Sid's Blog

You know when you receive an invitation to attend a Webinar, but then you realise that the kick-off time will be in a different time zone. This happened to me recently, and I wanted to find out what the time gap was. Yes, I could have looked it up on Google, but I now have a World clock to refer too… neat.

Roll over the various countries to find out what Time Zone they are in, then try dragging the time presented to another location. When you get bored with this game, you can drop it in the Delete section, bottom left of the image. Alternatively you can double click on the Country of choice and have the time zone appear at the bottom of the page.

If you would like the World clock in your blog or web page, check out this web site: http://www.clocklink.com/world_clock.php there are loads of clocks to choose from. Never be late again eh

The University of Southampton (UoS) played host to a lively two-day conference covering Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA) (20th & 21st July). I used to attend this annual conference at Loughborough University and some of you may remember this being hosted there. Loughborough have decided to hand over the batton to the UoS who will be conducting this conference for the foreseeable future.

The conference was both informative and enjoyable and a chance for me to speak with other CAA users, QuestionMark Perception representatives in particular and get up to speed in the light of new research.

A good deal of the conference was aimed at Adaptive learning (Adaptive testing in Denmark) along with learning mobility and student feedback.

Keynote address

The Keynote address was given by Professor Paul Brna (University of Edinburgh) more

JISC & HEA overview

John Winkley of JISC and Sharon Waller of the Higher Education Academy joined together to give a brief overview of JISC and HEA hopes for the next five years. I have created bullet points highlighting important elements of their talks, with a brief note in places to accompany them. more

What follows are a few session abstracts which I attended during the two day conference.

Andrew talked about personalising the learning experience for that individual using CAA.

(Abstract) Objective Testing.PDF

What is it that is really acting as a barrier to widespread use of summative eAssessment in UK higher education? Nora Mogey (University of Edinburgh)

Nora talked about the lack of adequate facilities in most institutions aimed at CAA examinations.

(Abstract) Mogey-CAA2010

Defence Academy  -  11 -12^thNovember 2009

I was looking forward to this International conference because I attended the same conference the previous year and found it inspiring and well informed, I wasn’t disappointed.

As far as conferences go, this wasn’t that big with some 80 -90 attendees registered, but the number of attendees was a good march on last year.

Early in the conference I struck up a conversation with a fellow attendee who brought me down to earth by reminded me that the dress code for the conference was smart casuals, they were relating to the fact that I was the only male attendee not wearing a tie. Despite this initial set back, I had a great two days, and no, I never did wear a tie.

What stood out for me over the two day conference was the variety and quality of presentations, from academia, business and the military, all of whom had a different slant on eAssessment. I was amazed at the progress made in simulation assessment which is now beginning to filter through to eLearning.

 Brian Bishop from Caspian Learning (www.caspianlearning.co.uk) gave a presentation using an application developed for EU Customs, where the customs official (player) worked their way through a mock-up of a customs warehouse checking documentation and cargoes as they went. The technology was based upon action maze (www.actionmazes.com) graphics and critical decision making tasks. At the end of each game students receive feedback from the software and a conclusion based upon their progress. During each real world game, progress was charted so that the tutor could view and record progress for later wash-ups and recording purposes.

Conclusion:

I’d recommend this conference above others in 2010, provided the organisers keep the attendance cost down. So if you have the opportunity in 2010, go.

If you do go, please don’t wear a tie.  ;-)

For many of us the keyboard is just a typing tool, but for others it’s a lot more than that. Built into your computer are shortcuts just waiting to be used? Short cuts can help you work more efficiently and importantly, make you less reliant on the mouse or touch pad.  I have to admit that when I found out about keyboard short cuts years ago, I had my doubts as to their value, what could be quicker and easier than using a mouse. I agree, the mouse is very efficient, but over the years I’ve found more able ways of doing things. Now I’m a convert, I use short cuts where I can and believe me you’ll be surprised how versatile they are once you get to use them.

While I have your attention, press the Alt key on your keyboard. If you are reading this in a browser or as a PDF[1] then you’ll see File highlighted on the toolbar and the letter F underlined. Now use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlight area across the toolbar then up and down the dropdowns. When you have finished with the short cut keys, press Alt again and the options will be removed.

