience. |
Hashtag
We used #UHISyncTeach in the run-up to and during the symposium.
Professor Keith Smyth: Professor of Pedagogy, UHI |
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Keith Smyth is Professor of Pedagogy at the university, and leads the Learning and Teaching Academy. Keith works with colleagues across the university on strategic learning and teaching developments, funded projects and supporting staff to engage in educational research. Much of this work is taken forward through the activities of the Learning and Teaching Academy.Keith has particular interests in co-creative pedagogies and curriculum models, open education, technology-enhanced learning, educational strategy and policy, and developing pedagogic research and scholarship. He has written and presented widely in these areas, and has undertaken funded projects for organisations including the Higher Education Academy, JISC, Scottish Funding Council and NHS. |
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Tara Morrison, Programme Leader and Business Lecturer, Business Leisure and Management, Inverness College UHI |
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Tara has been working in Higher Education for over 20 years, and has designed, developed and delivered a range of high calibre postgraduate programmes. Her areas of expertise in leadership, human resource management and organisational behaviour have been important in shaping curriculum within UHI. As a Programme Leader for the MSc Leadership and Management, and now the MSc Human Resource Management, she has helped to grow postgraduate provision within the Business, Leisure and Management Subject Network.
She has carried out a wide range of research projects including collaborating with international universities (University of the Arctic; University of Strathclyde); local and national agencies (Highlands and Islands Enterprise; Rural Gateway; Citizens’ Online; Ofcom; Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations; Skills Development Scotland); and charitable trusts (Carnegie UK Trust; The Royal Society of Edinburgh). She is currently working on a collaborative Northern Periphery Programme Project, to help rural communities engage with renewable energy sources and sustainability; and she is also working on a funded European project to develop introductory materials for students wishing to assess their suitability for postgraduate study.
Her pedagogical interests have been in the development of effective online learning. She has advised universities on their development and delivery of online learning materials (University of Edinburgh; University of Strathclyde); and co-authored the book entitled: ‘E-learning and Social Networking Handbook, 2nd ed’ (2013); and presented at international conferences on the importance of creating ‘learning spaces’ within online and blended modules, and understanding the importance of the social presence. She has won the UHISA Student Award for Most Engaging Online Tutor on four occasions (2010; 2011; 2016; 2017), as well as being nominated in several other categories. |
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Dr Michael Smith, Postgraduate Programme Leader, MSc Sustainable Rural Development, Lews Castle College UHI |
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| Michael moved from the HIE Network to join Lews Castle College UHI in 1997 and begun teaching in the traditional classroom environment. After gaining a programme leadership position in the years that followed, Michael led the Rural Development team towards developing UHI’s first fully online Honours degree, as they sought to distribute learning more effectively within the region. After leading the UG Sustainable Rural Development team subsequently to attain international delivery, Michael was seconded to UHI's Learning & Teaching team to develop a new accelerated degree in Geography, seeking to develop a new form of distributed learning that combines high levels of student satisfaction with high student retention. With this programme recently moving to Inverness College UHI, Michael has now returned to Lews Castle College UHI to take on the Programme Leadership of the online MSc Sustainable Rural Development programme. |  |
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Dr Simon Clarke, Senior Cultural Studies Lecturer, Cultural Studies, Shetland College UHI |
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Dr Simon Clarke, is a senior lecturer in Archaeology, currently heading the Creative and Cultural Industries section of Shetland College. He has been a lecturer at Shetland College, mainly employed on HE programmes since 1998. Prior to that he was a lecturer and research fellow at in the Archaeological Sciences Dept of Bradford University. He was one of the first to use VC to teach across the UHI network, and has been a keen advocate, but also vocal critic of how it is used ever since, publishing several academic paper on the theme. Other research interests include heritage management, ritual deposition, cultural contact and the perception of space. |
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Sarah Cornelius, The University of Aberdeen
