21 April 2015
eLearning Solutions Service
ITS are piloting an eLearning Solutions Service to help staff adopt eLearning solutions for the most common teaching and learning problems, using centrally supported tools. Coordinators can now request personal support and training to select, configure and launch new eLearning activities including:
- Online assignment marking and submission: Improve marking efficiency, quality of feedback and turnaround time.
- Online mini lecture: Move some of your content online to free up class time for active learning activities.
- Online quiz: Improve student engagement with your course content.
- In-class active learning tools: Improve student engagement in lectures and gain real time feedback on student's understanding of the content presented.
For further information refer to the eLearning Solutions Service webpage and email elearningtraining@uq.edu.au to nominate for the service.
New in-class active learning tool - Wordcloud
Wordcloud is a new UQ in-class active learning tool. Lecturers can pose short answer questions in-class with students responding on their phone, tablet, or laptop via a webpage. The answers are then collated and displayed at the front of class as a ‘word cloud’ for discussion.
Refer to the Getting started with Wordcloud guide for step-by-step instructions.
Nominate for the eLearning Solutions Service to receive individual help to implement this tool.
Engaging students in research discoveries
Students in Dr Karen Cheney's course worked in groups to produce a digital explanation of a discovery made in Zoology. Dr. Cheney’s students found the video assignment highly engaging. Her class enjoyed exploring the science behind the research articles, synthesising the data from various sources to create the digital explanation, and viewing the videos produced by other students.
For this activity Karen used Kaltura, UQ's video server, to facilitate the submission and sharing of the video assignments. In the video below Karen shares her views on the benefits video assignments and tips for managing them. Watch Video (3:47)
For further information refer to the Video upload guide.
Nominate for the eLearning Solutions Service to receive individual help to implement a video assignment.
Assessing communication skills
Students in Jacqui Bond's Pharmacy course worked in groups to produce video explanations of past exam questions. She found the video assignment was a powerful way to help students develop their communication skills and allowed her to accurately assess their progress.
For this activity Jacqui used Kaltura, UQ's video server to facilitate the submission and sharing of the video assignments. In the video below Jacqui shares her views on the benefits of video assignments and tips for managing them. Watch Video (3:59)
For further information refer to the Video upload guide.
Nominate for the eLearning Solutions Service to receive individual help to implement a video assignment.
New instructional video guides - How to add content to your course
New instructional videos are now available to guide you step-by-step on how to add content to your course and use the Text Editor.
The videos can be accessed from the Content Area guides.
Analytics for tests
The Blackboard Test tool includes analytics to help coordinators understand student performance and improve the quality of the questions. The item analysis function provides statistics on overall test performance. The discrimination factor indicates how well individual questions differentiate between students. The difficulty percentage indicates how many students answered each question correctly. The test log function provides information on the time each student spent on completing individual questions and the overall test.
Refer to the Access test log and Run test analysis guides for step-by-step instructions.
Recent Blackboard outage
Learn.UQ experienced reduced availablity on Sunday 19 April until Tuesday 21 April. Vendors provided a solution to the underlying database issue that resolved the problem by 8:00pm Tuesday 21 April. ITS apologises for the inconvenience to staff and students.
Next Blackboard upgrade in July 2015 Inter semester Recess
The next Blackboard upgrade will occur on the first weekend in July 2015. This will be during the Inter Semester Recess on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July. There are no additional scheduled upgrades until November 2016. We will provide further details though emails, our upgrade webpage, and the ITS eLearning update.