Reviewing National Teaching Fellow Applications – My Story

by Heather Boyd-Savidge | Oct 2, 2023 | General

This year was my first time reviewing National Teaching Fellow (NTF) applications. I have previously reviewed the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) awards, which celebrates teamwork and collaboration, whilst the NTF celebrates sustained professional practice in learning and teaching.  

The purpose of the National teaching fellow scheme is to recognise, reward and celebrate individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes in the learning and teaching profession. The award is organised by Advance HE (Higher Education).  

Source: National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) 2023, Guidance for Reviewers, Advance HE, National Teaching Fellowship Scheme. 

NTFS is open to both Academic and Professional Services staff working in Higher Education.  

The Role of Reviewer  

In my role as a reviewer, I assess NTF applications to enable Advance HE to recommend who will be selected winners.  

Reviewers provide a score and feedback on each section of the application as well as providing overall feedback to the applicant and summary feedback to Advance HE.  

As a reviewer you look at the 3 criteria to assess the evidence against:  

• Reach: the scale of influence 
• Value: the benefits derived for students and staff 
• Impact: the difference that has been made to policy, practice, or student outcomes.

As well as the demonstration of individual excellence, raising the profile of excellence and developing excellence. 

My experience as a reviewer  

I took part this year as a self-development activity and to appreciate the distinct types of practice that are being used as evidence. I found the experience really rewarding, being able to read about the applicants’ contributions to learning and teaching over a sustained period of time, seeing how applicants had developed, changed practice, and adapted to changing situations for the benefit of their learners was interesting to read.  

My batch of applicants to review included a mix of men and women which was great to see. 

Even though it would have been valuable to have reviewed applications from Professional Services staff, on this occasion they were all full time Academic Staff who highlighted their inspiring practice.  

 I queried this with Advance HE, and they explained there is a severe shortage of Professional Services staff applying for the National Teaching Fellow scheme. Advance HE has previously tried to encourage applications from underrepresented groups for NTF and this has made a difference to the range of applicants.  

Underrepresentation of the following groups in comparison to the UK HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) Staff Data:  

• Staff from UK minority ethnic groups defined within HESA as Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic  
• Professional Services Staff  
• Staff on fractional and part-time contracts  
• Staff working in HE in FE (Further Education) 

Source: National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) 2023, Guidance for Reviewers, Advance HE, National Teaching Fellowship Scheme. 

When reviewing applications.  

As with all reviewing the scoring is sometimes the most difficult part so I am looking forward to seeing how my scores aligned to the other reviewers. Reviewers score in isolation of other reviewers so there is no chance for reviewers to be influenced by others. Whilst it can be difficult for reviewers this practice of independent reviewing results in consistently reviewing applicants’ evidence in line with the scoring rubric that is issued alongside the guidance documents.  

Application Window 

The application window for NTF is from October through to early March, but preparation and planning applications like this starts much sooner and it is a chance to gather feedback on learning and teaching approaches and to consider what your application will be framed on, examples I have reviewed have included:  

Digitally enhanced learning  

Widening participation  

Entrepreneurship  

Innovation in Science Teaching  

Leadership  

Alongside the application applicants are required to include a supporting statement. This is to be composed by a colleague working in a senior role at DVC/PVC or equivalent who is familiar with the applicants teaching and learning practice. It is then signed off by the institutes VC for formal institution endorsement.  

If you are interested in finding out more about the scheme. Advance HE has information on their website:  

https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/awards/teaching-excellence-awards/national-teaching-fellowship

Hello from the Digital Learning Team

by Heather Boyd-Savidge | Sep 22, 2023 | General

Welcome to the new Academic year. We will be doing regular posts to bring you updates on our staff, our technologies, upcoming workshops and resources and key themes from the digital technologies sector.  

Our first update is focused on introducing the team with a big friendly hello from all of us 🙂

Our team is made up of Learning Designers, Learning Technologists, Learning Resource Designers and Digital Interns. The majority of our teams work is focused on supporting Falmouth Online course development and delivery working in collaboration with the course teams. We manage the learn.falmouth.ac.uk environment as part of this work.

