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GLEU workshops
Welcome to the GLEU Workshop Programme for 2010/11.
The programme is very varied and tries to balance issues of general pedagogy and technology-enhanced learning. However, all workshops have the following features in common:
- They are participative in nature: the small numbers allowed on each workshop makes sure that participants are fully involved in discussions;
- They are reflective: each workshop is constructed in such a way as to allow participants to reflect on their own teaching practices and link these to wider contexts (institutional, national and international), whenever possible and appropriate, and the relevant pedagogical theories and debates;
- They are both practical and conceptual: while aiming at enhancing practice, all workshops do not simply aim at giving people teaching ‘tips’ – these mean nothing unless they are embedded within an understanding of the ‘why’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ for their possible use. Thus, the ‘practical’ will be viewed through the ‘conceptual’ in an effort to give participants the necessary thinking frameworks within which to embed their practices so that these become ‘principled’ and not episodic.
- They are embedded in scholarship and research: each workshop is prepared by scanning some of the most relevant literature on the topic under scrutiny so that participants are informed about the most current thinking on it;
- They are interdisciplinary: the workshops complement the work GLEU does departmentally by making space for debates about higher education at an interdisciplinary level. This has the advantage of informing participants about views and practices from colleagues from other disciplinary areas – it is hoped that this will actively contribute to the enrichment of their own educational thinking.
Unless otherwise mentioned, please use gleu@gold.ac.uk for all bookings and inquiries (or tel: 020 7078 7400)
Given the small number of participants allowed on each workshop, early booking is recommended.
PLEASE NOTE THAT MANY OF THESE WORKSHOPS CAN BE RUN ON A BESPOKE BASIS FOR YOUR DEPARTMENT, TOO.
Workshops
- Enriching feedback with audio and graphical media
- “Touchy” subjects?
- Collaborative learning in an online environment using Wikis
- PowerPoint and learning: must the show go on?
- Who needs learning outcomes?
- Blogs and blogging
- How can good assessment design discourage plagiarism?
- Create video resources on a shoestring, using Flip digital video cameras
- What is happening with Web 2.0 in higher education?
- Practical and social issues with online collaboration
- Does my assessment help my students learn?
- Digital Storytelling
- Finding and using copyright free digital images and videos in teaching
Rolling Workshops on learn.gold
‘Learn.gold and more - drop-in sessions for staff’
Description:Drop-in sessions to find out about learn.gold, Mahara and other learning technologies, including e-voting, multimedia for learning, designing online peer learning, deterring and detecting plagiarism, e-assessment and feedback, conferencing and more.
Around Goldsmiths, learn.gold, its portfolio and group-work counterpart Mahara, and other technologies are being used for:
• Conversations and debates
• Tutor and peer feedback on assessment
• Surveying and polling
• Collaboration and peer learning
• Presenting in different media
• Meeting and conferencing
• Tutors setting, collecting, assessing and feeding back on work
• Building portfolios
• Deterring and detecting plagiarism
• Organising and communicating
• Representing courses online
• Making resources available
• And much more
We are here to help you get started or become more advanced and ambitious.
We know that colleagues are very resourceful, but some of you have told us that you feel you are muddling through. We can help you save time and effort, future-proof your course areas, find not-so-obvious short cuts, and reconceive activities to take advantage of the online environment.
If you have any questions about learn.gold, Mahara or other learning technologies, or if you'd like to meet up with us to discuss ideas, organising sessions for your department, or to plan a new initiative, come and see us.
N.b. we're varying the weekly times to improve colleagues’ opportunities. Please see the Goldsmiths Events Calendar for ongoing dates.
Tutor: Mira Vogel / Fotis Begklis
Cost: free
Duration: 2 hours
Date: Recurring sessions
Room: Warmington Tower Rm307
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‘Enriching feedback with audio and graphical media’
Description:Good feedback is formative at different levels. At the level of subject knowledge, it is grounded in the difference between what a student knows and what they need to know. At a metacognitive level, it moves students forward by clarifying learning intentions and criteria for success. Feedback is not always helpful, so it is important to understand what different kinds of responses feedback can trigger in students.
With reference to research findings, examples (including from Goldsmiths) and some hands on experience, this workshop will consider the potential of a range of audio, graphical and animated media for contextualising, individualising and delivering formative feedback online.
Who should attend:
Academic staff from across Goldsmiths who give formative feedback to students.
The workshop will be participative.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Apply principles of learning to the design and delivery of feedback
- Select from a range of different tools and media for giving feedback according to these principles
- Articulate an understanding of what is involved in planning and creating your feedback in different tools, with respect to time, usability, and reception by the learners.
