To facebook or not to facebook?

In my ’spare’ time I am an associate lecturer for the OU on S104 a first level 60 point course on general science. This is the second presentation I’ve taught and the course is just kicking off. The course has tutor-supported discussion groups with several assessed activities, all held in the crumbling edifice of First Class (an email-based system). The ‘tutor group forums’ struggle to take off, I have only 19 students at the moment, and even with latecomers won’t have more than 25. The forum’s success is very much dependent on the students we get, and while last year’s was OK, it never really had much spark and was mostly led by me.

At a staff development day it was mentioned that there were several S104 groups on Facebook. I’ve been off to have a look and there are several active groups, in particular one for this presentation, and one of my students is very active on there. I’m wondering whether I should go and say hello. I am pretty likely to be the only tutor on the group. However, I should think that this is most likely a place that students want to chat without a tutor looking over them (as OU student and colleague Andy suggests). I know the OU has created Facebook apps and promotes OU groupings on facebook and I know of one group that is specifically using a closed group for teaching, but I’m pretty dubious about engaging with my students in this way.

Seeing something to do with ‘work’ on Facebook has made me think about my own online identity. I have two main channels, Facebook and twitter (@jobadge).

I am pretty much ’social/personal’ me when I’m on Facebook, my network is made up of friends, old college mates who have known me under more dubious circumstances and other mums from school. It includes a couple of work colleagues but they manage to put up with me and I (hope) recognise the difference in context. My privacy settings are limited to allow access only to friends and so it’s slightly more private than twitter.

My ‘work’ persona is alive and well on twitter. My twitter followers and friends are colleagues, in the OU, at Leicester University and beyond. I may still twitter about baking bread and of course  there is endless #cake discussion, but it is primarily a work channel.

I doubt I’ll join my students on Facebook, but it would be nice to find some S104 tutors on twitter

Aargh! Turnitin fail

I’ve had my head against a brick wall today with several technical problems. The main one being that in some of our blackboard courses, Turnitin is not functioning, you can’t view old assignments, modify them or create new assignments. It turns out that this is because we were at the bleeding edge of using turnitin and we’ve been expired!

It’s rather tortuous but can be fixed by Turnitin, so if this has happened to you, get your admin person to contact iParadigms.

Way back in the mists of time (well it was 2004), we at University of Leicester installed an early version of the plug-in that connected Blackboard and Turnitin (version 1.something, I think). When a Turnitin Assignment is created on a Blackboard course using this plug-in, a corresponding class is created in Turnitin. This class is the container for the individual assignments and is a related to the stand alone version of Turnitin which operates like a mini VLE. This class container is never seen by the Blackboard user (instructor nor student), as they operate at the assignment level. the Blackboard module is their ’class’ equivalent.  The old plug-in set expiration dates on these classes, and having been around long enough, our Blackboard courses that first tried the Turnitin integrated system back in 2004/5 have now expired and so cannot use Turnitin in any shape or form. This is also a consequence of us recycling our Blackboard courses, keeping the content the same but refreshing the student cohort each year.

The good news is that this can be fixed by the Turnitin support staff in the States, who can renew the classes and set them to never expire, but it’s not something your institutional admin can sort out. the bad news is that until they fix it, these Blackbaord courses can’t use Turnitin and term starts on Monday. Fingers crossed for a quick response from the States!

Update: Monday 28 Sept. No it’s worse than that – response from TII is: ‘iParadigms have told us that all classes that are created have a maximum duration of 5 years. after this point they will expire and will not be able to be extended.’ This is a major problem for anyone that recycles their blackboard courses year on year and uses TII integration. All your courses will have a 5 year life span and then they will have to be re-made to reset the expiration date.  If this affects your institution please raise a support ticket to TII to ask them to rethink this policy. Emailing directly to requktii@turnitin.com. If this does not work, you can use the form at https://submit.ac.uk/help/helpdesk.asp

Using wikis for project student lab books

bye bye paper note books? flickr:SSK

I wrote about electronic lab books just before the summer break. Since then my husband (@richardbadge) and I have just published a short communication about his use of wikis to support undergraduate students carrying out research projects in his lab.  The wikis reside within Blackboard (using the Learning Objects campus pack plug-in).

