In this session we welcome you all to this year’s ALT Online Winter Conference. This session will be an opportunity to get an overview of the programme for day 1 and how to navigate between sessions and get the most out of your Online Winter Conference Experience. We also take a moment to thank all of our contributors and open the ALT Annual Survey 2019 for responses.more

The arrival of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018, created concerns and confusion for university professionals across the UK and beyond. The potential financial and reputational penalties for getting it wrong led to an understandable tightening of policies and practices in many departments and businesses. However, most of the data protection advice and training used to inform those policies is targeted at administrative and marketing practices, not teaching and learning. Even before GDPR, there has been very little official guidance to address the complexity of data protection in digital pedagogy. Confusion arising from wanting to innovate, while adhering...more

Join this session to take a look at how over 600 institutions are building a more inclusive learning environment and improving the student experience by helping them take clear control of course content with usability, accessibility and quality in mind. The session explores ways to improve the overall student experience with alternative formats that provide students with the choice and added flexibility that comes with a more personalised approach.  It will also share how institutions can automatically check for common accessibility issues and provide institution-wide reporting on the accessibility of your course content to efficiently prioritise your resources and tackle...more

Ulster University has invested heavily in its learning environment over recent years, with new teaching blocks housing both formal and informal social learning spaces in Coleraine, Magee and our new campus is under development in Belfast. We also have our Jordanstown campus which is in a transitional period as it prepares to decant to the new Belfast campus. This is a very exciting time for the institution, its staff and students. In order to maximise the opportunities for innovation during this transitional period and to enable staff to be rewarded for taking risks in our learning spaces with new pedagogies,...more

I am happy to share with interested colleagues how the Learning Technology team at the University of Northampton have worked with Kaltura to provide Closed Captions for our video content.more

Creativity isn’t just for the arts. At its core it is a problem-solving tool that can be applied to explore and resolve messy scenarios and move forwards when you are stuck. It is at the roots of innovation and the generation of new ideas. To build creativity or design thinking intentionally into the curriculum can support student success, no matter what the subject. This presentation looks at the learning designs developed for two specialist profession-focused universities, one fully online and one providing blended delivery, and demonstrates the role that digital spaces can play in the development of design thinking skills....more

In a world where institutions must adapt quickly while minimising disruption, having flexibility when it comes to change is a must. Delivering a simpler, more powerful teaching and learning experience, with a modern, intuitive, fully responsive interface, better engages students, eases the burden on educators, and clears the path to success. Institutions needs have evolved. In this session, check out how the Ultra experience transformed Blackboard Learn and hear how you can save time by teaching on the go while delivering a connected experience to drive success. Get Things Done Quickly & Easily – Powerful, yet simple tools and workflows that...more

By taking an auto-ethnographic narrative approach, the webinar seeks to interrogate what constitutes leadership for someone who has occupied a number of roles which have supported teaching in a number of ways. Through exploring and analysing my career in higher education to date and its potential future paths with reference to and reflections upon established research and literature as a means of exploring leadership in learning and teaching. Specifically, I will focus upon how can be exercised in direct and soft ways in combination with notions of identity and purpose around being a learning technologist and online pedagogic developer in...more

This session is aimed at educators who aspire to become leaders and influencers among teams supporting learning and teaching core activities in educational settings. Whether you have managerial responsibilities or not, this is a very practical session that will help you step into leadership coming from a professional background of technology-enhanced learning or academic services. Leadership in an educational context involves multiple dimensions, including the ability to influence and guide academics/lecturers, in addition to professional staff; that is why the session will be focused on these three key aspects: How to become an empathetic manager/leader: scenarios and approaches to become...more

Teaching, Learning and Assessment within the Disciplines’ is a core, 20-credit module, that sits within Strathclyde’s Programme for Researcher Development, Academic Practice and Knowledge Exchange (SPARK). In addition to offering staff a route to a PGCert and a taught pathway to fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), the module plays an important role in modelling good teaching practice and connecting staff, in meaningful ways, to University strategy and policy.   Since its introduction in 2008 the module has always featured heavily in the development plans of early-career academics and, as a consequence, been oversubscribed. More recently, it was made...more

The Master of Public Health (MPH) online is a 3 year programme that is delivered entirely online to students from all over the world. In June 2019 one of the group assignments on the MPH tasked students to choose from one of four behavioural risk factors and identify a population where one of these risks is causing significant harm. This learner-centred assessment instructed students to create a presentation that justified their choice of topic, critically analyse the problem and propose at least one evidence-based approach to tackle it. Students were asked to present information, using Xerte, in a way that...more

As a Technology Enhanced Learning team we use a range of social media to spread our message within our institution and engage with the wider EdTech community.  We use Twitter, a blog, a podcast, LinkedIn and Instagram to reach different audiences and share different types of content. The challenge is that for most of the academic year it can be difficult for members of the team to prioritise time for creation of social media content.  So this summer we tried something new – setting aside a week in July for a social media sprint, creating material to be published across...more