We manage and support Falmouth’s on-campus digital learning tools such as Mural, Padlet, Thinglink, Journal, Turnitin and the Learning Space our digital learning environment learningspace.falmouth.ac.uk.

Here to support you!

Our support desk is manned during the working week to support staff with using or best practice relating to use of online learning systems – contact us by email at dlsupport@falmouth.ac.uk.

We also have a number of guides and solutions available to support staff and students. These are designed to help at key times of the year such preparing for the new academic year or simply looking to make your materials as accessible as possible.

Keep in touch 🙂

We maintain a blog detailing the latest goings on within our team and the wider sector – sharing ideas and good practice.

Look out for future news features on our technologies, our projects and support available to help you with your learning and teaching.

Thank you, the Digital Learning Team.

Update to Talis resource lists in Learning Space

by Dominic Martignetti | Jul 20, 2023 | General

Following an update by Talis to the resource/reading list deployment tool for all virtual learning environments, Digital Learning have recently updated the Talis Aspire Resource Management deployment tool within Learning Space. How you add your resource lists in Learning Space for Study Block 1 23/24 onwards has changed.

The update does not affect new or existing resource lists created in Talis and will not alter the student user experience when using resource lists in Learning Space.

What’s changed?

As a result of the update there is now a new Talis resource list deployment tool within Learning Space that you will need to use to add your existing lists to modules for Study Block 1 23/24 onwards. The update includes a small change to how staff add lists, with an updated setup menu and a change of icon.

What about lists in previous modules?

The old Talis resource list deployment tool will remain, this will allow access to lists within previous modules as normal, no action is necessary. However, lists added using the old deployment tool should not be imported into any modules for Study Block 1 23/24 onwards.

Adding lists to modules

You can add your Talis resource lists using the new deployment tool now, instructions on how to do this are available within the Digital Learning Solutions guide for Talis. The process remains almost identical to the previous method.

1. Within your module; in the top-right of the screen toggle on editing.
2. Within a section click ‘Add an activity or resource’.
3. Select ‘New Talis Resource List’ from the activity and resource selection menu.
4. Click the ‘Select content’ button. The list for the module should automatically appear but if it doesn’t you can use the Talis search facility to find it.
5. Once you have the correct list click the ‘Embed List’ button to the right of the list to add it within your module. If you are embedding sections from the list, for example weekly reading, you can do that by clicking ‘Select Section’ then embed the section you need.
6. Click ‘Save and return to module’ once you are done.

Importing old lists

You shouldn’t import lists from older modules. If you wish to reuse content you still can, there are two options when importing:

1. Select only the elements you need when exporting and exclude the old Talis resource list. This is the recommend method if you don’t need everything in the module.
2. Import everything and selectively delete any activities or resources you don’t need including the old Talis resource list.

Further information on exporting and importing content within Learning Space is available within the Digital Learning Solutions guide, ‘What to do before the start of the academic year’.

Editing or creating new Talis resource lists

For help and guidance on how you would create and edit your resource lists the Student & Library Services Directorate have created guides to help staff use Talis lists with their modules.

• Creating resource/reading lists
• Video guide on how to create resource/reading lists

Further support

For further support with Learning Space, please get in touch with the Digital Learning Team via dlsupport@falmouth.ac.uk. Alternatively, please refer to the numerous help guides found on our Knowledge Base. 

Learning Space Tips & Tricks

by Rob Stillwell | Jul 13, 2023 | General

It’s been great getting feedback on the new Learning Space design since we upgraded on the 4th. We’ve been taking on board any feedback and answering questions where they’ve arisen. As a result we figured it could be useful to share some tips and tricks.

Customising your view of modules

Following the recent upgrade to Learning Space the guidance below shows you how to access, organise and sort your modules for easy access. 

Access my modules 

To access your modules, click the Learning Space logo (top left).  

This will take you to My Modules which is effectively the new home page. 

Once on your My Modules page there are a number of filters that you can use to find the modules you are looking for. 

Filter modules 

The default view in My Modules displays ‘All’ courses that you are subscribed on but can easily be filtered to show courses that are ‘In progress’, ‘Future’, ‘Past’ or ‘Starred’.  