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 3pm-5pm
Date: Tuesday 19th October 2010
Room: NAB 3.06
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‘“Touchy” subjects?'
Description:Goldsmiths excels in creative practice, social sciences and the humanities; as a result, much of our teaching addresses identity and creativity. These topics can be emotionally difficult for students to discuss, to relate to academic debates, and to have assessed.
This workshop uses case studies to share good practice between participants. It draws on critical pedagogies to suggest frameworks for approaching these 'touchy subjects'.
Who should attend:
The workshop is intended for any academics working with subjects or practices their students experience as controversial or emotive.
The workshop will be participative in nature.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- identify why aspects of their teaching may be particularly emotionally or politically charged
- choose appropriate strategies to overcome student difficulties.
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 2pm- 4pm
Date: Wednesday 27th October 2010
Room: BPB 3/4
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‘Collaborative learning in an online environment using Wikis’
Description:The goal of this workshop is to present a general overview of wiki technology and demonstrate how the “wiki way” can be used to boost or improve the quality of collaborative learning. It will provide an overview of the process through a practical hands-on experience creating and using a wiki.
During the session, participants will be guided through the process of creating a wiki, contributing collaboratively, inserting images, adding links, editing pages, and publishing it and sharing it with the world.
Who should attend:
Academics and academic-related staff from across the College who are interested in using Wikis in their teaching practice.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Define what a Wiki is and what the main educational benefits are of using it
- Explore how Wikis can be used to enhance collaboration in teaching and learning
- Choose suitable approaches to overcome student difficulties working in groups
- Employ the practical knowledge and skills needed to create, use and maintain a wiki.
Duration: 1 hour
Date: Tuesday 2nd November 2010
Time: 11am-12pm
Room: NAB 3.06
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‘PowerPoint and learning: must the show go on?’
Description:This session assumes that, as academics, when you present you hope to promote learning in your audience, rather than simply imparting information. It considers circumstances in which slideware is liable to divert attention from your argument, when it may support it, when it may interfere with learning, and when it may promote learning. It also considers the constraints imposed by the software defaults, and how to overcome these.
The session will proceed as follows:
- Discussion – when we use slideware, why do we use it?
- Discussion – what are the attributes of slideware?
- Hands-on – flexing PowerPoint beyond its defaults to create some slides
- Volunteers present with their slides
- Discussion about the extent to which, and circumstances in which, PowerPoint can support our various aims and intentions as presenters
Staff who use PowerPoint in their teaching.Intended Learning outcomes:
By the end of this session, participants should be able to:
- Articulate their understanding of the basics of creating multimedia slides in PowerPoint
- Identify appropriate occasions for using different aspects of slideware
- Be able to clarify what could constitute slideware abuse in higher education settings
- Recognise the defaults in PowerPoint and how to operate outside them
- Identify where different aspects of slideware might advance different forms of learning
- Manage the division of attention between presenter and slides.
- Apply design principles to their presentations to engage the audience
Duration: 2.5 hours
Cost: free
Time: 2pm -
Date:Thursday 4th November 2010
Room: RB 102
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‘Who needs learning outcomes?’
Description:The workshop will give participants space for analysing and critiquing learning outcomes, and writing their own. The practical side of the workshop will be embedded within wider pedagogical perspectives and discussions about the nature and scope of higher education today.
The workshop will be participative in nature.
Who should attend:
Academic and academic-related staff from across the College who are interested in discussing the nature, aims and scope of learning outcomes within the learning and teaching cycle.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Show awareness of the functions and uses of learning outcomes
- Structure learning outcomes as useful tools for both learners and teachers
- Relate learning outcomes to the different parts of the learning and teaching cycle
- Base the use of learning outcomes on sound pedagogical principles
- Critique the discourse of/on learning outcomes within current trends in higher education.
Duration: 2.5 hours
Cost: free
Date: Tuesday 16 November 2010
Time: 10am-12.30pm
Room: RHB 307
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‘Blogs and blogging’
Description:
Blogging – keeping a public journal in one or more Web-based media - is an explosive phenomenon which influences politics and has disrupted established business models of publication. In 2008, Technorati reported that it had indexed 133 million blogs since 2002, and close to a million blog posts were being authored every day. The 2009 US and Iranian elections brought micro-blogging – namely Twitter – into public consciousness. By 2010 UK cabinet ministers were breaking news on Twitter. There is now a body of educational research into blogging.
Blogging seems particularly suited to all three academic pursuits of research, teaching and public good.
This 2 hour workshop examines actual and potential uses of blogging in Higher Education teaching and research. The origins of blogs, reasons behind the current interest, and the variety of ways they are being used will be discussed. Drawing on a number of real-world cases, participants will consider the different types of learning, teaching and collaboration blogs could support. Participants will experience writing, reading, commenting in the Wordpress blogging environment.
