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ITCS 6265 Information Retrieval and Web Mining Lecture 10: Web search basics

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PBS Learning News Achieving the right blend!. PBS eWeek: Monday 23 rd – Friday 27 th (November 2009). 1. 12. Issue 7 – Autumn 2009. PBS eWeek: Programme of Events. Keeping a Safe Distance?. What is PBS ‘eWeek’? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

Portsmouth Business SchooleLearning Team

PBS Learning NewsAchieving the right blend!

Keeping a Safe Distance?

You are an extremely good speaker and very much on top of your subject. Students come to class, and you are able to hold their attention through a combination of interactive discussions and interesting content. You offer printed case studies in seminars that take learners through what you want them to learn – and life is good! But one day, a student asks you why your Victory site doesn’t have all the things on it that other PBS academics provide: lectures, PDFs, videos, podcasts, blogs, voice-driven discussions, formative assessment quizzes...audio/visual feedback. You tell them: “I don’t do Victory!” Then PBS announces its intention to sail in a new direction, to expand into online learning and executive training and you realise you may have kept your distance from ‘all that’ for too long. If this is you, then talk to the PBS eTeam. We can help you do your thing online!

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Email the eTeam! [email protected]@[email protected]

Issue 7 – Autumn 2009

PBS eWeek: Monday 23rd – Friday 27th (November 2009)

PBS eWeek: Programme of Events

What is PBS ‘eWeek’?

The eTeam will put on a series of demos from Monday 23rd November in the open area of Richmond Floor 4, at the times below. Why not come and learn more about using electronic tools in teaching? We’ll be glad to see you, and we hope the demos will be useful for your teaching. During that time, the eTeam Drop In Centre on Floor 1 of Richmond will be open as normal to answer your Victory queries, or to help you solve any problems you are having in uploading materials to your sites.

Monday November 23rd

10.00 to 12.00 Enhancing Victory Pages & Menus: Using Wimba Create

14.00 to 16.00 Automatic Session Capture: Try Camtasia Relay Yourself!

Tuesday November 24th

10.00 to 12.00 Voice Messaging: Wimba Voice Tools & Victory Podcasting

14.00 to 16.00 Screencasting and Podcasting: Camtasia Studio, Audacity & Jing

Wednesday November 25th

10.00 to 12.00 Victory Assessment: Formative Quizzes, Summative Assignments

14.00 to 16.00 Distance Learning: Turnitin Demo + Using Camtasia Relay

Thursday November 26th

10.00 to 12.00 Enhancing Victory Pages & Menus: Using Wimba Create

14.00 to 16.00 Using Video in Teaching: What is Involved & How to Get Started

Friday November 27th

10.00 to 12.00 Enhancing Student Employability: Victory ePortfolio Tools

14.00 to 16.00 Using Wimba Classroom: How to Set It All Up + Turnitin Demo

Reference from Page 2: HEFCE paper published March 2009: ‘Enhancing learning and teaching through the use of technology: A revised approach to HEFCE’s strategy for eLearning’ http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_12/ (Accessed 8th November 2009).

Page 2: Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

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New Directions for PBS

A Vision of the Future for PBS

MSc Forensic Accounting: The Portal

Developing a Distance Learning Course

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Portal Features created using Wimba Collaboration Suite

income generating activities. Outreach, via applied research, academic entrepreneurship and executive education, along with increased international involvement, is central to achievement of this vision.

Future Evidence of the Success of this StrategyHere are just a few of the measures that will indicate our strategy has yielded results:

a)Wide ranging outreach activity, including... Continuing Professional Development. Executive Development. In-Company Courses.

b)Increased number and quality of national/international alliances & partnerships.

c)All PBS disciplines in the Top 30 of the Times University League Table by 2015, and in the Financial Times Top 50 by 2018.”

These statements form part of the vision currently being developed for the future of PBS.

Wimba Output...

Here is an example of site web pages that were created in Word using Wimba Create.

Menus, graphics and text are all much more attractive than is the case if Victory is used without enhanced content.

Some of the classrooms created with Wimba Classroom.

Ann Ridley: Dean of the Business School

“By 2015, Portsmouth Business School will be recognised nationally and internationally as a leading UK centre for business and management education and research.’

