E-Learning Conference at Plymouth

I attended the Plymouth e-Learning Conference this week, and was spoilt with a broad range of speakers from around the world (proceeding available as a PDF). There was very much an emphasis on integrating software packages, making them much more student centred and institution specific.

The keynote talks Day 1: from Mike Blamires (video) that included a welcome from Michael Totterdell, Pro-vice Chancellor of the University of Plymouth. Day 2: Graham Attwell (Video).

Steve Wheeler summaries the event on his blog.

Windows 7 Beta, any good?

I finally got around to installing Window 7 Beta (64bit) on my home PC and joined the Microsoft beta testers. In a nutshell I am finding it surprisingly good, and importantly very stable. The only issues I found was that the operating system got a little confused between my two on board LANs, nothing that the on board troubleshooter couldn't work out... But this glitch kept re-occurring... One for the Microsoft people to work out on the driver front.

What about using and installing software?
Well all the Microsoft Office 2007 components work beautifully. There was a slight glitch after putting on Adobe Web Standard CS3 suite, as I later discovered that the control panel was not functioning properly. It was all down to Adobe Cue, however disabling this by renaming a file did the trick!

To be fair on Win7 (it is in Beta) and Adobe (only meant for Vista at most) so I was very surprised that so many applications actually worked. All this aside Win7 is in fact a very stable and fast booting/shutting down operating system. Everything Vista was meant to be. So far so good :)

tulip - What is it?

What is it? - ‘tulip’ stands for ‘Teaching and Learning In Plymouth’ and it’s simply an alternative name for the Student Portal, including all Programme and Module sites.

Why bother renaming? - When the new Student Portal launched two years ago, it was the only University web system powered by the SharePoint framework. Staff got used to calling it “SharePoint” to distinguish it from the “old” Student Portal.

As other internet based systems move to SharePoint (eg, intranet, official documents system) and we get new spaces like “MySite”, it’s going to get very confusing if we keep calling everything SharePoint. Hence, it was suggested that each area should have its own name and brand to help us identify it. The name ‘tulip’ was chosen in a student competition.


I don’t use tulip, what does it look like? - Typically, the tulip logo appears on programme and module sites (displayed in the top left of the screen). See example below:

SCOLAR (Submitting Coursework Online And Remotely)

The following are notes on a recent meeting regarding SCOLAR.

Here are some useful links: SCOLAR on T&L Web, there is also a powerpoint slide that highlights the features.

(Edit - since writing this post, further details on how to setup and use SCOLAR are now available)

Key points:

• Linked to tulip
• Will be under ‘Lists’ on module sites (left navigation bar) shown as ‘Assignments’
• Stage 2 Pilot underway Jan – Jun 09
• When with this be officially rolled out? – Sept 2009

Features:

• Electronic submission.
• Email notifications.
• Accept late submissions.
• Shows student numbers not names at the moment.
• Feedback and marks can be added by the tutor.
• Students see marks after the moderator agrees.
• Student view – will have ‘upload assignment’ – with declaration of own work.
• Resubmitted files will replace the existing file even if it has a different file name.
• Students can only submit one file (so zip maybe necessary for multiples).

Wish lists/concerns:

• Schools to decide if this option/facility is used.
• Automation of assignment for multiple markers.
• Printing of documents – who pays? - the intention is to keep it all online (Faculty/School/individual can decide if they wish to implement).

Dramatic Writing in Second Life

A very interesting project that utilised Second Life as a stage set for dramatic writing students. This came about from a successful Teaching Fellowship Award project developed by Becky Freeman (Faculty of Arts Learning Technologist), Anthony Caleshu, (Programme Manager for English and Creative Writing, School of Humanities) and Mark Pannell (Learning Technologist, EdaLT).

I was pleased to provide some support on the two days the sessions ran, also filming the students over the two days. ...Before you ask "but this is not a science subject?", I had my Experiential Learning CETL 'hat' on for this piece of work and it was an opportunity to work across schools with some very talented learning technologists..



The video was filmed using a Sony HDR FX1 camera, editing was carried out using Adobe Premiere CS3. CS3 is now superseded by CS4.  If you have the bandwidth, the video is best viewed in HD.

Further details on Becky Freeman's project can be found here.

I would like to thank Plymouth University Television and Broadcast Services for help and assistance, and also the Plymouth University Library Media counter for use of their editing suite.

Second Life and Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver

Typically Second Life (SL) requires a dedicated 3D graphics card for the best user experience. But what about those with a lesser integrated/shared graphics card? I have been doing some experimenting and you maybe surprised to know that it is possible to get a fairly usable experience (at the time of writing). However, this does require some careful selection of available media accelerators. There are of course some compromises, it could be that the media accelerator works on one application but not another. For those experimenters out there, remember to set up your 'roll backs!'

I tested driver updates for a bog standard PC with an Intel Core 2 CPU 6320 @ 1.86GHz, with 2 GBs of standard ram and a Intel(R) Q965/Q963 Express Chipset Family integrated graphics card.

At the time of writing, sing the existing drivers for the Intel graphics gave a very poor performance on SL as well as a few 3D apps. SL runs with unusable frame rates of 1 to 2 per second. Finding this is even worse than my 2 year old Celeron laptop with again 2gigs ram plus a shared Intel graphics device. - I should mention that ping times are around 200 ms so network performance is not an issue.

After referring to the Intel site I found the September 2007 release so I upgraded the Intel Q965/Q963 drivers (choosing XP Windows Professional).

This resulted in an excellent increase in 3D performance with Second Life running up as high as 18 frames per second in some instances (bar some unusual graphical glitches at start up).

SEED Project - Computer Aided Learning template

Pleased to have released this template as part of the SEED (Science
Education Enhancement and Development) project here at the University of Plymouth. SEED is funded by the HE Academy.
Working with Prof. Steve Rowland, the initiative was to create a computer aided learning template within Microsoft Visual Basic to aid in improving teaching and learning for science. Writing from scratch the software took the bulk of the difficult programming away from the user, meaning only a simple compile of the software was required when all content was complete. Later applications included the creation of a guided multiple choice stand alone software for teaching elements of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in Organic Chemistry.

Rowland, S.J. and Truscott, J.B., 'A Template for Developing and Delivering CAL Applications for Visual Basic Users (CD-ROM)', SEED Publications, University of Plymouth, 1999. (HE Academy - SEED project)