Apologies - I understand that some people have been unable to open the minutes of the last meeting, so I've copied them below:

SALT Meeting Minutes 

Tuesday 10th May 14:30-16:00 

 Attendees:  

JISC: Luke Keelan; Artie Vossel-Newman  

Southampton Solent University: Edward Bolton; Laraine d’Artin; Roger Emery; Steve Hogg  

Totton College: Hannah Avoth; Paul Jackson  

University of Brighton: Nick Feather 

University of Portsmouth: Mike Wilson 

University of Southampton: Gil Dekel; Sarah Fielding; Anna Ruff; Tamsyn Smith; Mike Wald; Adam Warren  

University of Sussex: Sally Burr; Kitty Horne  

 

Apologies:  

Bournemouth University: Kimberley Mills; Geli Roushan  

Highbury College: Anna Selway 

University of Portsmouth: Stephen Webb 

University of Southampton: Andrew Davey; John Savage; Bill Warburton/MLE Team 

 

Welcome and introductions + brief discussion around purpose of this group and frequency of meetings 

It was agreed that the group should include staff from HE and FE, with the recognition that most FE colleges do not have Learning Technologists and that IT Support Staff and enthusiastic teachers take up this role. 

Actions:  

    Artie Vossel-Newman to publicise the group to her JISC contacts 

    All attendees to encourage colleagues and other interested parties to join the mailing list (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/SALT)  

 

Student Response Systems 

Currently University of Southampton uses TurningPoint and Responseware as its main Student Response System, however, this is expensive, so is currently being reviewed by Adam Warren. Adam has been summarising his findings on his blog: https://telic.wordpress.com/srs/  

 

TopHat: https://tophat.com/  

Adam Warren gave a demonstration of TopHat, a student response system that has a backchannel. Dave Liptrot from TopHat was available to answer questions. If an institution buys a site licence then the cost is around $5-10 per student. (This costs is usually passed onto the students in North American institutions). 

 

Plickers: https://plickers.com/  

Artie Vossel-Newman suggested Plickers as a slightly less tech-intensive option as only the teacher needs a device – students need printed cards. People who had used it said that it was popular and worked well (in groups of up to about 30). 

A demo video can be seen at: https://holextechlearn.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/plickers-a-way-to-assess-learners-out-in-the-community/ 

 

Nearpod: https://nearpod.com/  

Nearpod is used at University of Portsmouth. It is also popular in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Southampton. 

 

Polleverywhere: https://www.polleverywhere.com/  

This is used at University of Sussex. 

 

Turning Technologies – Responseware: https://responseware.turningtechnologies.com/responseware/ and TurningPoint: https://www.turningtechnologies.com/polling-solutions/turningpoint  

University of Sussex and Southampton Solent University use Responseware, but the App is clunky. This is also currently used at University of Southampton, but it is an expensive option and other systems offer more flexibility/features. 

Sussex were interested in TurningPoint Cloud (https://www.turningtechnologies.com/polling-solutions/turningpoint-cloud), however a challenge is that all academics need to create accounts. 

Bournemouth University uses TurningPoint and are considering piloting Responseware. 

 

Socrative: http://www.socrative.com/  

Used at University of Brighton. 

 

Mentimeter: https://www.mentimeter.com/  

Sarah Fielding (University of Southampton) has reviewed Mentimeter on her blog: https://techknapping.com/2015/11/05/mentimeter-review-byod-for-audience-participation/  

Mentimeter currently seems to be popular at Bournemouth University. 

 

Echo360 Active Learning: http://echo360.com/ 

Roger Emery (Southampton Solent University) mentioned that he had seen Lecture Tools and Echo360 in this past. This is still combined with Echo360, but is now called Active Learning. 

 

Adam Warren and Steve Hogg agreed that it would be good to do some joint case studies/ an Action Research project between Southampton Solent University and Southampton. Adam has a feedback form that UoS academic staff who are trialling SRS need to complete. He will share this with others. Sue Callard at Bournemouth University is working on a similar project and would like to consolidate information. 

 

Actions: 

    Adam Warren to disseminate his feedback form that can be completed by academic staff who are trialling a new SRS  

    Anyone who is interested in taking part in a collaborative project to get in touch with Adam Warren: [log in to unmask]  

 

 

On-line exams and secure browser options 

Kahoot.it: https://kahoot.it/#/  

Kahoot is being used by some people for low-stakes quizzes. Students like it as it appears to be fun. 

 

Active quiz (Moodle): https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_activequiz  

Universities that use Moodle tend to use Activequiz, the Moodle plug-in. 

 

Questionmark Perception (QMP): https://www.questionmark.com/content/questionmark-perception  

Southampton currently use QuestionMark Perception, which was acknowledged by all to be an overly complex system. They are currently exploring Questionmark Live: https://www.questionmark.com/content/create-questions-and-assessments-questionmark-live  

 

Lock down browsers 

Portsmouth use Respondus: https://www.respondus.com/  

Edward Bolton mentioned using the lock down features of Opera: http://www.opera.com/  

 

Experience from Solent has shown that more regular assessments are preferable as they relieve the pressure on students and staff. If regular low-stakes tests are incorporated, it is important that accessibility issues are considered. 

