15th Durham Blackboard Users Conference

The 15th Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference will take place on Tuesday the 6th and Wednesday the 7th of January 2015.

There will also be some “free” optional pre-conference workshops and user group sessions on Monday the 5th of January 2015 – See this Section for details. Make sure you save the dates.

The conference will be held in the Calman Learning Centre at Durham University and at Durham Castle for our hospitality evening.

Please note that the conference closes at approx 4.00 pm on the Wednesday evening! There will be a free bus to the Railway Station.

This is the confirmed full Conference Programme: 2015 Conference Booklet – FINAL

Conference Theme – Students as Partners

This year’s conference theme picks up an issue being discussed across campuses this year. We first looked at the student learning experience at #durbbu in 2005 when the conference title was “In front of the Blackboard: the learner’s experience“. We feel there have been significant developments that merit us re-visiting this topic, and doing so from a slightly different angle. It’s also something that members of the Learning Technologies Team here at Durham have been exploring, with a recent “Student-Led” project providing some very candid and perceptive feedback on the local e-learning experience. We know that others have been active in this area too, a good example of this is the report Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education that Mick Healey, Abbi Flint and Kathy Harrington have just published via the HEA.

We feel this is a very timely topic, which offers a challenge to our assumptions, practices and beliefs about learning and teaching. Many of the people involved in delivering and enabling online education are trying to create an educational experience that is very different from the one they experienced themselves as undergraduates. Are our own experiences still valid reference points? Does embracing the concept of partnership mean we need to reconceptualise what it is to be a student, and/or a teacher? This view is not universally accepted – what are the consequences of rejecting or ignoring this challenge?

Taking the conference theme to heart, we’re changing the format of the conference slightly this year based on our own experiences when presenting the findings of the Student-Led project together with students. We will be adding a strand for papers co-authored with students and we hope that students will be involved in the presentation too. We plan to offer funded places for a limited number of presenters who are current students at your institution – more details will be available shortly, but we hope this encourages you to get planning now!

A second change is partnering with students as consumers of and commentators upon the conference activities. We are in the process of inviting some Journalism students to attend the conference from a local University in order to blog about the sessions during the conference – let’s hope we can find some willing volunteers!

We are very excited about these changes and hope that number fifteen will be even more inclusive, energetic, insightful and engaging than those before. To make that happen we’ll need your support – as presenters, reviewers and delegates.

Keynotes

We have two invited Keynotes during the conference (one on each day) – plus a Blackboard keynote on the last day.

We are pleased to announce that Abbi Flint, Academic Practice Consultant at the Higher Education Academy will be our opening Keynote on the first day – Tuesday, 6th January 2015.

Dr Abbi Flint is a Consultant in Academic Practice at the Higher Education Academy. Abbi has 11 years’ experience of educational development and pedagogic research at both the institutional and national level. Abbi’s current role concerns student engagement and partnership in their learning experiences, curriculum design and quality enhancement. She is an active qualitative researcher and a Visiting Research Fellow in Student Engagement at Birmingham City University. She regularly presents at UK and international conferences and has published on a range of topics including: student engagement in quality enhancement, student surveys, and cultural change in HE.

https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/person/7878

 

We are also pleased to announce that Doug Belshaw has accepted one of our keynote invitations which will be delivered on Wednesday, 7th January 2015.

Doug is the Web Literacy Lead for the Mozilla Foundation, an ex teacher living in the NE of England. He was heavily involved in making Open Badges a reality. Enthusiastic about all things related to education, technology and productivity. Regular speaker and contributor at educational technology conferences and workshops across the globe.

He is responsible for a range of cleverly titled websites including:

Open Educational Thinkering | Literaci.es | Thought Shrapnel

Author of the book Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, which builds on his Ed D thesis (Durham). Normally a prolific digital sharer of his thoughts, for the last few years he has undertaken a digital hiatus over winter – the self styled “Belshaw Black Ops”.

He tweets as @dajbelshaw

 

Our final Keynote is Alan Masson, Head of International Customer Success at Blackboard. Dr Masson leads a team of functional experts that support the realization of institutional strategic benefits through the adoption of Blackboard solutions. Previous to this role, he spent 10 years at the University of Ulster leading the development and delivery of e-learning and support services to enhance the teaching and learning experience.

While at the University of Ulster, Dr Masson led a number of large-scale, UK nationally funded education enhancement projects. These projects focused on a range of educational enhancement themes including curriculum innovation, assessment and feedback, digital literacy, learning design and the integration of library and VLE services. He has extensive experience of delivering curriculum innovation and assessment & feedback enhancement workshops at a number of UK Universities and has acted as a critical friend to the Quality Assurance Authority (QAA).

