19th Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference 2019

11 March 2019

For most, January might be a month of quiet consolation, with that weary post-Christmas feeling hanging heavy…
But not for the nation’s E-learning teams however: each coming January means the Durham Blackboard Users Conference!
The focus for the 19th Durham Blackboard User conference was “Fail, Fad or Future”, asking users of Blackboard to be honest with their experiences with Blackboard, acknowledging that some ideas will fail – some are just a passing fad – but some will be integral to the future of how we support and use e-learning systems.

The conference was opened by Rosie Jones, the Director of Library Services at the Open University. In her invigorating talk she placed an emphasis on play, a matter that was obviously close to her heart, as within five minutes we were all busy drawing pig diagrams(!?). She explained that we should all be allowed the freedom to fail, as this is where you learn the best experiences and encourages creativity & innovation. She explained that a major culture shift needed to take place with regards to how look at the world of e-learning and using systems in pioneering ways to continually adapt to a changing technology environment and to also meets the needs and desires of the students and staff.

Below are some of my highlights of the conference and for each one, we were asked to rate them as Fail, Fad or Future. In my opinion, they all made the Future category, but that isn’t to say that ones that didn’t were Fails!

“MBA in Your Pocket” – Mobile social learning for work-based learners

John Brindle – University of Liverpool

Liverpool described how in the future they are looking to adopt a “mobile first” learning approach. They have recently introduced their “mobile-first platform” (Blackboard Ultra – SaaS), with the aim of creating a blended learning module for post-experience learners and garnering 100% online engagement. They used the reasoning that the uptake should be high and overall successful as users don’t need an incentive to go on phone. This bore out specifically in the increased use of the Discussion Forums via Mobile phone.
John made a strong case for mobile-first learning as a go-to tool for busy work-based students. He noted that it was important to consider pedagogical decisions carefully to ensure a smooth transition of the new technology on a course that was previously face-to-face only and that training for Academics to interact with Blackboard more is essential for an endeavour such as this.

This might seam like a Fad but it is definitely the FUTURE!

It’s All About the Base (Navigation) -Northumbria University’s Move to Blackboard Ultra

Kristen McCartney-Bulmer, Lee Hall & Harriet Walshaw -Northumbria University

Northumbria shared some of their experiences from their recent move to Blackboard Ultra. The brave souls have taken the plunge, with the battle cry “Change is the only constant these days” and made the switch to Ultra. They explained that the scale and scope of change required to move to a new VLE means that getting it right at the beginning avoids difficulty further down the road. Rolling out a new VLE, especially one that nobody else is using has an appeal but also can be a scary prospect! As with any large scale change, managing expectation, training, and communication is key to successful to implementation and adoption of the service by staff and students.

Whilst Durham were more than happy to point out the Fails they encountered, overall they believe that Ultra is the FUTURE!

An Allied comparison of Ally

Claire Gardener (Derby), Kristen McCartney-Bulmer (Northumbria), Maria Papaefthimiou (Reading) & Susi Peacock (Queen Margaret)

A master-class in presenting here – four “Allied” universities discussed their their plans for implementing the much talked about Blackboard Ally. Over the past year many universities have started to implement Blackboard Ally: a tool that looks at the content in a course and considers the accessibility of that content. Engaging with the Ally European User Group has shown that there are many pathways to implementation and this collaborative presentation from Universities who have all recently implemented Ally shared their approaches, challenges, opportunities and goals.

As I cannot replicate the entire presentation here I would recommend anyone who is looking down the BB Ally route to get in touch with the individuals named above concerning subject ranging from creating a business case; BB Ally implementation strategy; communication, support and training methods; engaging and acting upon user feedback and how to take the project forward in the future.

This feature makes content better for the end user, so no doubt its the FUTURE!

The future starts today, not tomorrow

Neil Cocklin –Aston University

Neil Cocklin gave an engaging talk in which he looked at the issue behind Universities spending heavily on technology but investing significantly less on training and support. The education sector is slowly running the risk of running into a lack of digitally skilled workers in the near future.
As a reaction to this, the Technology Enhanced Learning team at Aston University, embarked on a series of initiatives to provide deeper, broader and more flexible teaching and learning support for their digital learning platforms.

Neil guided us through formal and informal approaches, exploring various techniques such as guided and self service, online and face to face. His team tried their hardest to adopt a multifaceted approach that was designed to fill in the gaps, re-invigorate and demonstrate the commitment of the academics and support staff.

His presentation was very insightful, especially from a support perspective, and explored a range of approaches that Aston has developed for supporting staff in technology enhanced learning development. Particular emphasis was placed on the drop-in sessions that were arranged for staff.

Hopefully elements of this are already in place, but if not then support and training should be something to look to in the FUTURE!

Thanks to Durham for an excellent user group (and of course for the three course gala dinner in Durham castle) and hope to see you again next year.

Panopto Conference 2018

Rachael Hayes

26 November 2018

Panopto

The E-learning team recently attended the Panopto EMEA Conference in Euston Square. The conference opened with an abundance of coffee and pastries (and weirdly rose water on tap) – before heading into the auditorium for an opening talk from Dave Cormier. Cormier is best known for the coining the term MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), and seemed to be somewhat of a celebrity in the teaching and learning sphere.

Cormier spoke about the best way to utilise video for learning. He emphasised that basic, simple tasks could be taught using high budget, high interest videos because they are unlikely to change. For example, in flight safety videos are usually well produced, high budget and give basic evacuation information.

In contrast, the plane exits are always displayed in person by the cabin crew – because these vary in different aircrafts and require prior knowledge from the crew. Cormier states that this can translate to an education environment by using videos to peak student interest – learning basic tasks can be monotonous and sometimes seem unnecessary to the learner. Video allows for these tasks to be immersive, interactive and interesting. It also negates the risk of human error – you can be certain that the same information is being delivered to everyone, every time.

The second portion of the morning concerned active learning. Each of the attendees was given an envelope containing a volvelle (see photo below) – not only did this encourage active learning but it also introduced an element of gamification to the talks that followed. Guest speakers spoke about how they’d used active learning in their own courses, and how this was boosted by Panopto. Topics ranged from Geology to Ethics but all followed a common theme, that active learning supported by video input allows education professionals to move away from a ‘chalk and talk’ approach and towards real world examples.

A commonality of these talks was that we’re entering an era of teaching digital literacy to a generation who’ve grown up with the internet. Inés Dawson and Simon Clark, both who had recently completed their PhDs in Biology and Maths respectively, talked about the use of video and the internet to engage a younger audience.

Inés had found success with her YouTube channel Draw Curiosity on which she uploaded playful videos which explored different aspects of science she found interesting. YouTube allows for a mash-up of social media and education. It’s taken off hugely in the last decade – turning bedroom vloggers into celebrities. Simon Clark wanted to take his vlogging a step further. Discussing popular videogame streaming site, Twitch, he talked about how he livestreams himself taking practice GCSE and A-level exam papers and giving advice for Oxbridge interviews.

There are drawbacks for this approach of course – whilst Twitch might be incredibly popular for live streaming video games – a Mathematical Doctor filling out an A-level exam in real time just might not hold the same kind of excitement for viewers. Equally, whilst Inés is a Doctor of Biology – her YouTube channel could be leading viewers down a less than factual rabbit hole.