We will consider the following questions:
- What does research suggest is the educational potential of writing, reading and discussing blogs?
- What are the factors in the growth of a community, audience or readership
- What are some of the different ways for attracting and managing large volumes of responses?
- What do facilitation and moderation entail; what are the critical incidents to watch out for in an online debate? What are the dilemmas?
Who should attend:
Academic teaching staff whose students would benefit from keeping a reflective journal, and reading and discussing those of their peers.
Intended Learning outcomes:
By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:
- Understand the background to blogs – origins, current use, and why they are academically interesting
- Assess what they and their students can achieve through blogs and blogging
- Work out what kind of tool you need
- Set up a blog in one of the tools freely available
- Be able to show a sense of blogging craft
- Set up aggregation tools for handling multiple blogs
- Articulate an awareness of support and tools for blogging at Goldsmiths.
Tutor: Mira Vogel
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 2pm-4pm
Date: Tuesday 30th November 2010
Room: NAB 3.06
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‘Learn.gold: Beyond the Obvious’
Description:With examples and reference to research findings, this workshop will look into a selection (depending on group consensus on the day) of the more interesting, less obvious corners of learn.gold.
- Using ‘Groups’, you can divide cohorts into smaller groups for activities on or off learn.gold, and assign individual tutors to each.
- ‘Choice’ is a polling tool which can be used, for example, to pique interest in a forthcoming session or to arrive at a consensus about a given issue.
- ‘Database’ allows students to contribute objects and/or information to a shared repository.
- ‘Assignment’ allows you to configure assessed work (questions, deadlines, resubmissions, available marks) and, if in digital format, allows students to submit work.
- ‘Glossary’ allows you and/or your students to create a reference for course jargon or difficult terms; wherever these occur in the course area they automatically link to their definition.
- ‘Wiki’ is web space in which you and your students can work without needed web design skills or special software.
- ‘Workshop’ is a tool for setting up and running peer reviews with a framework of criteria.
- ‘Questionnaire’ allows you to collect data from your students.
- Creating documents for learn.gold as learn.gold Web Pages has many advantages, which will be covered during the session.
Staff members who are already using learn.gold to some extent and who wish to see the above tools in action.
Intended Learning outcomes:
- At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Decide between the tools available on learn.gold, on the basis of the learning outcomes you intend for your students, and the potential of the tools
- Anticipate the factors for success in the activities you set up
- From hands-on experience, set up and run a selection of tools
- Find out how to set up and run the others.
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time:
Date:Recurring sessions
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‘How can good assessment design discourage plagiarism?’
Description:Participants will explore how assessment design can create chances for students to plagiarise. Through discussion and practice based activities, we will examine assessment design and its management and see how individuals who teach can promote or discourage plagiarism.
Who should attend:
Academic and academic-related staff from across the College who are interested in examining issues (and myths) around plagiarism, its causes and solutions.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Identify and analyse the nature of plagiarism in HE today, raising questions about its occurrences and its causes
- Identify strategies for reducing instances of plagiarism through good assessment design
- Articulate ways to support students to reduce the risk of them plagiarising
- Examine ways of detecting plagiarism.
Tutor: Dr Esther Saxey
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 10am-12pm
Date: Tuesday 25th January 2011
Room: TBA
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‘Create video resources on a shoestring, using Flip digital video cameras’
Description:This workshop will give each participant the opportunity to plan, shoot, edit and upload a video to learn.gold quickly and easily. It will involve discussing how video could be used in the participants’ modules and their teaching practice. We will show to the participants how to use the latest portable Flip digital cameras to make their own videos, load the video onto a computer and perform basic editing tasks (including removing materials and adding simple titles). Finally we will show how the videos can be uploaded onto learn.gold
Who should attend:
Academic and academic-related staff from across the College who are interested creating digital video resources.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
- By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Have insight into the value video resources may add to their teaching practice
- Explore how digital video cameras can be used as a reflective tool in learning and teaching
- Articulate their understanding on what is involved in creating digital video resources
- Be aware of the practical knowledge and skills needed to create and use video in teaching and learning.
- Develop a community of practice with other participants.
Tutors: Fotis Begklis
Duration: 1.5 hours
Cost: free
Time: 2pm-3.30pm
Date: Monday 31/01/2011
Room: RB 108
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‘What is happening with Web 2.0 in higher education?’
