Use of a Visualiser in Mathematics Support

One of the technologies that we are looking at to support students is the use of short videos. We are working with staff and students using flipcams to demonstrate laboratory and mathematical techniques.

IN the case of the mathematical techniques, we are using a visualiser to project the image onto a white board and focusing on the projection of the paper that the calculation is laid out on.

The calculation fills the screen and the lecturer explains the mathematical technique, carrying it out step by step. The lecturer's narration and explanation indicate the difficult parts of the calculation and guides the student through the technique. The videos will be made available on Studynet and students opinion on their usefulness in supporting the mathematics workshops will be sought. Their particular use will be demonstrating applied mathematical laboratory techniques when students which students traditionally have problems with.

Is a good example of how simple technology can support the appropriate pedagogy in delivering student centered learning. Furthermore we are able to gain the student view as to their usefulness through the discussion feature on Studynet.

JISC Experts Group

On Wednesday 17th March I presented a workshop on the ESCAPE Project at a meeting of the JISC experts group in Birmingham. The workshop gave an overview of the Appreciative Inquiry(AI) approach that we took with module teams. We then explored the emerging findings from two of the modules that we are working with. In particular we looked at how educational technologies (online submission, wikis, and online groups for example) provided a medium for achieving the pedagogical aims of the project (for example: a more consistent engagement with the curriculum, increased opportunities for students to engage with feedback and the facilitation of more personalised leaning opportunities). The day provided a good opportunity for getting feedback on the project and there were many questions on the use of AI.

It is indicative of the stage that we are at in the project that we are now starting to present the emerging results of the project on a national stage .This was always was part of our dissemination plan and its nice to be in a position to start to see all the hard work done by the module teams starting to bear fruit.

A Brand New Year

It's been quite a snowy start to the New Year here at the University of Hertfordshire with the University being effectively closed for two days. The snow has started to clear and things are now getting back to normal. Christmas seems to be a fast fading memory.

There are four modules that the ESCAPE team are working with, that finish in semester A - which is in two weeks time. We will be capturing the module team experiences through interviews and running the student online assessment survey again to capture the student view.

Conditioning and Exercise in Sport is a level 3 module due to start in semester B. We are working with them - looking to use students to produce a series of conditioning and exercise techniques as part of the formative assessment process. It will be interesting to see how the students get on .We will be issuing students with flipcams to record their sessions.

Curriculum Design Toolkit

Although I am the ESCAPE Project Director I only (officially) get to work on the project for 0.2 of my time The other 0.8 is dedicated to my role as the Deputy of the Blended Learning Unit (BLU). In the 0.8 capacity part of my remit is to lead a team of seconded staff in the area of Curriculum Design and Innovation (CDI)

Some of the CDI team are currently working on developing a Curriculum Design Toolkit. The toolkit has three components and is intend to help individuals, module teams and programme teams reflect on, and where appropriate re-engineer, their curricula. The primary components of the toolkit are

A Diagnostic tool – used to establish where the problems in the curricula might lay
A Features and Consequences map – used to show what the ‘features and consequences’ of the diagnosed curricula are likely to be.
A Suggestions for Improvement resource bank – used to provide staff with different forms of advice should they wish to tackle any diagnosed problems

Wednesday and Thursday of this week I drew the team together to review progress and accelerate the development. The team are only seconded the BLU on a fractional basis and so they too have many varied demands placed on them.

The two days was full of energy and enthusiasm for the development.
After I outlined the vision for the toolkit and fed back initial thoughts from users of a pilot Diagnostic tool day one was set aside for the team to show where they are at.

Marija Cubric outlined the Technology-to-Principles Matrix. Given that UH is wedded to the notion of Blended Learning there is a need for us to help staff make appropriate decisions about the use of the varied technologies available. For us it is never ‘the answer is a wiki, now what was the question?’

Following Marija’s presentation / discussion we spent the rest of the day exploring the progress of the various CD strands.

Currently the strands under development are ‘Curriculum Design Toolkits for…

* Core values (Here we use the Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education offered by Chickering and Gamson)

* Employability – this development is being led by Amanda (Mandi) Relph and Sarah Flynn

* Research Informed Teaching – this development is being led by Phil Porter

* Assessment for Learning – this development is being led by Maria Banks and Myself

Other strands to be developed include

* Internationalisation
* Entrepreneurship


The Diagnostic tool offers a set of research informed principles to the user. The Principles are different for each strand.

Each of the Principles are accessed separately by five questions. The Diagnostic tool rates the responses to the questions and shows, graphically, if there is good, or other, alignment with each of the Principles. We spent the whole of Wednesday looking at the Principles and the ‘accessing questions’.


Wednesday was really productive and we moved on our developments and thinking significantly. Wednesday also included a trip out to a local Indian Restaurant. It was great to continue the discussions as well spend some time socialising with colleagues.

Thursday was due to be a testing day. We were hoping (somewhat ambitiously) to get other members of the BLU / LTI to test the toolkits under different scenarios. Alas we were just too ambitious and so we stood the ‘testers’ down.