In his closing talk, Eric Burns – the CEO of Panopto – addressed the drawbacks of using YouTube for sharing educational materials. Whilst creators like Inés and Simon may be able to monetise their videos through adverts, they also relinquish ownership of everything they create allowing YouTube to do with it as they see fit. For Example, an education video on the Mars Rover could be followed on auto-play by a conspiracy theory video about alien life on Mars. In an age of ever emerging ‘fake news’ these sorts of features are becoming a cause for concern. Luckily, Eric handily points out, this is avoided by buying into Panopto.

After lunch, (I had an absolutely huge serving of lamb, broccoli gratin, and a pear salad which was lovely but I did feel massively bloated after and couldn’t fit in any dessert) there were two break out sessions; Teaching and Learning, and Technical.

The Teaching and Learning session allowed for attendees to hear from staff at different institutions talk about how they’d utilised Panopto. First up was two members of staff from Wolverhampton University – who discussed the move from their inhouse VLE, Wolverhampton Online Learning Forum (WOLF), to Canvas brining in Panopto in the process. Following on from the morning’s talks, two of the Education Developers at the University of Wolverhampton had incorporated gamification into their teaching and learning strategy in the form of a ‘flexigon’.

Paul Towers and Gemma Witton explained that active learning was an important step in getting staff onboard with big technological changes across the university.

This presentation was followed by Imperial’s own Moira Sarsfield – the principal Learning Technologist for FoNS. Moira explained that FoNS had introduced active learning through hosting a ‘Summer Challenge’ for teaching fellows – asking them to identify and upload a clip of themselves displaying active learning techniques in one of their lectures. Not only did this help teaching fellows identify their strengths and weakness where teaching techniques were concerned but showcased the skills of the Learning Technology and AV Teams (aided, obviously by the support of the E-learning team).

The day culminated in the Jim, one of the Panopto engineers based in Seattle outlining what’s to come in the roadmap. But this is all very secret, and I can never talk about it.

Of course the canapes and free bar was enjoyed by all – and if you want to know more about what others took away from the day, #Panopto18 on Twitter makes for an interesting read.

Blackboard Teaching & Learning Conference 2018

Deven Patel

19 July 2018

This spring, the E-learning Team let Lee and Dev jet off to sunny Manchester to attend the TFL Europe 2018 Blackboard Conference.

Hosted at the prestigious Manchester University, the conference kicked off with the 2 day DevCon on Monday 9^th April with the 3 day event starting on the Tuesday. Over the the five days, a busy schedule of talks, workshops and events was arranged for the avid attendees from across the globe.

The city of Manchester itself was a joy to visit and a great place to host the conference. Manchester University was a short walk from the city centre and the conference was well facilitated thanks to TLC and the use of the extremely useful AttendeeHub App, which let you organise your schedule really easily.

In addition to the conference, Imperial’s representatives also intended to visit as many Manchester pubs as possible that were listed in the Good Beer Guide and naturally sample the products that they had to offer. Cheers!

Welcome to DevCon

First up DevCon, the morning introduction discussed the development of the Developer Portal for Blackboard and the progress that it has made with the interest accumulating.

In 2017 there have been 1323 new developers registered for the developer community, of a grand total of 2133.

55 Production groups have delivered 62 application, 50% are in Education, 26% in Businesses and 24% in Open Innovation Initiative.

In 2017, the community was receiving requests for up to 10 new developers registering a day.

The Blackboard REST and LTI Developer Amazon Machine Image (“AMI”) is an image of a Blackboard Learn server available in the Amazon Marketplace.

Allowing users to create a standalone copy of Blackboard, to build applications using REST APIs/LTI’s to integrate with different versions of their standalone BB Learn.

REST+LTI 101

It was only a week or two ago that I was registered to the Developer Portal to gain access to REST API, this session explores the Blackboard Developer Portal in more depth, giving a brief overview of the REST API integrations that can be used. Information on how to register users, manage applications, managing groups and an understanding Rate Limits is discussed.

This session on the REST API offers the opportunity to discover how to make requests to obtain a range of information. Eg. Course/user/roles/content all readily available. This could be used to create a web application offering a solution to some of the requests we receive via ServiceNow. An option would be to create an application that would allow users to create thier own courses.

LTI Advantage

As the Building Blocks have been the primary integration framework for learn, they are not best suited for SaaS and Ultra. SOAP Web Services have provided a limited set of integration points for Learn Hosted environments or SaaS and are not suitable for Ultra.

In 2016 Blackboard Learn moved to REST APi’s for integrating with all products, Learn Collaborate etc. This has been beneficial when working with IMS LTI specification, which when used in conjunction with REST API provides a deeper experience than LTI alone

Integration Migration

There are 3 integration frameworks for Blackboard, SaaS, Ultra and Learn. These can be delivered in a Self-Hosted environment or a Managed-Hosted environment.

For optimal integration of Building Blocks, SOAP Web Services and REST API all must be considered.

Building Blocks : no longer supported on Ultra / Saas
Web Services SOAP no longer supported on
REST API : Suitable for both delivery models and UX

REST+LTI In-Depth

Building Blocks are problematic, as they require a server restart when installing or updating, which can impact system downtime. They require a controlled technique for improving the existing code to run on Saas and are not client installable on Sass, they also require Java programming expertise and are not compatible with Ultra.

SOAP is dead to Blackboard, they currently present performance issues in large scale applications and often suffer from ‘session sickness’. SOAP is not compatible with Ultra and at some time later this year will start to be decommissioned.

REST is now and the future…
REST is the integration model for all BB products from now on, applications run externally to LEARN. The application may be developed in any language supporting HTTPS (PHP, NodeJS, Java, JavaScript), using the same system resources as HTTPS requests via the browser and it is compatible across all Learn platforms.

LTI plus REST enables access to data not supported by LTI, it enables a deeper integration without the need for supporting SSO in your application and is compatible across all Learn platforms and user experiences.

How to Work Best with Blackboard Support

Presented by Andy Hulme.

Andy informed the group what the best steps to take are, when dealing with a Blackboard issue. He provides an example and takes us through each step that is necessary to resolve the issue quickly.

Logging Support Tickets

Example 1. We have an error in assignments. Please access and fix

Do not just provide user admin and password.

Timeline the problem and provide threaddumps while the problem is occurring if possible.

Take SQL Performance reports

Install new relic

Try and replicate the erorr so we can instruct BB support

Clear and easy to follow steps with a screen capture where possible

include the setup as well as the action that causes an error or question
include the full stack trace from the error
check the bb-servies.log or stdout-log file
check the app server you are using with /webapps/portal/healthCheck

Functioning as Designed

If support says a function is (Function as Design) FAD and you disagree.

Re-open the case

Escalate via the support channels

Help us understand this more so we can push for this is to be redesigned

Got the ideas exchange and post your view. Tag Andy within the ticket, or email him directly.

Collaborate API

Grade Traffic Controller is a middleware tool that sits between the Student Record System and Blackboard Learn.

