Session Abstracts
John Scott, University College London and Ruth Brown, London South Bank University
Research shows that, despite often substantial institutional investment and support, the affordances of technology for improving the student experience in HE are often not adopted because of lack of awareness and, sometimes, the limited skills of academics.
'What can you learn in 15 minutes?' is a "taster" format, offering a programme of 15 minute talks that aim to inform lecturers of the possibilities of technology and the available support, and to inspire them to explore its use in their own practice. The "drop-in, drop-out" nature of the method allows academics to attend topics of interest without having to invest a great deal of time initially. It focuses on inspiring exploration rather than teaching new skills. It is a method of raising awareness of both the technologies and the available support which has been successfully implemented at UCL for several years, and has recently been transplanted into the LSBU environment.
At the end of the session participants will have considered the key questions concerning the planning and promotion of a bite sized learning day for their own institution.
John Scott
John Scott is a Training Officer at UCL, with primary responsibility for student training. His interests include presentation and design skills, especially with regard to how these can improve the teaching and training experience. He’s been involved in IT training in Higher Education for almost 20 years, ever since one of his lecturers dealt with a particularly cocky student by saying "That half of the class – go help them." In his spare time, he runs a cabaret, finding that scheduling variety acts uses much the same skill set as running a Snippets day at a university.
Ruth Brown
Ruth is an Academic Developer at London South Bank University with a particular interest in the adoption of eLearning in Higher Education. She has collaborated with the Beyond Distance team at the University of Leicester in the Carpe Diem process, and is LSBU’s representative on the Open University’s JISC Curriculum Design project. As a part-time lecturer at University College London, she discovered the What can you learn in 15 minutes? “taster” format, developed by John Scott, and adapted it to the LSBU context. She is currently developing the format to explore innovative approaches to assessment.
Gillian Fielding and Karen Sumpton, University of Salford
Rather than the use of a traditional presentation style, the team have adopted a learner focused approach to delivery. Learner focused training incorporates seeks and uses tasks that are relevant to the trainees; it facilitates the sharing of experiences and best practice; uses objectives that measure confidence levels; utilises a high proportion of open questions rather than merely telling; encourages trainees to investigate, therefore ‘learning by doing’; is active rather than passive. All this provides the trainee with a deeper understanding and better retention, increases participation and interaction, and is more enjoyable for the trainee and the trainer!
This workshop will be delivered, for comparison, in part using some of these approaches, in part using a traditional approach. Following this there will be a question and answer session about the different approaches.
Gillian Fielding, BA (Hons), PGCE, MSc., FIITT.
Learning & Skills Development Manager at University of Salford.
Gillian is a social studies graduate who has lectured in the further education sector for 15 years and, prior to that, taught adults with specific needs for 2 years. She has a strong commitment to learner focused training and to enhancing the student experience via the incorporation of learning technologies into learning and teaching.
Karen Sumpton, BA (Hons), MSc
Karen is a Digital Skills Trainer and has been delivering training for 12 years in ICT. Prior to this she was a librarian for 10 years. Karen has worked at the University of Salford for 22 years.
Both presenters work in the Liaison and Support Unit, Information & Learning Services Division at the University of Salford. The team deliver ICT, Information Literacy, Business Systems and Learning Technology training across the University to students and staff.
Neal Harper, Teesside University
By combining academic-friendly session design with ideas and inspiration drawn from the world's leading personal productivity gurus, Teeside University have been making great strides in helping lecturers take control of their email (and therefore their lives!). Neal Harper of the University's staff development team will be describing how he's been working collaboratively with academic and technical colleagues to instigate wholesale behavioural changes with an approach that this hard-to-reach group have found convenient, engaging and thought provoking.
Simon Davis, University of Leeds The session will provide an overview of how the Learning Technologies @ Leeds podcast has been used to provide informal staff development opportunities and links into traditional classroom based training provision within the Staff and Development Department’s open programme. The audio and video podcast series provides an opportunity for academics to increase their awareness of the availability and use of learning technologies at the University of Leeds.
The approach has been trialled with a number of aims:
- Provide informal staff development opportunities outside of the traditional "taught course" structure for busy staff to access at times and places of their choosing
- Create links between informal provision and structured training opportunities
- Increase awareness amongst academic staff of how the consumption of podcasts ("podsuming") can be used to support learning
- Develop a sustainable approach to podcast development that can inform support for future podcasting projects
The session will explore the effectiveness of this medium in meeting these aims, along with initial evaluation results from a focus group of participating "podsumers".
Simon Davis
Simon works for the Staff and Departmental Department (SDDU) at the University of Leeds as a Learning Technologist specialising in e-learning resources. His background is in new media design and also teaching which has led him to an interest in learning technologies.
Chris Steele, London School of Economics
The IT training team at London School of Economics have adopted the use of virtual assistance technology to deliver short and effective training sessions for staff.
In 2007, the IT support staff at London School of Economics started using virtual technology to assist all staff and students remotely. By taking control of a user’s PC they were able to carry out various tasks without the need to visit them.
The IT Training team recognised an opportunity to use the same technology as a means of delivering concise training sessions - the fundamental difference being that a trainer does not take over control of the PC but simply observes the user’s screen while talking to them on the telephone.
This session will allow you to see the technology in practice and observe a live virtual training session from the trainer’s perspective. You will see how effective virtual training can be, the ease with which you can view a user’s PC and the various tools available to the trainer.
Chris Steele
Chris has been involved in IT Training for over ten years, initially delivering classes and managing various IT training programmes for Further Education colleges in the north east of England. He delivered training in Australia and the private sector in the UK before joining LSE over four years ago.
Will Allen and Steve Boneham, JISC Netskills
The emergence of web 2.0 technologies is giving trainers new challenges in considering how they can make best use of the wide range of tools available to enhance their practice. It is often assumed that Web 2.0 technologies are intuitive, but does that mean no formal teaching or guidance is required? Where should new users begin? What do they need to know to harness these web 2.0 tools? What is the best tool for a particular purpose? And what are the risks?
This session aims to answer some of these questions and will be led by Will Allen and Steve Boneham of Netskills. It will allow delegates to explore the Web2Practice guides, developed under the JISC-funded Web2Practice project, which implements a new approach to skills development. These provide succinct practical guidance and examples of innovative practice by early adopters of emergent technologies and delegates will discover how these Creative Commons-licensed materials can be altered, updated and added to by trainers to better suit their own needs.
Will Allen, Consultant Trainer, JISC Netskills
Will believes that the web is all about communication and is interested in the effective use of web technologies, both established and emerging, for this purpose. He joined Netskills in 2005 and has developed and delivered a wide range of training, including a training programme for postgraduate research students. Will's friendly, open and flexible approach to training and facilitation helps attendees to feel at ease and gain maximum benefit from the training and events he delivers.
More about Will: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/about/staff/willallen.html
Steve Boneham, Consultant Trainer, JISC Netskills
Steve has been a consultant trainer for Netskills since 2000. In that time he has seen the web grow into an essential platform for teaching and learning, research and administration. The ever increasing range of new web technologies driving this has created the need for new approaches to training and staff development. Innovating with such approaches is a key part of Steve's role at Netskills.
Steve's work interests include social media, podcasting, digital video and animation, presentation design, mobile technologies and web design.
Before Netskills, Steve worked as a researcher at Nottingham University working on HIV vaccines.
More about Steve: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/about/staff/steveboneham.html
