Engaging large cohorts with technology
On Tuesday the 24th of April, the Educational Development and E-Learning Unit held a joint event to explore engagement with large cohorts. Guest speakers Jayne Dennis (H&E), Guiglielmo Volpe (HSS) and Mark Roberts (SMD) explained their practice for engaging large cohorts using technology and shared both the benefits and limitations of these systems. Afterwards, a discussion was held to further explore audience questions about these uses of technologies. To read more about the event, you can find an event report here.
Do you conduct online exams?
The E-Learning team has been spearheading a project to explore the need for conducting summative and secure PC based examination university wide. This project is now finalising the requirements from each school after an initial wave of feedback from the key users across various schools at QMUL. However, we would welcome any further feedback of what your school (or you) would like in a PC-based examination system, you can email us to send your requirements or to arrange a meeting with us.
QMUL Model Skills surges
We have noticed a recent surge of staff and students accessing the QMUL Model Skills Review page where students can complete their skills review and find more information about the QMUL Model. If you haven’t had a look yet, we would recommend checking out our staff orientated QMUL Model QMplus page and our Skills Review Help & Support page.
QMplus Hub staff congratulated for global impact
Soon we will be conducting an upgrade for QMplus Hub to version 18.04 which brings navigation changes to enhance editing and sharing of pages. We would also like to congratulate QMUL staff who have been acknowledged by the developers of the QMplus Hub system, Catalyst. QMUL’s contributions to the code development of Mahara, the technology which runs QMplus Hub, has made a significant contribution to the platform in its new version. You can read more about their contributions and the new update here.
Q-Review scheduling made easier
A recent update to Q-Review has just been conducted to ensure that you were able to use it in a more efficient and effective way. The update provided some new availability settings which may make your scheduling of releasing lecture captures more streamlined. You can find out more about it here. In order to evaluate the system, we would like to ask all staff who use Q-Review to complete this short questionnaire regarding its use. It should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete and you can find it here.
QMplus update information
Our regular mid-year QMplus upgrade process is now in full-swing. Currently much of our team is testing the new platform to ensure as many issues as possible are ironed out before the system goes live. We would also like anyone in the community who would like to test the new system, especially any custom developments or school/faculty specific plugins, to please contact us by clicking here.
In other good news, we expect the upgrade to version 3.4 to only take half a day in which QMplus will be inaccessible. This will occur on the Monday the 9th of July. Compared to our last upgrade with three days of read-only access, we hope this is much less of an inconvenience to all users.
As we enter exam season we would like to remind you to spring clean your QMplus course areas and delete any unwanted courses or content. If you would like assistance with this, please contact us and we can do it for you. We would also like to remind all users for the last time that the upgrade will disable the ‘Topics’ activity format which is a current Moodle Standard. If this will cause any problems, make sure to get in touch.
What are our users asking via The Helpdesk?
We’ve picked out a few of the most frequently asked questions for April, updated our guidance material and have a couple of tips for you. Click here to learn why you may have been added to the QMUL Model Skills Review course and view other common issues raised this month.
Drop-ins and Book a Learning Technologist
Our staff drop-in sessions continue to run every Tuesday and Thursday from 1-2pm on the Mile End campus for any member of staff who needs help with their use of technology in their teaching.
If you’d like to discuss something in more detail, appointments are available through our Book a Learning Technologist service. Book a one hour appointment with a member of the team to discuss your use of technology in more detail.