This will require a step-change in the positioning of PBS, involving continued excellence in learning and teaching, a vibrant research environment, increased engagement with business, the public & voluntary sectors, and the development of

Opportunities offered by eLearning to Support the Vision

We will need to ensure that students can access information, support, expertise and guidance, and communicate with each other, wherever they are studying. Collaboration by tutors in subject communities to produce high-quality, reusable learning resources will be very important. Our VLE is a principle mechanism for this, augmented by tools including Wimba Create, Wimba Voice, Wimba Classroom, Camtasia Relay, Video and blogs like Twitter. We can show employers the skills of our students using ePortfolios. Electronic delivery of materials and assessments should permit us to reduce our use of paper, as we move away from simple content sharing toward experiential learning. The MSc Forensic Accounting course, recently validated, (see pages 10 to 11) is a good example of the type of vehicle PBS needs to employ if our vision is to become reality.

Page 3: Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

Create Web Pages from Raw Text

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http://www.twitter.com/eteamnews

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Trends in Learning & Teaching

Technology Influences on Learning & TeachingDeveloping a Distance Learning Course

James Hicks: Senior Lecturer

The challenge for the non-technical academic seeking to put ideas in front of those considering what knowledge represents is to find a mechanism that creates attractive content with minimal creative effort. Wimba Create is one tool that I believe does that very well, by turning pages of text into attractive web pages. During the creation of the Victory portal serving the MSc Forensic Accounting currently in validation, I found that Wimba Create had obviously been created by teachers for teachers.

Wimba Create takes an ordinary Word file and brings it to life by dividing the content into web friendly components through which the student can freely navigate, helping keep student attention. The resulting package can be SCORM’d into the VLE as a learning object.

Word Wimba Formatting Web

Having created your document in M’Soft Word, you can use the Wimba menus to choose which titles will be section headings in your web pages, and what will be body text. You can then create web pages with tables of contents that mean you no longer need to use Victory’s own hyperlinks.

Better Ways of Assessing Students*

‘Assessment is central to all learning and teaching practice. Effective use of ‘e’ assessment technologies can provide efficiency and effectiveness improvements in this practice. E-assessment is now widely used for summative assessment such as end of module tests. Much current use of e-assessment employs computer-marked, objective questions, with the main benefits of the technology being the immediacy of feedback to students and the reduction of marking for tutors. A growing body of evidence indicates that well-designed and well-deployed diagnostic and formative e-assessments can foster more effective learning for a wider diversity of learners.’

Employer Engagement*

‘The Leitch review of skills further emphasised the responsibility that higher education has to provide high-level skills for the information economy, and to equip learners as workers and citizens in an information society. Increasingly, employers are demanding a real stake in curricula that may be delivered wholly or partly while learners are at work. Institutions need to initiate more agile processes of curriculum design and delivery, and are discovering that technology can provide the efficiencies and flexibility they need.’

Raising the International Profile of UK Higher Education*

‘Effective use of technology is vital if we are to maintain the world-class provision of UK higher education. It can also help institutions in enhancing curriculum development and delivery, attracting overseas students, establishing campuses in other countries, and in engaging with the Bologna process. Staff teaching an increasingly diverse student body will benefit from access to relevant information and resources. In addition, more flexible approaches offered by distance learning and open educational resources will give international learners access to better course information, and assist with the recruitment and retention of these learners.’

Changing Student Needs & Expectations*

‘Learners want and expect to be able to use their own devices in institutional contexts, and to personalise institutional services to meet their own requirements. This places new demands on ICT services. The 2008 UCISA survey also identified demands emerging over the last few years that are likely to impact on the provision of support for ICT, including streaming media, mobile computing and podcasting.’

*See back cover for reference

Page 4: Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

Technology Spotlight: Automated Session Capture

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Report of the PBS Educational Technologist

The Work of the eTeam Camtasia Relay (BLWP Funded)

Start! Stop! Submit! View!

Camtasia Relay consists of ‘Camtasia Relay Recorder’ that will sit on all PBS PCs, including podium PCs, and ‘Camtasia Relay Server’ software. The latter captures a recording of PC (or Mac) screen and sound activity, makes a backup of the lecture or seminar captured, then encodes the file as a video or podcast in the background. Users make a recording by choosing their allotted profile, doing their talk, and then clicking ‘Submit’. (Recordings can also be paused if desired). Relay then emails the user with a link to where the encoded and original files have been stored, and if either link is clicked, the file opens in a suitable media player. When the BlackBoard Vista ‘Power Link’ has been installed, these emails will be translated into Victory ‘Announcements’ telling the user that a recording is available to view, and where it is.

