Recently, at very short notice, the LTU were asked by JISC to give a presentation to the Connect more… in Scotland event. We were delighted to do so and we (me, Craig John and Niall) put our heads together to come up with the following abstract and slides:
As a Learning Technology Unit, supporting core services such as Moodle and Mahara for the whole university is a vital part of our role, but sometimes these do not have all the functionality that’s required. Acknowledging this, we also work with academics to identify particular needs and provide bespoke solutions. We then make these solutions available to others who’d like to use them. In our presentation we talk about some of our recent developments – including YACRS, our open source classroom response system, and Inspector, for Moodle analytics.
The event was held at the Stirling Campus of Forth Valley College, with stunning views of the hills and the Wallace Monument. JISC staff were buzzing about ensuring that everybody was well looked after, and there were plenty of familiar faces from HE and FE as well as many we had not previously met. It was a beautifully planned day, with plenty of time for networking, practitioner sessions that were really interesting as well as four pecha kucha sessions – one of those from U of G’s very own Greg Walters.
Our session was very well attended, with several late comers having to stand, and we were very pleased with the interest from the audience and the conversations that ensued. And Irene was kind enough to let me know that our session had gone down as well as we thought it had in this tweet (which is not displaying very well – due to the theme Comms have chosen I think):
@NomadWarMachine thanks so much, Sarah, for your contribution today. So sorry I wasn’t in your session – folk saying such fab things! #star
— Irene Mackintosh (@irenewarnermack) June 16, 2016
The whole experience also served as a reflective exercise for all of us – as we realised when we were writing our slides, for such a small team we support and deliver and awful lot of stuff, and we have a great deal of expertise that we often take for granted. After pats on the back all round, we headed back to Glasgow re-energised and with new potential collaborators to work with.
flickr photo by ℓαurα suαrez shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
Pic of John presenting tweeted by @Mags-McKay
Sounds like it was an excellent experience. Wish I could have been there! 🙂
I’ll tell you all about it next time you’re up at this campus 🙂
Hi Sarah, can you tell me what is inspector? and is there anyone using ACJ at Glasgow in their teaching right now?
Thanks
Mary
Hi Mary
Inspector is a tool that we are developing to get site level stats for management, who have asked for them. Nobody as yet is using ACJ as Niall and Alex are still developing the tool – they plan to have it ready for you to use next semester.