I’ve had a free day pass for the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference at Aston U in Birmingham (thanks Blackboard!). I’m particularly interested in this first session on Rubrics. The session is called ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’. It seems like there are still a few kinks in the design, but it does have some functionality that the rubrics in Turnitin don’t. The reporting looks particularly unhelpful and it seems that getting the raw data (for Analytics) is possible, if not straightforward. It also doesn’t seem to be integrated with SafeAssign. We saw a live demo of the rubric and it’s evident that it is possible to ‘tweak’ the decisions within the rubric using a pull-down menu – effectively giving students a high or low decision within a rubric cell. As I argued in my review of ReView, this is something that academics may ask for but it works at cross purposes to one of the key reasons why you would use rubrics: transparency.

It’s interesting to see the Kaltura mashup integration in Bb.

After the break I’ve come to listen to a presentation in DES – Data Exchange System at Liverpool John Moores U. It’s not quite what I thought it would be (that’ll teach me for nit reading the abstracts carefully enough). It seems that it started out as a way of tackling the point-to-point issues of data management within the institution. I have tuned out a bit with all the tech-speak, but have tuned in again for the pedagogical side of things. The focus on retention has really got my attention. The ability to give students earlier access to VLE content (4 weeks prior to induction) is really interesting. They see it as a way f helping students build a sense of belonging and integration with their courses. This is particularly for library resources.

The next session I’ve come to is Helen Parkin and Helen Roger from Sheffield Hallam U about student expectations of Technology Enhanced Learning. The work they have done has enabled them to come up with (they’re calling it ‘inform and validate’) a set of minimum expectations for TEL and ways of supporting staff to achieve them. It’s interesting (to me at least) that 97% of students felt that it was important or very important to find staff contact details on the VLE. This is backed up by the strong expectation that the VLE is thought of as a key communication tool. 99% of respondents felt that it was important or very important to have assessment briefs online and similarly very high expectations to be able to submit online and have their work returned online. This is inline with their previous longitudinal work (done across the ‘noughties’) which showed a similar expectations. There was also a call for a single one-stop location for all of a student’s assessment results across their course. There was a strong push from students for timetabling to be made available via a mobile platform because dealing with frequent or last-minute changes on the go made their live easier. Another strong expectation is for readings lists (which is one of the reasons why MyReadings is so brilliant for us at Huddersfield). The requirement to link to this is passed to academic responsibility at SHU whereas for us it is effectively automated. This led to Helen’s final point regarding the automation of VLE material.