Camtasia Relay opens up a range of possibilities for making lecture materials that can sit on secure storage linked to Victory, an academic’s website, or wherever we might put such content – such as on iTunes U. Relay can also be used to enable staff and students to interact asynchronously via video and audio, thus increasing the formative element of courses. Finally, by creating lectures in this format, academics can point students at a recording in place of a lecture when they are off sick. A hosted trial of Relay proved it to be very effective in operation, and we are now installing hardware to process seven recordings at once. http://www.techsmith.com/camtasiarelay.asp.

Rachel Short: Educational TechnologistThe dust has begun to settle now that semester 1 is in full swing and the PBS eLearning Team have dealt with a considerable number of requests for new Victory sites and staff training. An audit of our Victory site presence for each department/school within the faculty has thrown up a phenomenal amount of work. One concern is that some Victory content has not been uploaded and students have highlighted the need for greater staff engagement. If you require help, please email: [email protected].

Wimba Create and Live ClassroomThe ELC and the PBS e-learning team have promoted the use of Wimba Create within the faculty. This piece of software can be used by staff to create meaningful content in MS Word and then convert this content using the WC add-in to an interactive learning object. It avoids the need to develop programming skills and works on the principle of applying styles to headings and text. This saves time when updating original files and provides a good way to maintain consistency and a standard format for your content. Staff can amend the settings of their document to output to the WebCT IMS Package which is compliant with Blackboard, generate their course and with their zipped files, import the content directly to their Victory site using the import menu item. WC content appears as a new learning module. James Hicks has successfully mastered the use of this software for the MSc Forensic Accounting (DL) course portal. PBS staff have also started to use Wimba Classroom to deliver introductory talks to their students. Wimba Classroom is created as a content link on the homepage of your Victory site. The online room is then created within the teach tab. It is a simple tool to use which provides exceptional functionality and the ability to app share with your students and vice versa. The classroom enables students to collaborate using webcams, headsets, chat dialog, drawing tools and to phone into the session when they are unable to access a PC. For training and support, please email: [email protected].

Second Life

The faculty has an area of land within the UoP Island in the virtual world Second Life. This environment is currently being developed by the PBS eLearning Team in collaboration with the School of Computing. The initial development is for a PBS Student Placements Centre and this will undergo trial and review in January 2010. For more information on SL within PBS, please contact us: [email protected].

Page 5: Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

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Mandy McCartney: Online Course Developer

Personally, encouraging and supporting staff and students in gaining access and working with the VLE (Victory) is an important focus. I am more than happy to provide Victory training sessions, adapted to each individual’s unique way of teaching. My support role can be nothing more than being at the end of the phone to answer questions, or I can help with site redesign, the uploading of learning materials and general Victory site administration. Here’s the gist of a typical day!

An email arrived from Chris Reid asking me to set up two multiple choice tests on his Victory site. The first is a practice test: a sample of five multiple choice and true/false questions to familiarise students with the system and approach, available immediately and with unlimited attempts. The second is a macroeconomics test.

An undergraduate student came through the door asking if they can be added to six unit sites. As they were late registering they do not have access to the material. I took a note of their username and unit details and assured them that they would be added during the day.

Helen, a lawyer, had asked if I would re-design a site she has taken over from a retiring lecturer. We met and went through the options available. Helen decided on having all materials available from the front page. This involved me in designing the ‘buttons’ and adding the materials. I also needed to take off/hide all old material. I have offered to add materials for her until she gets familiar with the site.

A law lecturer who is involved with Information Technology Law (PG) and Information Technology Law Project (PG) emailed me to say that he would like me to add all academics in the law department to two of his sites.

Just when we thought we could get a cup of tea, a whole class of students were shown in to the office! This was in relation to a Victory site that had an old unit code – the lecturer was working with the old site and didn’t realise this would make a difference to students being added. A new site was created and students added.

At the same time, a postgraduate student could not access his Victory site. The query seemed to indicate there was a problem with his computer. I emailed my ‘how to check my computer email’ guide to them and...it worked!  

Each day involves a range of challenges that we help our colleagues to address.

Report of the PBS Online Course Developer

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An Application of Blended Learning Working Party Funds

VLE MattersTwo Projects funded by the BLWP

The material is used for teaching here and although there are colleagues at IUC who can teach this material effectively, the students there find it hugely supportive that lecturers here have taken the trouble to think of them when producing teaching aids.

Ken Heather: Principal Lecturer – Video Tuition

The PBS / IUC Sofia collaborative programme is very strong, but we are always looking to strengthen the link. First, several colleagues have agreed to record materials for use in Sofia, including accounting, economics, law and Global Context posted on the IUC website.

