Staff LearnUCS Welcome Back Evaluation

LearnUCS Staff Welcome Back Sessions 2013

During the summer of 2013 LearnUCS was upgraded to the then latest release of 9.1SP13. This release brought a number of changes including a new feature that would offer teaching staff a long awaited ability to mark/annotate documents online in the browser, known as “Inline Grading”.

To support the returning lecturing staff after the summer break the Elevate team planned a number of 30 minute surgeries. These drop-in sessions were planned on a number of different days and times, to catch as many staff as possible out of their teaching periods.

The link below shows the schedule of surgeries that we ran:

http://ucselevate.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/staff-new-features-in-learnucs-summer.html

The main aim was to introduce staff to the new Inline Grading tool as well as a quick update on other new features and to then allow any questions.

Of the eight sessions we scheduled, four had no attendees, we had twelve lecturers attend across the other four sessions. These sessions were lively with discussion based around the new Inline Grading tool as well as other more general “how to” questions.

Feedback at the end of the sessions was all very positive in the new features, and all said they would go away and when they had time would look to use the tools and new features. The Elevate team suggest that staff try out the new tools and features as early as possible after seeing them. The thought is to keep the idea fresh in mind so there is a familiarity and less chance of forgetting how and why these features help within their teaching.

Two weeks after the sessions all attendees were sent a short survey to ask

1. Did you take any key messages from the session?
2. If 'Yes' please share what you took from the session
3. Have you tried any of the tools in LearnUCS that you saw during the session?
4. Please explain your answer
5. To what extent do you agree the session met your requirements

We had a 16% (2 members of staff) response rate to the survey. Both attendees said they took key messages away from the event. They key messages taken away were:

• “New systems for on-line submission of assignments and marking on-line”
• “There is more to Learn UCS than I thought”

One of the attendees at this point managed to try the tools they had seen, the other was waiting for a student assessment period that was in 8 weeks time.

Both attendees left the session had met their requirements and left the following statements:

• “Brief update on key features with opportunity for more detailed follow up session”
• “I was the only one there so I could ask whatever I wanted!”

In conclusion, I feel even though the sessions were not attended by a large audience, those that did attend took away something worthwhile. In future I will continue to run this kind of welcome back session, I would also continue to schedule different dates and times to host the sessions, to try and capture as many members of staff as possible.