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Sarah joined the University of Aberdeen in 2004 after working as a freelance consultant on a wide range of projects in online learning and geographical information systems for the private sector and Higher Education in the UK and United States. She has also held posts at Manchester Metropolitan University, the Open University and the Free University of Amsterdam. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an active member of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). She is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal 'Research in Learning Technology' and was co-chair of ALT's annual conference in 2014. Co-authored books include 'Live online learning: strategies for the web conferencing classroom' published by Palgrave Macmillan and the successful textbook 'An introduction to geographical information systems' published by Pearson Education. |
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Simon Bradley, Lecturer, HNC Music, Lews Castle College |
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| Simon Bradley joined UHI (Lews Castle College) in 2012 and teaches on the HNC Music, BA Applied Music and Music and the Environment Masters programs. The HNC is residential face to face and the BA and MA are networked and blended with extensive use of VC and Blackboard VLE alongside residential contact.Simon was awarded Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2017 and previously achieved BSc Geology, MSc Transport Planning and Engineering and Postgraduate Certificate in Managing Rural Sustainable Development.Prior to joining UHI Simon enjoyed a professional musical performing career and leads an ongoing research project, Albastur Cultural Exchange, which integrates staff, students and musicians from Scotland and Asturias (Northern Spain) in collaborations, field trips, performances and teaching opportunities. |  |
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Anne Bevan; Curriculum Leader, Art and Design, Orkney College UHI, Lindsay Blair; Lecturer, Moray College UHI, Siún Carden, Research Fellow in Centre for Creative Industries based at Shetland College UHI, Roxane Permer; Research Fellow in Centre for Creative Industries based at Shetland College UHI and Programme. Leader, MA Art and Social Practice |
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Exploring HISA research into the VLE at UHI |
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William Mohieddeen – Student Association Co-ordinator HISA Perth, Helen Doyle – Student Association Co-ordinator North of Scotland, Callum Stephen – Vice President Further Education |
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You can download a copy of the sessions outlines here
Mixing it up in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra: Online synchronous communication
Mastering Online Chat: The ‘OK’ Protocol
Reviewing Yesterday’s Bright Tomorrows; Two Decades of VC Teaching in UHI
Guest Keynote
Teaching in the here, there and then: BA Applied Music programme
A marriage made in heaven or hell? Virtual teaching and learning for practitioners in socially engaged art: MA Art and Social Practice
Virtual Learning: A student perspective
Mixing it up in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra: Online synchronous communication
Tara Morrison, Inverness College UHI
Blackboard Collaborate
Keywords
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Personalisation
Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values
Learner choice and personalisation - as students can choose to collaborate in a way that suits them. They can choose to use full audio and video, or just the chat facility…or not even attend at all and review the recording.
Providing a connected learning experience - students are able to communicate with each other and share their thoughts and ideas; their working practice and their student experience. Most of my students never meet each other face-to-face, and yet they build up such a supportive learning environment with each other and interact so well that many of them have made friends for life through this experience.
Session Outline
I have been a fan of the Blackboard Chat Room for a number of years, as it has allowed myself and my part-time PG students to communicate in real time and I facilitate lively discussions on topics related to the module content. When I have sought feedback from my students on this medium – and suggested that we move to one where we can see and hear each other, this has been met with an interesting response. They did not want to move to a full audio and visual experience – however agreed that some sessions like this would be appropriate within the semester.
This year I have moved to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra – which has proven to be a thought-provoking approach, allowing students to have greater choice about how they communicate online. I have not stipulated how students should communicate within Collaborate – I have left it up to them – and, as a result, they have gone for a very mixed approach. Some students connect and interact using both video and audio; some use just the audio facility; and most use the chat facility – some exclusively, and others to provide short comments, and come in with an audio response if a longer answer is required. I use the audio/video facility all the time to facilitate the session and read the chat comments and ask students to come in through audio and video if I would like them to expand on a point.