Caroline Strevens: Head of Law – Expert Witnesses

I was awarded £11,500 from the blended learning fund to make teaching artefacts to train expert witnesses. BLWP funds enable me to pay for the time of a solicitor and a barrister, an independent social worker and a forensic accountant, who attended the Rotunda to talk of their experienceof being instructed as, working as and giving evidence as an expert witness in various

civil and criminal processes. In addition, I was able to buy out time for members of staff to become involved in video demonstrations of the differences between examination in chief and cross examination and also to visit and interview barristers in location in their chambers in London. We also put together some background reading concerning the legal framework and conducted some research into the viability of teaching skills with a blended learning approach. One of the outputs was a successful paper at the Association of Law Teachers’ Annual Conference in April 2009 and this led to an enquiry from a local toxicologist who has looked at the materials and is assisting me in turning the teaching artefacts into a two day training course for experts. The artefacts are located on the Victory website if anybody should like to look at them.

The other initiative is that I am delivering a unit as an experiment in distance learning. The lectures are delivered by a mixture of “live” lectures given during visits, lectures recorded at the Rotunda and films that I have recently made covering some of the topics covered in the unit. Students are working through exercises and then getting feedback partly by film material recorded by myself and a Bulgarian colleague, and partly by Skype’d classes. It’s an experiment and we are all learning but the director there was enthusiastic, commenting last week: “Yes, this is a real breakthrough. Fantastic result! It will take a week or two for the students to get used to the fact that you are "in the room" and you see what they do and how they react. Once again - thanks Ken, Matt and Petya for the web breakthrough. Great work!” We hope to do more of this. It must be the way forward in teaching!

Page 6: Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

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Have Camera, Will Travel! Blended Learning Working Party

PBS Funding for the Development of Online Teaching

Anthony’s Report on Recent Media Work

Since the start of this academic year I’ve been involved with an ongoing video project on behalf of Ken Heather in Economics, and his associate, Simka. This series of videos was made to promote the use of Economics, and demonstrated the potential of eLearning within the Business School. They also gave support to the University’s distance learning students in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The production took place in the Rotunda TV studio and a total of 7 hour long lectures were filmed of which I not only to edited, but replicated, animated and synchronised each individual hand drawn supply and demand graph. There were over 60 graphs in total, with additional diagrammatical animations.

I also gave training in Photoshop on how to illustrate graphs for future use in economics, and provided training for ACCFIN students on how to achieve good results using video in their assignments; from framing techniques to lighting and audio.

My time is currently spent working in either Richmond Building – where I assist in the development of Victory units, their formatting, auditing and general victory queries – and the Rotunda where I film and edit the Business schools video productions using Adobe Premiere, and Final Cut Pro.

If you have an interest in using media and video to enhance your teaching, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Send an email to: [email protected] to find out more about our services.

Canon HD video cameras and editing laptops equipped with Adobe Premiere elements and Roxio Creator 2010 can be booked out from the Information Services desk on floor 1 of Richmond Building. Please contact Ian Plant or Michelle Kane for details.

Anthony Harrison, PBS Media Producer

PBS academics have available to them a range of media creation facilities. Anthony Harrison is the person who can advise academic colleagues on what can be achieved with media including, video, images, animations and various Wimba tools. Ant is your point of contact with the Rotunda, where he can shoot and edit PBS productions, but he also has a desk in RB1.07, where he supports students with video and Victory.

Linda McCormack:

PBS Business Development Director

To further our vision of providing leading edge delivery, PBS has a budget managed by a small working party to invest in the development of blended learning units and courses. The group meets five times a year and approves and monitors progress on bids put forward by any individual in the Faculty.

Report of the PBS Media Producer

BLWP

In its first 18 months around £100,000 has been invested in 10 projects.

Examples include:

A project to develop a risk and crisis simulation.

Development of on line materials for a course on the role of the Expert Witness.

Intrapreneurship unit development.

A distance learning forensic accounting course.

Flexible doctoral research training.

Production of video material abroad.

An automated session capture system, and screen recording software.

The group has also supported the purchase and installation of Camtasia Studio 6.0 and SnagiT 9.0 in the computer labs, and the installation of an encoding server running Camtasia Relay.

If you wish to develop a more flexible delivery using web, work-based or distance materials please send a short outline and budget (including any buyout of your time) to myself for consideration by the group.

If it is a web based solution it is worth first checking with David Starkey to see what is already available or in the pipeline.

All that we ask in return is an update report and feedback on what the resultant solution has done to improve your teaching / student learning.

As we progress we plan to showcase and share best practice across the School.