 

Actions: 

    We could ask local language school what they are doing for online exams 

 

Lecture capture and policies and practices surrounding it 

In future there will be a JISC hosted lecture recording option – Artie has agreed to talk about it at a future meeting. It sounds like most universities are currently using Panopto for lecture capture. 

 

There was some discussion about whether people are using opt in or opt out policies: 

Opt in: Brighton, Southampton 

Opt out: Sussex 

 

A student survey by Southampton University Students Union found that 95% students want lectures recorded; 97% international students want lectures to be recorded. 

 

There are issues about recording in practical workshop spaces (difficult to site a single camera and capture what is important, noise issues etc). There are issues around equity between courses. Lecture capture can be used as a staff development and peer observation tool. 

 

In recent discussions on the ALT mailing list: 

    The University of Essex use a matrix approach (see appendix 1) 

    The University of York provide a great deal of student support around good study skills for lecture capture, and have done some interesting research (see appendix 2) 

 

Actions: 

    Artie Vossel-Newman to present the JISC lecture recording option at our next meeting 

 

AOB 

    Mike Wald mentioned slidewiki where staff can upload lectures: http://slidewiki.org/  

    Gil Dekel asked about the use of S3 (Study Success at Sussex), which can be seen outside: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/  Succeed at Solent is available with a Creative Commons licence: http://mycourse.solent.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=90 Should Study Skills resources be added as an agenda item for a future meeting? 

 

Future SALT meetings are scheduled for the following dates and times: 

It was agreed that meetings should take place termly and that two hours would give us long enough to discuss the issues that are raised. Attendees are invited to arrive early to be able to purchase drinks if required. 

    06/07/16 2:00-4:00pm 

    11/11/16 2:30-4:00pm 

 

Proposed agenda items for next meeting: 

    Learning analytics 

    Lecture capture – JISC product 

    Use of Opera as a lock down browser? 

    Online assignment handling (including large file uploads) 

    Plagiarism – use of Turnitin and similar products 

 

Actions: 

    Any additional agenda items to be proposed on the list 

 

Appendix 1: Lecture capture notes from Essex 

 

Broadly speaking, we (Essex) are opt-out. But I believe we are a bit of an oddity with regards to lecture capture, so I will try and explain in a bit more detail. 

We provide our staff with a recording preference matrix (opt-out/in). Staff can indicate a preferred audience (opt-out) ranging from 'do not record at all', through 'record but keep private', 'disabled students', 'students on module', 'all university', and 'public'. Staff can dictate this preference (opt-out) by taught event type, so 'lecture', 'class', 'seminar', etc. This gives each member of staff a matrix where they can opt-in to some event types but opt-out of others. By default we opt-in staff so that all recordings are made available to students on their modules.  

This may seem overly complex but the recording preference system was created in response to staff feedback. The rationale being that some staff were happy for their lectures to be recorded but did not want classes or seminars captured. This recording preference system allows them to pick and choose which events are captured. 

Finally, like you, we've found that the greatest pressure is from students. Whereas a few years ago the biggest voice seemed to be academic resistance, it's now from students (and staff) demanding that we increase the opt-in, coverage, quality, and reliability of the service. 

Best regards 

Ben Steeples 

Development Manager (Learning Technology) IT Services University of Essex 

 

Appendix 2: Lecture capture notes from York 

 

The University of York policy at the institutional level is 'opt-in' however departments can choose to be 'opt-out'. We have five departments recording everything in equipped rooms (two have done so for a number of years), another four (at least) being opt-out policy next year - driven by a strong student campaign supported by our research.  

The 'opt-out' policy is managed (rather than lecturers just not starting a capture in the room), in that the recording is completely automated based upon requests placed on our Timetable (lecturers don't start/stop in the room). Opt-out policy departments add requests by default. The timetable data (visible to students) drives the automated captures, so we can be clear to students what is due to be recorded and what isn't. This is important as it enables students to adopt particular approaches to learning in class and out of class based upon the knowledge of a lecture being recorded. The research we've done implies that is the case when departments are capturing as much as they can, students can establish these working patterns across the majority of their modules. My thinking is that isn't the case for the 'opt-in' lecturers in other departments, where students aren't well versed in how to make the most of both lectures and lecture captures (hence our newly developed resources; your feedback or your students' feedback would be most welcome.). 

Our institutional policy is available here [PDF] with the process outlined on our webpages. 

Please feel free to contact me off-list ([log in to unmask]) if you'd like to discuss our approach or the research. 

Best wishes, 

Matt 

E-Learning Advisor 

Lecture Recording Coordinator 

University of York