In these sessions students are required to apply their learning to their own practice or practice they are familiar with. The Discussion Board is where they critically analyse theoretical concepts, and BB Collaborate is where they apply them. This means that they are able to share their learning and working experiences with each other.
Mastering Online Chat: The ‘OK’ Protocol
Michael Smith, Lews Castle College UHI Videoconference
- Online
- E-Learning
- Chat
- Synchronous
- Participation
Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values
Integrated and sustainable teaching practices – Repurposing content and approaches to engage students in online sessions.
Supporting the learner as an individual – The diverse and individual student needs of remote and rural learners through more inclusive approaches to the delivery of the curriculum tailored to evolving student needs.
Reflective practice and continuous improvement - Our practice and development of synchronous chat delivery protocols were progressed as part of a reflective practice amongst the course team and the student cohorts participating in the degree and allowed us to evolve our practice to benefit future student groups.
Session Outline
This session will be about how to prepare for, deliver and manage an effective online synchronous chat experience. I will show participants examples of how I have prepared content to deliver online chat discussions on particular topics and discuss the principles of how to prepare content (i.e. what works and what does not work). I will show participants how I have managed these chat sessions with students, the ‘operating instructions’, as it were, from their perspective and how to implement the ‘OK’ protocol to manage effective cohesive synchronous discussions live online. These sessions have been implemented and run since the late 1990s using a mix of synchronous technologies, NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, Skype along with the Blackboard Chat tool.
Reviewing Yesterday’s Bright Tomorrows; Two Decades of VC Teaching in UHI
Simon Clarke, Shetland College UHI Videoconference
Keywords:
- Video conferencing
- Networked delivery
- Off campus delivery
Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values
- Learner choice and personalisation
- Providing a connected learning experience
- Evidence-based educational practice
- Active and creative use of technology
- Integrated and sustainable teaching practice
- Supporting the learner as an individual
- Supporting professional development in learning and teaching
Session Outline
This paper explores the technological advances that have made teaching by VC possible, particularly since UHI acquired its first equipment in 1997. The author wishes to celebrate the considerable progress that has been made, whilst also exploring significant obstacles that remain and possible reasons why VC supported teaching has not been more widely adopted within and beyond UHI. Particular landmarks have been the replacement of ISDN with IP videoconferencing, the introduction of high definition video and streamed video recording and the advent of low cost PC based VC solutions. This last technology, it is argued, could yet transform networked HE delivery by VC from an orphan technology, directly affecting only a relatively small number of students based within the Highlands and Islands into an off campus pedagogue with national / global reach.
Teaching and learning with synchronous and mobile technologies
Sarah Cornelius, The University of Aberdeen Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Synchronous and mobile technologies can support innovative teaching and effective learning. This presentation will review some of the opportunities and challenges of synchronous and mobile learning, exploring both learners’ and teachers’ perspectives.
Teaching in the here, there and then: BA Applied Music programme
Simon Bradley, Lews Castle College UHI Videoconference
Keywords:
- Video conferencing
- Networked delivery
- Off campus delivery
- Participation, Synchronous
Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values
- Providing a connected learning experience
- Evidence-based educational practice
- Reflective practice and continuous improvement
- Active and creative use of technology
Session Outline
This session will reflect on experience over 5 years of BA Applied Music delivering across the UHI network and off campus over VC, with students often in the same room as the tutor and others accessing recordings later. Strategies for enabling inclusion, participation and engagement before, during and after the VC relating to the flipped-classroom approach, VLE discussion threads and announcements and tutor led communication style during the sessions will be covered. The importance of room layout to ensure visual and audio contact is maintained during the VC will also be addressed. Feedback and reflection from students and tutors will be summarised along with student attendance patterns and efforts to reach out to those unable to make the allocated time slots. The take away messages will be a sharing of strategies used on the BA Applied Music programme and a reflection on effectiveness and the team’s efforts to continuously improve delivery.