To apply a filter, click ‘All’ and select the option you want. This will filter out other courses making it easy to locate the courses you are looking for. 

Search for a module 

Enter the name of a course into the Search box to retrieve it. 

Sort courses 

You have the option to sort courses on your My Modules page by name or last accessed. 

Star courses 

If you are enrolled on lots of courses the ‘Star’ option is a great feature to use to reduce the number of courses displayed on your My Modules page. You can ‘Star’ any courses that you are enrolled on regardless of whether they are in progress, future or past, so it’s a useful option if you need regular access to specific courses. 

To ‘star’ a course, click the 3-dot icon and select ‘star this course’. 

Note: If your courses are displayed in Card view, the icon will be in the bottom right corner of the tile, if in List view it will be at the end of the row.

An important thing to point out if you do use the ‘Star’ option, is that you will need to ‘Star’ all courses that you want to appear in my Modules as only ‘Starred’ courses will be displayed. 

Customise your module thumbnail image

Learning Space now allows you to set images that are visible in staff and student My Module pages.

• Style of Image
  We suggest that you avoid any busy images – simpler images will often be more effective.
• Copyright
  Ensure you own copyright for the image you use or that it is available under a suitable licence e.g. Creative Commons.
• Relevance
  Make sure the image is relevant to your module so as not to confuse staff or students.
• File Size
  Ensure your image isn’t too large in terms of file size or resolution and is appropriate for your module. Images should have a minimum width of 1024 pixels but no more than 2000 pixels
• Aspect Ratio
  Images should have a 2.7 : 1 aspect ratio. The width of the image should be about 2.7 times the height. You can achieve this using the ‘crop’ tool using photoshop or similar applications. If your image is taller or shorter it might get cut off at the bottom or side.
  

How to change the thumbnail

If you are a member of staff and wish to do this follow this steps

1. Go into one of your modules and turn edit mode on
   
2. Go to settings
   
3. Upload an image in the Module Summary Files section under Description. 

Sample thumbnail image

You can use the following image as a template / guide for size and dimensions from which to create your own module thumbnail. Right click to save a copy of it. The size is 1350px x 500px

Advantages of Panopto

by Rob Stillwell | Jul 10, 2023 | General

On July 10^th 2023, Panopto will go live for Falmouth University. 

At Falmouth we have had a long-running gap in our digital toolset for a dedicated video and audio hosting platform that provides proper integration with Learning Space and Falmouth Learn, and can facilitate student submissions without resorting to external tools 

Panopto is the market leading platform in this space, serving around 80% of universities in the UK. You may know it from other institutions as a lecture capture solution, but Falmouth will not be implementing lecture capture. We are adopting it purely as a video hosting platform to replace (and upgrade) Microsoft Stream, and to reduce reliance on external tools like Youtube and Vimeo. 

For everyday users

Everyday users will benefit from Panopto’s simple, educationally-focussed user interface. 

All Falmouth and FXPlus staff and Falmouth students will have a ‘My Folder’, a private folder to upload content. From here, videos can be dragged and dropped to module folders, added to playlists, or shared directly within and outside of the university. 

Panopto integrates fully with the VLEs, so each module in Learning Space generates a module folder in Panopto which grants access to only the staff and students on that module. These folders inherit permissions from the VLEs, so no admin burden of asking to have staff added, and no hassle of setting sharing permissions for huge groups of students. 

But don’t worry, if you need to every video, folder, playlist, and even a randomly selected group of your videos can be shared with specific users. 

Search

Panopto has an incredible search function which not only returns video titles and playlists, but also searches through the captions of every video that a user has access to and returns these results with timestamps for where the keyword has been mentioned. It even recognises written words on Powerpoint slides and automatically generates video chapters which are also returned in searches.   

Editing

Panopto has far superior built-in editing capabilities than Microsoft Stream. Videos can be top-and-tailed, middle sections can be ‘removed’, and additional videos can be inserted. All from within Panopto. 

