The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce the programme for its forthcoming Virtual Reality Mini Conference on Tuesday 28 March.
Booking for the event is already open. This mini conference is taking place in person in B23, Llandinam Building between 11:00 and 16:00.
The Mini Conference will start at 11:00 with a session by Chris Rees from UWTSD. Our blogpostannouncing Chris as our external speaker provides further information.
From 11:45, Amanda Jones and Bleddyn Lewis from the Healthcare Education Centre in the Department of Life Sciences will be showcasing what they do with their students in their session Embracing Virtual Reality within Healthcare Education for student nurses.
At 12:30, Education’s Steve Atherton will be presenting the session VR in Education.
A lunch break has been scheduled between 13:00 and 14:00. We will not be providing catering at this event but please feel free to bring your lunch along with you.
Between 14:00 and 16:00 Sarah Wydall, Helen Miles, Rebecca Zerk, and Andra Jones will be providing a 2 hour workshop identifying the next step in the evaluation for the use of VR as a training tool. This session is limited to 15 people – the session is first come, first served and you will be able to sign up for it on the morning of the mini conference.
Most of the sessions are hands on and interactive – you’ll have the opportunity to try out VR and see how colleagues are using it in their teaching.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is hosting a mini conference on Tuesday 28 March looking specifically at Virtual Reality. We’ll be showcasing colleagues’ work in this area from a variety of different disciplines. The event will be taking place in person. Booking for this event is already open via this online form.
In addition to this, we’re delighted to have Chris Rees from University of Wales, Trinity St. David’s (UWTSD) join us.
Chris is the Executive Head of Digital Creativity and Learning unit, with a background in teaching and learning across many age ranges. He has always had a keen interest in pedagogy and the use of digital technology to enhance the delivery of content and therefore, enrich learning. With 12 years’ experience of teaching and taking leaderships roles in schools across South Wales, Chris moved to a take a position of Strategic Lead in Digital Learning for a local authority. Within this 4 year tenure, Chris continued to research and implement digital pedological approaches including blended learning, synchronous and asynchronous delivery, VR and flipped learning with the goal of improving teachers skills and student experience
Within his role in UWTSD, Chris utilises his strategic, governance and management skills across the recently formed DCL unit, which includes the Digital learning team, Graphics, Print and Multimedia team, and the Web team. The position facilitates new approaches to digital creativity and learning within the institution, making use of the newly created team to develop innovative creative digital content for learning. More recently, Chris has been leading the team to develop the use of mixed reality and design content for specific use cases across the institutes. This includes the launch of the university’s immersive rooms, which are a similar design to a VR cave, but utilising the latest AV and Immersive technology to create a collaborative VR experience.
Keep an eye on our blog as we announce other contributors.
If you’ve got any questions about our mini conference then contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (lteu@aber.ac.uk).
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit has been working to confirm the templates that will be used in new Ultra courses.
Unlike previous years, there will no longer be departmental templates. Following the decision by Academic Enhancement Committee and consultation with Associate Deans of Welsh-Medium Academic Provision, 3 templates have been created for Ultra:
Welsh template
English template
Bilingual template
The template that your course will have is determined on the language of delivery for the module recorded in AStRA.
Courses with language delivery of 100 Welsh will be created with a Welsh template. Courses with NULL or 0 will have an English template. If the score is between 1 and 99, a bilingual template will be used. Unlike Blackboard Original Menus, the course templates can be edited by instructors.
The course content template is comprised of 3 folders:
Gwybodaeth am y Modiwl / Module Information
Asesu ac Adborth / Assessment and Feedback
Arholwyr Allanol / External Examiners (hidden)
An image of the bilingual template is below:
The next stage in our Ultra Project is to create practice organisations for all staff. These organisations will be a space where you can look at Ultra functionality and copy course content from existing modules. We will also be making use of these practice organisations in our staff training programme that will be communicated with you over the coming months.
If you have any questions about the Ultra project, then please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
Transformative Teaching: Creating Opportunities for Learning
The main strands of this year’s conference are:
Teaching in the age of artificial intelligence
Preparing for Blackboard Ultra
Universal design for learning
Mentoring for success and self-regulation
Active and authentic learning contexts
Staff, postgraduate teaching assistants, and students are welcome to propose sessions on any topic relating to learning and teaching, especially those that focus on the incorporation and use of technology. Even if your suggestion doesn’t fit a particular strand, other topics are welcome.
We seek to encourage presenters to consider using alternative formats that reflect and suit the content of their sessions. As such, we are not specifying a standardised presentation format.
Please complete this form no later than 5 May 2023.
If you have any questions, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit at lteu@aber.ac.uk.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce the theme for our 11th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.
The Learning and Teaching Conference will be taking place with increased face to face presence and some online activities from Tuesday 4-Thursday 6 July.
The theme and strands for this year’s conference is:
Transformative Teaching: Creating Opportunities for Learning
Teaching in the age of artificial intelligence
Preparing for Blackboard Ultra
Universal design for learning
Mentoring for success and self-regulation
Active and authentic learning contexts
Keep a look out for our forthcoming call for proposals and for booking onto the conference.
LTEU is pleased to announce our next external speaker event. On 9 March 14:00-15:00, Dr Sarah Gretton and Alice Jackson from University of Leicester will be running an online workshop on Sustainability in the Curriculum.
Abstract
Sustainable development can be adopted as a driver for change within higher education institutions and as an opportunity to transform curricula (as seen with the recent revisions to QAA Subject Benchmark Statements). This workshop will discuss practical ways to embed Education of Sustainable Development (ESD) and specifically the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the formal curricula. Dr. Sarah Gretton – Institutional lead for ESD and Alice Jackson – Sustainability Academic Engagement Officer at the University of Leicester – will bring their experiences in integrating the SDGs into teaching and learning and will guide participants on how to evaluate their modules in relation to the goals. During this session, participants will be asked to associate their module’s intended learning outcomes with the UN SDGs and associated targets, to understand how existing learning objectives can support sustainable development.
Biographies
Sarah Gretton is an Associate Professor in Biological Sciences, Director of University of Leicester’s Natural Sciences programme, and Academic Lead for Education for Sustainable Development at the University of Leicester. Sarah is Senior Fellow of HEA. Sarah has over a decade’s experience in educational development, working on internally and externally funded projects (HEA, Advance HE, Royal Society for Biology, QAA). Her research interests include sustainability, skills development and interdisciplinary science education and have resulted in multiple publications (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=xv8W6lIAAAAJ&hl=en). She leads the UK Society for Natural Science Scholarship of Teaching and Learning sub-committee and is member of national organising committee for the UK Horizons in STEM Higher Education Conference. Her educational work has been recognised by a number of accolades which include reaching the finals of the 2017 Green Gown Awards (Sustainability Champion), winning the University of Leicester’s Teaching Excellence award (2017), and receiving a National Teaching Fellowship in 2021.
Alice is a sustainability professional working to deliver the ESD strategy at the University of Leicester. She comes from a sociology background and has previous experience working in employability and graduate skills which has informed her work in engagement and strengthening the sustainability content in the curriculum. She leads on the collection and analysis of data for an annual ESD audit and is enhancing those processes for the institution as part of a QAA funded ESD project. She has worked on the development and teaching of an interdisciplinary sustainable enterprise module to connect students with local SMEs in order to create lasting sustainable impact and has recently been recognised for this work at the 2022 Green Gown awards with a Highly Commended project. She has also developed and delivered Carbon Literacy Training to over 200 staff, students and local businesses as an accredited Carbon Literacy Facilitator.
Want a way to automatically schedule meetings with colleagues and students without going back and forth?
Bookings has been enabled on Office365 accounts. You might want to use this to schedule personal tutor meetings, dissertation supervision sessions, or appointments with professional services staff.
