February - APRIL 2021
Journal reflecting on my current and past use of Aula for the FBBM course.
18th February - First thoughts
I started using Aula in its pilot scheme back in 2017/18 with our year 1 cohort. I was immediately impressed with its ease of use for both students and tutors.
Previously, we had been using moodle as an archival space for content and an FBBM facebook page for communications and links to online sources, events etc… This was a very tedious process and never formed a successful online shared learning ‘community’. Furthermore, we would receive tens of emails from students asking simple questions which would often get lost in already very full inboxes. Aula has revolutionised and streamlined communication with students; staff and formal student communication (such as attendance issues) are via e-mail and student conversation and questions are over aula message in a simple informal way. Managing questions and student communication is easy in the built in messenger and automatically archives all previous communications which is useful. Sometimes all students need is a simple ‘yes’ answer or the link to a lecture and the messenger works really well for this and does not require you to boot up a laptop and email system - you can do it quickly over the phone app.
In terms of setting out the course content this is really user friendly and easy to navigate. There are enough embedding facilities and plugins to utilise but not too many that it becomes too complicated or unintuitive.
Students also use the platform as a professional app. When we used facebook the conversation would often vere off topic or sometimes become inappropriate due to students seeing facebook as a personal social platform. I never really felt comfortable using Facebook as a method of communication. Now students see aula as ‘their professional study space’ and build up a facebook or wassap group for independent/social conversation away from tutors.
19th February - Setting up my Aula Spaces
I tend to set my Aula spaces up following the timetable. For example, in the above screengrab, the left column has a section dedicated to each day a class is taught with all the links to the content for that day added inside e.g.
L1 Unit briefing,
L2 PESTEL (point 1),
L3 Secondary Market and Consumer Research (point 2)
L4 Primary Consumer research (point 3)
Etc…
I have done this so that students can easily cross reference their days and corresponding content with the Aula journey. I also add in brackets, next to each lesson title, the corresponding point on the brief the lesson relates to e.g. (point 1)
As the day starts out the agenda for the day and any links to zoom rooms etc.. are the only contents in the section. As the day progresses I add the recorded live zoom session, corresponding lecture slides, links to any aula feed posts and so on to build the content and make it easy for students to refer back to. Feedback from students in our course reviews and during PPRs confirm they find this a really easy way of accessing information.
Preparing my Aula space for my Learning Activity…
I used the Aula space a lot for my learning Activity which was delivered yesterday. I was able to share and embed an external wordmap by mentimeter and a pre-classed mini shared learning activity where students had to source and pin an article on ethical or sustainable practices within the fashion supply chain to a shared Padlet. Both of these were easily accessible to students on the Aula journey. They can now re-access that bank of information as they continue with their studies.
Aula Limitations
While it is great that we can hide certain sections under the ‘materials’ tab to be released/scheduled for a certain time. It would also be great if we could do the same for elements within the materials section e.g. I could already upload the lecture PDF and the task jpegs to be scheduled to be released at 11:00 once I know my delivery is finished. This saves me having to take time to do this (or avoid me forgetting) right after delivery.
22nd February - Learning Environments
This week we started to look at the learning environment. Below are some of the thoughts and ideas I had for the flipped learning (which also appears in my main blog/journal)
1. What makes a good digital learning environment?
- A place that feels safe and where members feel valued.
- A domain that supports students' learning experience, encourages questions and communication.
- Where students feel encouraged and free to share their thoughts and opinions
- Making sure there is a consistent/reliable ‘presence’ - questions can be asked and there will be a prompt response from a tutor.
- A place that's well organised, easy to follow and consistent.
- A place that can be co-created by both students and tutors.
2. How can you encourage 'informal' exchanges, between students, to build community when the course is fully online?
- Encouraging group discussions/debate
- Brief flipped learning activities on the feed and get students to reply with their findings. After, link the feed to the corresponding journey section so students can re-access and refer to it easily in the future.
- Get students to upload work from in-class tasks/workshops and encourage them to read and comment on each other's submissions.
- Dedicate time for students to interact socially, ‘as people’ not just students
Ways in which I could enhance my use of Aula…
- Linking a feed to an element in the journey e.g. a discussion point so it doesn't become lost in the feed and both student and tutor can re-access it later easily.
- Jigsaw learning - but get students to all feedback using emojis.
- Possibly incorporate the pass the parcel group work concept?
- Use the ‘tag’ option in the feed to group post types e.g. pree-class learning, discussion, class agenda etc…
- Keep getting the views of the students and adapt the platform to their needs? Gain and analyse feedback.
- Use the sections and file pages within sections on Aula.
One of the articles I found most useful was; 10 Principles for Effective Teaching & Learning on Aula
Building community - I found it interesting reading about this and how it's important to ‘create structured time and space for you and your students to connect socially ‘as people’ as well as academically’. This is something I don’t do enough of at the moment but feel could be really beneficial.
