Tuesday 12 July 2011

Thanks

Many people gave their time and expertise to make the 11th Middlesex University Annual Learning and Teaching Conference a successful event. Sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone involved especially those mentioned here...

2011 Organising Committee: From left:Kirsteen Macdonald, Joanne Mullarkey, Steve Chilton, Carole Davis (Centre for Learning and Teaching Enhancement), Pat Cartney (School of Health of Social Sciences), Caroline Reid (Centre for Learning and Teaching Enhancement)
Thanks to:

Shauna Torrance for administrative support and help on the day

Karen Ridout for sharing her expertise and support on the day

Angus Macdonald and John Parkinson for filming and producing the keynote sessions (Cat Hill for the loan of an extra camera)

All session presenters and chairs

Joyce Clancey for her guidance and support

Neesha Kodagoda and Artemis Parvizi for persuading participants to allow their conference impressions to be captured on video

Louis Slabbert and media support services at Hendon

Colleagues in the Centre for Learning and Teaching Enhancement for their support, contributions and report writing

EFMS and Ben Hill, Vitorio Pollame, Chartwells' Catering Services

Question Time Panel

Bob Rotheram - Keynote presentation

Tuesday 5 July 2011

PGCHE Prizewinners

Congratulations to the recipients of the Middlesex University Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education 2011 awards:
  1. Enver Ever,  Department of Wireless Communications, School of Engineering and Information Sciences
  2. Jackie Meredith, Department of Psychology, School of Health and Social Sciences
  3. Kate Herd,  Department of Engineering, School of Engineering and Information Sciences
  4. Julie Haddock Miller, Department of Human Resource Management, Business School
  5. Sukhy Kaur, Business Information Systems, School of Engineering and Information Sciences.
Many thanks to Josie Taylor for giving the presentations.



Apologies for the quality of some of the images from the 'amateur' photographer

Bob Rotheram - feedback

Monday 4 July 2011

Track F: e-Requirements

TRACK F - From Tasks to e-Requirements
Presenter: Carl James Reynolds

Carl proposed that instead of selecting software tools for e-assessment and trying to adapt to them, we should be in the driving seat and adapt the tools to suit us.

Run as a workshop, his session took us back to basics, in search of a set of requirements rather than tools. In small groups, we were asked to each adopt a ‘stakeholder’ role (programme leader, school administrator, student etc), for the other group members to interview for 10 minutes and then swap around. The aim being to explore our existing processes around assessment.

After some debate as to why we were looking at the assessment process in general, rather than e-assessment and seemingly taking a step backwards, Carl explained this was in order to identify all the tasks around assessment – not just pedagogy; thus being better prepared for evaluating existing tools and developing new ones.

Carl was assisted in the session by a student and together they aimed to collate all the recorded tasks from each group.

Louise Merlin
e-Learning Content Producer
Centre for Learning and Teaching Enhancement

Keynote: Bob Rotheram - Assessment and Feedback: Technology to the Rescue?


Lunch break

Track H: Using Turnitin

TRACK H - Using Turnitin: From Plagiarism Detection to e-Assessment
Presenter: Franco Raimondi

Franco presented an interesting, informative and often humorous session of his experinces of using Turnitin. Franco explained how students are allowed to submit their work via Turnitin several times as a development and feedback tool as well as a plagiarism detection device. He then went on to explain some of the many creative methods that students have come up with to reduce their plagiarism scores in Turnitin; an eyeopener!!. The session was a thought provoking exploration of both the strengths and weaknesses of Turnitin. Franco concluded by saying that Turnitin is by no means a fool proof method of detecting plagiarism and as such should be treated with caution. However, it has a very useful role to play in supporting students as part of an overall module assessment methodology geared towards developing the students throughout the process of learning and assessment on a module.