Broaden your horizons and read how King's is transforming Digital Education
The purpose of this blog is to provide a centrally supported space to capture and share digital education practice from across King’s College London. It’s a community contribution blog for individual and teams working in this area and provides an opportunity to promote initiatives to a broader audience, both internally at King’s and externally across the sector. Continue reading “Welcome to the Digital Education Blog”
In September 2021 King’s launched its first CMALT (Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technology) programme cohort aimed at helping 15 colleagues put together an evidence-based portfolio in order to gain CMALT accreditation.
What is CMALT?
Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technology (CMALT) is the learning technologist’s ‘kitemark.’ This professional certification (and membership) recognises your expertise and experience in your field. Benefits to candidates are in the form of reflection on their professional practice, mentoring from experienced colleagues and peer-to-peer support. CMALT also, increasingly, appears on TEL job specifications so gaining CMALT (and with it post-nominal letters which you are allowed then to use) provides both CPD and career-development opportunities. You join an established community or practice, are invited to ALT meetings and events; and can view and contribute to publications.
The CMALT Accreditation Framework provides pathways to peer-assessed accreditation for a cross-section of learning technology-focused professionals, educators and administrators in the UK and internationally. Accreditation is achieved by the successful submission of a reflective, online portfolio, which evidences skills and experience in learning technology across four core areas and a specialist area. There are three different pathways to choose from to best match an individual’s experience: Associate Certified Member, Certified Member and Senior Certified Member.
First steps:
• Having joined King’s in 2018, I quickly realised I was one of only a few colleagues in the institution that held CMALT accreditation. Given the size of King’s and the number of TEL colleagues, I wanted to see if I could support colleagues in gaining CMALT recognition.
• I originally attempted to launch a pilot programme in late February 2019 with a small group of colleagues from my team in CTEL, however, the Covid pandemic hit and efforts were instead prioritised elsewhere.
• In early 2021, I along with three other colleagues (David Reid Matthews, Danielle Johnston and Fariha Choi) came together to resurrect the CMALT programme. We formed the CMALT planning team to create a year-long programme and agreed to become mentors to the colleagues taking part.
We successfully bid for funding from the Students and Education Directorate (SED) for up to 20 places on the new programme (see CMALT registration fees for more info).
• We began sharing information about the new programme and asked interested parties to complete a show of interest form (Google Form).
In the summer of 2021, we invited all interested colleagues to an online (MS Teams) 1h CMALT Information Session to provide further details about the accreditation and what the programme entailed. Of 25 that attended the session 15 opted to sign up for the 2021/22 CMALT programme with the remaining either deferring to the following academic year or deciding to remove their interest from the programme.
Make up the first Cohort:
The programme schedule
• The programme would start in September 2021 with each month focusing on a section of the portfolio, delivered purely online via MS Teams. We provided two months (December and June) when no meetings took place to allow colleagues to catch up.
Here is the full schedule of our CMALT programme:
For more detail please refer to Part 2 of this blog:
https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/digitaleducation/?p=1511&preview=true
Written by Sultan Wadud and David Reid Matthews
Wadud works as a Learning Technologist, Faculty Liaison at CTEL, working closely with Academic Faculties and Departments to support and drive the implementation of the King’s Technology Enhanced Learning ‘Transformation in Digital Learning’ strategy.
Wadud supports the management and delivery of multiple projects aimed at both the development of academics’ pedagogic understanding and the practice of technology enhanced learning.
Wadud is the product owner for Kaltura and one of the leads for the CMALT programme at King’s. In addition to this Wadud oversees the Digital Education Blog.
David is the TEL Manager for Arts & Humanities and joined King’s in 2018. He leads a team of learning technologists supporting a large and complex faculty, providing mainly 2nd line support, training and troubleshooting on our core, recognised and recommended TEL tools. David has worked in learning technology since 2011, having previously (and improbably) been a Lecturer in Theatre Studies. His particular interests are in legislation and policy around TEL, as well as IT Service Management and Delivery. David is one of the leads for the CMALT programme at King’s.
This is Part 2 of Introducing CMALT programme at King’s College (Read part 1)
Resources and interactions
• We created a Moodle site to host all the information relating to CMALT accreditation and provided resource links, session recordings and presentations for colleagues to be able to refer to or catch up on anything they have missed.
