Video, video and more video!

I have spent the last two weeks video interviewing tutors and learners and editing the footage. This is proving to be very time consuming, especially where the learners are concerned. On Monday I waited around for an hour to talk to learners from the Creative Media class. They were meant to meet me at 3.30, but the tutor decided to let them watch a film as it was the end of term, so I finally got to see them at 4.20, by which time they wanted to leave. I managed to get 10 minutes of their time.

A lot of the tutors did not want me to talk to learners until they had finished their exams, at which point many of them are no longer attending College, so this has proved to be particularly problematic.

The tutor interviews have been more successful and I feel that I have more to work with in the final report. I have decided to edit them into smaller bite size pieces, which will focus on specific uses of the technology (e.g. using Assignments, Quizzes) rather than an amorphous mass of everything they did. This will be easier for me to analyse and will make for easier viewing for others.

Mahara ePortfolios

This morning I worked with the Creative Media students to help them to create views of their Mahara portfolios, in order to submit for assessment and moderation. Each student has created six folders for each area of the qualification in their portfolio, and the tutor and I decided to get them all to create the same view (as a sort of 'template' view) so that when he marks the work it will all be in the same format. We used the 'Display a folder' option for the views so that it generally fits on one screen and then if a student uploads any additional content, they do not need to change the view as it will automatically update, even if it has been submitted to the tutor.

This is an example of one of the views. The students will now generate secret URLS in Mahara, so that when the tutor is ready to submit the views to the awarding body as evidence, he will simply provide a list of URLs and the examiners will be able to view all of the portfolios.

Changes to interview plans

I had originally planned to get our multimedia designer to film my interviews, but on reflection I am going to do them myself using the flip camera. It is a more flexible arrangement as any last minute changes to plans can are easier to arrange and perhaps more importantly tutors and learners being interviewed are more comfortable with just me and a flip. Once the flip is set up and running people tend to forget that it is there and will therefore be more relaxed in front of the camera. Although I thought that the sound in some of my previous interviews was not too good, I think that was due to the rooms used and this time I have booked time in our small training room, which is nice and quiet.

I am also going to speak to learners and tutors from other curriculum areas who have used other tools to get a wider range of feedback and not the IT Diploma learners as I had previously intended to do.

14th June 2010

Today I worked with the the learners from Addey and Stanhope school who are studying on the Creative and Media Diploma. They are planning to upload all of their coursework into their ePortfolios and then submit the work to Edexcel. This is the first time we have tried anything like this and the tutor thinks that it will make a vast difference to the time it will take in submitting all the work, as he will only need to supply web links to the views of their work. I will need to spend another session with them showing them how to create the views, but we are very excited about how this will work. We are also encouraging them to use the CV feature and to use the blog, as they are required to keep a journal in this course. Due to the nature of the course they are creating videos of their work, so this is an ideal vehicle to display what they have done.

I am looking forward to being able to get some positive feedback on the use of Mahara with this group of learners - watch this space!

Preparing for final interviews

I am currently preparing my questions for the interviews with learners and tutors for the final phase of the project, which is proving to be a logistical nightmare. As well as negotiating times to interview the tutors I need to book a room to record them and also to liaise with Henry, our multimedia designer, who is going to record them for me. Although my previous interviews were recorded using a flip camera, and the quality of the video was good, the sound quality was not as good and it was sometimes difficult to hear what was said.

I have arranged to go into both the Higher and Advanced IT Diploma group classes in the next couple of weeks to get volunteers for interviews. I hope that they will volunteer to be interviewed, but if not, the plan is to offer them a store card (value £20) as an incentive, but this is really a last resort. Following the last JISC event, I had received suggestions of incentives that I could offer. One suggestion was to offer printer credits, which with another group would be useful, but these groups of learners do not need to print out their work for either assessment by tutors or final submissions for the course, so not practical in this instance.

May 2010

Not much activity this month. The IT diploma students have finished the controlled assessment and are getting ready to go on their work placements. They have been using their Mahara ePortfolios to create their CVs which will be submitted to employers prior to their placements. I hope to get some feedback from some of the employers about the content and usefulness of CVs presented in this way.

Following the meeting with the creative media diploma tutors and our school contact, I arranged for two members of staff from the school to have access to the learners PDPs as agreed and provided instructions for logging in. I have been checking to see if anybody has looked at the PDPs, and to date they have not even logged in to the course. This is very disappointing as the school liaison was keen to participate and had expressed a special interest in being able to see the learners attendance and punctuality information, rather than waiting for register information to be sent to the school.

They had also agreed that the learners would be able to access a chat room, in the course, on the Learner portal during their IT sessions when at school. This has not happened and Nik, the course tutor, has spent several Thursday afternoons waiting for somebody to join him in the chat room! I spoke to some of the learners to find out why they were not accessing the chat room and they said that their school teachers needed them to spend the time on their Functional Skills. We have a meeting arranged in early June which will be an opportunity to ask why the school contacts did not access the Learner Portal.

New collaborations

Had a meeting today with the Creative Media tutor and a representitive from the secondary school who the College is collaborating with on the diploma delivery. Nik, the tutor, has agreed to run an online chat on a Thursday afternoon when the diploma students are in an IT lesson at the school, so that they can communicate in between their lessons at the College. We are also enabling the school tutors to access the learners' PDPs so that they can be fully informed of the learner progress and crucially, any attendance or punctuality issues will be immediately highlighted. I hope that this will provide more data for the final evaluation, especially around the collaboration of stakeholders.