As part of the SYMBoL project (Second Year Mathematics Beyond Lectures), four mathematics undergraduate students have been working this summer as interns on a six-week placement. Naomi, Robert, John and Matthew conducted several focus groups with second year undergraduates to find ways of making student learning more effective and their modules more engaging. The long-termRead more
It’s easy to dismiss OMR (or Optical Mark Recognition) as technologically outdated – surely everything can be done online now? But don’t dismiss OMR as it can still be very useful. In the case of CAA (Computer Assisted Assessment), it’s a relatively easy, low-cost approach to automating the process of marking large numbers of examRead more
In this post (reproduced from our Summer 2011 “E-learning Innovations” staff newsletter), Ben Halkon (Wolfson School) talks about his use of the GradeMark online marking tool in Turnitin. I didn’t want the hassle of having to manage a pile of paper marking, and the integration with the Originality Reporting from TurnItIn was useful, so I optedRead more
Existing (or would-be) users of our ‘Make History’ timeline authoring tool might like to know that V1.10 is now available. As well as fixing bugs identified in earlier versions, it allows you to create events of less than one day. See my earlier blog post for more about the tool.Read more
After a successful first full pilot year of operation, the ReVIEW automated lecture capture service will be back in 2011/12, underpinned as before by the Echo 360 system. Last year over 500 ‘sessions’ were captured – not just lectures to students, but also inaugural lectures, staff development workshops, meetings, conferences, and a variety of otherRead more
We’ve just taken delivery of three new ‘Papershow’ sets which are now available for demonstration or loan purposes to colleagues. Papershow comprises a special pen equipped with a miniature camera and a bluetooth transmitter; a USB ‘dongle’ for your PC or laptop; and a pack of paper preprinted with tiny dots. It allows you toRead more
A look at some of the screencasting options for the Mac.Read more
If you have a little cash that needs using up at the end of the financial year, you could do a lot worse than buying yourself a good quality USB or Wireless headset for your PC. Clear voice presentation really helps Elluminate online meetings, and as you are likely to be wearing the headset forRead more
A recent study by TurnItIn looked at the sources of 110 million content matches over 40 million submissions, and found: 33% of matching text came from Social Networking sites, content sharing sites or question-and-answer sites 25% of matching text came from educational sites 15% of matching text came from cheat sites, and 7% of matchingRead more
Anybody logging into the Elluminate website may have been surprised by the changed design. As part of the re-branding of the Elluminate Live! web conferencing package as BlackBoard Collaborate, the home page of the Elluminate website has changed. Log in and go further, and you’ll find it’s exactly the same as before. Panic over.Read more