Efficiency Gains

Improve Quality

Academic Staff

Reduced admin workload

Better Reporting

Powerful workflow

Duplication of effort

Marks handled securely

Improve Quality

Time Saving

Reduced error rate

Clarity of marking

Secure transfer of grades

Work Backed up

Developer Roadmap

To end the DevCon 2018, Mark O’Neil (Senior Product Manager) highlights the API and future enhancements. As we start to create more self- service applications at Imperial College London, it has an interesting end to the conference.

2018 (by the end of the year)

2019

Content Download

User Calendar

Memberships with optional User Data

Course Copy with Ignore Membership option

Course Calendar

Observer Management

Original Assignments and Attempts

Discussions

Rubrics

Search Object Modified

Grade Weight Formulas

Batch Requests

Course announcements

Hierarchy/Activity Stream/Notifications/Logs

Institution Calendar

Localization and accessibility data

SaaS

Much of the conference was understandably dedicated to SaaS, with a lot of Blackboard customers considering moving over to the SaaS service in the future. SaaS offers Blackboard Learn delivered via the cloud, with the option to enable the new features that Blackboard Ultra boasts, as well as many improvements to maintenance, updates and service.

With SaaS, Ultra can be used for either navigation (with courses staying as they are in BB Learn) or changing completely and using Ultra for both navigation and courses. The Activity Stream is a major selling point and does indeed look impressive:

The system hasn’t been without its teething problems however, with the functionality of the building blocks quoted as being “not quite there yet”. We shall watch this space.

Gamification

Malcolm Murray from Durham University gave an excellent and insightful presentation on using Gamification in Blackboard.

He presented many innovative ideas that he had incorporated into his courses, including:

Padlocks – Used to tease users to progress through the course and “un-lock” content
Progress bars – Users can gauge how far they are into the course and how long completion will take
Scoreboard – Display grades and attainments in the course visibly so that users can reflect on their achievements

The presentation went on to highlight the benefits of individual targeting, which helps with retention. Techniques included mentioning them by name and awarding badges. These helped to show a clear representation of how the user is progressing in the course.

More information can be found here: Tinyurl.com/bbtlcgamification

How do students use BB

Imperial’s very own star Learning Technologist, Katie Stripe, gave an excellent presentation about measuring engagement with students at the National Heart and Lung Institute.

The key topics she discussed included:

How the different approaches to building content have an impact on student outcome and that these are varied as people learn in different ways.
That students know what they want in terms of course design but they do not know what is good for them. Students will take the path of least resistance.
Course creators should explain their decisions around why the course is structured in a specific way, to the student taking the course. The use of signposting and transparency is important.

And finally:

That students are entitled to the best content! Raising the concept that “If you put garbage in – you get garbage out!”

Best Pub Award

Of the pubs visited, the most highly recommend is the City Arms with The Briton’s Protection coming a close second. Both are lively pubs with well-kept beer. The City Arms served an excellent pint of mild, which turned out to be the perfect aperitif to pie, chips and gravy.

In The Briton’s Protection, Lee met a man whose aim was to visit every Weatherspoons pub in existence. He was fairly drunk and quite close to completion of his epic task.

Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference 2018

John Ramsay

19 February 2018

In January I attended the Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference. This was the 18^th running of the event by Durham University and the first I have attended. Each conference has a unique theme and this years was based on the classic Spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and The Ugly. The two day conference featured a number of talks, demos and presentations highlighting what is good bad and ugly with Blackboard.

Before I cover some of the sessions, I have to say it was an exceptionally well run conference. The team at Durham have put a great deal of work into not only the event, but the social aspect following the conference. A highlight was a private tour followed by dinner in the rather glorious surroundings of Durham Castle.

Alternative to Turnitin?

Moving onto the programme, the Durham team managed to arrange a number of interesting and varied Blackboard sessions over the course of the two days. One of the first sessions I attended was by URKUND, one of the conference sponsors. URKUND, which has a large presence in Europe, offer a plagiarism detection service that compares submitted documents against around 11 million student papers, journals, periodicals and books all over the web. Click on the video below for an overview of URKUND:

URKUND have been working with Blackboard to create a building block that uses Blackboard’s Mashup tool so that assignments are sent directly to URKUND for checking. From the demo, it looks like there are a few key differences from Turnitin. Firstly, URKUND doesn’t have the option to remove bibliography from similarity report which is something you can easily do in Turnitin. It also creates two columns per assignment in the grade centre. One column for the assignment and one for the similarity report. Are there advantages of using URKURD over Turnitin? Well, it is difficult to say at the moment. For long term users of Turnitin, would they allow you to take your institution repository and place it in a rival system or would you have to start again from scratch? Another consideration is the user experience and whether it offers the same functionality as Turnitin. At the moment that remains to be seen.

Self-directed Blackboard Course

As a Blackboard training provider, it is always interesting to see what services other institutions are offering. Candace Nolan-Grant from Durham University gave an interesting presentation on a self-directed Blackboard course that introduced new staff to their Blackboard platform (duo). The course, available to all new staff and anyone on request, was designed for those unable to attend face to face training or preferred online learning.

The course aim was to help staff with the basics of Blackboard to ensure they meet university minimum standards and crucially, understand Blackboard from a student and staff perspective. The initial idea was to create a sandbox for all staff. However, Candace commented that this ‘clogged’ up the system so they limited to new staff. Durham produced some stats after rolling out this introduction course. They had 79 unique visitors. 62 visited more than the first page. However, they only had 18 return visitors, possibly due to the staff completing the course after one visit. Interestingly they had zero posts in the blog they created highlighting a challenge most institutions have getting staff and students to engage with interactive tools. Overall, it is a good first attempt at developing self-directed training.

Upgrading to the latest release of Blackboard Learn

There was an interesting presentation by Jonathan Knight from the University of Keele discussing how they have radically changed their process for dealing with upgrades to the latest versions of Blackboard Learn. Historically Keele, like most institutions, are a version or two behind the current Blackboard release, preferring to wait for others to test new releases and explore features before making them available to staff. Jonathan used the analogy of the canary down a mine to demonstrate this point.

Over the last few years they have changed that policy and now prefer to run the latest release with all the features turned on. Jonathan argued that introduction of SAAS Ultra and updates every two to four weeks makes Blackboard the ‘canaries’ finding all the bugs and doing all the testing in their latest version. For Jonathan, he found that with Blackboard backfilling bug fixes into a version a year old can sometimes lead to side effects and in turn impact functionality in the older version of Learn. Jonathan also suggested that not having to spend time doing rigorous testing has freed up their teams time to focus on new developments. Personally, I feel it a bit of a brave move going to the latest release as you never know what might work or more importantly not work. Interestingly when questioned on change management procedures, Jonathan mentioned it is not something they deal with. Jokingly (or rather ominously), Jonathan ended his presentation saying if he is not around at next year’s conference then you know that this method has not worked. Maybe best not to rush to the latest version yet.

Moving to Managed Hosting – A review

One of the final presentations of the conference was by Chris Boon from City College Norwich on their move to a managed hosted solution. There were a couple of key drivers for Chris. Firstly, the increased number of services that have moved to the cloud meant it was a good time to review the hosting option. Secondly, it would hopefully resolve what he described as ‘Thursday slowdown’ problem where the system would be temperamental for no obvious reason. Chris spoke about the on boarding process which you can see in the image below before moving onto disadvantages and advantages.

