1B: Technical knowledge and ability in the use of Learning Technology

Description & Supported Technologies
  • Virtual Learning Environment – Moodle
  • Lecture capture – Echo360
  • Student Response Systems – PollEverywhere
  • Blogging – CampusPress
  • Web Conferencing – Blackboard Collaborate, AdobeConnect, Zoom
  • Accessiblity tools – Blackboard Ally
  • MOOCS – UCLeXtend
  • Multimedia – Kaltura Media Systems, MediaCentral, Youtube, Box of Broadcasts

In my daily role, I answer/answered queries and phone calls from academics and administrative staff at City, UoL and UCL on the above software’s. I also assist in the different training sessions on the above range of educational technologies. For evidence of this, I have attached the job decription for my previous Digital Educational Support Analyst role.

As part of my roles, where required, documentation and the online guidance is also updated. One example of this is the Glossary documentation which was updated after a ticket arose. Another example is the Moodle 3.7 Documentation which I have worked with. Evidence of one of the pages I have updated has been shown. The green highlights show the additions I have made. As this was a Moodle release, documentation on various plugins had to be updated.

Reflection

Looking back at the way I wrote the documentation, I had to be quite concise and to the point. The documentation was written this way as my target learners will mainly be academic staff and lecturers. They don’t have much time of their hands, and also may not understand the intricacies of Moodle as well as I do. I also try to incorporate this practice this in my tickets, often giving step by step instructions. Please see the Bulk Uploading .CSV files ticket for evidence of this. Being concise gives them the information they would like in a clear and easy to understand manner. The step-by-step instructions are also good, as they give the end user an easy list of action points to follow.

A lot of my own learning has been done by being quite hands-on. Being in a core/operational team, my work tends to focus on the VLE and Lecture Capture, as that is where majority of the problems for academic and administrative staff arise. With regards to certain plugins, activities etc in Moodle, the less used activities in Moodle such as Glossary, Database and Choice activity are the activities where I struggle with. This is because there isn’t an exemplar or a lot of tickets for me to refresh my knowledge on. In future, I would keep an eye on the Moodle Tracker and Moodledocs documentation on these lesser used activities. Perhaps a training session with other members of the core team would be beneficial as it allows all of us to pool together and learn from each other regarding these technologies.

Compared to email and ticket queries, when a query comes over the phone, typically, there is a bit more urgency, as the user would like an immediate response. While I can answer majority of these queries, there have been a few times where I haven’t known the response. In these situations, I look at the documentation online for this query, and if that hasn’t solved the issue, I ask one of my colleagues for an answer to the question, and make a note of it for future reference. This ensures the user has a response, and keeping a note of the resolution for future reference allows me to learn. I then look at the guidance online and if needed, update the guidance.

Being quite new to the world of educational technology, looking at the different Moodle pages has made me realise there is no one size fits all to a specific type of learner. One example of this would be the difference between a Chemistry Moodle page, and a Moodle page for History. With Chemistry, the content is a lot more theoretical, and there is more imagery (dot cross diagrams, molecule diagrams, spectrometry charts), whereas for the History page, there are more references to activities like the reading lists and external sources. Visually seeing the difference between the different pages helped me to understand the importance of tailoring the content to your learners as well as the difference in resources used by disciplines.

Evidence

Documentation Yahya Changes

Digital Education Support Analyst JD

Bulk Uploading .CSV files Ticket

Glossary Changes Ticket