In August 2018 the presenter met with one of the Senior Lecturers in Art and Design at the University of Bedfordshire to discuss how this cohort of students could be supported with their academic skills. The students attend practical-based units at Alexon House, which is situated off the main campus, and attend theory-based units on the main campus. It was decided to support the students through the delivery of targeted teaching sessions during their theory-based unit, where academic skills sessions would be embedded into the curriculum using subject specific examples. In the first year of support, second year students were...more

This session is part of the consultation process for the next strategy for ALT. This session will be facilitated by ALT’s chief executive Maren Deepwell, who will provide an overview of the consultation process. We also look forward to welcoming special guest Professor John Traxler from the University of Wolverhampton, who will be leading an open discussion about ethical considerations for Learning Technology professionals and how this might be part of the next strategy for the Association. The questions we are looking to discuss during the session include: Why do professional bodies have ethical codes or frameworks? What are the...more

This session introduces MoodleNet, a new open social media platform for educators, focussed on professional development and open content. MoodleNet sustainably empowers communities of educators to share and learn from each other to improve the quality of education. It is Open Source, AGPL-licensed, and an integral part of the Moodle ecosystem. Participants will be introduced to the research that led to MoodleNet’s development, along with an overview of the federated approach we are taking. Individuals can join MoodleNet to contribute to communities curating collections of resources. Organisations can run their own instance of MoodleNet or curate dedicated communities and collections...more

In this session we welcome you all to day 2 of the ALT Online Winter Conference 2019. For those joining us for the first time this is an opportunity to find out how to navigate between sessions and we also provide an overview of the programme for day 2. We are also joined by some of the ALT ELESIG officers who will be launching the new ELESIG online presence.more

This webinar will discuss the potential of ePortfolios in relation to Mahara in developing Level 4 academic skills and supporting the transition to Higher Education.  The benefits of a collaborative relationship between the Learning Technologists and academic staff in preparing students for study and employment. Identifying opportunities for formative feedback in the ePortfoilo in relation to assessment design.more

If there is one point of agreement in the learning technologies sphere, it is pedagogy needs to come first. It is almost a truism that the most successful innovations are those that are pedagogy-driven. But can we assume that we all mean the same thing when we talk about ‘pedagogy first’. When we look under the surface of pedagogy-driven innitiatives, we often find quite different perspectives on teaching and learning. This webinar will adress this question by comparing axes of agreement and disagreement looking back at the history of pedagogic change. Most specifically, it will discuss questions such as: Do...more

Unlike traditional approaches to assessment and feedback, formative assessment coupled with feedforward offers students a high degree of control (Ferrell and Gray 2013) and emphasises their future development and positive improvement (Gonzalez 2018). It is not simply ‘given to’ students: they are responsible for deciding on success criteria, and assess their own performance and receive peer comments first before engaging in a dialogue with a tutor (Hine and Northeast 2016, Wheatley et al 2015). Combining formative assessment and feedforward with video can enable students to improve their performance in a wide range of professional disciplines (Fukkink et al 2011). By...more

The OER World Map aims at be the platform that facilitates access to materials and and knowledge to promote open educational practices, acting as a source of information on current projects, practices and people for everyone interested in Open Education (OE). One of its newest developments is the OER Policy Registry, which aims not only to record current policies in OE but to become the knowledge hub to support the wider OE community to develop OE policies, helping them to bench-learn from other policies, to contact organisations that have developed policies and to openly learn from others. This session will...more

Dr Mary McVey, Dr Avril Edmond & Diane Montgomery Supporting students in HE and FE to develop their digital literacy skills is vitally important to prepare students for the workplace. The authors have successfully implemented the use of Microsoft Teams to support digital skill development in both HE and FE settings. Building a class community is very important and can be difficult to achieve. Teams has been seen to improve communication between students and staff and facilitates communication and collaboration between students within an online community. It was found to be especially useful when students are undertaking an online course...more

How are teaching staff in further and higher education actually using technology? As universities and colleges are investing large sums of money into their digital environment, how do we know that this investment is resulting in staff and students using the technology effectively? Understanding how students and staff use technology is essential to inform colleges and universities with the development of their digital environment. Since 2016, Jisc has been running the digital experience insights surveys to support organisations to gather staff and students’ expectations and experiences of technology. The main purpose of the insights survey is to allow organisations to...more

This special webinar is part of this year’s ALT Online Winter Conference and continues our monthly series organised by ALT as part of our work with the Further Higher Education Digital Accessibility Working Group (FHEDAWG). This time we welcome a special guest Hector Minto, from Microsoft, who will be sharing his expert perspective on accessibility for Learning Technology. You can access the slides here.more

Do you subscribe to the #ALTC blog? Have you ever thought of contributing but were not sure how it works?  This session, led by members of the blog editorial team, will look at: the types of media you can contribute – text, audio, video  the benefits of publishing in the #ALTC blog  the process of submitting  how an editor will work with you to get your draft ready for publication.  There will be plenty of time for questions, so this is a great opportunity to find out how you can help build the ALT community by contributing to the blog.more

The School of Mathematics and Statistics, within the University of Glasgow, launched an MSc programme in Data Analytics three years ago. This is part-time and targeted at those who are already in employment where there is strong interest in qualifications which are viewed as improving subsequent employment prospects and an enormous demand for data analytics expertise. This particular programme has considerable innovation in its content, management, delivery, and tutorial support. For example, a film studio has been created with a novel `light board’ to allow lecturers to be face-to-camera while writing. As a result, the work required by the staff...more

We explore the opportunities of learning technology as part of a Study Abroad course design from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada where indigenization and internationalization are leading institutional priorities. In this course design moving out of the institutional VLE to a WordPress site with a shared class blog in aim to build deeper shared learning opportunites is a focus.  This shift away from the institutional VLE also connects to the decolonising pedagogy of the course design. We will explore the capacity of Study Abroad course design and the role of learning technology to synethsize Indigenous and Western pedagogies and methodologies...more

St George’s University of London (SGUL) has recently launched the George’s Award Programme as part of a university-wide strategy to support student engagement in extra-curricular activities whilst at University as well as support the development of employability skills.  To deliver the Award Programme, SGUL has adopted the Myshowcase.me ePortfolio which integrates with their existing LMS, Canvas and has in-built digital badges to motivate and encourage participation in the Award Programme. In this short webinar, we’ll be covering how St George’s University of London use Myshowcase.me and digital badges to help students earn up to 11 individual skills badges based on...more

When migrating from a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that has been embedded in a University for well over a decade to implement a Next-Gen VLE that offers huge potential for transforming the learning and teaching experiences of staff and students alike, the stakes are high. Project stakeholder groups are wide and varied and include students, academic staff, administrative staff such as student registration officers, learning development officers and finance officers, as well as IT staff, and, of course, University management. Each group has different expectations of, and from, a project such as this, as well as a different understanding of...more

This last year has seen all UK universities working to ensure they meet the new accessibility legislation requirements, with many in the sector  focusing on how best to support our colleagues and fellow academics to meet the requirements. Borrowing from the excellent accessible design posters by the University of Hull, Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Sussex have put together a suite of Creative Commons licenced resources, providing a toolkit for the University. We will talk through how we designed the Toolkit, how we are embedding it in our work  to improve the accessibility of teaching resources and how...more

The Learning Design Bootcamp offers an intensive three months programme for Learning Technologists and academics engaging in the design and development of a 15 or 30 credit module of their choice. The teams are supported by mentors in the design and development of their modules following the CoDesigns Learning Design Framework. The pedagogic composition of this framework is based on the Blended Learning Design Framework (BLEnDT©) developed at Imperial College London (Toro-Troconis et al. 2019; Toro-Troconis & Aleksiev, 2018; Morton et al, 2016). This webinar will explore the experience of participating in the 2019 Bootcamp from the perspective of the mentor, Jannah and mentee, Catherine....more

Twine is a great open source tool that was originally designed for the creation of interactive fiction. However it can be used to great effect within teaching in terms of creating interactive teaching experiences and scnario based learning resources. We’ve also been using Twine alongisde a website called ThingLink to create accessibility navigation guides, helping students plan the best accessible routes through buildings and areas. This short webinar will go through how we’ve been using Twine at our institution to aid teaching and also improve accessiblity.more

Transitioning to digital learning technologies can be complex, especially for instructors and institutions doing so for the first time. Across many fields and approaches, research has identified several key success factors. This session explores these, including: general principles of learning that technologies should reflect; how to identify learning challenges and technologies that might address them, and what types of stakeholder support and professional development are associated with better outcomes. There is, of course, no magic formula, but we will share a practical 4 step approach to building an effective digital learning experience. Using this research to create a consistent set...more

On December 10th for United Nations Human Rights Day, hubub will be hosting an interactive conversation around BAFTA winning Director, Shreepali Patel’s anti slavery film “The Crossing”. https://crossing.onhubub.com/ In this ALT session we will be watching the film and throughout, Shreepali and the Hubub team will be fielding questions on both the film , the issues it raises and on using Hubub as a new space for hosting interactive, equitable and inclusive conversations. Discussion will be by text and within the hubub platform . You can log straight in with Twitter or create an account with an email address.more

Pull up your chair and settle in for 30 minutes of festive fun online. Make sure you have your christmas jumper – you may win a prize.Record your christmas wishes for a fairer world on our flipgrid and share a virtual drink: BYOMP (bring your own mince pie). All welcome!more