The main issue they have had was losing access to the database. Previously they were able to fix things via database queries or run simple reports on database. However, on the flipside they no longer have same the performance issues they had before. Furthermore, upgrades have become significantly easier and less labour intensive. This has also had the knock on effect of freeing up more time for other developments. It was a somewhat positive end to the conference knowing that the move to managed hosted can bring a number of potential benefits.

Turnitin User Summit Review – 6/10/16

John Ramsay

12 October 2016

On Thursday 6^th October, I attended the Turnitin User Summit in Newcastle. The one day event consisted of short presentations from Turnitin representatives, guest speakers from UK HE institutions, a group workshop and a ‘knowledge bar’ which provided an opportunity to speak to a variety of people working at Turnitin. Before I discuss the event, here are some pictures from my time in Newcastle.

Newcastle, for those who have not been, is a Northern city (closer to Edinburgh than London) dominated by a number of bridges over the Tyne, a plethora of bars and clubs, an average football club and two very central universities (Newcastle and Northumbria). Incidentally, my trip coincided with freshers’ week so I spent most of Wednesday evening dodging drunk students dressed as gladiators, knights and Harry Potter.

Hello from the CEO

The user summit took place in the rather nice surroundings of the Crowne Plaza in Newcastle. After the customary coffee, pastries and meet and greet, the event kicked off with a video from the CEO Chris Caren, who discussed recent successes and outlined his vision for Turnitin. Future aims include increasing the number of submissions to one billion (currently at 636 million), tripling the number of unique users to reach 100 million learners and improve the ‘journey’ for students submitting drafts. For instance, students submitting formative drafts with have full online feedback and not just an originality report. Turnitin are also working on a ‘ghost writing’ build to recognise if someone else is writing your essay.

Recent successes for Turnitin include doubling the customer support staff and introducing the ‘wizard’ support feature. Moreover, the introduction of the wizard has seen a vast reduction in support queries (specifically related to forgetten passwords). With the increase in support staff, Turnitin hope to have an SLA of 24 hours by next year. However, with the goal of having 100 million learners and a billion submissions, I am little sceptical if they can realistically achieve this target. In terms of hosting, another success has been the move to Amazon Web Service (AWS). According to Caren, the move has helped improve up-time and greatly improved security and flexibility. Finally, the welcome ended with a note on how important the UK market is for Turnitin. He used the example of multiple markers being a huge requirement in UK and so far they have failed to deliver on this. The company hope to tailor the product more to the needs of regions once they role out Feedback Studio next year.

Customer-Centric Vision

Following the CEO was a presentation by Claudia Dowell from Turnitin on the ‘customer-centric vision’ of the company. After looking back at the successes over an 18 year period and comparsions against rivals (see image below), Claudia noted that communication between Turnitin and users is not great and needs to be improved. One of the methods suggested to improve communication is to build a user community. I suggested to the VP of Turnitin that they should look at Behind the Blackboard as a template for how it could be set out. It seems that there was a big demand from those who attended the summit for the development of a community.

Technology Keynote

Ron Park, CTO of Turnitin, began his presentation by noting that the company had over promised and under delivered in the past. He argued the key for the future success of Turnitin is to improve speed, power, flexibility, accessibility and security. To help reach these five goals, the company have made many improvements, including investing in a new $5 million Data Centre. Ron used the analogy of an iceberg to demonstrate some of the other big changes happening within the company (see image below).

Iceberg ahead! - Recent changes at Turnitin — Iceberg ahead! – Recent changes at Turnitin

Feedback Studio

One of the main reasons for attending this summit was the opportunity to view Feedback Studio in action. Mark Rickson, one of the chief designers of Feedback Studio, was on hand to demo the system and run through some of the main features.

One of the new features has been the development of a web crawler called ‘Walker’ (Turnitin trying to be funny with the name…). A web crawler is what Turnitin use to scan and index new and existing content from the web in the Turnitin database. The problem with the previous crawler was it did not go deep into web content and struggled with java script content. Furthermore, it previously could not crawl SSL secured pages. Walker on the other hand can crawl SSL pages and is also significantly quicker. For example, previously it would take 17 days to crawl through the whole of Wikipedia. The same process can now take place in 5 hours.

The main goal for the designers of Feedback Studio has been to make it easier to use (for both staff and students) than previous versions of Turnitin. In particular, they have put a lot of effort into re-jigging the interface when providing student feedback. In Turnitin Classic, you have different feedback options in every corner of the page. Feedback Studio on the other hand consolidates all the options into one tool bar at the side of the page. You can view this and other changes in the demo video below;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIKjBzJIe2g

Edinburgh University gave a short presentation discussing their findings on using Feedback Studio. Edinburgh have been involved in the beta testing and have been using the system for the last four months. To date, there have been 5952 submissions using Feedback Studio. User consultation has proved positive and despite having the option to revert back to Turnitin Classic, Edinburgh have found that users are sticking with Feedback Studio. In addition, 85/90% of their users use Feedback Studio with the Blackboard Learn integration. Rather positively, they haven’t reported any issues with this.

Nevertheless, despite the positivity surrounding Feedback Studio, Turnitin still have not addressed some key requirements that users would like to see in the new system. There still appears to be no delegated grading or option for double and blind marking. This seemed to be a concern for most users at the summit. On a positive note, they have recognised this is an important issue and are in the process of developing a solution to support multiple and blind marking. Turnitin are currently looking for beta testers for this. Information on this can be found here – https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Feedback_Studio_Success_Kit/Multiple_Markers_(Beta). Realistically, it will probably be a couple of years before these features are included in Feedback Studio.

Feedback Studio – Launch Timeline

In August 2017, Feedback studio will become the default service, as Turnitin classic is fully deprecated. To help users with the transition to Feedback Studio, Turnitin have created a Success Kit (https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Feedback_Studio_Success_Kit) which contains resources needed to get started with the new system. This includes a section on how to trial Feedback Studio with a subset of users and email templates to send to staff.

All in all, it was a useful conference to attend. Turnitin seem keen to keep their UK customers happy and they hope the introduction of the Feedback Studio and a potential user community will help them achieve this. However, it was also somewhat dissappointing that they have not addressed the issue of delegated, multiple or blind marking. There is clearly is a huge demand for these features so hopefully they will appear at some point in Feedback Studio. If they don’t, I’m sure any new community of users will have a lot to say on the matter.

Incorporating Virtual Reality (VR) into Online Courses

John Ramsay

15 July 2016

This is a short blog post on the potential of using virtual reality (VR) content in e-learning courses. I recently attended the Learning Technologies Summer Forum at Olympia in London. This was the second Learning Technologies event that I have attended this year, following the conference & exhibition that took place in January. Although I found the event slightly disappointing due to the lack of seminars, one area that stood out was the growing number of exhibitors demonstrating e-learning content through virtual reality headsets. Furthermore, the exhibitors from Kallidus managed to win over the crowd by giving away free Google Cardboard before their seminar entitled ‘Getting started with VR: myths, realities and practicalities’ which you can download from this page.

The key characteristic of VR is that the user can view 3D images that create a simulated environment. This immersive experience can allow a user to interact in a 3D world. The availability and quality of VR content has improved rapidly over the last couple of years and this is due in part to the mass (and cheap) production of Google Cardboard (https://vr.google.com/cardboard/) and a growing number of apps that it supports. By using Cardboard and a smartphone, you can now enter an immersive world that was previously only accessible via clunky and expensive headsets. So, how can VR be used effectively in online courses? During his presentation, Tim Drewitt from Kallidus suggested the following benefits;

Simulate dangerous or risky situations within a safe controlled environment
Offer accurate and realistic simulations to solve real-world problems
Offer exploration of virtual scenarios as experience for real world scenarios
See the world through someone else’s eyes
Use visualisation to simplify complex concepts and theories
Reduce the cognitive load and improve retention and recall
Allow learning objectives to be measured through observation
Cater for large numbers of learners in different locations
Demonstrate learning innovation and a “wow” factor

In terms of applying VR to courses, you could find it really beneficial if creating content related to the following areas.

Dangerous Environment

VR could revolutionise online safety courses, particularly fire training. It is not advisable or practical to create a real fire for training purposes (obviously). Using a VR fire simulation would provide a visual imprint that you can’t really get from face to face training or from a picture embedded into an e-learning module. Furthermore, if you take a risk in the VR simulation, you will probably have a greater recognition of the consequences of your action than you would get from taking a fire safety quiz. G4S have created the following trailer for their Health & Safety training VR to give you an idea of what it could potentially look like.

Sense of Presence

VR could also be great tool for practising public speaking. For example, you could create an interview simulation for an online recruitment course. Alternatively, you could create a VR lecture theatre allowing the user to experience public speaking without the fear of having to do so in a real-life situation. Click on the example created by VRARlab below to get an idea of how this could look.

Induction/Tour

Users could potentially access a VR simulation that gives them access to a tour or induction. This could be particularly beneficial to new starters (staff and students) to help them get a sense of their environment before they arrive. In addition, it could also potentially benefit overseas students who may find it difficult to attend open days for logistical reasons. Kallidus have produced the following example of a VR tour of Cannon Street station.

https://youtu.be/q6XNsXXW_xQ

Nonetheless, despite the potential benefits of using VR in online courses, there are a number of challenges that need to be considered. Although you can purchase Google Cardboard for around £10, it could be costly (in terms of both money and time) creating a VR simulation. A great deal of work would need to go into the planning stage and storyboards would need to be used. The Kallidus presentation also highlighted other potential barriers;

Lack of knowledge of how to use VR
Lack of cultural appetite, or scepticism from leaders
Lack of suppliers/designers working in this area
Possibility of motion sickness/disorientation for viewer
How do you measure effectiveness

Overall, it is still too early to say if using VR in online courses is the next big thing or a ‘flash in the pan’. There are many potential benefits for adopting and embracing VR, particularly if you are trying to replicate a dangerous environment or situation. However, creating a VR simulation for an online course could be costly and time consuming. It will be interesting to see how VR continues to develop over the next couple of years.

Blackboard Learning & Teaching Conference 2016 Review

John Ramsay

21 April 2016

Groningen in the Netherlands recently hosted the 2016 Blackboard EMEA conference. The three day conference was the biggest that Blackboard have held in Europe and featured over 420 delegates from 19 different countries. Before discussing the conference, I must say that Groningen was a great location to hold the event. It is a small picturesque town dominated by University of Groningen and surrounded by canals and ‘car free’ streets full of cyclists. Furthermore, the town also hosted the fantastic ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition and Blackboard delegates were given free access to this after hours.

Groningen at night — Nosferatu making an appearance in Groningen

Bowie exhibition — Starman outfit from the ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition

University of Groningen – one or two bikes in the foreground.

I’ll now focus on some of the key events from the conference.

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Roadmap

So what do Blackboard have in store for the year ahead and beyond? Would we finally be getting a glimpse of Ultra? Unfortunately no. There was actually very little talk of Ultra at the conference. The roadmap, which you can view below, focused entirely on Learn 9.1 and mobile app developments.

Firstly, in development and coming in summer 2016, is a brand new modern theme for Learn 9.1. This new theme is apparently inspired by the Ultra experience. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see this though. Also in development is a more responsive optimization for 9.1. This is inspired by the Blackboard student app and should lead to improved navigation on different devices. From a technical viewpoint, Blackboard have made a few infrastructure improvements in the Q2 2016 release. These changes include moving from Java 7 to Java 8 JDK and updating SQL 2012 to SQL 2014.

In the design stage, the team are working on improvements to the delegated and anonymous marking feature in 9.1. One of the problems Blackboard have recognised is that if a tutor has to re-upload an anonymous assignment for a student (if they have permission to do so) then how do you find the original upload if the name is anonymised? Blackboard have built in a pull-down menu of names so you can find the student and add the assignment that way. In addition, they have also created reminders that will be emailed to anyone who has not submitted an assignment.

One feature that is available now and that Blackboard were particularly proud to display, is the enhanced cloud profile feature (see image below). This profile supports student from undergraduate studies to employment and documents grades, work experience and achievements. The aim of his feature is to improve employability of graduates. Roughly 2 million students from 1000 institutions are using this feature. Students can determine the openness of their profile and they can also link it to their CVs or LinkedIn sites.

Enhanced cloud profile

Other developments include improvements to the Blackboard Student app. This includes making the app more responsive when ‘stacking’ content. In other words, if you make the page smaller or larger the content should move correctly to the centre of the screen and not stack to the side as it has done occasionally in the past. Tests and assignments have also been restructured for mobile devices so that they render correctly. Unfortunately, Blackboard have not made any improvements to the look and feel of discussion boards, blogs or wikis in the app. It is now available in more than 100 countries, in 26 supported languages and available on iOS, Android and Windows phones and tablets. In addition to the student app, Blackboard are also in the process of developing an instructor app. The aim is to release this on iOS and Android later this year. Unfortunately for Windows device users, there is no roadmap at the moment.

So that covers the plans for the upcoming year. I will add the full roadmap presentation to this blog once it has been released by Blackboard.

Blackboard Learn Search Engine

One feature that many users feel Blackboard is lacking is an adequate search engine. In this day and age when we can easily search the internet, smartphones, computers for relevant information so why is it difficult for users to do so in Blackboard? The University of Leuven’s solution to this problem was to build their own search engine using the open sourced Elasticsearch.

Is this something that Imperial could potentially introduce/create? Well firstly, this was a huge project involving a large number of people (system admins, Java developers and project managers) that took roughly 500 ‘man’ days to create. This is a lot of time and resources to dedicate to a function that you can ultimately live without. Other questions relate to how good the search engine actually is. For example, it doesn’t recognise adaptive release and you cannot search for anything that is set to ‘hidden’. Furthermore, search relevance does not work and results appear in Elasticsearch order. Finally, only content items are searchable so if you are looking for announcements, blogs, discussion posts etc it will not recognise them. Since this presentation, it transpires that University of Brighton have created their own search engine with a limited budget. Anne Cross from Blackboard was hoping to get them to demo this at the next Blackboard User Group meeting in April 2016.

Building Institutional Readiness for Learning Analytics

Another interesting session focused on analytics and in particular, encouraging institutions to go from a general view that learner data ‘might’ be important, to understand how data can be used to address particular issues. For example, if a student is on course for a C grade, what is the background to why this has happened? The presenters of this session argue that Blackboard is not, in its current form, adequate for producing analytics. JISC are working with Blackboard to produce a new learning analytics platform (Jisc Learning Analytics Discovery Service) that they hope will ultimately ‘improve the learner journey’. One of the key features of this is to produce a variety of reports. For example, one report can show students how they are doing in comparison with the rest of their course. This might lead to a sense of competition between students and improve motivation. Another report can improve technology adoption. For example, you can look at each department at an institution and work out what features in Blackboard that they are utilising. This could potentially influence professional development with more focus being placed on tools not being used. These are just two examples of reports you can create using learning analytics. The main thoughts coming from this session include, what kind of stats/information do staff want? How many different types of reports can you produce that will satisfy all departments? Finally, will Ultra (when it arrives) have improved learning analytics built in?

You can read more about the JISC learning analytics project here.

How do you Encourage Active Learning?

The closing keynote speech by Professor Neil Morris from Leeds University was an interesting look into Leeds efforts in adopting technology to enhance learning. It was a good opportunity to compare Leeds with Imperial in this area. Leeds developed their digital strategy partly based on the need to modernise, meeting student expectations and recognising the Teacher Excellence Framework.

Digital strategy — Leeds Digital Strategy

One of the first changes was to introduce lecture capture using Panopto. Leeds now have 250 Panopto enabled classrooms and have had roughly 2 million views since introducing lecture capture. 25,000 out of 30,000 students have logged in and accessed recordings and 73% of lectures have been recorded. Leeds also offers an opt out policy for any staff who do not want their recordings made available. The increased use of Panopto at Leeds has had an impact on academics adopting a flipped classroom approach to teaching and learning. For example, staff are now editing their lecture recordings into short manageable videos.

In addition to lecture capture, Leeds are radially transforming all their lecture spaces. The aim is to remove all blackboards and whiteboards from rooms and replace them with IWBs, visualisers and projectors. Below is an image of how they plan to make rooms more interactive. Each desk will have a built in tablet and microphone for asking questions.

Although the plans look and sound great, I could imagine that there would be a lot of complexities and challenges, particularly maintaining and updating the AV in these rooms.

In addition to transforming the physical classroom, Leeds have been developing the virtual classroom using Blackboard Collaborate. The feedback they have received is that students, particularly those who are not as confident speaking in a physical classroom environment, are more involved in online discussions and are more engaged. Leeds have also been keen to harness mobile technologies and have developed an app. The app allows attendance monitoring, polling which can be used during lectures/seminars and module evaluation.

So what does the future for Leeds hold? They are continuing to work on MOOCs and developing new credit bearing online courses. The idea is that the user builds up credits at their own pace until they have enough for a qualification. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

So that is a brief snapshot of the 2016 Blackboard conference. I will add the relevant slides and videos from the conference once they have been released.

Learning Technologies 2016: Authoring Tools Review 4/2/16

John Ramsay

24 February 2016

Digital Education

by John Ramsay

On Thursday 4^th February, I attended the Learning Technologies event at Olympia in London. Learning Technologies is a showcase for organisations to demonstrate the latest advances in workplace learning and learning technology. With over 140 free seminars over two days, I decided to focus my attention on the latest e-learning authoring tools to see if they offered a viable alternative to established products such as Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline.

The three main seminars that I attended were;

WMB: E-Learning is Dead!
eLB: Become an E-Learning Rockstar
Appitierre Ltd: Enabling Everyone to Create Multi-device E-Learning Content

You can find a short summary of each presentations below.

E-Learning is Dead! WMB Presentation

This was a bit of a misleading presentation title from the company e-Learning WMB. Nevertheless, this somewhat pessimistic title certainly helped to draw a large audience to the seminar. What the company were suggesting, is that the world of e-learning is moving away from paradigms of old and much of the lexicon used today should be revised. In other words, technology has moved on since the term e-learning was first defined/used and therefore this term should be re-evaluated.

WMB presentation at Learning Technologies 2016

So what does the company e-Learning WMB offer? The company have created a cloud based authoring tools solution (Jackdaw Cloud), bespoke ‘off the shelf’ e-learning courses and an open source Learning Management System (Open Elms). On first impressions, the Jackdaw Cloud authoring system looks like it can create some nice looking interactive content. You can click on the links below to view some examples of courses built with Jackdaw;

The Jackdaw Cloud tool has a few advantages over other competitors, such as there are no software downloads or licence restrictions. Therefore, anyone in an organisation (who has the correct permissions) can create courses or edit existing ones. With licences for software such as Articulate restricted to one licence per user, this more open approach to creating content could result in more collaborative work. However, a potential negative of this approach is that if a whole department can edit content then you might get a ‘mishmash’ of ideas and content produced. Furthermore, how would you stop somebody editing or updating your content without the original creators permission? This was not clear in the presentation.

Jackdaw Cloud uses Adobe Flash to create content. WMB emphasised that this can be exported to HTML5 at any time, which is crucial due to the massive usage of mobile devices that do not use flash. Content can supposedly be exported easily to a flash file SWF, HTML5 or iPhone or android app. Overall, WMB gave a good pitch for their products and the Jackdaw Cloud tool created content that looked striking and engaging. However, I do believe that this tool would probably be more suited to a developer creating ‘CPD’ type training courses.

Become an E-Learning Rockstar: E-Learning that is Engaging, Inspiring and Interactive

This was a presentation by the American company eLearning Brothers (eLB) who specialise in producing eLearning templates and designing custom e-Learning courses. The company have produced around 20,000 e-Learning templates and assets (terminology for games, quizzes, interactions, cut out people, stock images etc) that can be opened and edited using a number of authoring tools software including Articulate Storyline, Captivate and Lectora. The company believe that their templates can help you create professional looking content quickly whilst at the same time, increase software developing skills.

eLB presentation at Learning Technologies. Pictured are some the products that eLB’s templates are compatible with.

Similar to the ‘E-learning is Dead’ presentation, eLB emphasised that an advantage of their product is that it can elevate an entire team to create excellent content. In other words, the templates are so easy use that you no longer need to rely on one ‘expert’ in a team to create good looking content. You can view some of the more popular templates via the link below.

http://elearningbrothers.com/25-popular-elearning-templates-2015/

Although I liked the look of the templates that were demonstrated, I have to question if it is worth the cost. A one year full ‘master’ membership (per designer) costs $1399. Therefore, If you are using Articulate Storyline, is it worth the additional cost to pay for the eLB templates when you already have a number of these that come free when you purchase Articulate Storyline? Furthermore, websites such as E-learning Heroes https://community.articulate.com/downloads provide a number of downloadable templates that are also free to use.

Enabling Everyone to Create Multi-device eLearning Content

The final presentation (and the first that I was able to get a seat for) focused on the Evolve authoring tool created by Appitierre Ltd. The company have tried to create a low cost, easy to use authoring tool that outputs HTML5 and works effectively on desktops, tablets and mobiles. Click here for some further information about the Evolve product.

Appitierre use what they call ‘interactions’ when creating course content. For instance, Presentation Interactions would cover interactive video content, sliders and flip cards in a course. Question interactions cover a range of different question types, including drag and drop and multiple choice. Some of the key features include being able to easily update the look and feel of your courses. The ‘Theme Editor’ function seems straight forward to use and you are able to tailor all the ‘interactions’ in your courses. They have also made branding content straightforward for users that need to use specific logos and colours in their courses.