We continued with our work from Wednesday and also spent part of the day engaging with students. This was to incorporate their voice into the Features and Consequences Map. We thought getting the students involved would be a valuable contribution. I’m not sure any of us knew just how valuable that activity was going to be. We took input from Lauren Anderson and Elizabeth Terry (placement students in the BLU), Yoeri Goosens – BLU Student Consultant, Ruth Hyde – BLU research assistant recently engaged in the JISC funded STROLL project and Dawn Hamlet. Dawn is our link with the UH student Union. We have worked with this group before and they are always dedicated and committed. Thank you!

Each of the strand leaders met separately with the students to get the student view. It was really interesting to see how the strand leaders engaged the students differently. I suspect the different facilitation techniques kept the students alert too. That is they were not overwhelmed by the same technique.


Gaining the voice of the student was followed by a super-efficient and dialogic facilitation technique (Marija Cubric) to get us to vote on the likely ability of the various technologies to meet the needs of the various Principles.

We came a long way in those two days and although we are left with some on-going activity I doubt we would have so far if we had stayed in our offices and worked on the toolkits on an ad-hoc basis.

Oh, why am I writing this here? Mainly because of the Assessment-for-Learning strand that is being developed. It will be just great to get this and the Technology-to-Principles matrix fed into ESCAPE.

Watch this space…

Great job team!

All roads lead to ESCAPE

Peter Bullen and I have been invited to act as guest editors for a special edition of Engineering Education. Engineering Education is the Journal of the Higher Education Engineering Subject Centre. We were approached (I suspect) since we are engineers, are passionate about engineering Education and because we are Director and Deputy Director of the Blended Learning Unit (respectively).

The focus of the special edition is technology supported engineering
education. See the fit?

We were overwhelmed with the response, it far exceeded our expectations and I suspect it exceeded the expectations of the Subject Centre :-) Naturally we then had the pleasure of reading the proposals. This 'pleasure' IS genuine since I'm always interested to hear and read about colleagues activity. Although we are guest-editing the regular editorial team are still in place to support us. I had a lengthy telephone conversation today regarding the proposals and how we move forward from here.

Some things that came from the conversation included ...

* What to do with a great proposal that exceeded the word limit?
* How it was comforting when the 5 independent reviewers agreed on the outcome of many of the proposals
* How it was frustrating when we didn't.
* How we can be encouraging yet maintain the standards of the Journal

Sure, much of this relates to the Journal but it really struck a chord with me since we were essentially assessing the proposals for suitability for inclusion in the journal. And many of the issues really relate to assessment per se.

* Congruence of mark / feedback - i.e. reliability of assessment
* Engagement with the rules
* Sharing and maintaining standards


Seems like wherever I look nowadays I see assessment and activity related to ESCAPE.

Online marking

Having read Mark's post about meeting with the Business School, I wanted to comment on the benefits of online marking. I am a strong advocate of online submission. As well as reducing queueing times for students and as Mark rightly mentioned, burdens in marking work submitted in plastic wallets etc. the reduction in administrative time is really beneficial and it means as a lecturer, I can start marking assignments as soon as they come in. I do not have to wait for the paper copy to be logged, sorted and passed on to me. It also saves me time, as I don't have to physically pass the copy onto the second marker/moderator and back to the administrator. I think we save atleast 3 days by having work submitted online, plus it reduces the risk of paper copies getting lost and limits the need for storage space. I appreciate that some colleagues do not like reading work on the screen, but I know colleagues who print out the work to read it, but annotate the online version. I use my Tablet PC to mark which enables me to handwrite comments on the screen in exactly the same way i would do if i was annotating a paper script, however, those without a Tablet PC can easily use 'track changes' to annotate scripts. The other benefit to online marking, is that the students are more likley to read the feedback, and hopefully use the feedback. Student marks are released through the virtual learning environment (VLE)and the mark is shown at the bottom of the page below the feedback comments. If you haven't yet tried it, give online marking a go.

A challenge from the Vice Chancellor

Our Vice Chancellor (Professor Tim Wilson) lives in a different world from me. He seems to have firmly gone metric and now has 25 hours in a day and 10 days a week! Part of his busy schedule includes him keeping a blog where regular entries communicate thoughts, successes and challenges.

He had clearly read the Times Higher Education article on assessment, which was pleasing giving its relation to this project and UH's inclusion, and made many positive comments about the piece. At the end of his blog entry he asks the question about the format of the traditional examination. Why shouldn’t we allow computers and technology into the examination room? A great question and, for sure, there might be an appropriate reason why we don’t but for some cases I suspect there might not.

I might stretch the challenge further and not only ask why not make greater use of technology in the examination room but why the examination room itself?

What I really want from the ESCAPE project is to stimulate similar questioning with our partner academic schools and by the use of the project, appropriate change management techniques and visioning a future, explore why we do what we do.

Because we do, as a response would be interesting to unpack and see what lies behind keeping the norm.

Great to see that our VC is up for a challenge and wants us to explore current practice.