13 years as a learning technologist
May 31, 2023
Long term Moodle maven Helen Whitehead retires at the beginning of June, so we asked her to reflect on her 13 years at the University. How long have you been at the University? I started in the Learning Technology Section in 2010 as a Learning Development Support Officer. I still do essentially the same job, …
Turnitin: what does the % similarity score really mean?
May 9, 2023
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 …
Moodle is Upgrading in the Summer of 2023: Moodle 4.1 is coming!
April 24, 2023
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 …
Turnitin (& Moodle) assignment submission: checklist for students
April 20, 2023
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 …
Designing for Engagement in a Learning Community – course starts Wed 19 April
April 14, 2023
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 …
Take a NAP 8: Accessibility checkers
March 16, 2023
The final core habit of the eight we’re calling Nottingham Accessibility Practices — the NAPs – covers accessibility checkers. These can be an important tool in identifying issues or catching errors in your documents. Much like spell-checkers, accessibility checkers can be found in most text editors and are easy to use. Within Microsoft Office you …
Take a NAP 7: Formats and assistive technologies
March 14, 2023
The Nottingham Accessibility Practices – the NAPs – are eight core habits that will help make your teaching materials and publications more accessible. In this seventh post in our series on the NAPs we’re looking at how materials can be formatted to be used with assistive technology tools. Those who will benefit most from accessibility …
Take a NAP 6: Colour
March 9, 2023
Colour is one of the most important features to be aware of when creating accessible content. In this post, part of our series on the eight Nottingham Accessibility Practices – the NAPs – we’ll look at why colour can be an issue and how to design to overcome that. To make your content easy for …
Take a NAP 4: Multimedia
March 3, 2023
Our fourth blog post in our Nottingham Accessibility Practices Series covers the NAP on Multimedia. This is one of the eight core habits that will help make your teaching materials and publications more accessible and available. Video and audio are key tools in providing variety of materials. Videos can be important in assisting the processing …
New resource: Digital Learning Frequently Asked Questions for staff
March 1, 2023
I’ve been asking around my colleagues in Learning Technology in order to find out the questions that have been most repeatedly asked over the years. We’ve then created a Digital Learning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Staff resource to help members of staff to find the answers quickly. Perhaps one of our top questions at …
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