What can we do with QR codes at University of Leicester

QR code for Jo's homepage

Alan recently started thinking about QR codes and we have consequently joined a QR JISC LTIG project which is just starting at Bath University. Led by Andy Ramsden, the project will encourage a wide range of uses of QR codes, produce case studies and evaluate their uses. These uses can be with students in lectures, practicals, tutorials or other learning situations, or administrative, functional or for other activities such as marketing.

We will have our first meeting on 26 January 2009 11am – 1pm and so far have staff involved from the Library, ITS, Student Learning Centre, School of Biological Sciences and Beyond Distance Research Alliance. We are already starting to think of some uses and hope to develop even more ideas at the meeting in January.

All suggestions welcome!

Update 15 December - thanks to Roger at 2d code who pointed out that I had made a data matrix code, not a QR code. I’ve now replaced the image above with a QR code and learnt the difference between the two!

Review of my 2008

Sounds like one of the myriad of TV shows that grace our screens in the that weird period between Christmas and new year when they aren’t sure what to put on, but yes, it is time to look back and see what on earth I have done in the last year.

Technology

Overall this has been a year of trying new technology on and offline. Web 2.0 has transformed the way I work. I have lost count of the number of services online I have signed up for (I have 35 listed in my clipperz account, but that is only a fraction of them!). Some have come and gone, others are now part of my daily life:

Twitter: I now have a community of twitterers to help me. My first tweet was in December last year, but it was March before I started using it seriously and June when it became obvious that twitter had become a major channel of communication for me. The experience of a lively twitter back channel at a social Learn event for the OU was amazing. Tweetstats shows your usage over time (my stats are here) – you can see the impact of school holidays.

Blogging: I’ve started two blogs this year, this one and one for the School of Biological Sciences.

PLE: as part of our research project on personal learning environments, my own PLE has undergone quite a shift over time since January 08 and now looks something like this.

PLE version 3

Delicious: (jobadge) I’ve been using delicious much more over the last year.

Publications 2008

Badge, J. L., Dawson, E., Cann, A. J., & Scott, J. (2008). Assessing the accessibility of online learning. Innovations in Education and Training International, 45(2), 103-113.

Bevan R, Badge J, Cann A, Willmott C and Scott J (2008) Seeing eye-to-eye? Staff and student views on feedback Bioscience Education E-journal 12-1

Willmott C and Badge J (2008) Ethics and Plagiarism: helping students write right The Biochemist 30:12-15

Conferences

Suffered from overkill in conference season this summer. Still, made a good impact and put Leicester on the teaching and learning agenda nationally

list of conferences attended and presentations made

Badge, J. L., & Scott, J. (2008). Plagiarism policies: Looking for intra-institutional consistency. Higher Education Academy Annual Conference, Harrogate.

Badge, J. L., Yakovchuk, N., & Scott, J. (2008). Consistent policy into consistent practice: A case study from leicester University . Keynote Paper presented at the Second Meeting on Institutional Polices and Procedures for Dealing with Plagiarism, Oxford Brookes, May 2008

Badge, J. L., Yakovchuk, N., & Scott, J. (2008). Academic culture in transition: Are honour codes a viable solution? Paper presented at the Third International Plagiarism Conference, Gateshead.

Badge, J. L. (2008). Electronic detection of plagiarism. Paper presented at the Preventing and Designing Out Plagiarism HEA Centre for Bioscience, 8 April 2008, University of Leicester.

Grants

lots of success this year with Alan Cann

HEA Centre for bioscience departmental grant: £15k to revolutionise the way we teach first year undergraduates about IT and numeracy using web 2.

TechDis HEAT 3: 10 iPod touches

Roberts fund: small world networks for postgraduate students.

Academic Integrity: continuation funding for research assistant to March 2009

Support

All about the voting this year! Lots of problems with using the electronic voting system on cfs. now time to get it publically written up and move on to embed it’s use in the first curriculum. Interim report from first year of implementation.