 

Panel Discussion

We will be following Abbi’s keynote with a panel discussion, involving a range of staff and students. Some of these documents may come up in the discussion, so we have added links here:

• Durham’s Principles of Student Engagement – agreed with the Student Union
• The NUS Manifesto for Partnership

Presentations

Engagement through Partnership
Abbi Flint – HEA (Keynote)

Radical Participation: a smorgasbord + Vimeo Presentation
Doug Belshaw – Mozilla Foundation (Keynote)

Engaging Students at GCU: The Story So Far
Jim Emery & Stephanie Noble – Glasgow Caledonian University

Designing a Student Centric Learning Environment
Bryony Bramer, James Leahy & Steve Dawes – Regent’s University, London

Student/Staff Collaboration in the Production of an official University App for Students
Sharon Flynn, Darren Kelly & Fionn Delahunty – National University of Ireland, Galway

Learning and Assessment with Social Media: A Case Study of Manipulating Data
Bex Lewis, CODEC, Durham University

Enhancing Graduate Employability: Developing Digital Resources Final Year Projects
Dave Lewis, Alexandra Byrne & Daniel Lewis – Leeds University

Facilitating a Feedback Loop through Grademark and TurningPoint (Workshop)
Christie Harner, Alison Graham, Sara Marsham & Caitlin Oliver – Newcastle University

Solutions for Detecting & Preventing Plagiarism – A community session: SafeAssign vs Turnitin (Discussion)
Jonathan Knight – Keele University

Get the Bigger Picture: Point and Click for your instant Feedback Kick!
Fraser McLeish – Glasgow Caledonian University

Blurring the Boundaries: Putting Students at the Heart of Programme Delivery
Paul Scott, Aseem Mishra & Edward Miller – Hull York Medical School

Delivery a MOOC via Blackboard Open Education: The 12 Apps of Christmas
Steve Dawes, James Leahy & Bryony Bramer – Regent’s University, London

Small Groups Projects Big Groups Numbers
Zafar Ali – Sheffield University

Using Open Badges to Encourage Student Participation in Class Rep Activities
Josephine Kinsley & Tanya Lubicz-Nawrocka – University of Edinburgh

Spinning Plates – Working with Students as Partners to Deliver Innovative Scholarship
Sam Nolan & Sarah Learmonth – Durham University

GCUGameson: An Open Education Event
Jim Emery – Glasgow Caledonian University

Going Large – Adventures Running a MOOC
Nuala Davis, Suzanne Hardy & Mike Cameron – Newcastle University

Reflective and Dialogic Student Spaces using Campus Pack Learning Objects
Maria Tannant – University for the Creative Arts, London

Taking the Pain out of Software Development: Timely and Effective Feedback using Google Apps for Education
Adrian Molyneaux & Dan Harding – Keele University

Student Blog Posts

• Post by Darren Kelly – National University of Ireland, Galway
• Post by Stephanie Noble – Glasgow Caledonian University
• Post by Caitlin Oliver – Newcastle University
• Post by Edward Miller – Hull York Medical School

Delegate Posts

• Post by Rosie Hare – York University
• Post by Doug Belshaw – Mozilla Foundation
• Post by Simon Booth – Stirling University
• Post by Tim Smale – Keele University
• Storify by Sharyn Flynn – National University of Ireland, Galway
• Post by Stephen Walker – University of Leicester

Pre-conference Workshops

We ran three “free” pre-conference events this year:

• Blackboard Mobile User Group meeting hosted by Peter Rayment, Cardiff University
• LTI Workshop hosted by Stephen Vickers & Simon Booth – Stirling University
• Enterprise Surveys Workshop by Julie Mulvey – Durham University

Conference Feedback

 

 

About the Conference

This is a conference organised by the user community, for the user community. Whilst we welcome the involvement and support of Blackboard and other commercial companies, they have no influence on the conference theme, the programme or the content. Delegates are free to offer constructive praise or criticism of any product as they see fit.

This long-standing e-Learning event regularly attracts over 140 delegates – a few years ago we had to move to bigger premises because we had exceeded the old venue’s capacity! The audience is a mix of repeat attendees and first time visitors: learning technologists, librarians, academics, administrators and even the odd manager. It is a great networking opportunity at a low price.

Sponsors

Our thanks go out to Durham University and to Blackboard Inc for making this conference possible

Durham University www.durham.ac.uk
Blackboard Inc www.blackboard.com

and also to our 2015 sponsors who help to keep Registration costs so low!

 

PebblePad www.pebblepad.co.uk
Kaltura www.kaltura.com
TurningPoint www.turningtechnologies.com
Eesysoft www.eesysoft.com
Talis www.talis.com
MyKnowledgeMap www.myknowledgemap.com

If you are interested in being a sponsor for our upcoming conference please drop an email to julie.mulvey@durham.ac.uk

Additional Information

Our Social Media Twitter Hashtag is #durbbu

For information how to set up your laptops/mobile devices please click on the following link: Link to Internet Connection page

Please note that Durham University has signed up to eduroam which you can use at the conference. Delegates will also be given a temporary Conference ID when you arrive.

Here is a link to a map of Durham University

Check out our FAQ pages. If they don’t provide an answer then contact us by emailing julie.mulvey@durham.ac.uk or calling Julie Mulvey on 0191 334 2781.