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Helen Whitehead

Helen Whitehead

Learning Technology Consultant, Nottingham: University Park

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Posts by Helen Whitehead

Some advice on preparing for exams

It’s that time again, when students are preparing for exams and for submission of coursework. We’ve published some good advice in the past on assessment prepartion which might be relevant again this year, and we’ve added some more resources that might be useful: Preparing for and revising for examinations, presentations and coursework. Revision and examinations …

Five minutes with… Ben Atkinson

What is your job role? Learning Technology Consultant for the Faculty of Science. What 3 words describe you? Creative, passionate, inquisitive. Tell us something ‘unusual’ about yourself I’ve presented a country music radio programme weekly for the past fifteen years. It is broadcast on stations around the UK and in Ireland, Australia and the US. …

Turnitin: what does the % similarity score really mean?

At the University of Nottingham, as elsewhere, student assignment papers are submitted to the Turnitin service. This produces a Similarity score and report but it doesn’t indicate plagiarism or a lack of academic integrity. What Turnitin does is check a student’s work against a database of previous submissions, web pages and journals. If there are …

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How to schedule announcements in Moodle

Did you know you can schedule announcements in Moodle to be sent out at a time you specify? Useful if you want to make sure the message drops in inboxes at a particular time, when you might not be around (or if you’re me, might not remember!)  It works for other forum posts as well.  …

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Moodle is Upgrading in the Summer of 2023: Moodle 4.1 is coming!

This summer Moodle will upgrade to version 4.1. This new version of Moodle brings with it lots of changes to the layout of Dashboard and My modules pages when you first login, and to your module site pages. The biggest changes in this upgrade relate to the look and feel of Moodle, such as the …

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Turnitin (& Moodle) assignment submission: checklist for students

We are often contacted by students worried about why their submissions to assignment dropboxes are not succeeding. Here are some of the most important things to check. Your document: please check Your filename must be no longer than 40 characters (you may get an error message if your filename is too long: it will be …

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Designing for Engagement in a Learning Community – course starts Wed 19 April

Time and again, we hear that students are not engaging with their learning. Being engaged benefits students in so many ways. It can make learning more enjoyable as well as boosting achievement. So what can we do to promote more engagement in our classes? The course “Designing for Engagement in a Learning Community” looks at …

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Digital badges, safety online and other posts for students

Our blog has been running since 2010, and moved into this blog platform in 2020. We’ve had two Advent Calendars and a Summer of Moodle, and published posts hopefully of use to both students and staff. Some of the posts which may still be of interest to students (and of course some staff) include: How …

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Easter eggs!

Traditionally, Easter eggs in the digital sense used to be hidden in the software that we used every day. From video games to operating systems, software developers have been known to add secret features, messages, and hidden references for users to discover. For example at one point there was a Flight Simulator game hidden in …

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Creating audio and podcasts

I got some really good tips on creating audio and podcasts in education, from the recent Future Teacher webinar focusing on audio. Speakers included Andrew McLaren. Edinburgh Napier, Sheila MacNeill, Jane Secker, and Mark Childs. Here are, with thanks, some of their tips. The preparation time needed (at least at first) means it can be …

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