The Educational Development and Communications Team works with Academic staff to deliver increased and efficient online delivery of unit materials. The Educational Development and Communications Team are committed to developing training sessions, workshops and information that will help learn about and apply skills in online teaching and learning.
Like what we do on Facebook
EDC team
The following insertion has been placed in every Tri1 and 2 unit as a separate section in the ‘Unit Information and Assessment Overview’ resource included in all UNEBS units.
Cyberethics
It is important to the Business School that students feel safe in interactions relating to online learning. Students should be aware of the University Cyberethics Policy, which is a guide to good behaviour and staying safe in online communication.
If you feel that there has been a breach of these guidelines, you should contact your Unit Coordinator or, to make a formal complaint, the Service Quality Unit (http://www.une.edu.au/service-quality)
All students should refer to the links below to ensure that they fully understand their rights and responsibilities associated with online use.
- Student Behaviour Misconduct Rules: http://www.une.edu.au/policies/pdf/studentbehaviouralmisconductrules.pdf
- Information Technology Directorate Email Operating Procedures: http://www.une.edu.au/policies/pdf/email.pdf
- Rules for the Use of Information and Communication Facilities and Services: http://www.une.edu.au/policies/pdf/rulesofusecomputingcommunicationsfacilities.pdf
If you have any questions about this please contact us.
In response to a request by the Faculty T&L Committee, the following information has been added to every Trimester 1 unit. This will be incorporated in all units from now on – in the Assessment Overview section of the ‘Unit Information and Assessment Overview’ resource that sits in every Moodle site for UNEBS units.
Please be aware that grades for assessment tasks displayed through the Moodle site are provided as a guide to your progress in the unit. These are not your official grades for the unit. Official results are only available following their consideration and approval at the relevant School Examination Board, and ratified by Examinations and Results, Student Administration and Services Directorate at the end of each teaching period.
If you have feedback or concerns about this, please contact a member of the EDC team.
Please Note: The showcase time has been rescheduled to 9-11am Monday 25 March
The Educational Development and Communications Team is pleased to invite you to a Teaching and Learning Showcase
The line-up for this event includes:
Leo Bayerlein
‘Balancing Life’ An interactive virtual learning environment designed to:
Increase student engagement through a custom made interactive “TV-Show” style narrative; and Prepare students for real life work challenges in accounting
Valerie Dalton
Collaborative Online Group Work within Moodle
Rob Field (via Skype)
Future Campus
Sue Whale
10min Gradebook Training
Naomi McGrath
School Social Media and Community Sites
The showcase will be held in LT5 at the UNE Business School 9.00-11.00pm, Monday 25 March 2013 and morning tea will be provided from Cafe Affamato.
If you have any dietary requirements please contact naomi.mcgrath@une.edu.au
Please RSVP by 21 March by registering at http://eddevcommsshowcase3.eventbrite.com.au
Thank you
Naomi McGrath
BCommunication (Media), GradCertArts, DipProjMgt
Educational Development and Communications Officer
UNE Business School
Faculty of The Professions
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351 Australia
Phone 61 2 6773 2276
Email naomi.mcgrath@une.edu.au
Skype Naomi.McGrath_UNE
www.une.edu.au/business-school/
CRICOS Provider Code 00003G
Dear Colleagues,
INVITATION: Moodle performance forum – Paul Barratt Lecture Theatre, 11am on the 28th March.
I would like to provide an update on the current status of Moodle and invite you to a forum next Thursday 28th March at the Paul Barratt lecture theatre at 11am where our hosting provider NetSpot will provide an update on the performance issues experienced with our LMS Moodle in quarter one 2013.
For the last two weeks our Moodle environment has been more stable with four outages (of 6, 7, 17 and 27 minutes – the last two on Saturday morning).
Our hosting provider NetSpot identified some underlying issues in the infrastructure and they have taken steps to address these problems. We are continuing to work with NetSpot to reduce downtime.