• In addition to the Moodle area we set up a Microsoft Teams site to allow us to send general announcements, plan for meetings and private areas for mentor groups:
Example of Teams announcement to Cohort 1:
Mentor support
• Whilst each meeting had an opportunity for colleagues to have shared contact time with their mentors, additional mentor support was provided on an ad hoc and individual basis. In Cohort 1, some colleagues utilised this consistently throughout the programme whilst a few left it to the end to seek help.
• 93% of Cohort 1 either strongly agreed or agreed their mentors facilitated appropriate discussion and reflection throughout the programme:
• 12 out of the 15 colleagues took the opportunity and connected with their mentors outside of the monthly Teams meetings.
Cohort 1 completion
• Overall, we had 14 submissions to ALT with one colleague deciding to re-join the programme with Cohort 3.
• We received feedback from all colleagues who took part in the programme, with the majority offering positive feedback. Nearly all colleagues fed back that the frequency (monthly meetings) and length of sessions (1h) of the sessions were just right.
The majority utilised the Moodle areas during their time on the programme.
• “Being a part of a cohort was great and enabled me to work collaboratively/share ideas with others on this project. However, starting very early on in the process without the pressure of fixed deadlines meant I probably took it too easy, so having deadlines for (formative) feedback in the 6 months run-up to our submission date would have been helpful”
• We took this feedback on board to introduce two draft deadlines for sections 1-2 by January and 2-3 by late March. In addition to this, we encouraged colleagues not to leave it to the end to seek help and have regular contact with mentors.
• Moodle discussion board – except for two posts in the Moodle discussion board we noticed majority of interactions were taking place in our Teams areas. For Cohort 2 we decided to remove the Moodle discussion board and replace it with one in the Teams area.
Cohort 2 and beyond
• In 2022 we expanded the programme for Cohort 2 to include all three pathways of CMALT which resulted in 22 signups (x18 CMALT, x3 Associate CMALT and x1 Senior CMALT).
• If funding is provided for a third cohort, we will offer the senior CMALT pathway as for Cohort 2 Senior CMALT was only available to the mentors.
• King’s has recently applied to do CMALT in-house accreditation which we hope will allow us to provide quicker assessment and feedback turnout.
• ALT requires CMALT holders to refresh their portfolios after three years of obtaining accreditation. This is something the planning team is anticipating offering to the first cohort in 2026.
• The long-term aspiration of the CMALT programme at King’s is for it to become self-seeding after the first few years. We have already had one Cohort 1 candidate who has become a Cohort 2 mentor, and, in future, we expect CMALT holders to move up the CMALT pathways once they gain more experience as well as come back to mentor and support the next generation.
Written by Sultan Wadud and David Reid Matthews
Wadud works as a Learning Technologist, Faculty Liaison at CTEL, working closely with Academic Faculties and Departments to support and drive the implementation of the King’s Technology Enhanced Learning ‘Transformation in Digital Learning’ strategy.
Wadud supports the management and delivery of multiple projects aimed at both the development of academics’ pedagogic understanding and the practice of technology enhanced learning.
Wadud is the product owner for Kaltura and one of the leads for the CMALT programme at King’s. In addition to this Wadud oversees the Digital Education Blog.
David is the TEL Manager for Arts & Humanities and joined King’s in 2018. He leads a team of learning technologists supporting a large and complex faculty, providing mainly 2nd line support, training and troubleshooting on our core, recognised and recommended TEL tools. David has worked in learning technology since 2011, having previously (and improbably) been a Lecturer in Theatre Studies. His particular interests are in legislation and policy around TEL, as well as IT Service Management and Delivery. David is one of the leads for the CMALT programme at King’s.
I run a postgraduate module entitled Global Law of Climate Change that introduces students to the role of law in the climate crisis. A few years ago, I decided to innovate by introducing a new form of summative assessment. It initially consisted in writing a research essay, to which I added a new component – the creation of a digital artefact. I wanted students to be able to translate their arguments and findings into communications which could be understood by an external audience without specific knowledge of climate law. The format that this artefact can take is decided by the student: so far, artefacts have included videos, poems, drawings, posters, Twitter threads and TikTok posts. I see several pedagogical advantages to this assessment: it invites students to engage with different ways of using law, it gives them the possibility to develop their own voice and it helps them build a portfolio of work that they can share with employers and the wider community.
From a technological perspective, this assessment gives rise to two main challenges. First, the creation of a digital artefact requires that students have some minimal technological skills, in terms of, for instance, creating a poster by using PowerPoint or recording and potentially editing a video. This has so far not created a significant obstacles, primarily because students are free to choose a format with which they are familiar. In addition, students are reassured that they did not need to use or buy specific software and that their technical abilities are not assessed. I signpost them to links within KEATS and beyond where they can find technical guidance and training, if necessary.
Second, the dual submission of a Word-processed essay and a file which is sometimes large in size presents some difficulties when it comes to their submission. As an assessor I need these to be in the same place so I can easily cross-reference and mark them together. Our School Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) team identified Moodle Assignment in KEATS as the best submission tool: it incorporates a Turnitin similarity check on the essay and allows large files to be submitted. Since students are used to submitted to Turnitin submission areas, the TEL team created tailored step by step guidance, explaining how to upload different file types to Moodle Assignment.
The creation and submission of the digital artefact generally goes smoothly, as long as students follow the guidance and do not leave their uploads to the last minute! While some students encounter some problems, these can normally easily be solved.
The most common difficulties are related to the following:
Process of uploading media files:
Media files are generally large and usually exceed the 500MB upload limit on KEATS. When this assessment was first implemented a few years ago, students were advised to compress their files before uploading directly to KEATS. Since 2021/22 the TEL team advised that this process should be changed as uploading large media files directly to KEATS can negatively impact the site’s performance. Instead, the TEL team recommended that such files are uploaded to Kaltura (King’s media service) and then embedded into the assignment tool using the online text box. Turnitin will provide a similarly report for media items can cause concern and queries from students, so it’s good to include this in the student guidance.
Student error:
Despite providing step by step instructions some students still tried to upload their media file directly to KEATS. When they do this, students may receive a message saying their file is too large. This can cause students concern and increase emails to the team.
Editing submissions:
Assignments can be resubmitted as often as students wish before the deadline, which is convenient as they can test the tool well ahead of time. However, this only works in ‘draft mode’, and once they click the ‘submit assignment’ button they are not able to make any more changes. When students misunderstand this process, the supporting Programme team has to manually reopen their submission to allow them to resubmit. There is also the risk that they forget to hit the ‘submit’ button once their submission is ready!
Failure to upload:
Students who wait until the last minute to submit sometimes face difficulties uploading and end up emailing their final submissions either to the module leader or to the Programme team. This creates additional work for staff and clogs inboxes with heavy files.
The submission of a digital artefact does can present some difficulties but these should normally be minimal if clear and informative guidance is given to the students. The importance of following the guidance should be highlighted to students, and it is important that the supporting Programme team are aware of the upload process so they can offer assistance if needed. For future submission areas, the TEL team has recommended that the Programme team restrict the file types in the submission area. This will mean students cannot upload large mp4 files directly to KEATS and should reduce queries from students regarding file size. While this new type of assessment was initially tested with a group of fifteen students, the number of students taking the class has now tripled, which increases the complexity of the task. However, with guidance and support throughout the semester, it usually goes smoothly. And seeing the creativity of our students fulfilling this assessment is very inspiring.
Useful Links:
On the pedagogical aspects of this new type of assessment, see my blog post on King’s Academy Assessment for Learning: https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/aflkings/2020/05/12/digital-artefacts-as-assessment-in-law/
The artefacts are currently being curated for a virtual exhibition, which is forthcoming: https://wordpress.er.kcl.ac.uk/climatelaw/
Guidance for students created by the TEL team: Using the Assignment Tool
Written by Dr Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli
Dr Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law and the Deputy Director of its Climate Law and Governance Centre. Her scholarship covers the ambiguous role played by environmental principles, the global legal implications of the clean energy transition and the role of citizens’ assemblies in the making of climate law and policy. With the Contribution of Clare Thompson, Technology-Enhanced Learning Officer, Dickson Poon School of Law.
KEATS will be upgraded to Moodle 4 in Summer 2023, this will bring a variety of improvements to the student and staff user experience. The existing functionality of KEATS will still be core to your teaching and learning, but the user experience has been redesigned with a new, modern look and feel that makes it more intuitive and user-friendly. The provisional date for the upgrade is 18 July 2023, and we expect KEATS to be unavailable to all staff and students for the majority of the upgrade day.
For students, these KEATS improvements will include:
For staff, the new design will bring the following benefits:
The video below shows what these improvements look like in Moodle 4. Please note that the Moodle 4 site shown in the video does not yet include King’s branding, this will be added in due course when Kings’ new branding guidelines have been finalised.
Fariha Choi is a Learning Technologist at the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning and has been with CTEL since June 2021. She has a particular interest in educational multimedia and has worked as a Learning Technologist, eLearning Developer and Learning and Development Manager for the past 11 years.
This blog post is a follow-up to the post Using Automation to Facilitate Flipped Learning.
Due to the success of using Microsoft Power Automate to support flipped learning for an advanced KEATS training session, the Power Automate process was rolled out to all training sessions offered by Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning (CTEL) and other elements of the Microsoft Power Platform have been introduced. This blog post will outline the processes, successes, and challenges.
Once the decision was made by the CTEL CPD Chair to roll out the Power Automate process to all CTEL training sessions, we needed to decide how this would work practically. The established process, or flow, used for the KEATS: Personalising the Learning Experience training session was built specifically for that session and was the only one that included pre-session work. We navigated around this by creating individual flows for each of the sessions run by CTEL and removing and adding steps as appropriate. The Assistant Learning Technologist for the team and I worked closely with the session leads, customising and creating the flows and encouraging personalisation of their flows to better reflect their sessions, such as adding attachments and editing email text.
Another risk was that the flows would reference the same Microsoft Excel spreadsheet hosted on a SharePoint site, and with multiple people accessing and changing the data, flows could be affected and send out emails at the wrong time. We navigated around this by creating individual spreadsheets and pointing the flows to the relevant spreadsheets for each session, which allowed for further customisation from session leads if desired.
Flows are usually triggered 2 working days before the session is scheduled, but this can vary if the pre-session work required will take more time to complete. The core template automatically completes 5 core steps when triggered:
The above template is core and session leads can add further steps as relevant to their own flows. Working days are calculated within formulas in the Excel spreadsheet and are utilised to increase the response rate, rather than send emails out over a weekend or bank holiday which can be ignored.
The Power Automate process outlined above is fairly simple in terms of its structure and aims; it sends out emails at predetermined times based on the date and time of the relevant session, which is calculated in the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Each email sent to attendees once the session has been completed contains a link to CTELs feedback form. Once feedback is submitted, it is collected, anonymised, and stored. I designed a Power BI report to display the quantitative and qualitative data submitted to display the impact of the sessions and assist each session lead with making any changes using free text submissions.
After organising this data and gaining experience in Power BI, I was able to link this data to attendance data extracted from SkillsForge, to gain insights into our historical CPD attendance and how this relates to our feedback submissions. An advantage to this was to see if the flows had an impact on gathering feedback for our sessions.
Key findings revealed that attendance for 2020/21 was significantly high with 2209 members of King’s staff signing up for a session offered by CTEL, with feedback submissions at 324, so around 14.7% of attendees left feedback. Attendance dropped for the year 2021/22 with 1247 members of King’s staff signing up for a session. This is to be expected as we saw an increase in face-to-face teaching taking place and there were fewer modules delivering fully online teaching, but feedback submissions increased slightly with 373 submissions, around 30% of attendees submitting feedback. This is a positive revelation as although attendance figures fell by almost three quarters, the total amount of feedback submitted increased, and the percentage rate doubled. However, we need to be aware of several caveats with this data.
During the academic year 2020/21, CTEL joined other departments across King’s to offer a full suite of training opportunities in delivering teaching online. During that time, a generic feedback form was sent to attendees which were mainly concerned with joining instructions to Teams Meeting links, so we cannot see detailed responses to questions usually asked on the CTEL feedback form. Based on the 373 feedback responses submitted in 2021/22:
The above is very positive as it demonstrates the impact that CTELs training sessions are having across the King’s community. The feedback form has not been changed for the academic year 2022/23 and so data can be easily compared in the future.
Based on an overview of the data, the Microsoft Power Automate process appears to be working well as the feedback response rate has remained steady as attendance figures have dropped, and Power BI has been a very useful tool to display and filter feedback data. Session leads have fed back that the Power BI report is beneficial and allows greater insight into the feedback for their sessions, and the CTEL CPD Chair has passed on positive feedback regarding the overall attendance data visualisations. I am currently working on an additional Power BI report that will utilise row level security to allow Technology Enhanced Learning Managers across the university to see attendance figures for their own faculties and tailor demand or promote courses that CTEL offer at strategic points in the year.
I am pleased that the automated process works and has helped free up time for CTEL staff and helped increase our feedback response rate, but I am dissatisfied that the session leads need to access two pieces of software (Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power Automate) to get this to work. I am currently investigating whether I can achieve the same results with a Power App (another Microsoft Power Platform application) to improve usability and increase satisfaction.
Dave Busson-Crowe is a Learning Technologist at the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning and has been involved with Learning Technology in some capacity for approximately 6 years.
He has a keen interest in the use of artificial intelligence in education.
As the new academic year gets under way, we will be looking at some new features available in Echo360 which are now available to staff. Echo360 is one of King’s College’s core technologies (read more about our core technologies) and is used for Lecture Capture platform which is used to record live lectures.
Echo360 can also be used to create video content on your desktop using your webcam and microphone and can also record your screen. For full guidance on using the features described here, please refer to the links at the bottom of this post.
Until recently, the only way to create a desktop recording using Echo360 was to download and install Universal Capture to your computer. Browser Capture allows staff to create a desktop recording without the need for additional software, using their browser. Browser Capture allows you to record your screen, webcam video and audio.
The main advantage of using Browser Capture is that it doesn’t require installing additional software. Other pros include the ability to record just one application or window on your computer, or a specific browser tab, none of which are on option via Universal Capture. However, unlike Universal Capture, you cannot create recordings if you are offline, so you will need an active internet connection whilst recording.
Echo360 have introduced advanced editing options, including:
This new feature allows users to remove a segment of a recording, including one from the middle of a recording. This is useful if you have a break during your lecture, or if students undertake group discussion, which is not useful to have as part of your recording. Once you are in the video editor, you will see a new option to Split Clip via the play head menu.
Using this on both ends of the segment that you want to remove will allow you to delete it.
It may be useful to insert other media into your recording, for instance if you want to record an introductory video for your lecture and have it be part of the recording, or if there are challenging parts of your lecture content that you want to expand on after it’s taken place. In the Echo360 video editor, click on Insert Clip as shown, you will then be prompted to add the clip via your Echo360 library.
A track is a particular element of your recording, such as the audio, a camera feed showing the Lecturer, or the screen recording. The ability to remove a track may be useful if the camera feed was part of your recording, but you later decide that you want to remove that element. You can remove a track by accessing the editor, clicking on the 3 dots next to the track you want to remove and clicking on Remove Track.
Similarly, you can add tracks to your recording that will play alongside the existing tracks. To do this, access the editor, click on the Actions dropdown menu and select Add A Track. You will then be prompted to add the track from your Echo360 Library.
Note: You can only have a total of 3 tracks in one recording, so if you already have 3 then you won’t be able to add a new track until one is deleted.
A thumbnail is the preview image of your recording. You may choose to change this to something that better summarises the content of your recording. For instance, you can select a frame from your recording that shows a slide that shows a summary of what will be covered, or you can create an image to upload as your new thumbnail.
You can grab a new thumbnail from your recording by navigating to the part of the recording showing the slide/video that you want to use and selecting Set Thumbnail on the play head menu and following the remainder of the on-screen prompts.
For full guidance on using this feature, including how to upload a thumbnail from your computer, please refer to the link below under further guidance.
Please note following links are accessible only for King’s staff:
Fariha Choi is a Learning Technologist in the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning and has been with CTEL since June 2021. She has a particular interest in educational multimedia and has worked as a Learning Technologist, eLearning Developer and Learning and Development Manager for the past 11 years.
This recording by Dr. Manasi Nandi, Reader in Integrative Pharmacology, complements the blog post, Digital Education Accessibility Baseline: Raising our standards for digital accessibility. It focuses on how Manasi approached the implementation of the baseline, provides tips on where to start and how to overcome some of the challenges she encountered. The benefits of accessible KEATS courses and content are explained, and resources to support accessible design are signposted.
Please click on the image below to access the recording:
Useful links:
A holistic approach was adopted by the King’s Language Centre (LC) to comply with the legal requirements of accessibility. The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) has been instrumental in driving the change not only with the academics, but also with members of the Professional Service team (PSS). The approach combined top-down and bottom-up strategies that have been successful in improving all our digital resources, including KEATS pages, educational materials, and templates for essential documentation. Continue reading “King’s Language Centre Approach to Digital Education Accessibility”
KEATS is scheduled to be upgraded to Moodle version 3.11 on 12th July 2022. This upgrade will represent a minor incremental change to the usual major upgrade that takes place over the summer. Continue reading “King’s Summer KEATS Upgrade to Moodle 3.11 – what to expect”
Feedback from students from various channels across King’s have reported that there is a lack of consistency in the User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) across KCL’s digital platforms, particularly the website and across templates and module pages within KEATS. Continue reading “KEATS 3.11 UI Refresh”