New Modules Released | Content Rollover

The new modules have been released.  Now these have been released academic staff can request access via their course administrator.

 Once academic staff have access they can start to populate the modules with content. This can be done in two ways, individual items can be copied from one module to another, or a bulk "module copy" can be completed.

The video below shows both of these routes for copying.



All 2015/16 modules are being created as "unavailable", meaning they need to be set to available before students can access them. The end of the above video shows how to make a module available for students.

New FutureLearn Course: Blended Learning Essentials

FutureLearn is a company/platform that is owned by The Open University where they work with UK universities to offer free online courses.

There are lots of courses and a new one has been released that looks to offer something of interest to us all.

The course, Blended Learning Essentials is not specifically targeted at HE academic staff, but will certainly give a good grounding for an approach of blending face-to-face with the use of online tools to support your learners.

The course starts in November, but is open to registration now.

Course details:

URL: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/blended-learning-getting-started

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

• use a range of effective blended learning practices and pedagogies to improve your learners’ experience and attainment
• understand how the many free and affordable technologies now available can enhance teaching and learning, and
• approach new technologies with confidence, designing a pedagogical approach to make the best use of these tools

The course offers peer review of assignments and the curriculum is mapped to accreditation frameworks including CMALT

The Educators:

We would certainly recommend having a look at the course materials even if you are unable to fully participate in the course.

LearnUCS: The Numbers

LearnUCS Statistics for July 2015

Application Insight

Total Page Views	646,692
Average Page Views Per Day	Non course - 14,970 Course - 4,649
Most Active Date	Non Course - 25,498- 9 July 2015 Course - 9,679 - 8 July 2015

Application Metrics

Total Monthly Logins	18,639
Total Number of Courses	9792
Total Number of Active Courses	1396

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LearnUCS Mobile Statistics for 5th July 2015 to 4th August 2015

The stats below are using the built-in Blackboard mobile analytics, which uses the mobile service for the mobile application for its data.

Since April we have been using Google Analytics on our Blackboard installation, this does not take into account those users using the mobile app. It is interesting to see that iOS is still the second most used operating system. Which means users are using their smart devices to access LearnUCS via a browser rather than the available app.

These stats are for the Mobile Learn application only.

Total unique logins for the period was 373 with 1,479 logins.

iOS is still the most popular operating system for those devices.

We have had continued fall in the number of active module this month, this follows the trend of the end of year with students finishing their studies, with staff and students no longer requiring access to those materials. We will see a continued drop on all stats until the start of the new academic year.

Clicker Use 2015

The following statistics are part of the e-Learning in Figures series. This post covers the use of clickers at UCS. Due to changes in the way we wish to promote the service, we are not evaluating by an annual questionnaire, but will focus on collecting stories and testimonials from staff and students.

The service has gone through a number of enhancements during 2014/15.

1. We've moved the management to the Library and the RFID system. This enables better monitoring and return.
2. We have undertaken a short literature search around answering the question, Do clickers improve student learning and result in higher grades?
3. There is increasing interest from students to use clickers within their assessed presentations. In fact, information on using clickers has been included into Learning Services, Effective Presentation Workshop.
4. There are requests to run Programme Team bespoke sessions as an outcome of our Staff Digital Capabilities Survey

The data was collected between 1st September, 2014 and 29th April, 2015 based on booking software.

The evidence suggests clickers are being increasingly used over the period. The clickers were booked on 106 occasions by 27 staff. An increase from 55 occasions by 26 staff in 2014-15. A number of staff had booked the clickers over 4 months in advance.

The 27 staff, divided into 10 within professional service teams, and 17 within course teams. The course teams covered the Dept of Nursing, Dept of Science & Technology, Dept of Applied Social Science, Dept of Health Studies and Suffolk Business School. A development from the professional service teams has been the use of Clickers within communication strategies for Institutional projects.

Table 1 illustrates the level of repeat bookings by staff. These are always difficult to interpret as the determinants to book the clickers ate very diverse. However, it does imply an increase in re-bookings.

Table 1: Frequency of bookings

Frequency of bookings	Number of people
	2014-15	2013-14	2012-13
1	9	12	5
2	3	6	7
3	9	3	1
4	-	6	1
5	1	1	-
6	-	1	-
10 or more	3	-	-

If you would like to know how clickers might be used within your teaching and learning, please contact Learning Services (learningservices@ucs.ac.uk).