Flipped Learning Action Group (FLAG) meeting

[]¹Today I attended my first [UTS Flipped Learning Action Group (FLAG) meeting]². These monthly meetings bring any interested UTS academic staff together to “develop innovative teaching, learning and assessment practices that use the strengths of flipped learning.” It’s an exciting area, and UTS is doing a huge amount (best way I can collate so far is a [site:google for flipped learning]³). This meeting involved IML Learning Technologists introducing some technologies they have made use of, categorised as: * Encouraging active learning and student engagement * Effective uses of the online space * Alternative uses of video * Synchronous online learning Very brief overview, people talked about: 1. UTS is a google domain institution, so using google docs is easy, integrated, familiar and feature rich. You can set up google communities through this (or join existing ones) 2. [Verso]⁴ is an app that allows you to post resources, and set a question or comment to accompany the resource – really quick and simple tool to e.g. set a reading/video and ask a simple question for feedback 3. Producing attractive course outlines and materials using UTS Online 4. Eportfolios for the submission of reflective writing; digital submission makes it much easier to track participation, and gives a gradebook for the tutor/student as well as a portfolio of work that students can present externally (with visually pleasing outputs from both) 5. Use of Blackboard Wiki and Spark (peer assessment tool), e.g. using feedback from spark peer assessment in group work to motivate exploration of Wiki-analytics (e.g., seeing whether it is in fact the case that someone in a group-work assignment didn’t really contribute much). Looks interesting, would want to explore what data can be pulled out (at the moment I think it’s number of words modified and pages edited). [Blackboard’s description of these participation analytics is online]⁵. 6. Use of youtube to support sharing videos of students and experienced nurses talking about reflective practice 7. Richer notions of video engagement and analytics (beyond clicking on it) toward that. So eg YouTube let’s you view dropoff rates. Taking it to the next level, [Zaption]⁶ analytics let’s you ask questions at particular stages of a video and gather analytics on these (with full LMS/VLE integration, and embedability). ([Edpuzzle]⁷ looks similar and is completely free) 8. Vlogging and online presentation making with the use of feedback and discussion boards to build conversation around improving their videos. 9. Video conferencing, using a Logitech camera that tracks who’s speaking and moves to focus on them during a Skype/Hangout, etc. call 10. Moot trail facilitation (in a legal context), and use of [Appear.in]⁸ (or similar) simple and free tools to do this. Fun stuff and great to see the sort of things going on, and the scale of ‘improving things we’re already using’, to one-off or smaller-scale innovations, and new projects yet to be trialed. I’m particularly looking forward to exploring the Wiki analytics a bit more (as I’ve sketched about [before]⁹), and the Zaption/EdPuzzle potential!

Footnotes

1. /static/2015/10/inspiration.jpg ↩

2. http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2014/08/flipped-futures ↩

3. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22flipped+learning%22+site:uts.edu.au ↩

4. http://versoapp.com/ ↩

5. https://en-us.help.blackboard.com/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Instructor/080_Collaboration/020_Wikis/040_Grading_Wikis ↩

6. https://www.zaption.com/ ↩

7. https://edpuzzle.com/ ↩

8. http://appear.in ↩

9. http://sjgknight.com/finding-knowledge/2013/01/mediawiki-for-learning-analytics/ ↩