Description:Academics are increasingly exploiting freely-available, easy-to-use, high-quality Web tools – part of the ‘Web 2.0’ phenomenon - for learning, teaching and research. This two hour hands-on workshop will give participants awareness and experience of a few of the useful and free tools available. The tools covered will be selected to support tasks academics currently carry out – including collaborating on online bookmarking and bibliographies, collaborative online document editing, aggregating the Web sites you visit regularly in one place for easy checking. The session will draw on research and reports from government, professional organisations and think tanks, as well as peer-reviewed research in real-world circumstances. We will draw on examples from Goldsmiths to consider what Web 2.0 implies for higher learning, in terms of new possibilities, as well as what it might undo.
Who should attend:
Staff who are interested in using the Web for teaching and learning.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this session, participants should be able to:
- Articulate the ethos of Web 2.0
- List the range of tools available and find one to do what you want to do
- Have a broad grounding in success factors for use
- Articulate an understanding of the business models used by Web 2.0 companies, and needs around reliability, privacy, security, and backing up.
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 10am-12pm
Date: Wednesday 9th February 2011
Room: RB 108
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‘Practical and social issues with online collaboration’
Description:So you think it would be good for your students to collaborate together to create a shared piece of group work? This session will consider possible ways to:
- promote participation (including assigning roles, and clarifying criteria)
- build students’ ability to self-organise equitably and effectively in groups
- build their metacognitive understanding of how collaborative work can advance their learning
- develop their understanding of the qualities of a well-integrated and audience/reader-friendly presentation.
Who should attend:
Staff who are interested in pursuing collaborative activities with their students.
Intended Learning outcomes:
By completing this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify and avoid some common pitfalls of group work, including online group work
- Articulate an understanding of and communicate the basic principles of a good resource in an online environment
- Consult learn.gold’s records to find out how individual group members have contributed.
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 10am-12pm
Date: Tuesday 1st March 2011
Room: Warmington Tower 306
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‘Does my assessment help my students learn?'
Description:‘Students can escape bad teaching; they can't escape bad assessment’. (David Boud)
Do your assessment methods do everything they could to support your teaching?
This workshop will examine the different functions of assessment, as an effective mechanism for judgement, but also as a tool to encourage learning. The workshop will also explore feedback on assessment as one of the most powerful ways of improving student understanding and performance. We will use research literature and the shared experience of colleagues.
Who should attend:
Any staff involved in teaching, particularly those involved in the assessment process (determining the structure of assessment, setting assessment questions or frameworks, or marking assessment).
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Identify ways in which assessment on their courses can be used to support student learning
- Describe different forms of feedback and use them to improve student performance
Tutor: Dr Mira Vogel and Dr Esther Saxey
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 2- 4pm
Date: Thursday 17th March 2011
Room: TBC
‘Digital Storytelling Workshop’
Description:Digital storytelling offers new ways for students to present and reflect upon their work. It enhances students' experience by encouraging personal ownership, and develops both skills and a sense of accomplishment.
The objective of this workshop is to help participants consider the potential of using Digital Storytelling with their students. It will provide an overview of the process - from planning to producing, through a practical hands-on experience of creating a three minute digital story.
During the session, participants will be guided through the process of creating a short story from scratch (no more than 200 words in length), collecting and taking still images, incorporating video and audio, editing digital materials, and uploading the final story onto the web and sharing it with the world.
Who should attend:
Academics and academic-related staff from across the College who are interested in using digital storytelling in their teaching practice.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
- By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:
- Identify the purpose of Digital Storytelling and its main pedagogical benefits
- Explore how Digital Storytelling can be used as a reflective tool in learning and teaching
- Articulate an awareness of the requirements in planning and using Digital Storytelling in teaching and learning
- Be capable of using digital equipment such as digital cameras, voice recorders and digital video cameras and simply software tools to produce Digital Storytelling
- Produce a digital story combining some or all of the above tools and equipment
- Develop around the participants a Digital Storytelling community of practice.
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: free
Time: 2- 4 pm
Date: Tuesday 23rd March 2011
Room: TBA
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‘Finding and using copyright free digital images and videos in teaching’
Description:Many educators use Google to find visual resources for their teaching. However, there are copyright issues related to the use of these materials. This session will show you how to find copyright free images and videos which can be used in your teaching. It will involve hands on experience of how to find digital visual resources, from sources such as Edina, the BBC and others.
Who should attend:
Academic and academic-related staff from across the College who are using digital visual resources in their teaching or are interested in starting to use them.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Identify different forms of digital visual resources and know how and why to use them in their teaching
- Identify possible copyright issues
- Find copyright free image resources
- Find copyright free video resources
- Use learn.gold to disseminate digital visual resources.
Duration: 1 hour
Cost: free
Time: 11am- 12pm
Date: Tuesday 3rd May 2011
Room: TBA
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