Bookings allows you to schedule meetings and appointments and automatically integrates with your Office365 calendar based on yours and your attendees’ availability.
You can specify your available booking slots, when your meetings are scheduled, whether they’re taking place online, and publish a webpage with a link to share with others or put in your email signature.
Take a look at our FAQfor further information on how to set this up.
Contact Information Services (is@aber.ac.uk) if you have got any questions about using Bookings.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce their next external speaker. On 10 May from 14:00-15:30, James Wood from Bangor University will be hosting an online session on Improving feedback literacy through sustainable feedback engagement practices.
James Wood is Lecturer in Education, Assessment and Taught Postgraduate Lead at Bangor University. Prior to this position, James has worked with Kings College London, University College London, Birkbeck University, Greenwich University and Seoul National University.
Session Abstract
Despite the importance of feedback in supporting learning in higher education, there is still much to learn about nurturing sustainable skills for seeking, engaging with, and using feedback. In practice, many students fail to access feedback, and even if courses offer formative assessment in principle, it is only sometimes engaged with or used effectively. It is often argued that students require ‘feedback literacy’ before engagement with feedback is possible. However, in this workshop, we will explore how feedback literacy and receptivity to feedback can emerge as students experience well-designed dialogic feedback practices that offer the opportunity to consider how learning from feedback occurs, the benefits, what constitutes quality and how to evaluate it and how to develop and execute plans to close the gap between current and target performance. I will also discuss how social and non-human factors entangle with learners’ agency to engage in ways that can serve or limit their participation. I will finish with an overview of how technologies can be used to enhance learners’ ability to use feedback effectively and develop relationships and communities that can offer powerful collaborative learning opportunities, as well as emotional support and encouragement.
The workshop will take place online using Microsoft Teams. Book your place online.
If you have any questions, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (lteu@aber.ac.uk).
It’s been a little while since we updated you on what we’ve been up to with Blackboard Ultra since we launched Ultra Base Navigationat the beginning of January.
We’ve been working with our colleagues at Blackboard to help finalise our course template. Unlike previous years, we’ll be having one course template for all modules and all modules in 2023 will be created blank to assist with the move to Ultra.
We’ve updated our Required Minimum Presence for Blackboard which is going to the Academic Enhancement Committee for approval and feedback. We’ve also been exploring how Welsh and English templates will work together in Ultra. Once we’ve got the template and RMP agreed, we’ll start the process of creating your Ultra Practice Courses so that you can see what Ultra will look like and begin to start thinking about your teaching ready for September 2023.
Our outreach work will continue at the start of next month as we will host focus groups with Departmental Directors of Learning and Teaching and Associate Deans for Learning and Teaching to start discussing what types of training you will require and how best to help you with the Ultra course rollout.
From a technical perspective, we’ve been looking into ways in which Panopto folders will provision with Ultra courses as well as Talis Aspire reading lists.
As part of our work with Blackboard, they have provided us a with a course readiness report which helps us to identify how prepared we currently are for Ultra courses. We’ve started exploring Wiki and Blog equivalences for those of you who currently use these tools in teaching, as well as Blackboard Test question equivalences for those questions that aren’t available in Ultra.
We will be updating our webpages with additional support and guidance materials as we go. If you have got any questions about our move to Ultra Courses then you are welcome to contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
In addition to their training, Vevox also run a series of educator webinars online.
Their first guest will be Daniel Fitzpatrick from Aston University and he will be presenting: “Using Vevox in whole class and small group teaching” on the 8th March from 2pm-2:45pm.
Followed by, Laura Jenkins from Loughborough University, speaking on how to “use Vevox for formative and mid-module feedback” on the 22nd of March from 2pm-2:45pm
And closing out the series will be Alex Pitchford presenting from Aberystwyth University discussing “Increasing Engagement & Active Learning using Vevox in Maths and Sciences “on the 26th of April from 2pm-2:45pm
If you are using Vevox in your own teaching and would like to provide us with a case study then email the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (lteu@aber.ac.uk).