Develop and Show Cultural Awareness & Care: I found this section interesting too and would like to explore how I can cater for all my students’ needs and preferences online to hopefully maintain student retention, engagement and achievement.
23rd February - Looking at things from another perspective
This evening I spent time with my triad completing the SWOT analysis for Aula. It was really great to hear things from another perspective. I personally really enjoy Aula and often find myself advocating for the use of technologies within teaching practise. However, it came to my attention this evening that I am perhaps classed as a ‘digital native’ - who knew? In fact, I actually took this for granted, and it's definitely something I should acknowledge that not all uses of the platform are. I remember last year (when we swapped to emergency online teaching) I was working with a colleague who found technology really daunting and found it really hard to grasp how to operate the system. I was happy to take responsibility for our shared Aula space and allow them time to acquaint themselves with the system but it was a real challenge for them and took time. When trying to ‘host’ a digital learning environment this is definitely a major challenge. It wasnt that they were a luddite - they just needed to be shown how to operate Aula and given time to familiarise themselves with it as a VLE.
Another thing I realised was that although I enjoy Aula and technologie - lots don’t. There are alsoe come people who are just luddites. I really disliked the old moodle set up we used to use for various reasons and I should be sympathetic to colleagues who don't enjoy Aula in a similar way or technology in general.
What really came to my attention this evening and through yesterday's lesson is that perhaps Aula is great at hosting and archiving content and links but it is a dormant environment and needs to be combined with *live* teaching, groups etc… to really achieve community. At present we are using zoom as a platform to present live lectures and create breakout rooms where students can participate in group ‘face to face’ learning scenarios. I guess I'm asking myself if Aula needs that *live* side to really form a successful ‘active’ online environment where students feel a presence. Maybe there always needs to be someone one there present (like in a zoom) room that a student can just pop into (during working hours)? Or do the lectures need to happen there? Is it actually as much of a learning environment as zoom in reality or just an index of information? Something to think about…
25th February - Teaching students in a virtual world
I listened to a podcast titled ‘teaching students in a virtual world’ (Jisc, 2020) that discussed a fully immersive teaching experience like I discussed in yesterday's journal entry. In the episode, Itzel Lopez who teaches tourism at Cardiff and Vale college has developed a fully immersive online platform using ‘second world’ for her students. Not only does Lopez host lectures and content on the platform but students can travel virtually, go inside classrooms, attend rooftop yoga, sit by a campfire to meet other students and visit a virtual pub. It has been really useful for developing relationships amongst students who are currently based internationally due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While developing a VR environment such as a second world may not be feasible, creating some kind of social and wellbeing aspect to the platform is definitely needed for it to become fully immersive. For example, at the moment student services and student unions are totally separate entities - do these need to be merged into the VLE?
I was also interested in how students build avatars and can present using their avatars. This is helping students develop their confidence presenting before doing it in person. One of the most problematic things when teaching seems to be getting students to present and causes a huge amount of anxiety which often overshadows other aspects of teaching and learning.
1st March - How did Aula help with my learning Activity
While evaluating my ‘Agents of Change’ learning activity I thought it would be useful to evaluate how Aula helped on the day too and include it here.
How did Aula help on the day?
- I have been evaluating Aula for my Learning Environment (A4) and took this opportunity to reflect upon its use to support my Learning Activity (A1).
- I was easily able to set the pre-lesson input on Aula with a link to Padlet for students to share all their work too.
- I wanted student to watch a mini film documentary of our visit to MAS holdings in Sri-Lanka from 2017 which documented their journey of being creating a circular sustainable process in their vertically integrated factories - however, I had to upload it to youtube then share the link as the film far exceeded Aulas upload limit. It would be great to increase this to 3gb.
- Schedule was set for the day on Aula and I uploaded content under the readings as the day progressed e.g. links to my recorded live lecture, recordings of student presentations etc…
- The core of the day e.g. live lectures, breakout room group work and presentations happened over zoom.
In conclusion for Aula to become a fully immersive community of practise it really needs that *live* aspec to it otherwise it really just becomes an archive of content with no live presence.
4th March - Online learning; podcasts
The past few days I have been listening to a few podcasts on online learning and made the following notes to reflect upon...
1. Conversations on Online Learning - Episode 2. Caroline Kühn.
Edinburgh Napier University, 2020. Episode 2. Caroline Kühn. [podcast] Conversations on Online Learning. Available at: <https://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/dlte/DSP/Pages/DSPpodcast.aspx> [Accessed 2 March 2021].
Realist social theory; interplay between culture, structure and agency.
Agency → individual ↔ individual → agent.
