Staff development

academic development events

Facilitator: Dr Panos Vlachopoulos

Introduction to WebCT

Designed for those new to WebCT or for those who would like a refresher, this hands-on
session provides an introduction to WebCT tools and an opportunity for participants to
develop their module under the guidance of Academic Development online learning
advisers.

Participants will find out how to:

• customise their homepage

• upload and organise course materials and activities
• integrate links to external resources
• support communication using the Announcement, Discussion and Chat tools
• use the Assignment tool and the Turnitin®UK plug-in.

More advanced or tailored WebCT sessions can be run on request for school and
programme teams. Please contact the Academic Development online learning team for
further information, contact details can be found at
www.napier.ac.uk/webct/staff/training.html.

Improving our students’ skills in reflection

Central to the promotion of employability and personal and professional development
planning (PDP) are the skills of reflection. Many of us, staff as well as students, find this
a difficult concept with which to engage in practical terms. This session will provide an
opportunity to find ways of encouraging students to engage in more critical and reflective
thinking. We have three main possibilities in mind, all of which involve rather different
forms of reflection. Colleagues may wish their students to reflect on:

• developmental needs, and plan to make progress with them

• recent learning experiences, and assemble an objective claim for development
• recent critical incidents, what issues they raise, and what can be learnt from
them
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All of these options are equally valuable – depending on the context. Prior to the session
– at least a week before – participants will be invited to send to the facilitator a brief
outline of the context in which they would like their students to engage more with critical
and reflective teaching, and a note of what type of reflection they have in mind. He will
pick three or four of these, and use them (in anonymised form unless individuals choose
to declare themselves) as case studies for which he will offer specific suggestions. He
will then invite the workshop group to discuss these suggestions, and consider any
transferable ideas emerging from the discussion.

Introduction to Elluminate Live!®

Elluminate Live! ® Academic EditionTMVersion 9 is a real-time online collaboration
environment that finds use not only in distance education but equally as a complement
to classroom-based lectures or seminars. It allows staff to support virtual office hours for
students, run fully online presentations and even organise meetings or guest lectures
with colleagues from other universities or experts from industry. Sessions can be
recorded and played back to those who could not attend.

Elluminate Live! ® users only require a basic microphone and speakers or headset. Use
of a camera is optional. Elluminate Live!® already finds use across the University to
support group work activities among students who commend its ease of use and
functionality even for slow broadband connections. Distance education students from
France, India, and Poland using Elluminate Live! ® already benefit from the personal
contact to peers and tutors. This session will allow you to experience Elluminate® from
the user’s point of view by taking part in a series of activities aimed to demonstrate the
main tools first as students and then as tutors.

Time has been allotted at the end of the session to create individual Elluminate Live! ®
classrooms for those participants ready to get started straight away.

No prior experience of Elluminate® is required. To learn more about Elluminate® visit

www2.napier.ac.uk/ed/learntec/elluminate.htm.

How can software help with a qualitative project?

Using NVivo 7 for qualitative analysis
NVivo 7 is a specialised software for qualitative research. The workshop will
involve creating projects, entering data, making memos and carrying out simple
coding and search of qualitative data using NVivo 7. The session will also
consider the issues involved in reporting qualitative research.

This workshop is suitable for members of staff who have experience of qualitative
analysis and want to use NVivo 7 to support their coding and analysis process.
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Participants can bring their own data to work on but sample data will be provided.

Qualitative research for beginners

The purpose of this session is to enable participants with little or no previous experience
of research to gain a basic understanding of qualitative research and the potential for
this type of research in their chosen field of investigation.

The session will begin with a general introduction into the nature of qualitative research.
This includes identification of the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in a
brief comparison with quantitative research. This will be followed by short descriptions of
the main qualitative approaches and ways of collecting information. Clear and practical
guidance will be provided on techniques for analysing and presenting information.

Participants in this session will be encouraged to consider following this session with
attendance at the workshop How can software help with a qualitative project? Using
NVivo 7 for qualitative analysis to gain practical experience in the use of software for
qualitative analysis.

Enhance your lectures with classroom voting

Would you like to:

• make your lectures more interactive

• introduce a greater variety of activities
• gain instant feedback on how students are progressing?

Then why not try out classroom voting? Classroom voting is a simple and enjoyable way
to increase participation and engagement in your lectures. Napier has recently
purchased a voting system (TurningPoint®) that works in conjunction with PowerPoint.
During a lecture, students respond to questions or polls via the handsets and the results
are displayed instantly on screen. Research shows that, used well, voting can
significantly enhance student understanding of material and have a positive impact on
attendance and overall retention rates.

This workshop will show you how to develop and run a TurningPoint presentation. There
will also be the opportunity to consider examples of how classroom voting is being used
in higher education and to share ideas about ways in which you might go on to integrate it into
your teaching.
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Introduction to E-moderation and Online Tutoring

With the growing demand to use online tutoring in blended and fully online modules,
there is a new awareness of the tutor’s role in different settings. In particular, the
asynchronous nature of online discussions highlights the different approaches that tutors
can use. This face to face session will examine a variety of online settings together with
suggested e-moderation approaches. All participants will:

• Get to know methods, approaches and techniques of e-moderation for facilitating

groups in WebCT discussions

• Take part in simulated e-moderation activities in WebCT

• Be able to evaluate their e-moderation approaches and critically review them
• Develop ideas for possible activities using moderated online discussions

Designing activities for online and blended

learning

In this seminar we will explore the possibilities offered by Napier's VLE (WebCT) and the
recently adopted Web-Conferencing System (Elluminate 8) to design and develop
activities for fully online or blended modules. The collaborative activities explained and
elaborated will include:

problem-solving
online role play
online debates
learning cycles

Participants will work in groups to design (using a given template) at least one activity of
their choice. Then they will explore with the help of the tutor how it can be adapted for
online delivery. Issues of assessment will also be considered.

Many of the ideas and tips which will be discussed in this seminar are inspired by a
recent publication by Palloff and Pratt (2005)1 entitled Collaborating Online: learning
together in community.

1 R M Palloff and K Pratt (2005) Collaborating Online: learning together in community,

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass