In this Section:
JISC Audio Projects Overview
Joint Information Systems Committee Users and Innovations (JISC U&I) Audio Projects
The Engineering Subject Centre has worked with the Sounds Good and Audio Supported Enhanced Learning (ASEL) projects to encourage and support colleagues in the use of audio in their learning and teaching. These projects formed part of the JISC Users and Innovations (U&I) programme. An innovative aspect of the U&I programme was to try and ensure that the wider community benefited from the work of the individual projects (in this case Sounds Good and ASEL).
The Sounds Good project is based at Leeds Metropolitan University and led by Bob Rotheram, National Teaching Fellow. So far, sixteen teachers have used digital audio to give formative and summative feedback on students’ coursework. The ASEL project is being led by Will Stewart at the Universities of Bradford and project partners at the University of Hertfordshire. The ASEL project has developed, implemented and evaluated the use of audio within next generation technologies to support, enhance, and personalise the learner experience.
The proposal was structured that two subject centres – Engineering Subject Centre and Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) Subject Centre - would invite expressions of interest in working with the JISC projects. Departments bid to host a workshop and to receive up to £3000 to introduce the use of audio into their teaching or assessment. As part of this work, a member of the Sounds Good or ASEL project would be available to run a departmental or faculty workshop; act as a project and technical consultant; share resources and lessons learnt from their work to date. In total the Engineering Subject Centre secured funding for 6 projects at £3000 each and 2 days consultancy per project. The projects were awarded funding in November 2008 with the aim to be completed by end of March 2009.
Subject Centre Contacts: Liz Willis and Emma Hurdle
Overview of the JISC Projects
The projects took place at the following Institutions:
- Coventry University
- Glasgow Caledonian University
- Staffordshire University
- Sheffield Hallam University and University of Sheffield
- University of Leeds
- Loughborough University
Institution: Coventry University
Mark Childs is a Teaching Development Fellow at the centralised elearning unit at Coventry University, supporting and enhancing the teaching within the Faculty of Engineering and Computing. The University has integrated Wimba within its suite of online tools, however as yet, limited use is made of this tool within its teaching and leaning unit. Mark is currently working with Teaching Quality leads for each of the departments to identify one module for inclusion in the project.
The aim of the project is to:
- expand the use made of Wimba tools for aiding feedback to students.
- incorporate audio files into students’ eportfolios through the use of Pebblepad to support reflection by students.
- trial additional third party tools, for example Utterli to encourage reflection through the creation of audio blogs from mobile phones.
- trial Dragon voice recognition software to provide transcripts of the audio files for hard-of-hearing students.
The first case study available will be:
- Delivery of formative assessment to students who are working with audio files of sound waves, distributed through the MATLAB system.
Outline of the activities are in the Wiki.
Project Co-ordinator: Mark Childs, Faculty of Engineering and Computing.
Institution: Glasgow Caledonian University
The project aimed to further develop the use of audio in emerging technologies to provide an interactive, accessible and flexible learning environment for students studying audio technology and other media related subjects.
3 case studies have been generated from this work:
Project Co-ordinators: Dr Don Knox, School of Engineering and Computing and Prof Malcolm Alan, Head of Learning, Teaching and Quality.
Institution: Staffordshire University
The Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology at Staffordshire University is currently focussing on how to improve feedback to students. This includes both formative but particularly summative feedback.
Audio feedback for students has been introduced in 3 modules (one level 1 module (12 students) and two level 2 modules (12 and 31 students)) in Semester 2. The projects explored the use of NING for communication and feedback of audio files from one module (using feedback for summative and formative purposes), and Blackboard for feedback in the other two (using feedback for summative purposes only in these cases). Students were given formative and summative audio feedback using MP3 files instead of receiving traditional written feedback.
Project Co-ordinator: John Stockwell, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology.
Institution: Sheffield Hallam University and University of Sheffield
Anne Nortcliffe is an avid audio user to support and enhance student learning experience in engineering and strong advocate of the use of technology in teaching. She has successfully implemented audio at Sheffield Hallam University in a module on the electronic and electrical engineering programme through audio feedback and audio lecture notes. Staff have been introduced to the technology through workshops, with a view for their consideration and adoption. Research at the university has indicated that final year engineering projects could benefit immensely from audio feedback to support and enhance student learning experience.
The expertise at Sheffield Hallam University are to be further developed with the help of contacts from the University of Sheffield. A local Special Interest Group in using audio to support learning and teaching has been created to support this development.
Case study: Audio Feedback on Examination Papers with first semester examinations in Mechanical Engineering at University of Sheffield – case study to highlight the student response to such provision and concluding guidelines for good practice implementation.
Case study: Digital Audio Interventions
- 50 Audio Devices have been given to undergraduate students studying control engineering at University of Sheffield. The aim of this project is for the students take responsibility to create/record their own audio learning resources.
Case study: Remote distance learning through remote laboratory experimentation
- Video/Audio resource to enable remote distance learning through remote laboratory experimentation of industrial control engineering equipment on the Foundation Degree programme at Rotherham College and Sheffield Hallam University is currently being developed.
Main Project Co-ordinator: Anne Nortcliffe, Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University
Other Project Co-ordinators: Dr Mark Thompson, Head of Undergraduate Admissions (Engineering) at Sheffield Hallam University; Dr Jennifer Rowson, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Anthony Rossiter at the University of Sheffield.
Institution: University of Leeds
Recent National Student Surveys have drawn attention to the need to enhance the role of student feedback in learning and explore alternative means of feedback delivery. The project will draw explicitly on the experiences of the Sounds Good project at Leeds Metropolitan University. The aims of this project are:
- Exploring, using and developing the practice guidelines (for using audio) that have arisen from Sounds Good;
- Investigating the value of incorporating a mark into the audio feedback;
- Contributing to research already undertaken into the ‘right’ amount of feedback to provide in audio format.
- Using audio to make assessment ‘easier’ for students, i.e. as members of the Sounds Good team have done, can audio be used to provide additional clarity to students on what is required of them in an assignment before they actually do it?
Audio handsets have been given to staff in the School of Process and, Environmental and Materials Engineering, Computing, Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Project Co-ordinator: Anthea Connolly, Faculty of Engineering.Institution: Loughborough University
This research explored of the use of audio within emerging technologies to support enhanced learning, assessment and feedback for Industrial and Product Design students. The methods used and outcomes of this exploratory project were discussed and a view of the role of audio in developing effective learning, assessment and feedback strategies is offered in the case study:
A number of examples of the use of audio during the project are also presented. The development of robust guidelines for using audio technology is discussed, as is integrating its use into existing automated systems.
Project Co-ordinator: Rhoda Trimingham, Design and Technology.