Students start to feel ‘safe’ within their VLE because they are not interacting with the ‘real’ world - they can’t break anything! Fear of presentation is a great example - most students feel more comfortable presenting over zoom - it’s not real life - there is not a classroom of faces looking at you. However, the very emotion that inhibits students to feel willing to present in a classroom environment also acts as a motivator for confidence and improvement. Thus, agency becomes restrained in the virtual environment and inhibits these kinds of practises if we rely solely on a VLE.
You need to provide students with challenges - expose them. Find the tools to solve things. To become independent. Virtual environment only has a role.
The authenticity of the experience of the students and the technology being a ‘safe emotional space’ for the students and the educator.
Power of social relations.
Critical realism defines reality as complex and layered. Teaching requires lots of things to happen and combine- in interaction now properties emerge.
How we can make the virtual space more akin to a real ‘natural’ space - there is the problem. Spaces are politically and socially constructed - they are not empty vessels.
Open participatory tools (wordpress) - twitter is powerful but not per sey. - Can we use all this in a ‘less artificial way’
Artificial constraints - end points in academia - exams - exit awards - ends of trimesters. The learning that happens can always be constrained within these structures. But sometimes they can be motivating for things that can be bigger, more authentic, more real world and its key into the social relationships there, emotional things going on.
De-centering the role of the teacher to give more agency to the student but the effect on that on the educator is quite profound because there's that co-construction of learning with your students powerful learning experience -huge possibility here as well?
There is resistance on both sides - nothing worth without struggles. By asking students to present in class, write an essay etc… They like things done for them - reluctant.
Offer challenges but provide the scaffolding. Providing care brings a humanistic element to students to achieve these challenges.
2. Emotion Science and Online Learning with Flower Darby
Nave, L., 2021. Emotion Science and Online Learning with Flower Darby. [podcast] https://thinkudl.org/. Available at: <https://thinkudl.org/> [Accessed 3 March 2021].
Technology can be awesome, it can be fun, it can be really engaging. Using Cahoot - quizzing - enjoyment - welcome includes all learningers.
Virtual reality, mixed reality courses - so much power to truly engage and immerse our students.
When we pair these newly emerging technologies and what we are learning about emotion science we can achieve pure learning gold.
VR to go to an archeological site + fashion visit a factory internationally (inclusive for those who cannot access international trips)
Many faculty have been forced to get more comfortable with tech due to the pandemic.
Empathise that not all lecturers (digitally native or otherwise) are enjoying the current teaching circumstances but there is so much potential with the use of technology within our courses. In order to serve today's students use technology to help all students excel within our teaching environments.
(pandemic has thrown certain courses into adopting it)
Darby says during the podcast that “The technology does not do the teaching but we can put it to work for us to help our students learn”
Connection between technology and emotion science… How can you help students persist in an online environment
Foster caring relationships with our students. Connect with us as people. The more students can connect with us as real people is a great way to help people engage and persist.
(Nave, 2021)
3. Creating Inclusive Space for All with Zach Smith.
Nave, L., 2019. Creating Inclusive Space for All with Zach Smith. [podcast] https://thinkudl.org/. Available at: <https://thinkudl.org/> [Accessed 3 March 2021].
Everyone has been marginalised based on context - where we are going to have strengths and where we are going to have weaknesses - where we have power where we don't. That's a problem to understand - realistically we need to design systems that are ready and flexible because of that - because of human variability. And because in our (US) history we have not done that well. Certain power structures that we put together benefit certain types of people, certain populations and it benefits them in a disproportionate way. UDL works by putting choice in place, by being thoughtful and compassionate with how systems are designed - it’s welcoming and inclusive.
If (you) can facilitate a learner to see themselves as an expert learner then you are empowering them to go out and to take control and agency over their lives. That's what a great educator should be trying to do. Trying to give power back.
4. Conversations on Online Learning - Episode 6. Dani Dilkes.
Edinburgh Napier University, 2020. Episode 6. Dani Dilkes. [podcast] Conversations on Online Learning. Available at: <https://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/dlte/DSP/Pages/DSPpodcast.aspx> [Accessed 2 March 2021].
Inclusive design - access issues? Have things available in text and audio format is - asynchronous materials so they are more accessible.
Should students have webcams on??
Faculty → they need them on so we can see if they engage. Invite them instead - make it clear why - create a learning experience where they want to engage/want to have their cameras on.
Activities → students will naturally have their cameras on.
Help shake the idea that this is temporary - offer Luddites digital support, recognise it is a lot of new skills that we are expecting of students and teachers!.
7th March - Pause - What do I know now?
Questions and reflections from last week's research and reading.
After the reading and research I carried out last week there are some overriding themes and thoughts I'd like to reflect on...