Another key feature Appitierre were keen to demonstrate was the use of gamification features in Evolve. Gamification is the concept of applying gaming techniques to a task and the company feel that this can encourage learners to fully interact and engage with e-learning content. By adding ‘achievements’, learners can gain points, collect stars, earn badges and lose lives. They believe this function will encourage competition for each learner. Although it is an interesting development, I believe that there are a number of potential problems with introducing gamification to e-learning courses. For example, if it is a poorly designed course then it could potentially lead to disengagement and confusion for the user. It also has the potential to distract the user from learning objectives.

Although Evolve has some nice features, I felt that the content did not look as striking as what WMB and eLB had produced. However, it did seem more competitively priced than the other products (£25 a month per user or £99 a month for a team of 5 users).

In conclusion, there seemed to be a running theme with all the authoring tool presentations. Each presentation emphasised that you do not need to be an e-learning developer wiz to use their products effectively. They also encouraged the need for sharing the usage of these authoring tools within a team instead of them being the sole responsibility of a single user. It is argued that this can potentially elevate an entire team and offer the opportunity for larger groups to learn new skills. Nevertheless, despite the pitches from the three companies, I still feel there are better authoring tool alternatives available such as Adobe Captivate 9 and Articulate Storyline. These are the two that would be top of my list when creating new e-learning content.

Panopto Conference 2015: The future of video for learning – 21/10/15

Jonathan Blatchford

28 October 2015

Digital Education

Amidst a slew of Back to the Future quotes, images and analogies the Panopto 2015 conference looked to focus on “The future of video for learning”

If it did manage to pass you by 21^st October 2015 was the day Marty and the Doc travelled to in Back to the Future II… See Wikipedia for more details if you are interested!

(Photo: Universal Pictures)

The conference this year was held at the America Square Conference Centre, an interesting feature of the conference centre is that it is built over part of the original London Wall (one of the largest construction projects carried out in Roman Britain) and this has been exposed and displayed in the refreshment area.

(Photo https://twitter.com/adamrgb/status/656821987977928704)

The morning started with an introduction from Panopto’s Head of Marketing Rebecca Avery. Welcoming the new and prospective customers, last year customers from 60 EMEA institutions attended, this year there were attendees from over 90 institutions. The hashtag #panopto15 was requested to be included in all tweets about the day.

The first talk of the day came from Panopto Global’s Managing Director Tom Davy. His theme was Education then and now – and what’s to come.

Tom focused on current trends for a return to physical objects where a digital emergence had threatened to replace that object. The primary example was a return to buying physical books rather than e-readers and the popularity of book reviews by vloggers. (PS if you are going to name check a youtube vlogger, please check how they pronounce their handle, there will be fewer confused people in the audience!)

While trends amongst our incoming digital natives are quite often the hot topic of conversation I found myself questioning the quality and appropriateness of the examples given in this talk. While book sales may be up on past years and e-reader sales are down on previous years, is that really a sign of a return to using physical books, or have e-readers reached market saturation? The same report this information came from (by Waterstones) also suggests sales of physical books are higher due to a higher sales revenue, not really a fair comparison given many eBooks sell for significantly less than their physical counterparts.

While I agree that we are seeing a renaissance of quality physical items I would happily put the topic up for further debate as to the cause and effect of the digital/physical divide.

Tom’s talk was followed by the Keynote given by Graham Brown-Martin. (Author of “Learning {Re} imagined”) While largely a plug for his book Graham did cover a similar theme to Tom of “has the death of physical been exaggerated” (although I would like to have countered most of the arguments made with “is technology just not immersive enough yet”) also some interesting challenges faced by the Higher Education sector today. With video interviews with some forward thinking voices from within the educational community, Graham poised the question of what universities now offer when MOOC’s and Open Learning Materials give a similar education away for free. How can universities adapt to stay valid in that kind of environment? What will set a university education apart from other types of education on offer when having a degree is no longer a guarantee of a job?

(Photo www.grahambrownmartin.com)

The fourth talk of the morning came from Simon Eder from Voxburner. Panopto had commissioned Voxburner to survey students on their views on learning, technology and video… Unsurprisingly while the results were still fresh off the presses and compilation had not yet finished, the initial results showed that students love lecture capture.

This was followed by the first of the panel sessions; students. Panopto have gathered a student panel in previous years and it has often yielded unsurprising revelations of how much students appreciate being able to revise and play back lectures in their own time and at their own pace to really help re-enforce the learning. Interesting threads that did appear through this year’s panel was that there was an increase in using video submission as a means of assessment, an appreciation of flipped or “bite sized” videos from tutors that they could use for revision and video guidance from tutors for getting started on assignments etc.

After a short break we returned to the Staff panel. The staff panel covered common concerns of academics being recorded, fears of student’s not attending lectures and “Box Set” watching the series of lectures at the end of the course. Interestingly that particular point had been covered in the student panel and the students felt that they did get more from physically attending the lecture and having that engagement with the lecturer. Lecture capture being used for mainly for revision or as a much appreciated catch up if something had prevented them from attending the lecture.

Eric Burns (Panopto CEO) completed the morning talks with an annual rendition of Moore’s law and how the falling cost of technology was making lecture capture almost free…. Billing Panopto’s vision of the future to be aiding institutions in making a “living library of institutional content” akin to the great libraries of centuries past. He highlighted that lecture capture is moving from the stage of “delight” of students getting a new technology to an “expected” mainstream part of their HE education. He also hinted at a number of potentially exciting developments to come, see the day’s twitter feed for some of the highlights.

After lunch parallel sessions were run for “service/technical focus” and “use case/teaching and learning focus” I attended the “service/technical focus” sessions.

The first afternoon session was “How has Panopto developed since the last conference? What’s coming next? Andy why should it matter to you?” This session was run by Neil Burdess and Eric Burns from Panopto.

Highlights of this session were:

From the past 12 months –

Panopto currently cloud host 400 customers in the US and 30 in the EU. There are currently 10 customers in the process of migrating either from self-hosting or US hosting to the EU cloud. The migration was being offered for free.

Folder and session date range restrictions

An option for video upload is being added to the Android client.. While you can record directly from IOS devices Android hardware is too varied to be accommodated by their app, so a post-native app recording can be uploaded through the Panopto client instead. (Panopto version 4.9.1)

Live streaming can be viewed through the Panopto app on IOS

Coming soon –

The ability to “quick copy” and create a “shortcut” to a recording in folders other than the one it was recorded to.

Live broadcasting from the Mac client

Ability to record multiple sources/screens with the Mac client

Nesting folders throughout the interface, web and recorder client, removing the current scroll of death from picking a folder to record to.

Addition of a “on air” style “LIVE” indicator in the viewer so students can see when they are watching a live broadcast.

The ability to instantly rewind a live stream in the viewer

The ability to edit in the viewer

Questions and Comments in the viewer will be combined in to a “Discuss” area.

Remove the need for Silverlight in the UI entirely including the editor.

The second afternoon session I attended was “Ask/Tell the experts”

Highlights were:

Customers can now request a 6 month product roadmap

New releases will come in time for the “Winter break” and the “Summer break”

The windows recorder will be updated in a future release to “tidy up” after itself and will not require the user to manually delete the recordings from their local disk.

Panopto will look in to if it’s possible to make uploading from IOS devices faster

Panopto will look in to making it easier to copy schedules from broken remote recorders to working ones.

A future update will make it possible to assign “ownership” of a remote recorder to individual users.

It was requested that streams to be recorded should be possible on a “per schedule” basis

Improved functionality for students to change the layout of the viewer will come in a future update.

In the final session of the day Ben Steeples from University of Essex gave a talk on “Using Panpto’s API for scaling lecture campus-wide and recording a specialist medical use case”

Ben gave a demo of a custom interface that he has written for the university that links Panopto with their time tabling system. Providing a time-table based UI to the students and scheduling captures to happen from the time table to Panopto remote recorders.

Ben also gave an overview of a custom interface for assessing medical students that interacted with Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras in a mock hospital environment so that their interactions with simulated patients could be recorded via Panopto with control of the cameras and then shared with tutors, the student and assessors.

Due to my location in the room I was unable to easily take any photos of these sessions. I noticed Panopto staff were recording the sessions so if that content gets made available I will update this post with additional information/links.

Update – 28/10/2015 – Blog post from Panopto http://panopto.com/reflections-on-the-panopto-annual-conference-2015-the-future-of-video-for-learning/

Sadly this conference didn’t require me to drive at 88 miles an hour, hook-up a cable to a clock tower in the middle of a storm or fly a DeLorean or a hoverboard. That being said the future of e-learning still looks exciting!

London Blackboard User Group Meeting Review – 31/07/15

John Ramsay

10 August 2015

Review by John Ramsay.

I recently attended the summer 2015 London BUG meeting at Regent’s University. The theme for the event was ‘Enhancing Blackboard with Plugins and Building Blocks’ and below are some of the key points that emerged from the meeting;

BbStudent app – coming soon
Blackboard Collaborate – Ultra Roadmap released
Turnitin: Next – new look for Turnitin
Bb roadshows in November 2015
2015 Bb World slides- now available

I will now look at some of the key points from BUG in more detail.

Blackboard World and Ultra Updates

Ashley Wright from Blackboard started his presentation by speaking briefly about the recent BbWorld conference from Washington DC. Some of the key sessions and highlights from the event are now available from this link – http://www.bbworldlive.com/all/. Included in the link is the latest Bb advertising campaign for their New Learning Experience which you can view below.

The next Bb World will be taking place in Las Vegas in July 2016. The next Bb roadshow will take place on the week commencing 16th November in either Dublin, Edinburgh, Amsterdam or Birmingham. The definitive location will hopefully be decided in the next few weeks.

Ashley went on to discuss some of the exciting updates coming soon to Blackboard. You can view some of the selected highlights from the Blackboard Learn Ultra Experience roadmap below.

Available Now	Planned: In Development	Planned: In Design
Announcements	Tests	New Tabs & Modules
Notifications	Learning Outcomes	Audio and Video
Course Content	Group Management	Enhanced Profiles
OneDrive Intergration	Rich Page Editing	SafeAssign Integration
Calender	Rubrics
Discussions	Integration Framework
Messages	Local and Language Selection
Assignments
Grades

One key feature that stood out in the presentation is that instructors can choose between creating new courses in either the original or Ultra Course Experience format. This could potentially lead to issues of confusion for staff and students if they are switching between potentially radically different course styles.

Other key areas the Bb team are currently working on include;

A new video tool that can be accessible in China.
Grade journey to help institutions manage an efficient exchange of grades between Bb Learn and student information systems (click here to access a webinar on this).
A student App that is currently in Beta (the Mobile roadmap and a screenshot for this app can be viewed below – click on the images to make them full size).

There is still no release date for the Bb Student app in the UK. Jon Kolko, who is the VP of Design at Blackboard, has written an interesting blog that highlights some of the key developments and features in the new app. Click on the link to view it – http://blog.blackboard.com/bb-student-a-mobile-app-for-learners-designed-from-the-ground-up/?lang=uki.

Ashley also gave an update on the new look Bb Collaborate. Although this is not currently used at Imperial, it might be worth looking into in the future. The whole product has been redesigned with the aim of making collaboration between students and instructors simpler. One of the key developments is that the tool uses webRTC technology, meaning there is no longer need to download plugins such as Java. Integration with Learn 9.1 and the Student App is still in Beta at the moment. Other planned developments include integrating mp4 recordings, introducing polls, breakout chatrooms and at some point in the future, uploading movie files. You can view a Bb Collaborate demonstration video below.

Overall, the changes to Blackboard do sound and look impressive. The tools look slick and the interface appears more modern than any previous versions of a Bb product. Not having to download plugins for these features will be a huge benefit (and relief) to users. The one area that I am slightly skeptical about is the option to create either new courses with the ‘Ultra’ look or the original look. This could cause confusion for users, especially if they have a mix of courses using both styles.

Turnitin Integrations with Blackboard

Gary Finnigan from Turnitin spoke at length about the ‘Turnitin: Next’ project. Once completed, ‘Turnitin: Next’ will enhance the user experience thought innovative new features and a simpler, clearer user interface. Although there is no definitive timeframe, they hope to have it rolled out in the next 12 to 24 months. This is a massive project for Turnitin and Gary kept reiterating that they wanted to ‘get it right’ before it is rolled out to the masses. The Bb plugin will replace both Basic and Direct (V1 and V2.5). Furthermore, all the features of ‘Turnitin: Next’ will be available through the plugin.

A ‘Turnitin: Next’ demo video was shown to the BUG group and the new layout did look slicker than previous versions. Unfortunately the video is not available online at the moment. A couple of (bad quality) photos of the student and staff grading platform can be viewed below (click on the images to make them full size).

Instructor view - Turnitin: Next — Instructor view – Turnitin: Next

Student view - Turnitin: Next — Student view – Turnitin: Next

Apart from a significantly different look and feel from previous versions of Turnitin, another key change is that ‘Turnitin: Next’ will no longer have the revision assignment option. This will be replaced with a new multi-part assignment feature. Another area that seems to have been slightly ignored is analytics. However, Gary did assure the audience this is an area Turnitin want to look into in the future. One key feature of the new system is its responsiveness to different devices. For example, it will recognise what device type you are logging into and adapt the screen to reflect that device. ‘Turnitin: Next’ will also be able to evaluate any submitted work including coding and music.

Using the ‘Tweaks’ Building Block

Out of the ‘show and tell’ presentations, the most interesting was the demonstration of the ‘Tweaks’ building block by Chris Boon from City College Norwich. In the simplest terms, Tweaks will allow you to alter the Bb course interface by adding your own templates and customising the course design. For example, you can add your own banners to a course, change icons to your own graphics, add quizzes and choose colour sets for different sections. You can view a full list of Tweaks features (including some demo videos) via this link – http://tweaks.github.io/Tweaks/description.html. Although I was impressed with the course customization using the ‘Tweaks’ building block, with the impending changes to Bb Ultra, it has to be questioned whether its main features will be redundant in the new version of Blackboard.

That concludes my blog from BUG. It will be interesting to see how all the Blackboard and Turnitin developments turn out over the next year. I hope to add links to all the presentations on this page soon.

Thanks for reading!