All editing is non-destructive, so the original video remains intact behind the scenes even when your edited video is live. This allows you to make different edits each year that you deliver content, or just acts peace of mind if you want to see how a video cuts together without committing to permanent damage. 

Interactive content

Quizzes

Panopto offers us a great new feature where you can add quizzes to a videos -these are visible when viewed in Panopto. 

The quiz options include  

• True/False 
• Multiple Choice (one correct answer) 
• Multiple Select  
• Fill In the Blank. 

These quizzes are configurable, so you can choose whether students have to get the correct answer to progress in the video, or whether you’re just gathering data on how fully they understand a concept. 

Embedding Links or YouTube Videos

Panopto allows you to add links to external content through URLs at certain points through the video / audio. It is also possible to embed YouTube videos as part of your own content – something that could be useful if you wish to provide some related information.

Accessibility

Panopto shines in its accessibility features. Every video is automatically machine-captioned (to a higher level of accuracy than Stream) and has a much more stable interface for manually editing captions. Existing caption files can be uploaded to videos for anyone who’s already put in the work of manually correcting hours of existing content. 

Custom dictionaries can be added to Panopto to recognise commonly used words, and although this will not be configured for launch, it will be investigated going forwards by the Digital Learning team. 

Caption display can be adapted by end users to suit their own needs (size/colour/position of captions) and when videos are opened within Panopto captions are displayed as a transcript to the left of the video. 

Audio

Panopto accepts a huge range of file formats including audio-only files which can be uploaded directly in exactly the same way as videos. 

This is great news for anyone wanting to create podcast lectures (a huge time saver, and good if you don’t like to see your face) over videos, not to mention for music staff and students who can use the platform to host and share music files in exactly the same way as video, or even a combination of the two. 

There is great potential for Panopto to be used at Falmouth for sharing of audio recordings and discussions / analysis to take place through the use of timestamped discussions, bookmarks or notes, a bit like often takes place on services such as SoundCloud.

Panopto Capture

Panopto isn’t just a video hosting platform, it comes complete with its own recording apps, including a downloadable app for Windows and Mac (which will be added to the Self Service Portal), as well as the browser-based Panopto Capture to bypass downloading anything at all. 

These capture apps are powerful enough to record cameras, screen, microphones, computer audio, and can record multiple cameras at once if you’ve got a complex hardware setup. For any multi-input capture, end users can toggle between screens, cameras and slides while viewing the end video. 

For Falmouth Online

As well as everything above, staff working on Falmouth Online courses will benefit from improved workflows with the Digital Learning team through Panopto. Videos will be added to Panopto and all work can be done on them in situ. Panopto Capture can simplify recording workflows, and the built in editing functionality (not to mention quizzes) means that most editing can be performed within Panopto. 

Core course content will still be delivered inline with the production schedule and embedded into Canvas by Learning Technologists, offering all of the benefits of Panopto to your students. But Panopto’s integration with Canvas means that staff and students can share videos within Canvas forums or announcements. 

It also means that amended videos could be delivered to students without involving the Digital Learning Team if a critical change needed to be made outside of enhancement windows. 

Panopto for Assessment

At the time of launch Panopto will be able to facilitate student submissions, and provide a safer, more secure platform for video and audio submissions than Falmouth has had access to before. 

Much like they do now with other platforms, students will be able to upload content to their ‘My Folder’ and share a link in a word/PDF document to submit to a Learning Space/Falmouth Learn assessment. In truth the greatest benefit will be when things go wrong, with better data on when videos were submitted, and the Digital Learning team will have access to students’ videos to fix issues, instead of assessed work being hidden in external tools like Youtube. 

This also raises the important point of retention of student work, which will finally be possible within a unified platform instead of needing to download and store video and audio content elsewhere to conform to University regulations. 

Understand how your videos are used

Panopto provides powerful statistics that can be used to better understand how and when your videos are being watched / interacted with. This provides further opportunities to improve your video content should you notice that for example all views drop off after a certain period of time – perhaps the video could be shorter or split into smaller bitesize chunks.

The Video Hosting Project

Panopto has been brought in as part of the work undertaken by the Video Hosting Project at Falmouth University. For further information about the project or migrating your video content see our project site.