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A&H Module Lead & Teaching Admin #3: Digital Accessibility

Please find below the links, presentation, resources and discussion from the 11th October 2023 session on Digital Accessibility.

UCL Accessibility Policy

UCL Accessibility Hub – UCL policy, advice, resources and guidance to support both staff and students.

UCL Accessibility Fundamentals – basic guidance to improve everyday accessibility when creating resources.

Ben Watson presents on Digital Accessibility

Link to Ben Watson’s PowerPoint presentation slides.

Ben Watson and Abbi Shaw in conversation: Use of Reading List, accommodating students with SoRA, generative and assistive AI discussion.

UCL Reading List – supported by the Library.

Colour Contrast Checker – a really useful resource for checking accessibility of text on backgrounds.

The video Ben mentions on using GenAI to support non-academic tasks.

Forthcoming Digital Skills Development sessions – including multimedia, podcasting, and more, and, most relevant here, creating accessible Word documents.

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A&H Module Lead & Teaching Admin Session #1: Moodle, Moodle Assignment, CMD

(please note, owing to some technical issues with the recording, only sections of this are currently available: I will be updating this post over the next 24 hours!).

1. Intro to Moodle 4.2

1a. Faculty Learning Technology Lead Abbi Shaw introduces the platform. TO COME.

Resources:

Reading List – Contact your subject librarian to discuss use of Reading List. Support and info available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/learning-teaching-support/teaching-learning-services-tls/readinglistsucl

1b. Karen Stepanyan and Luke Dickens of Information Sciences share their departmental template and discuss some tips, tricks and issues encountered.

Slides and Resources:

Slides from Karen’s presentation.

Moodle 4 – Quick Tips for Updating Your Course.

Moodle Assignment: Configuring Individual Student Deadlines

Individual / Group Deadline Overrides in Moodle Assignment: UCL Guidance.

You can also use Moodle Test User Accounts to test features like assessment setups – these temporary accounts let you log in with a real student view, and submit to your own assignments. They’re great for practicing marking, demonstrating to students, and understanding how workflows work, and they disappear after a fortnight so there’s no chance they’ll get mixed up with actual students. Find out how to set them up here: https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/MoodleResourceCentre/M14+-+Test+User+Accounts.

Continuous Module Dialogue:

Jesper Hansen updates us on CMD for 2023/24:

Recording of the 2022/23 Continuous Module Dialogue Workshop

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Term 2 Modules: Course Rollover & Mapping Students

Greetings, all! A reminder to all teaching in Term 2 that the Course Rollover process, introduced this year, applies to all Term 2 modules in the same way it did Term 1. To refresh the memory: every taught module will have an individual annual instance in Moodle. There is NO snapshot of last year’s modules: they must remain as-delivered. Do not overwrite 2021/22 modules, only update/change things in the newly-created 2022/23 modules.

Each A&H department has a slightly different setup for module rollover: please check with your Teaching Administrator if you are unsure as to how/when the rollover and mapping activation takes place. If you teach in SELCS, you are tasked with your own module rollover and activating mapping: it is essential you carry this out prior to the start of teaching, as students will otherwise not have access to your course in Moodle.

For central guidance on the Course Rollover, please read the applicable info below:

1) Rolling over a module taught in 2021/22
2) Rolling over a module last taught prior to 2020/21
3) Rolling over a T1 module to be taught in T2
4) If you have a module where the code has changed for 2022/23, you must ensure that you are working in a Moodle page created under this code. Please check for a page with the new code in Moodle, as it may have been automatically created. If you then need to import content from a module with a different code, this can be done via the Import function in Moodle, but do contact me for any support with that. If you cannot find a course with the correct new code in Moodle, and are certain that this is the code you will be teaching under in T2, please follow the rollover process for the old module, remove the suggested alignment/delivery for the existing course code and use the search box to search for the new course code. This is the only situation in which you should change any prepopulated course code or course title.

Ensuring students are mapped to your module:

This process is the same as T1: I have written a quick guide to the process here: mapping students to modules.

Finally, ensure that at least the first two weeks of course content have been populated, and that anything you want enrolled students to see is visible; anything you wish to hide from them is hidden. When your students have been enrolled, and the course status has been changed from Hide to Show (Module page > Administration block > Course Visibility > Hide/Show).

As ever, any issues, grab me on Teams, or email abigail.shaw@ucl.ac.uk 😀

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A&H Faculty Research – Student Experience of Moodle (Changemakers 2021/22).

In 2021/22, the third iteration of our A&H Faculty Research recruited 5 students, including one Project Lead, to carry out research to deepen our understanding of the student experience of Moodle. The main aim was to find out which practices stood out as particularly positive amongst the diversity of student experience. This project led to a conference presentation at RAISE 2022, in Lincoln, and has further been written up into a review of staff-student collaborative research, which has been accepted for publication in the December 2022 edition of SEDA Magazine.

Link to the post containing a video of our student-led report to A&H Module Leads, with a brief summary of the recommendations made: Student Moodle Experience; Moodle Rollover & Recommendations.

Presentation slides for Jesper and Abbi’s report to Arena: The Search for Clarity: A&H Students’ Perception of Moodle.

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A&H Faculty Research – Student Online Experience

Since 2020, I have been conducting iterative Faculty-level research with the A&H Arena representative, Jesper Hansen. This post outlines the first part of this project: a quick look at the A&H student experience of online teaching and learning during the first part of Emergency Remote Teaching (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust & Bond, 2021).

The full report regarding the research, and the development of the resulting Faculty recommendations, can be accessed here: Link to Student Online Experience Report.

We wrote a short reflective submission regarding this report for the 2021 UCL Education Conference, which can be read here: What do we take with us? Recommendations and reflections on research into Arts & Humanities students’ online experience.

Overall, this research formed a baseline of student voice, and a snapshot of sentiment at a particular moment in our Faculty, which has continued to support my work, and inform future iterations of our research.