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Jenny Mathers is a senior lecturer in International Politics and has recently been experimenting with her learning and teaching - including e-learning and enhancement techniques.

Podcasts
Jenny records her lectures, edits them and puts the videos on to Blackboard as podcasts.  Jenny finds that the students really appreciate it - it seems to be the ones who attend that are the ones who watch them again.  Recently, Jenny has been encouraging the students to take less detailed notes in lectures and listen carefully instead.  As they know the video will be on Blackboard later, they feel more relaxed and are able to take more in.

Blogs
Jenny has also started experimenting with the Blog tool on Blackboard.  It is currently completely optional, but the students can comment on Jenny's posts and also post their own ideas.  Once a week, Jenny tries to find something relevant to the module to post - paerhaps an article or webpage - and ask them to comment on it.  Jenny found that before long they were finding, posting and sharing their own articles and discussing them between themselves.

Assessment
The students have 8 seminars during the module which they are marked on, but they also have to give a three minute presentation at the end for more marks.  Jenny puts topics on Blackboard that they can then research, comment on and link back to previous topics.