Description
The difficulty of providing students with comprehensive instructions and user manuals for machinery in labs, workshops and other non-standard teaching environments has just become easier. In August 2013 we began a collaborative project with teaching staff to create Digital Learning Materials that students could access inside a non-standard teaching environment by using QR codes.
The Textiles Department provides practical experience for students in their Sewing Laboratories where they can learn about and use a wide array of different and complex textile machinery to design and create their own garments and test pieces. We aimed to create a dynamic ‘user manual’ for each machine that students could access on their personal mobile device, giving the students the freedom to work at their own pace, without having to access bulky paper user manuals or wait for personal instruction. The use of QR codes has allowed us to introduce eLearning into an area where it was not possible before. Not only do students have a larger range of support materials available to them, but they can access them in a place and at a time where they are of most use to them.
In this presentation we will outline the project process from start to finish, and discuss the challenges, pitfalls and lessons learnt: from explaining the technical tools and processes the eLearning team used in order to achieve the project goal, through to how we created tutorial videos, mobile web pages, how we researched and chose the appropriate QR Codes and Readers, and finally how we linked it all together and made it available to students by using simple, largely free, technologies.
Authors
Name | Dan Jagger |
Affiliation | University of Manchester |
Country | United Kingdom |