New web technologies present exciting opportunities to enrich teaching, learning and research. The project’s aims were to develop students’, teachers’, administrators’ and researchers’ technological capabilities to support collaborative learning and working in the adoption of Web 2.0 tools. These diverse groups of users used a simple step-by-step approach to adopt technology which, based on the experience and research of the Bloomsbury Colleges consortium, has been shown to bridge the gaps between different user constituencies.

For more information on the project see APT STAIRS website www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/apt

For news articles and reviews, see http://sites.google.com/a/jiscapt.net/project-plan/Home/News 

For videos, see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5711375711154114724&hl=en

The aims of the project were to investigate whether it was possible to give richer feedback to students and save assessors’ time. Building on very small-scale work using MP3 files for summative feedback on one programme, the Sounds Good team widened the focus to both formative and summative feedback in various disciplines at different educational levels. The experimentation included delivering digital sound files containing feedback to students via a virtual learning environment, email and widely available mobile devices such as MP3 players.

For the project website, see www.soundsgood.org.uk and for the guidelines see http://sites.google.com/site/soundsgooduk/downloads/Audio_feedback_tips_3.pdf and for more downloads, visit http://sites.google.com/site/soundsgooduk/downloads.

Multimedia have become technically easier to create (e.g. recording lectures). However, while users can bookmark, search, link to, or tag a complete podcast or video available on the web, they cannot bookmark, search, link to or tag a particular section within that podcast or video. MACFoB addressed this problem through the development of a web-based multimedia annotation tool that made multimedia web resources (e.g. podcasts) easier to access, search, manage and exploit for students, teachers and other users by developing and deploying technologies that supported the creation of synchronised notes, bookmarks, tags, images and text captions.

For the project website, see http://www.synote.ecs.soton.ac.uk

And for recordings and the guide, see http://www.synote.org
 

MOOSE investigated the scaffolding and processes needed to enable groups of students in Higher Education to establish productive information and knowledge exchanges and learning through the medium of online 3-D Multi User Virtual Environments using Second Life. Students’ and tutors’ use of SL-tivities were evaluated in four areas: understanding immersion for in-world socialisation and learning in groups; designing for useful SL events; investigating the role of facilitation in SL; and exploring institutional and disciplinary differences in using SL for learning.

MOOSE developed a pedagogical framework, ten user-examples, a demonstrator, seven SL-tivities, an exemplar of SL training course and a framework for SL-moderating, and Guidelines for embedding 3-D MUVEs in institutional systems and policies. All these deliverables are delivered through the MOOSE website and blog (here) A work in progress version of the training course is available at (here)

The SkillClouds project addressed the issue of making skills more visible to students through an exploration of the use of social bookmarking software and tagging, and in particular through the tag-cloud data visualisation technique that has become a distinctive feature of web 2.0 sites. The project’s basic hypothesis was that the skill cloud was an engaging way for students to visualise this information. For this pilot project, the main motivation was to explore the suitability of this approach with a number of student groups, and to develop tools for building skill clouds and integrating them into our institutional systems.

For the project website and a video overview, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillclouds

The details of and outputs from three activities can be found at:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillclouds/pilot_stage.php

For publications see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillclouds/publications.php?publication=shock2008

The Content Integration Project (CIP) piloted a software solution to institutional information integration at the University of Bristol by extending an existing prototype CIP tool developed previously in 2007. In the CIP pilot, the team integrated central, institutional databases with localised and external content using Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technology. The team showed this type of approach leads to excellent opportunities for the customisation (at departmental level) and personalisation (at individual level) in the use of research data.

A demonstration of the pilot and other information concerning the project may be viewed online at http://cip.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/cip/

The main aim of the Project was to produce demonstration versions of online ‘skills development maps’ for a range of different approaches to skills development through the Project Team’s engagement in ‘dialogues’ with academic staff in programmes in local FE colleges. The team collaborated with Janet Hale of curriculummapping101.com and Rubicon International to use Rubicon's Atlas online curriculum mapping software to host the skills development maps.

For the demonstration repository and more information on the project, visit http://ukanskills.org/ and for a background paper on 21^st century curriculum mapping, see background paper. For a skills checklist go to skills checklist and to see a colour-coded method, go to link for categorising students' critical thinking in their academic writing. The software to support the use of the colour-coding (called "Critter") is being crowdsourced through Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The changing purposes and composition of UK higher education are increasing the challenge of providing effective and timely academic writing development. User-group representatives have identified the dissertation as a particular challenge in which students often lack appropriate support. AWESOME  Dissertation Environment (ADE) project used social software to develop a reflective, critical voice and provide networked social support for undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation writing. The project was based on sound pedagogical models, using authentic examples, and following Web 2.0 tenets, notably collective intelligence and the active engagement of users in collaborative creation and sharing of content.