A list of issues together with dates and duration (and brief explanation if the issue) has been posted to the “Teaching Online” unit at http://moodle.une.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=395859.
This is a historical record of issues since the beginning of teaching to give you some background information in case students query Moodle availability at a certain point.
Please note that this page should not be used to check the current status of Moodle – issues will be logged there only in retrospect once resolved. Any significant Moodle issues will be posted to http://blog.une.edu.au/serviceannounce/category/itd-announcements/ (which is accessible from the IT website or from the homepage of MyUNE).
If you intend to attend the forum on the 28th please RSVP to dbridge2@une.edu.au so that we can ensure the venue is appropriately sized.
Regards,
Robert
Robert Irving
Director, Information Technology Phone 61 2 6773 4520
University of New England Mobile 0407 142144
Armidale NSW 2351 Australia Email mailto:directorit@une.edu.au
Executive Assistant
Debbie Bridge
T: 02 6773 4075
CRICOS Provider Code 00003G
Information Technology Support
ITD Service Desk T: 02 6773 5000 E: servicedesk@une.edu.au
Teaching Space Support T: 02 6773 2489 (Emergency Support for AV/teaching spaces)
Conferencing: T: 02 6773 3703 (Emergency Support: for Video/Tele Conferences)
Wireless SSID: eduroam
Username = username@une.edu.au Password = UNE Network Password
ITD Support Page & Atomic Learning www.une.edu.au/itd
All standard requests for service and issues go via the ITD Service Desk
Dear Unit Coordinators,
The Courseware Redevelopment Project is an initiative to further enable ‘online readiness’ across all of UNE’s products, inject innovation into courses and units, and improve the overall student experience. The project will establish the foundations to support innovation in teaching and learning in line with UNE’s strategic aspiration to be recognised as the nation’s highest quality provider of online and blended delivery courses. The Courseware Redevelopment Project consists of eight work streams including the Learning and Teaching Innovation work stream.
The project charter for the Learning and Teaching Innovation work stream requires that UNE use this opportunity to structurally adjust and establish the foundations to support innovation in learning and teaching in line with UNE’s strategic aspirations. The goal of this project is to work in collaboration with Schools to assess and enhance up to approximately 1500 units that are available online within a 15 month period.
The initial assessment process will require Trimester 2 unit coordinators to complete a brief review of their unit(s) and to establish a wishlist for enhancements to be implemented as part of this initiative.
This is an opportunity for the School to access additional resources to support online development. The Educational Development and Communications Team will lead and manage this project as it is implemented across the School and will shortly be in touch with coordinators to arrange a time to meet. I would greatly appreciate your timely responses to their requests for meeting, as TP2 is looming.
Regards
Alison
Professor Alison Sheridan,
B.Ag Econ (Hons) (USyd), PhD (NE)
GAICD, FANZAM
Head
UNE Business School
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351 Australia
Phone 61 2 6773 2367
Email hosbusiness@une.edu.au
http://www.une.edu.au/business-school/
CRICOS Provider Code 00003G
Now you’re thinking
The Project
This project focused on the creation of “Balancing Life”, a scenario based alternate reality gaming environment in which students interact with academic materials by working through a trimester long interactive “TV-Show” type narrative, set in a virtual business. The use of a scenario based alternate reality gaming environment for this project has resulted in a shift away from classroom based learning activities towards fully self-paced online activities which are integrated into the underlying interactive story, and for which students receive individualised instant feedback. The interactive learning environment also enables the use of targeted early intervention strategies (both automated and manual) as the progress of individual students is monitored continuously. The developed story line is also designed to encourage the use of support structures/materials and to encourage students to seek academic advice whenever necessary.
The project also showcases the online learning opportunities that are created by the use of scenario based alternate reality learning environments, demonstrates how innovative self-paced learning strategies can be implemented within Moodle, and highlights the advantages of approaching the design of units in a blended learning environment from an online teaching perspective rather than relying on a replication of traditional offline activities in the online environment.
