Dear Colleague,

Although not directly related to Blackboard, you are welcome to 
participate in an online experiment we are running from University of 
Leicester tomorrow morning (Wednesday).  

From 9.30am you can enter our online meeting room 
https://breeze.le.ac.uk/r54112427/ and the online meeting will start at 
10am.  You can log-in as Guest if you do not have a University Breeze 
account.  There are two aims of this experiment:-

1.  It is intended to give colleagues the chance to see a brief 
presentation from a colleague who has used Adobe Acrobat Meeting (formally 
Macromedia Breeze) extensively with colleagues across the UK and Ireland. 
Lisa Pigeon (Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine) will then be available 
to answer questions on the strengths and weaknesses of the system.  

2.  We want to involve as many people as possible viewing the presentation 
then asking questions on chat about it. This is to check the system has 
the capacity for 50 our more students in this mode.

If anyone wants to see how were are using this with our Blackboard 
courses, you are welcome to look at our online E-learning module.  Details 
of the course are given on http://breeze.le.ac.uk/p27158338/.  Further 
information of the content of this course which begins on Friday is 
available below.

Thanks (in advance) if you can join us tomorrow (Wednesday) and apologies 
for the slightly off topic posting.

Cheers,

Tony Churchill | Educational Developer (e-Learning)
Staff Development Centre | 9th Floor Charles Wilson Building | University 
of Leicester | University Road | Leicester | LE1 7RH | UK  
T: +44 (0)116 223 1876 | F: +44 (0)116 2231815 | M: +44 (0)7748 677724 

For Staff Development updates & e-learning training please go to 
http://www.le.ac.uk/staffdev/ 

E-learning module

We have redesigned the course so that it links into other stand alone 
training events we are running.  Although primarily intended as an 
opportunity to develop skills in and awareness of e-learning, it is 
possible to earn 15 M level credits by completing the module.  In the 
coming weeks we will therefore be exploring the following topics…

From Friday 2 February…

Theme: Course creation – This will explore aspects of creating your online 
course.  You will work with colleagues on:-

1.      Planning your Course - deciding what learning outcomes you wish to 
address and what activities you wish to engage your students in.
2.      Create your Course - deciding how you could implement what you've 
planned.  You will have the choice of creating (and sharing with other 
participants) either a Blackboard Learning Unit or an e-Portfolio.  The 
latter gives you the option of producing web pages rather than something 
that needs to be delivered in Blackboard.

To complete this Theme you will get chance to contribute to the online 
discussion over the coming fortnight.  Since this links with one of our 
face-to-face sessions, you have the option to attend at 11.15am on Friday 
2 February.  Please let me know if you would like to attend although I 
would stress that all the resources and interaction will be available 
online.

From Wednesday 14 February…

Theme: Content creation – This will explore aspects of creating 
interactive online resources.  You will work with colleagues to work on:-

1.      Planning your resource - deciding what it will address and the 
nature of the media you will use in it.  In addition to narrative content 
you will be able to include interactive (and even adaptive) activities 
starting with multiple choice questions.  You can also consider whether 
you wish to engage your students in communicative activities (such as 
discussion boards) through your resource.
2.      Create your resource – this will involve using Adobe Acrobat 
Presenter (formerly Macromedia Breeze) to convert a PowerPoint 
presentation into a multimedia resources. Whatever your skill level you 
can achieve powerful results quickly because Breeze just adds an extra 
menu item to the familiar application - PowerPoint.  The potential of this 
technology is enormous, going far beyond basic slides, bullet points and a 
few graphics to spice up the content. It enables you to include 
interactivity in your instructional resources with graphics, animations 
and even quiz questions with feedback. With Breeze you can convert 
PowerPoint animations with your own timings or giving the user control of 
the pace and sequence. This converts your presentations to more 
accessible, rich multimedia resources. In the process the file size can be 
reduced to a quarter so they can be delivered over the Internet even with 
slow connections.

To complete this Theme you will get chance to contribute to the online 
discussion over the coming fortnight.  Since this links with one of our 
face-to-face sessions, you have the option to attend at 2pm on Wednesday 
21 February.  Please let me know if you would like to attend although I 
would stress that all the resources and interaction will be available 
online.

From Friday 2 March…

Theme: Communication – this will further explore the application of 
Professor Gilly Salmon’s five-stage Networked Learning model.  It will 
also be a chance to explore the skills necessary to be an e-moderator of 
such courses. 

To complete this Theme you will get chance to contribute to the online 
discussion over the coming fortnight.  Since this links with one of our 
face-to-face sessions, you have the option to attend at 11.15am on Friday 
2 March.  Please let me know if you would like to attend although I would 
stress that all the resources and interaction will be available online.