Publications and reports which outline and discuss these pedagogic processes can be found on the AWESOME website at http://awesome.leeds.ac.uk/

For further information on the implementation and for a full user guide, see http://awesome.leeds.ac.uk/getting_started.php and http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/llau/awesome/Full-User-Guide.pdf

During discussions with members of the Emerge community, teaching staff and students, it became clear that Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) offer a number of interesting opportunities for teaching and learning, including the ability to design and build objects/structures collaboratively and the sense of presence or of ‘being there’ that is experienced when interacting in a MUVE. Open Habitat encouraged students to use MUVEs as an integrated part of their learning. The project focused on designing activities relevant to the discipline in question, generating useful outputs for more widespread application.

For outputs, summaries, findings and videos, please see http://magazine.openhabitat.org/page/open-habitat-magazine

The eTutor project created and piloted two new modules for the Wales e-Training Network on-line Foundation Degree in e-Commerce. The eTutor project explored the possibility of creating an effective on-line learning environment from currently available Web 2.0 services and social networking software, and used this environment to deliver quality assured learning modules using existing on-line content and resources. The modules were created without developing any new on-line learning materials and were delivered without using a VLE.

Reports detailing the development, piloting and evaluation of the two modules created as part of the project, delivery websites created from Web 2.0 services and containing the visual gateways to learning resources, the eTutor project website with all the project research materials and outputs can be found here http://etutor.pbwiki.com

The M3 Project explored the potential of integrating Second Life and Twitter with an existing Moodle course. Twitter is a convergent technology that allows learners a choice of communication platforms for connecting to their online course and frees them from the need to be always sitting at a computer. Twitter can also bridge the ‘in-world’ (SL) environment with the ‘outside world’ of Moodle, and M3 investigated whether the short messages (Tweets) encouraged in-course participation from learners.

For more information, see the project web page http://www.elanguages.ac.uk/secondlife/

The demo site can be seen here http://m3.jiscemerge.org.uk and the code repository is here http://m3repository.jiscemerge.org.uk.

The project built on issues identified by the Streamline project, namely that the relatively low take-up in the use of repositories was a result of attitudinal issues as well as technical ones. Streamline consulted potential repository users as part of its activities in supporting workflow and found that even staff who were willing to engage had serious concerns about loss of control and ownership of their outputs. The need to manage their own resources, while still sharing them with others, was important and it was concluded that building a community of trust around repository use would alleviate some of these issues. The project examined individuals’ interactions with the repository and investigated how social networking tools facilitated connections between the institutional functions of the repository and the individuals’ own use and exploitation of it.

The most tangible output of PERSoNA is http://leedsmetrep.wordpress.com/, a site supporting access to various repository tools for Leeds Met. The blog can be found herehttp://personanews.wordpress.com/ and the project website is here http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/inn/persona/

As practitioners start to explore the use of Web 2.0 technologies in their assessment, learning and teaching (ALT) practice, it is critical that successful examples are identified and shared to enable efficient and effective re-use in different contexts. The Planet project developed a pattern language approach, as per Christopher Alexander (1977), for the domain of learning through Web 2.0 technologies, developing a collaborative software platform which facilitated community-based pattern creation and use, and, together with supporting methodologies for these activities, supported and engaged a community of practice which sustained the pattern activity in the longer term.

The Participatory Pattern Workshop methodology is available for use by other groups. The current versions of these are available at http://purl.org/planet/Outcomes/Methodology

There is a set of supplementary patterns, which represent the range of activities used in the workshops. These are also available at http://purl.org/planet/Outcomes/Methodology

To see a number of proposals for organising structures and a number of discussion papers, see http://www.patternlanguagenetwork.org/pattern-maps

The aims of the ARGOSI project were to examine the potential of Alternate Reality Games as an alternative method of supporting student orientation, socialisation and induction. The Alternate Reality Game consists of a series of challenges, an underlying narrative and a collaborative community. The project examined whether Alternate Reality Games were an effective and appropriate medium for enabling students to meet the intended learning outcomes, create social networks during the induction period, improve their confidence in navigating the city and university campus, and engage in and enjoy the induction experience.

The project web site at argosi.playthinglearn.net will act as a repository of the resources created by the project, such as the software produced, reports, graphical artefacts, guides to designing and running ARG elements, and materials from the training courses developed. This site will act as a growing resource for the ARGs in education community and will grow as new resources become available. The research findings (documented in detail in the project Evaluation Report) include insights into players’ motivations for playing ARGs and the ways in which educational ARGs are necessarily different from those designed purely for recreation.