The Showcase
The showcase will give an overview of the student experience within the “Balancing Life” learning environment and explain the educational aims and strategies that underpin “Balancing Life”. Participants will also have the opportunity to participate in a Q & A session with the team that created the scenario based alternate reality gaming environment.
The Presenter
The showcase will be presented by Leopold Bayerlein from the UNE Business School. Leo has led the team that has created “Balancing Life” and coordinates the unit for which “Balancing Life” was designed. The showcase will also include remarks by Dr Michael Crook (PVCEII) and Dr Jenny Rindfleish (Deputy HOS UNE Business School).
The Faculty T&L Committee has recommended the following wording to be added to Moodle sites so that students do not get the wrong idea about Moodle Gradebook results as opposed to the results they get after the Board of Examiners meetings each Trimester:
Please be aware that grades for assessment tasks displayed through the Moodle site are provided as a guide to your progress in the unit. These are not your official grades for the unit. Official results are only available following their consideration and approval at the relevant School Examination Board, and ratified by Examinations and Results, Student Administration and Services Directorate at the end of each teaching period.
This is because results are withheld in MyUNE when students have a financial encumbrance and results may be amended (or rounded) in Callista following the BOE meeting.
The EDC team have added this statement to the Assessment Overview section of all Trimester 1 units and will be including it in upcoming units as they are developed.
How do you prevent students from posting or replying to posts in a Forum. In other words you want the forum to be Read Only. Change student permissions.
Click for instructions
Moodle offers a variety of means to interact and communicate with your students:
Chat
The chat activity module enables participants to have text-based, real-time synchronous discussions.
The chat may be a one-time activity or it may be repeated at the same time each day or each week. Chat sessions are saved and can be made available for everyone to view or restricted to users with the capability to view chat session logs.
Forums
The forum activity module enables participants to have asynchronous discussions i.e. discussions that take place over an extended period of time.
There are several forum types to choose from, such as a standard forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time; a forum where each student can post exactly one discussion; or a question and answer forum where students must first post before being able to view other students’ posts. A teacher can allow files to be attached to forum posts. Attached images are displayed in the forum post.
Participants can subscribe to a forum to receive notifications of new forum posts. A teacher can set the subscription mode to optional, forced or auto, or prevent subscription completely. If required, students can be blocked from posting more than a given number of posts in a given time period; this can prevent individuals from dominating discussions.
Forum posts can be rated by teachers or students (peer evaluation). Ratings can be aggregated to form a final grade which is recorded in the gradebook.
Announcements
Announcement forums (or news forums) are set up to enable only coordinators or admin staff to post messages. These forums have the added functionality of generating an email to students for each post, and feeding content into the Latest News block that appears on the home page of units.
Adobe Connect (set up and accessed through Moodle)
Adobe Connect enables synchronous discussion with the added benefit of being able to screen share documents (powerpoints, spreadsheets etc) so that students can view what you are discussing while you are ‘meeting’ with them.
Some activity tools enable comments to be added for student contributions:
Glossary
The glossary module enables participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary. Glossary entries may be automatically linked wherever the concept words and phrases appear throughout the site.
Database
The database activity module enables participants to create, maintain and search a collection of entries (i.e. records). The structure of the entries is defined by the teacher as a number of fields. Field types include checkbox, radio buttons, dropdown menu, text area, URL, picture and uploaded file.
Wiki
The wiki activity module enables participants to add and edit a collection of web pages. A wiki can be collaborative, with everyone being able to edit it, or individual, where everyone has their own wiki which only they can edit.
A history of previous versions of each page in the wiki is kept, listing the edits made by each participant.
Of course, you can also communicate via email, phone, blogs, Skype, Facebook, Twitter etc.
While we realise that email and phone communications are valuable for personal contact with students, if information is applicable to all students, posting it in Moodle makes it available for everyone. The same applies for social media use as not all students will access these platforms. Further, with social media, we advise setting up your own spaces that enable you to be in control of posts by students.
For more information, feel free to contact us.