Winter Digital Learning Seminar Series
Following on from our Autumn Seminar Series, this Winter the Digital Learning team are running a series of seminars looking at the design and delivery of online sessions and materials. Based on feedback from the autumn, this time we will be running the sessions in both Zoom and Collaborate. We strongly recommend that you use the Chrome browser to access the sessions that are running in Collaborate.
There is an overview video for the series, and the sessions and their times are listed below – there is no need to book, just click the relevant link at the appropriate time to take part. Links to add the session to your Outlook calendar are also provided for convenience.
Designing effective Blackboard sites
Is your Blackboard site difficult to navigate? Do your students find it hard to locate the correct materials?
This session will give you tips and advice on laying out your materials to aid the user experience and ideas of how to add resources so that they are more interactive.
Supporting your students with LinkedIn Learning
This session will look at how LinkedIn Learning can be used to boost students’ employability with course related content, using learning pathways and the curator role.
Designing accessible learning content
This session will outline the importance of web accessibility, and demonstrate tools and provide top tips to help you increase the accessibility of your course content and Blackboard sites.
Delivering engaging webinars
This session will cover how to host engaging webinars using a variety of tools and techniques.
Designing and delivering effective and engaging screencasts
This session introduces the pedagogically designed screencast and draws together techniques that support the planning and design of an effective screencast for student engagement.
Designing online group activities
In this session we will look at ways to create and facilitate engaging group activities in an online environment.
Designing and creating digital portfolios
This session helps colleagues to understand the uses and benefits of portfolios. It is not designed for colleagues who already have a portfolio design and want help to start building it.
Designing and delivering Blackboard Tests
This session promotes the practical benefits of automated testing and feedback in Blackboard, along with best practice guidance for using different types of test questions available in Blackboard and tips on writing effective objective questions and feedback to test a range of cognitive skills.
Designing efficient and engaging online feedback
This session will focus on designing efficient and engaging feedback online, showcasing online tools that can be used to provide feedback during the marking process.
Setting up Portfolios and Workbooks in PebblePad
This session is comprised of two parts of 30 minutes each. In part 1 we will demonstrate how to create Portfolios using PebblePad and in part 2 we will demonstrate creating Workbooks in PebblePad. Colleagues who and unsure which they require should attend, or watch the recording of, the Designing and Creating Digital Portfolios session first.
17 March 11:00-11:55 (Zoom) – add to calendar
23 March 13:00-13:55 (Collaborate) – add to calendar
Digital Wellbeing
Using insights from STEER (student engagement, evaluation and research) and staff HIVE surveys this session will focus on how you can promote your own and your students’ wellbeing while teaching and learning online.
This session will give you the opportunity to:
- Reflect on current teaching practices through a lens of inclusivity
- Identify some practices that you can implement to support wellbeing
We will be using this quote in the session and you may want to familiarise yourself with it in advance (although this is not essential):
- …when you go in to a teaching session and you’re confronted with a screen of black rectangles because no one will come on camera and they won’t even have profile pictures on and despite the fact that you might have emailed them beforehand to say please enter the room and have your webcam switched on, it makes for a much more interactive and engaging experience for everyone in the room and myself, you just have a wall of black rectangles and you ask them why don’t you come on camera? They won’t. Then what you’re doing, you’re talking to just a black screen and it’s really, really a hard experience to get – it’s a struggle to get engaged. You can ask a question and it’s just silence and you find yourself having to pick on a name and say, so what do you think?
- Quote audio clip
25 March 14:00-14:55 (Zoom) – add to calendar
15 April 14:00-14:55 (Collaborate) – add to calendar (moved from 30 March due to Easter)
Moving away from the narrated PowerPoint
In this session we consider why a narrated PowerPoint is not always the most appropriate way to deliver online and discuss alternatives.
26 March 11:00-11:55 (Zoom) – add to calendar (Moved from 1 April due to closure day)
16 April 11:00-11:55 (Collaborate) – add to calendar (Moved from 7 April due to Easter)
Manage PebblePad with your students
This session will focus on managing PebblePad – running student inductions and pre-empting issues that cause stress at deadlines. It will not include the creation of portfolios and workbooks (this is covered in the Setting up Portfolios and Workbooks in PebblePad session).