The project developed and evaluated tools to integrate the necessary repository-related functions for creating metadata for resources, resource discovery and sharing into common proprietary work tools, such as Microsoft Office, and their open source equivalents, such as Open Office. The project focused on learning and teaching resources and developed generic tools applicable to other asset management areas as well as exploring the development of customised tools to support individualised workflows. The project favoured an institutional change in emphasis from individual course materials to reusable learning objects with metadata and a more innovative learning environment for students with access to greater range of materials.

A complete list of outputs including a collection of reports, documentation, reviews, project tools and a Beginner's Guide to e-CAT can be found at http://www.streamlineproject.org

The aims of the project were to develop, deliver and test problem based learning (PBL) scenarios within virtual worlds. All implementation was user-guided at development, testing and evaluation stages, and provided materials to enable others to build and develop further work.

For more information, publication details, presentations, case studies and scenarios visit the project website http://www.elu.sgul.ac.uk/preview/blog/

HeLMET provided generic services to support on-line consultation and brainstorming in distributed communities of practice using social software. The proposed services included a social networking manager, an ontology development tool, a semantic wiki, a collaborative document authoring tool and an interface to a portfolio. The five components worked together to support cycles of discussion and collaborative document authoring.

For more information on the project, see the website http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/helmet/

A video demonstrating how e-llaborate works in practice can be found at:
http://tewpl.manchester.ac.uk/ali/support/welcome.htm

A video showing a demonstration of the editor can be found at:
http://tewpl.manchester.ac.uk/ali/support/tasks2.htm
 

Flourish eased the personal administrative burden experienced by learning, teaching and research. The project provided a flexible learning system which allowed colleagues to record significant aspects of their personal and professional development in ways which integrated with their existing workflows. This personal learning system permitted users to aggregate their records of learning and achievement into rich ePortfolios which were used for a variety of professional purposes including career review, academic qualification, professional accreditation and personal development. EPortfolios were also used to smooth the creation and sustainability of cross-departmental working relationships between staff within a newly formed, dispersed/multi campus institution.

For two short animations 'E-portfolio for Starters' and ‘E-portfolios for Managers’ are available on YouTube. 

A series of video case studies illustrating how an e-portfolio can enhance CPD for staff is available at www.flourishproject.org.

For examples of E-Portfolios, look here: Exemplar E-Portfolios for CPD.

For the JISC 2008 publication on Flourish’s work, see Effective Practice with e-portfolios and visit the project website for more information at www.flourishproject.org

Audio is emerging as a key area of development across the HE sector in meeting the individual needs of an increasingly diverse range of learners, promoting active engagement, enhancing learning and enriching the learning environment. The ASEL project developed, implemented and evaluated the use of audio within next generation technologies to support, enhance, and personalise the learner experience. It also captured effective lecturer and learner practices from across the domains of teaching and learning that will help inform future practices across the HE sector. The project focused on using audio within next generation technologies in three key areas: self reflection, assessment and collaborative learning.

For a comprehensive account of tools and techniques for implementing audio to support self-reflection, assessment and collaborative learning, examples of audio-based learning and case studies and details on the software WAFT (web-based audio feedback tool), audio and video podcasts and the tool PIRAF (Pseudo-interactive real time audio feedback tool) go to the project wiki www.aselactive.com/

Gold Dust built upon some by-products of the JISC Users & Innovation-funded ticTOCs project and the work of several other projects and research, and produced and tested a prototype and subsequently a demonstrator for the delivery of highly relevant, personalised current awareness content to academics, ultimately without the need for any input by those academics in the personalisation process. It tested the delivery of this content from within selected JISC and non-JISC presentation services, including a university institutional setting, a desktop tool, and selected web-based services.

Digital storytelling is an innovative approach to reflective learning in which pictures and sound are collected and assembled to form a multimedia story. Next generation technologies, such as mobile phones with cameras, blogs, social networking sites and media sharing sites, provide familiar and easy approaches for multimedia collection by students. The project examined whether the combination of a new educational approach to reflective learning with a range of next generation technologies for social networking, collaborative writing, and collecting user-generated content to develop digital stories, increased students’ engagement in reflective learning.

For more information on the project, including the study guides, see http://www.reflect2.org/ and go to http://www.ireflect.org/ for the wider community of practice.

The ticTOCs project’s aims were to develop a freely available service for academics and researchers to transform their current awareness of journals. The project made it easy for academics and researchers to find, display, store, combine and re-use tables of contents RSS feeds from multiple publishers in a personalised, web-based environment. It enabled library and information services, commercial and open access journal publishers, gateways, content aggregators and journal directories to allow their users to embed journal TOC RSS feeds into a web-based interface.

The project’s website http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/ is dedicated to the search and retrieval of publisher’s journal TOC RSS feeds and is a free, globally-available service.

ticTOCs database has been exposed through a very basic API in the form of a text file which is available athttp://www.tictocs.ac.uk/text.php.