Digital Education Newsletter Vol 2 Issue 1


3 May 2021

In this issue, you’ll get an idea of the work CTIL has been doing to get modules ready for the 21/21 academic year. There is also a staff spotlight where you can find out what the worst sound is according to Natalie Lafferty (head of CTIL). Finally, take a peak at the volume of Help4U calls CTIL received in 2020.


CTIL Updates

CTIL have had a busy month as the work on improving the proposed template has continued. As part of this process, we have been collecting invaluable feedback from the different schools to create school-specific customisations to the standard template. The student voice has also been reiterated through these meetings with the main message being that they want consistency across modules and simplicity where possible. The quick feedback has been greatly appreciated since CTIL are keen to deliver a fast turn-around on module creation to give the academics much-needed time to reflect and prepare for the next academic term.

In addition to refining the template, we have been reviewing our module creation process in order to align it more closely with SITS. Our goal is to have SITS as the single ‘source of truth’ for modules and use that as the basis for all modules in My Dundee and all student enrolments (even for non-assessed students).

CTIL would like to share a sample of the many examples of good practise from the academic community. If you have an example you would like to share or if your school is planning an event with examples, please let CTIL know so that we can turn these in to short, recorded clips. We will used these clips as part of a recipe that can be shared to give fellow academics practical tips and ideas.


Staff Spotlight

[Questions are from the television shows Inside the Actor’s Studio and the panel show Hypothetical.]


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Tool updates

Blackboard (My Dundee)

Blackboard version 3900.10.0 was released on 8 April 2021. There are some exciting new updates to this version including:

Adaptive release by group: A much-requested feature by our community, you can now create content and release it by user or by group. As a new option to the conditional availability rules, already present in Ultra courses (date/time and performance-based rules), instructors and support roles can now allow certain students to have access to specific content while selecting one or both existing rules mentioned above.  Students who are not  in the selected group for an assignment will not see any notifications in their email or on their activity stream.

Disable notifications for users enrolled in 500+ modules: This is great news for administrators and instructors who may be enrolled on an exceptionally high number of modules. These users will no longer receive any notifications in emails, push notifications, or the Activity Stream.

Peer-review assignments: The first version of peer-review will be available for Blackboard assignments. There are still some restrictions such as students not being able to fill out any rubrics, not being able to link with groups, and the peer review can only be anonymous to the reviewed student.

You can read about these features in more depth on Blackboard’s release notes page.

YuJa:

YuJa has been working on improving transcription accuracy throughout 2021, and has an accuracy rate of 85% -95% [source].

New User Analytics Dashboard for Course-Embedded Content – The User Analytics view has a brand new look with more in-depth analytics of individual users. Capabilities include:

  • Ability to filter video analytics for a given course including video content presented in both Media Channels and LMS-embedded Deep Linked content
  • New summary statistics on most viewed content, accesses and storage space used

Stat of the month

Infographic that shows CTIL Help4U calls over 2020 alongside key dates for Covid lockdown and university activities." title_text="CTIL_H4UInfographic" admin_label="Stat of the month - infographic
Infographic that shows CTIL Help4U calls over 2020 alongside key dates for Covid lockdown and university activities.” title_text=”CTIL_H4UInfographic” admin_label=”Stat of the month – infographic

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Fortnightly Round-Up

What’s on:

Keep an eye on this space for any upcoming workshops. In the meantime, don’t forget the weekly drop-ins! These are held every Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30 – 11:30 in the Organisation room in the eLearning Resources for Staff organisation in My Dundee.

What we’ve made:

New: Conditional release by user or group finally here! (just in case you’ve managed to miss it!) View past recordings – in Collaborate; you may also want to share this with your students. Marking and Results – covers both Turnitin and Blackboard Exam Support – support for both you and your students  

CTIL recommendations:

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World by editors Marc Stickdorn , Markus Edgar Hormess , et al.

LEGO Build Yourself Happy: The Joy of LEGO Play by Abbie Headon

This webpage by Columbia University in the USA on Hybrid/HyFlex Teaching & Learning

The University College London’s page on ABC Design Curriculum


Need more help?

IT ISSUES: 6 places you can go to for help by Laura-Jane Logue
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