Areas to consider touched upon
- Using synchronous technology to create a sense of community in blended or online cohorts
- Using synchronous technology to meet diverse student needs
- Combining synchronous technologies with use of the Virtual Learning Environment and/or other technologies for asynchronous delivery and engagement
- Interactive approaches to real-time online teaching
- Bending and breaking boundaries using synchronous technologies (e.g. bringing in guest experts, supporting learning across different cohorts and disciplines, student-led teaching)
A marriage made in heaven or hell? Virtual teaching and learning for practitioners in socially engaged art: MA Art and Social Practice
Anne Bevan, Curriculum Leader, Art and Design, Orkney College UHI Lindsay Blair, Lecturer, Moray College UHI Siún Carden, Research Fellow in Centre for Creative Industries based at Shetland College UHI Roxane Permar, Research Fellow in Centre for Creative Industries based at Shetland College UHI and Programme Leader, MA Art and Social Practice Videoconference
Keywords:
- Art and social practice;
- Communities of practice
- New social practitioner
- Professional practitioner
Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values
Learning for employment and Learner choice and personalisation: One of the programme’s core aims is preparation for employment by equipping students with practical and theoretical skills required for a career in as a socially engaged artist, and in particular within their own community. This latter aim provides necessitates personalisation and personal choice for each student.
Evidence-based educational practice: lies at the core of our teaching and learning philosophy, and we actively engage our students as researchers in all aspects of the programme.
Active and creative use of technology: We are striving to use technology actively and creatively, constantly searching for best modes of practice and new ideas, for we believe the success of our programme is in part dependent on the creative use of technology.
Reflective practice and continuous improvement: is fundamental to develop an effective socially engaged art practice, and thus we teach students to be reflective from the start.
Harnessing open education approaches and Supporting the learner as an individual: Harnessing open education approaches is in keeping with the ethos of inclusion that characterises socially engaged art practice. In our learning, teaching and assessment practices we strive to ensure that all students have the opportunities and support they require to succeed, and that diverse and individual student needs are met through inclusive approaches to curriculum design and delivery, and contextualised personal and professional development.
Supporting professional development in learning and teaching: Lastly, our academic team is actively interested and supported to engage in relevant professional development activities that are focused on enhancing and sharing effective learning and teaching practice.
Session Outline
This good practice showcase session is based on our teaching experience using synchronous technologies for the MA Art and Social Practice, a new UHI programme taught entirely virtually. The benefits, qualities and constraints of synchronous technologies and virtual learning have encouraged us to develop a different structure for this programme compared to similar but non-virtual courses. We use synchronous technologies to address issues that are unique to this field of practice, enabling us to embrace inter-disciplinarily, equip students to engage with their locale and facilitate better understanding of their particular communities of practice.
Synchronous technologies used in combination with the VLE are well suited to teaching the subject of socially engaged art practice. By their very nature they create a community and place students within a framework that mirrors participatory projects where the participant is placed at the centre. Students’ learning is active and acquires a social dimension. Synchronous technologies engage students in live discussion centred on their work and enable the student cohort to develop a unique dynamic in their engagement with their studies.
Our session will highlight ways we share our experience and use student feedback to improve how we use synchronous technologies to better pitch our subject, pace our delivery and keep students creatively engaged. We particularly have sought to develop innovative ways to foster cohesion among a dispersed cohort and to facilitate meaningful and relevant professional engagement. By embedding unique opportunities into the programme, such as an annual Winter School and Virtual Symposium, we aspire to productively employ technologies to extend and diversify modes of learning, strengthen relationships and empower students to work as professionals in their field. Events such as these provide students with enhanced learning experiences while facilitating regional, national and international connectivity. In sharing the way we use synchronous technologies for teaching and learning, we hope to extend knowledge and promote continued sharing among colleagues.
HISA research into the new VLE
Colleagues in HISA will provide an overview of the research that they are doing into the new VLE at UHI.
More information to follow.
Blackboard Collaborate