VIRTUAL LEARNING SPACES AT NEWPORT

SCHoMS

Michael Webb

Head of IT and Media Services

Overview

MyCommunity (blogging, forums, photo galleries)

MyNewport(Facebook access to MyLearning

Essentials)

Mylearning Essential SMS

(Making Texting as easy as email)

About Newport

Around 9000 students

A fairly even split of full-time, part-time and franchise students

Widening participation agenda

Many students not traditional 18 – 21 year old undergraduates

Our approach to eLearning

No ‘traditional’ VLE MyLearning Essentials

is a portal to tools to match learners needs.

MyCommunity, MyNewport and SMS are part of MyLearning Essentials Tools to make use of

‘Web 2.0’ and mobile devices.

These tool are all to aid communication.

1. MyCommunity

Blogging/Forum/Photo galleries for all staff and students

Beta Launch May 2006 – Full Launch Sept 2006

No signup procedure, ‘click and go’ Publically visible at

http://mycommunity.newport.ac.uk Some blogs (e.g. reflective practice) are

private

Why?

Part of a strategy started three years ago to engage with Web 2.0 technologies To create a tools set for learning and teaching To create tools and places for social purposes To find out what works

Services also created at the same time including: Institutional Wiki (http://wiki.newport.ac.uk) Internal Instant Messaging Service Both partial successes

Forums

How are they used? Most aren’t connected to courses. Used more by students than blogs Finding people/accommodation/selling

things Comment on the University

Not frequent, but how does the institution deal with valid comment?

Obvious questions

How has it been used? Most staff/students don’t blog for fun!

A few ‘traditional’ staff/student blogs Used for direct communication (eg events,

finding people) Reflective practice (private) Informal communication from schools

How do you monitor it/has it been abused? Very ‘light-touch’ moderation Virtually no abuse

Hosting

Is it still relevant to host our own service? Blogger, WordPress, Facebook etc all free and now

widely adopted Reasons to host

Varying student skills (widening participation agenda) – we can probably provide better support for our own services

Need to carry out very robust due diligence process before handing confidential data to someone else.

Reasons not to host Cost/someone else can do it better for nothing. Student preference?

2. MyNewport@Facebook Access to myLearning

Essentials through Facebook Launched Sept 2007 Essentially an experiment Would students prefer to

create their own learning space?

Many (most?) use Facebook anyway.

Very ‘lightweight’ development (about 2 days work)

My ‘Learning’ Space

Has it worked?

376 users (from yesterday) So hasn’t replaced our own portal! User installed it very quickly with little

publicity from us Far fewer daily active users (a handful) Positive feedback from those that do use

it Contributed to debate on personal

learning

3. Text Messages

Why? Email is increasing

become a ‘retro’ technology (discuss!)

We’ve tried to make it as easy to send a text to students as an email Link from MyLearning

Essentials for staff…

Sending a message

Step1… Choose a course from a list of your courses or modules

Step 2… Type the message and click send

Why not?

Cost

Closing Thoughts

This is an incredibly fast moving area! Twitter, Google Friends, Ning….all new in

the last few months or so Matching pedagogy and technology is

obviously crucial Key areas of development for us at the

moment – Peer Evaluation (WebPA), PDPs (?), group working space (Elgg)

But…we can also use technology to help with the overall learning environment

Questions and Contact Details

Email: michael.webb@newport.ac.uk Twitter: michaeldwebb Blog:

http://mycommunity.newport.ac.uk/blogs/michael