The article focussess on his use of the wikis to supervise the student’s work, as this was a pilot study just carried out with his two students. We considered asking the students how they found it, but the most fundamental question we wanted to ask was how using an electronic lab book compared to a paper one, however, neither of them had used a paper lab book, so it was a moot point!

You can read the paper in full on the Bioscience Education Journal.

Leicester staff Tweet-up

twitter cake from flickr

Following a hastily arranged local meet up, twitterers came for a coffee, tea and some cake at David Wilson Library Cafe, Leicester University. We marvelled at Mark’s shoes and only talked in 140 character sentences.

I went through my list of followers to find staff and postgrads from Leicester University and DeMonfort University that are tweeting and was surprised how many people there were. Andrew (@steepholm) asked for a list and I started typing and it got silly, there are LOADS of us

To save RSI, can you please add yourself to the list using this google form?

Results will be automatically added here as a list of Twitterers

We’ll organise another face to face session (with cake) again soon.

Networking

I met a lot of people at ALT-C 2009 that I only known through twitter. It got me thinking that there are a few people in Leicester that I talk to on twitter that I haven’t met yet, either. So, before the beginning of term makes the David wilson Library Cafe completely inaccessible, lets meet up in the flesh for some famous #cake and a nice cup of tea.

Update: Friday 18 September just squeaked in to be the most popular day for our tweet-up. Sorry to those who can’t come on Friday, but I think we should make this a vaguely regular event, so there will be other times!

So come along to David Wilson Library Cafe at 10.30am ready to buy some coffee, eat some #cake and attempt to connect to the wifi.

If you missed it first time, you can still sign up or just turn up!

HEAT3 presentation at #altc2009

I presented our work using iPod touches and microblogging to ALT-C 2009 on 9 September 2009.  This work was funded by JISC TechDis who provided the iPod Touches through the HEAT3 scheme. The presentation went well (apart from some freaky slide changes brought on by my forgetting to turn off my rehersal timings!). I would guess that we had over 80 people there, which was really pleasing as we were scheduled against plenty of other good stuff. There were some great questions from the audience.

Thanks to Jane Challinor (@virtualleader what a star!)  the whole thing was recorded and is available on youtube. I’ve restated the questions below, and provided some short answers to save you watching the video!

The ALTC2009 hashtag has been extensively spammed, was this a problem with the student hashtags?

No. We didn’t have any spamming issues. The students were new to twitter, none of them had accounts before starting the project, twitter is now quite a different place but still wouldn’t be an issue. ALTC2009 was a trending hastag, the student network didn’t trend, so didn’t attract attention and even now wouldn’t be spammed.

What is an iPod Touch?

An Itouch is essentially an apple iPod with wifi capability, prices start at £149, no data contract involved.

In the network diagrams  you appeared to have social connectors in both networks were these acilitators of collboration?

Agree that there were social connectors in each network. Friendly tone, social connection was important to them helping the network emerge.

Is there an optimum network size for this sort of work?

Difficult to say, the students that were involved volunteered and were incentivised with the potential of keeping one of the iTouches. Dunbar number is 150, optimum number of people that you can know well. We agreed that there was no minimum size for this sort of network.

The undergraduates seemed to have a level of  peer support which was different from the postgraduates. Why?

The two groups of students very different – first years in throws of transition, a lot of social grooming went on with this group online. The postgraduates did have some extended peer support – they were more professional, trading links and resources to support studies. These students were perhaps more aware of public nature.

Was the 140 character limit a problem?

No, students took to it very naturally. Around 50% undergrads still twittering.

Did you ask students to limit their private communications on twitter?

No, we didn’t ask them. We have no way of knowing if they made private communications with each other and we didn’t ask them about this at any point.