Many thanks to those staff who completed the Technology-Enhanced Learning Survey 2010. Your responses and suggestions will help us to provide the services needed by our staff and students.

Prize winners

We are pleased to announce that Fred Long, Computer Science, has won the first prize, an HD Flip camera. Gareth Hall, Psychology, has won the second prize, a memory stick with EduApps software. The prizes were acquired with Gwella funding. We will be making a presentation of the prizes at the New Technology and Innovation Day event on 15 April 2010.

New Technology and Innovation Day 15 April 2010

Information Services will be offering members of staff a chance to attend a day to demonstrate new developments in ICT at Aberystwyth. The technologies shown could well help you work and/or deliver your teaching more effectively. For more information go to: [http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/is/computers/innovationsday/>">.

Summary of results

Here is a summary of highlights from the survey. Responses came from a total of 64 people from 14 academic departments and a range of other services across the university. A large number of responders (43.5%) have either completed the PGCTHE programme or are currently enrolled in it. There were two main areas of focus for staff when considering techology - communications and resources. For communications, 50% of staff reported this as their main focus, with 23.7% reporting it as their secondary focus. Resources was close behind, with 35% reporting this as their main focus, 44% reporting it as their secondary focus. It may come as no surprise that the tool with the highest reported use was the Blackboard VLE, with 76% of responders saying they use it for teaching. The tool with the next highest use was social networking (e.g. Facebook) with exactly 50% of responders using it for personal use. The next most popular cluster of tools all relate to digital media:

• Shared video resources (e.g. YouTube) - 45% personal use, 31% teaching
• Shared image resources (e.g. Flickr) - 40% personal use, 17% teaching
• Podcasting - 40% teaching, 14% personal use, 14% research
• Lecture capture - 31% teaching
• Video conferencing - 31% research

Video recording also came in high, with 26% of staff using it for teaching. Following on digital media, we find several centrally-provided tools for administration and assessment:

• Discussion boards - 28% teaching, 18% personal use
• Online assignment submission - 29% teaching
• SAMS attendance monitoring - 23% teaching
• Online quizzes - 23% teaching
• Wimba Create (Course Genie) learning object creation - 23% teaching

The following tools for interaction were also popular:

• Blogs -  22% teaching, 19% personal use
• Wikis - 19% teaching, 17% personal use
• Qwizdom interactive voting system - 17% teaching

These patterns show us that when a particular tool or type of tool has been picked up widely for personal use, it can sometimes be leveraged for academic use as well. There is a strong trend toward digital media at the moment.

The two tools that proved most useful for research were podcasting and videoconferencing, which suggests that technology can facilitate long-distance collaboration among researchers.