If you haven't discovered https://gamma.app/ you should have a look a serviceable and downloadable presentation in under 5 minutes . Quicker than building a Sandcastle - unless of course you use Bing Image Creator
................................Really what it says in the heading. I will play with this from time to time. A mixture of education and domestic ...............................observations.
Here is video and summary transcript of video I was asked to share with QAA Scotland for recent conference.
What is your role at City of Glasgow College?
I am head of digital skills - but what it means is that I look after College learning technology and push out models for blended learning.
Biggest task in the last 2 years has been taking College from self hosted Moodle on to Canvas by Instructure.
We do everything in the open - so most of this is reflected in learning and teaching academy website - along with staff and student support materials.
What is some recent work that you have been working on regarding blended?
Simply encouraging staff to use full range of tools available to them appropriately.
Using Jisc survey feedback from staff and students to shape our offer.
Learners want a more standard blended learning experience.
Staff want more training and support - and time. We can offer the first two.
How does City of Glasgow College approach blended?
We work from a model based on UCL ABC model at City of Glasgow College we call this Active, Blended and Connected.
Boring but necessary things like consulting on , creating and promoting a standard Canvas template. Students want basic elements in any online course.
What course is about , a sensible order of course materials , a introduction to teaching staff and information on how to contact them.
On course materials been encouraging more use of quizzes and different forms of assessment and more use of pre-recorded video ( short 8 minutes)
Post pandemic courses are delivered in mixed mode some on site and some online.
We have some rooms set up for hybrid teaching - but most staff simply cannot cope with this - it is very difficult to give face to face and online learners a positive experience synchronously.
What are you hoping for in the future?
My hopes haven't really changed since late 1990's when as a lecturer all my materials were on the internet and available for all my students and for any colleagues that wanted to augment these or adopt them. I think we still have a long way to go before staff and students are confident open practitioners and collaborators around learning and assessment.
We can see AI arriving and we have a policy in place - but the next thing is really training AI on our own data sets.
I can see role too for more intermediate tools like Teachermatic .
VR/AR still had enormous potential but challenge is using these tools in a cost effective and sustainable way - tools like ThingLink will open door here.
The CDN/GTCS digital standard for lecturers will become a great driver in terms of professional review. I don't think staff are really aware that they now have a benchmark to meet.
We are working to a set of College attributes for all learners - remember core skills and meta skills are a thing in College landscape - these attributes will help us move on digital skills.
We work within a lifelong learning - national system - Colleges can play their part - it would be good to see more examples of resource sharing both across the College landscape and between University system and College system. Colleges should be doing a lot more for schools too.
We will do more with Canvas commons, Canvas credentials, Canvas Folio - Commons to share whole courses with other Colleges and internationally. Credentials to support initially our College attributes and then to offer certification for some open less formal provision - open to all. Canvas Folio to give learners a folio of their own work to take with them when they leave college.
I'd still like to see more lecturers and managers across Colleges in Scotland maintain reflective blogs or journals. Social media and networking is driven by activities like this - too much practice is siloed across the school , college and university system.
Yes, it's a promotional video but it really does capture staff and student engagement in our continued Canvas journey!
It's a great advert for the teams across City of Glasgow College that made it happen, the teachers and our students.
Testament too to the great support we continue to enjoy from Instructure. Always happy to talk about our Canvas journey.
City of Glasgow College: Improved reliability and user experience with Canvas | Instructure
I was scheduled to deliver a short presentation for ELESIG but was at short notice invited for a long weekend in Barcelona. So input was pre-recorded and shared here.
Slides and recording for ELESIG
and back-channel Joe Wilson (@joecar) / Twitter
#ELESIG
Nice to meet and give Turkish Govt vocational delegation tour of City of Glasgow College and chat about the technologies we use to support learners. Technical chat too about SCQF and Articulation routes and what works and what still does not work in Scotland.
Turkey has just created a national qualifications and credit framework and now trying to get all institutions to implement this.
Well done SQA for supporting this critical international work. I'm sure rest of programme will go well.
Among other things we visited College TV studio - no sound ;-)
There were attendees from both institutions and folks from
- How you manage, roll out and maintain a sensible Canvas template or templates. We have one at City of Glasgow College some Universities have undergraduate and postgraduate even faculty templates. Not a path we will go down. You can catch a glimpse here. Canvas allows you to publish open courses and we will be doing more of this.
- Everyone is enjoying using the new Canvas Icon Maker (though important for accessibility always include an appropriate ALT tag).
- Some institutions like ours have clear update cycles to allow everyone to review content. Some only do this for programmes that are targeted on basis of a range of factors.
- Generally, learners love the consistency of Canvas and templates. The challenges lie in ensuring there is cross faculty adoption and that staff come to have an understanding of very basic learning design. A course should not simply be a collection of PDF documents or PowerPoints.
- One way to solve some of these issues is to build in content review to a college or University quality process. In colleges that might include sampling the appropriate use of the College template in internal verification processes.
- For all ensuring the accessibility of content is continuing issue. There are lots of great tools in Canvas that support this. Our centre uses Ally to take this further but ultimately staff need to take ownership and publish learning materials in an accessible format.
We showcased how we are using Canvas Folio and how it can give a learner a portfolio for life and can be built into normal assessment processes. We talked around how we could use Canvas Credentials as open badges/ micro credentials. Canvas have made two great acquisitions in Portfolium and Badgr.
We highlighted the opportunity that we have as Scottish Canvas users to make more use of Canvas Commons and specifically to work together and share content through a consortium on Canvas Commons. Its available if you look for it under admin consortiums. Called "Scottish Canvas Users Group" We should all be sharing content here and to the wider global community to align to UNESCO principles around Open Educational Resources. We will share our template and some of our Canvas courses here.
Also. covered our approach to ABC learning design and the range of tools our staff have access to, to embed in their Canvas courses.
Some suggestions we will take back.
Ushare is an online platform provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) that allows teachers and lecturers in Scotland to share resources and materials related to teaching and learning. The platform is part of the SQA's wider commitment to promoting and supporting the use of open educational resources (OER) in Scotland's education system.
I'll be around for another flying visit to Bett23 - I wonder how much Artificial Intelligence will be on display ? Is that a pun?
I am a fan of the idea of the Scottish Learning Festival and have chipped in many times over the years on how it might be improved.
I looked at the advice and like me it has aged - but some of the principles are still just as valid and have not really ever been picked up. I guess just the changing guard in the Education Department and Education Scotland and tight budgets keep it sticking to one formula or another.
If you follow my blog you will know I've been attending since the last century and before there was SLF, there were more modest gatherings of Learning Techs at the Scottish Council for Educational Technology.
I think this years regional and blended approach was a great idea. Will be interested to see if it converted into true national participation.
Last week in the splendid surroundings of the Glass House Hotel in Edinburgh I outlined what we had intended to do and what we will actually do with our new Fujitsu learning Hub.
It's a none technical presentation and does not cover the systems we use in learning technology nor our current journey to Canvas by Instructure. You can find these in more detail on the Learning and Teaching Academy site.
It was great to meet my fellow ambassadors and hear about developments across the Scottish College sector. I am looking forward to the next chapter as we deepen our relationship with Fujitsu and industry partners.