If you are reading this in a Word document then you will have noticed a host of letters appearing next to each heading. If you press the Alt key at the same time as one of the letters you will have a new set of letters appear. Using this method you can happily navigate around the page just by using the keyboard shortcuts.

Why not have a little experiment with this; you’ll be surprised how useful some of these actions are.

Some mouse moves scream out for a short cut. Here are some I regularly use.

If you have students in your class with disability issues, then short cut keys may be of help to them and if you find yourself without a mouse or on a bumpy road (I’m open to other suggestions) trying to use a mouse or Touch pad, then this can and will solve navigation issues.

This has been a brief overview of some of my favourite shortcuts. If you want a comprehensive list to try out then go to this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301583 or Google ‘Keyboard shortcuts’.

If you want to know what shortcuts there are for the Mac computer then follow this link.

Download this document: Keyboard short cuts – PDF

During the writing of this article I spent a few hours just using my keyboard to navigate pages and do all the other things I would normally use my mouse for. It was an interesting morning, but a nightmare. Don’t throw away your mouse people.

Pictures or graphics can balloon the size of your PowerPoint, Word or Excel documents significantly. A reduction in the size of your file can speed up the download time and consequently save you a lot of file space.

Some of the ways you can reduce the file size?

1. Crop the picture to focus interest on one area
2. Change the resolution of a picture

Photographs, which are High-resolution images that have lots of colour pixels, can benefit from optimisation; these file names will have an extension of PNG, JPEG, JPG, TIFF, BMP or GIF.

Cropping the picture to focus interest on one area

1. Select the picture whose size you wish to crop
2. Go to the Format tab and click Crop

3. Adjust the edges of the graphic to the desired size.

Changing the picture resolution

1. First select a picture, this is important otherwise you will not see the Format ribbon

2. Go to the Format tab and click Compress Pictures

3. To change the resolution for the selected picture only and not all of the pictures in the document, select the

Apply to selected pictures only check box.

4. Click Options, and then under Target Output, click the resolution that is most appropriate.

5. Click OK

Your files should now be compressed and at a reasonable size for presenting.

If you would like to view this tutorial in another format then please follow these links:

Video tutorial

Compressing pictures (pdf 210k)

There is one type of graphic you cannot compress and that is a vector graphic. This is a drawing format used mostly in clip art.

John Winkley of JISC and Sharon Waller of the Higher Education Academy

John and Sharon joined together to give a brief overview of JISC and HEA hopes for the next five years. I have created bullet points highlighting important elements of their talks, with a brief note in places to accompany them.

John Winkley (JISC)

• Not enough UK institutions being represented at International conferences.

John encouraged institutions to send more representatives to International Conferences, apparently the UK is the most under represented country at these events. Line managers, please take note the next time one of your team spot an appropriate conference in California, hands across the sea and all that .

• Increased use of Creative Commons (CC) should be encouraged.   

It was pointed out that use of CC is on the increase, particularly in the field of education.

• Encouraging inter operability using Question and Test Interoperability (QTI)

• How to measure eAssessment

• The future -  Encouraged sustainability, formative assessment is a richer vain than Summative assessment, recognise diversity

• The question of cheating came up and it was emphasised that it was difficult to cheat for the whole of an academic year, hence regular assessment should be encouraged.

You may well be aware that the University of Plymouth use TURNITIN when checking for plagiarism.

Sharon Waller

• Learning Technology Enhancement programme

• Evidence based practice assessment feedback seminars

• Reduced funding

Keynote speaker – Professor Paul Brna (University of Edinburgh)

Paul’s theme covered adaptive learningand personalised formative assessment. Paul made a lot of interesting points regarding self direction and how it could benefit some students but not be beneficial t others.  He also touched on the effect of feedback and how the right kind of feedback like adaptive feedback was essential.

Adaptive learning technology is becoming a reality at last and something that can give the student the personalised assessments Paul is advocating.

Setting up on-line learning takes good planning and the right tools to help you. Listening to Paul, two useful tools sprang to mind. The first was QuestionMark Perception (QMP) which has a number of adaptive learning features. One of which is the ability to bridge between assessments based on student end of assessment marks. The QMP feedback feature is also very flexible, having the ability to present the  individuals name, their student details, topic marks available and much more.