Creating a fully immersive experience
Lots of conversation regarding online learning seems to be about its limitations:
How can we make it social, fully immersive etc…
Technology can be really fun and engaging when used correctly. How do we grow an online environment so it becomes fully immersive?
Should we be using VR?
Does there need to be a virtual world; social hangouts, virtual classrooms, access to SS, SU?
Can we use this to our advantage? Can we visit a factory on the other side of the world - EVERYONE can join you don't need to pay or travel to ‘go’ on a trip?
Bringing the ‘real life’ element to online learning - challenging our students:
One of the BIG questions surrounding online learning seems to be how we bring that real life experience to the table.
Teaching online the past year it's been really interesting seeing how students feel about presenting. It's always the ‘thing’ that causes the most anxiety and most students shy away from. However, we know that communication and instilling the confidence to ‘voice’ one's opinion is one of the key learning outcomes we want our student to have.
It seems some students are better at doing this in class and others online. A few of the students who would almost always skip class on presentation day have really engaged with online learning and have volunteered themselves to be lead presenters and have presented with confidence and clarity. They appear to feel ‘safe’ online - while we want them to gain confidence presenting in front of a real audience it's also great that they have been able to contribute and participate in something they haven't been able to do before. Could students build confidence presenting behind an avatar as Itzel Lopez suggested in the podcast ‘teaching students in a virtual world’ (Jisc, 2020) before going on to do the real thing in person?
Should we be offering choice in the future so more students can have a go whether online or in person? Considering UDL it feels like this could be an option. It seems a shame that an otherwise capable student can jeopardize their mark and outcome so much through fear of presenting. Can we offer a compromise? Presenting in class to smaller groups and the optio to present at summative online in some units?
With more companies wanting ‘virtual’ CV etc… is this a good skill to develop the ability to present ‘virtually’ too?
UDL - Inclusivity
It is important to acknowledge that technology and online access is a privilege to many. We cannot make assumptions that all our students can access online content and universities need to accommodate people's needs if VLE’s take precedence.
Can you be more inclusive online?
Can we cater to broader neurodiverse needs?
Can offer audio, video and word format learning opportunities?
Assessment - ability to offer more choice - digital, physical, verbal submissions?
Financially accessible - without travel costs, physical printing (submission) costs, reduced travel - financially online offers a lot of options?
Offer support
We must not make assumptions that all students can access technology - digital poverty is an issue.
We need to offer technical support to non digital natives so they can operate and engage with VLE’s.
We need to have conversations with luddites to see how we can engage them with their VLE’s and find balance.
10th March - Time, Space, Place
As I entered this topic I found myself naturally advocating for the use of technologies within teaching and for Aula as a VLE. However, as I’ve continued discussions in class, within my triad and continued research I’ve become more sceptical, critical and appreciative of others opinions. While reading Kühn’s blog post; Is technology good for education? (Kühn, 2016) there are a number of points that take this into account and the theory of time, space and place that Kühn discusses is really interesting.
- Where there are gains (with technology/VLE)there are also losses; thinking about the balance of them, considering what is what we are losing when embracing a particular technological solution.
Time, space and Place are key elements for education to happen - online challenges this:
Time - students can manage their study time - watch a lecture when it's convenient for them then re-watch
Place: gained a new dimension, space is no longer only the physical spaces we inhabit but also the virtual spaces that digital technologies have enabled to exist.
Spaces: spaces then will hopefully become places where different experiences are mediated by digital tools and that are complementing all of the other experiences happening in the face to face experience.
Genuine disruption involves re-thinking the very nature of education: its activities and relationships, as well as its core purposes and values. Genuine disruption is not about using technology to do the same differently, but using technology to do different things
Kühn, C., 2016. Is technology good for education?. [Blog] Open Learning Space, Available at: <https://carolinekuhn.net/index.php/2016/05/21/is-technology-good-for-education/> [Accessed 8 March 2021].
11th March - How can we adapt our teaching to suit our students
Now I start to reflect back on my own learning outcomes set at the start of the unit they all seem to be based around how I can make my teaching more inclusive, create a stronger community and find that balance of online and technology versus face to face teaching.
LO_7 – Identify ways I can become more inclusive by becoming more aware and understanding of neurodiversity within my cohorts
LO_8 – Explore effective ways to deliver hybrid teaching within FBBM modules
LO_9 – Integrate a broader framework of connectivism within my community of practise to keep pace and adapt in a digital age.
As i've started to do more research into how do we create a strong and successful online teaching environment all the answers seem to be pinned around flexibility:
Bullet point ideas:
Be more flexible as to how we deliver our material
how we assess our students learning.
Teaching hours
Re-watch content
18th March - Preparing students for unknown digital futures
TO READ and reflect:
BAME: Shades of Noir http://shadesofnoir.org.uk/
How to embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into your teaching: