Enhancing your unit – Take your unit beyond the basics. Dave Hunt and Debbie Holley share ideas, good practice and examples from across the faculty and beyond

1. Dave and
Debbie tech
chat
Enhancing your units: top tips

2. Context
Consistency of the
student learning
experience
Enhance the quality
of teaching delivery
and assessment
Promote staff digital
literacy
Brightspace with
associated digital
tools
Increase the
opportunity for
students to enhance
their digital skills
Active engagement
with digital learning
tools in their unit

3. Reminder! Building Out Your Units
 Add unit handbook and assignment brief
 Copying content
 Add an introductory Video Note
 Use an html template
 Look at date restrictions / creating checklist
 Make the default Discussion live – ideas on how to get
engagement with it
 Making use of the Intelligent Agents to monitor engagement
– how to make live

4. What students think staff need to do
 Expectations. Set clear expectations at the start of the course
 Quality. ‘take action against poorly designed assignments and bad demonstrators and
lecturers’
 Skills. More confident in using technology
 Support and understanding. Need to be better at supporting and communicating with
students. ‘Regular 1-to-1 support’. ‘Check in on each person, their well-being and work
load’. ‘Understand that not all of us work at the same rate/retain information at the
same time’, ‘Be aware that some students have familial or other responsibilities away
from the course and this makes it more challenging’. Support for group-based activities
 Build relationships. ‘so many [staff] seem so unapproachable - focus on lecture job not
just be there for the pay check’. ‘I would find it helpful if lecturers took the time to get
to know students’
 Student contribution. Staff do not take into account the valuable knowledge that
students can offer
 Recognition. More recognition of good student performance
 Responsiveness. Respond quickly to student requests
 Link to research: Holley and Biggins (2021)

5. In Todays Session: Enhancing your unit
 Digital badges
 Mentimeter
 Padlet
 Quizzes
 Panopto
 Discussions
 Video Note

6. Digital badges
 Lots of evidence about how digital badges can motivate learners
 These have been used to 'badge' meaningful micro credentials & recognition schemes
 Listen to leader Dr Doug Belshaws podcast
 Need careful consideration and design
 Use sparingly!
 Brightspace Link here
 Example from Association of learning technologists - I used some of these to build my
professional accreditation

7. Mentimeter
 Mentimeter is available to staff and students, you can setup an account using your BU email address
 Mentimeter is an online polling tool which can add an interactive element to a lecture, presentation or
recorded session.
 Question types include Multiple Choice, Ranking, Scales, Word Cloud and Open Ended, among others
 Mentimeter is all online and uses a bring-your-own-device approach.
 Mentimeter is completely anonymous – the anonymity can sometimes encourage quieter students to answer
 Get an overview of where your group might be struggling, or common misconceptions
 Do the whole presentation in Mentimeter (talk to anyone on IPL unit last year)
 Mentimeter research articles collated
 Demonstration
Using Mentimeter

8. Padlet for formative and summative, F2F
and online
 Staff can login to Padlet at https://bu.padlet.org/ and click Log in
with Microsoft.
 Collaborative class and group activities
 Synchronous / asynchronous
 Anonymous by default
 Students can create a Padlet account by going
to https://padlet.com/ , clicking Log in and then Log in with
Microsoft.
https://bu.padlet.org/dhunt35/9r208n9kn939e3z3

9. Example padlet for summative
assessment(social policy)

10. MCQs for
formative
and
summative
(see ref list
on how to
write good
ones!)
Brightspace quiz tool
 Multiple question types
 Auto-grading (MCQ & multi-select)
 Question library and sections
 Randomization of questions
 Feedback options

11. Panopto
 Panopto is an easy to use desktop and lecture
recording tool and video hosting platform.
Whether you wish to record lectures, perhaps for
students to access during revision or to create bite
size recordings to create a learning module for a
topic, Panopto allows you to capture your screen
along with video and audio and then make the
recording available within Brightspace for your
students to view, all in a few simple steps.
 Key features of Panopto include:
 Existing video content is streamed so that it can
be played back instantly online
 Can be viewed and uploaded from mobile devices
 Pre-recorded video files can be easily uploaded
 Video content can be edited online via a browser
 Flexible video sharing and permission
management
 Captured PowerPoint slides automatically create
an in-built video navigation menu
 Analytics show how video is being viewed
 Search functionality is able to locate content that
is spoken or displayed as text during recordings.

12. Discussions
 The Discussions tool provides an area for
collaboration allowing learners to post, read, and
reply to messages on different topics, share thoughts
about course materials, ask questions, share files, or
work with your peers on assignments.
 Use the Discussions Tool in your unit to:
 Encourage users to share thoughts on course material
with their peers
 Set up forums for users to ask questions
 Pose a question for the class to debate
 Discuss the answers to an assignment
 Create forums for groups to work on group
assignments
 Take a look at the following video from Dr. Anne Luce
demonstrating Discussion Boards in action: Ann gets
100% student satisfaction on her unit, all discourse
based
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Teira769Gj4

13. Video Note
 Video Note allows you and your students to record and
embed videos of up to 30 minutes within Brightspace units.
Video Notes can be embedded within Announcements,
Content pages and Discussion Boards. They can also be used
to provide short video feedback on Assignments.
 Video Notes are a great way to connect with your students,
particularly in between face to face sessions and at distance.
They may be used to deliver a quick welcome to your unit and
also to frame particular activities.
 Using a quick video note (3-5 mins to welcome your students,
to update them or add additional information as your uit
develops
 To record a Video Note you will need a webcam and a
microphone. Most webcam cams will have a built in
microphone and most laptops already have built cameras and
webcams.
 https://brightspace.bournemouth.ac.uk/d2l/le/content/18315/v
iewContent/725216/View

14. • Powerpoint karoke – students prepare
short story using images, then another
group interprets
• Pairs work – students can chat to each
other by mobile, especially if wifi flaky
• Lots ideas ALT community resources
• I love jamboards Maha shared this at
an online conference Maha Bali is an
Associate Professor of Practice at the
Center for Learning and Teaching at
the American University in Cairo, Egypt
Pushing boundaries?

15. Further Resources
• Further guidance on using Brightspace can be
found in the Brightspace Staff Resources area
• FLIEFlix 'boxsets'
• Digital Pedagogies Framework
• Faculty Learning Technologist

16. References
 Ashwin, P., 2015. Curriculum: What is to be taught and learned? In: Ashwin, P. Reflective Teaching
in Higher Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 153-177.
 Biggs, J.B. and Tang, S.K., 2011. Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does.
4th edition. Maidenhead : McGraw-Hill/Society for Research into Higher Education/Open University
Press.
 Holley, D; Goldsmith, B & Fevyer, D (2021) Inspiring learning through technology (chapter
5) in Pokorny, H. and Warren, D. eds. Sage. Enhancing Teaching Practice in Higher Education. 2nd
edition. London: Sage, 11-52.
 Warren, D., 2021. Course and learning design and evaluation. In: Pokorny, H. and Warren, D., eds.
Enhancing Teaching Practice in Higher Education. 2nd edition. London: Sage, 11-52.
 Douthit, N.T., Norcini, J., Mazuz, K., Alkan, M., Feuerstein, M.T., Clarfield, A.M., Dwolatzky, T.,
Solomonov, E., Waksman, I. and Biswas, S., 2021. Assessment of Global Health Education: The Role
of Multiple-Choice Questions. Frontiers in Public Health, 9.
 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8339563/