The Courtyard

The painting “A Courtyard in Chernihiv”, by Victor Onyschchenko, shows what I’d probably call a back alley. It’s that space behind the house (or beside the house) where you park your bike, play with the dog, kick a ball around, do a bit of experimental “gardening”. This courtyard is in a city far away, but …

Hybrid Teaching and Learning in HE: a futuristic model or a realistic model for the future? Summary and Reflection

‘Hybrid Teaching and Learning in HE: a futuristic model or a realistic model for the future?’ was a question addressed at a workshop held by the University of Nottingham in early 2022, when universities were ready to turn the pandemic corner. More than 150 participants from around the globe were brought together to share their …

Word games and learning – make your own Wordle!

So have you caught the Wordle bug yet?  I have. And of course there’s a group of colleagues sharing our scores… It’s taught me a few things that I hope to apply to my digital learning design, particularly perhaps for revision and key learning points: Make it a small activity: Wordle takes a few minutes …

Open Badges in Moodle

Open Badges are a commonly globally accepted form of micro-accreditation that also provide motivation for students to complete a course, part of a course, or a series of tasks. Open Badges are verifiable and shareable, and they contain detailed information about the achievement and what the recipient did to earn the badge (evidence of learning). …

Anonymous forums in Moodle

We are occasionally asked about how staff can set up anonymous forums in Moodle. At the time of writing there is no official anonymous forum in Moodle. Moodle is designed to be, like the lecture theatre or seminar room, a safe learning space where students feel comfortable speaking in a community of learners. There are …

Advent  Calendar #12: Getting students to annotate PowerPoint slides during a MS Teams meeting

It’s Day 12 and this tip has been written in response to a recent question via the Digital Learning Drop-in. A colleague asked if it was possible for participants during a Teams meeting to annotate PowerPoint slides. Apparently this is possible in Zoom, so we set out to find a way to do it with …

Advent Calendar #6: Q&A: a new student engagement app from Microsoft

Microsoft have rolled out a new app, the Q&A app, which enables question and answer sessions to be held in Teams meetings. Meeting organizers and designated presenters can hold moderated or unmoderated question and answer sessions at any point during a Teams meeting. They are also able to mark best answers, filter responses, moderate and …

Advent calendar #4: Ways to poll your students

Polls and simple quizzes can be used during synchronous sessions (face to face or online) and also asynchronously to support learning by: identifying gaps in learners’ understanding, providing a simple way of actively engaging students in their learning, a minimal form of feedback, stimulate conversation, establish a baseline understanding or opinion that you can then …

Advent Calendar #1: A festive use for H5P

In our most recent Moodle upgrade we installed H5P. This is an alternative to Xerte Toolkits for creating small interactive items within the Moodle page. You can create, edit and re-use interactive content (e.g. multiple choice quizzes or virtual tours). These can be added as graded activities on your Moodle module or non-graded embedded elements …