University of Kent

Moodle is an example of a virtual learning environment (VLE). A VLE is a collection of online tools which, if used appropriately, can be used to support learning and teaching. You can easily create learning materials and activities can be delivered to students at any time and any where. You can connect to Moodle at the Moodle login page. For help with Moodle, visit our staff or student how-to guides page.

Turnitin is an online plagiarism detection service. It enables your students to submit a piece of written work electronically which is then automatically checked against a number of databases including current and past web pages; previous student submissions and numerous online journal and newspaper articles and ebooks. You are then given an Originality Report which indicates how much text has been matched from existing sources and identifies the sources of any matched text which is found. For more information and documentation about Turnitin, please visit the Academic Integrity website.

Twitter is a microblogging and social networking service. It has been likened to sending a text message to the world.

It is very easy to explain what it does, yet much more difficult to explain why to use it and what to use it for.

Quite simply Twitter allows you to submit (via your own twitter identity) messages (tweets) of no more than 140 characters which can be seen by anyone that is actively following your messages (Twitter stream). While Twitter just seems like a short version of blogging, hence the name microblogging, it ends up being used in a very different way.

What can I use it for?

Twitter is being used in a wide variety of ways, the following are just some of them:

• Notification alerts: if you've just written a new and interesting blog post and want to advertise it to your followers, send a quick tweet to let them know.
• Status updates: if you've just gotten into the office, are heading out for a long lunch, or writing up some research why not tweet so your friends and colleagues know what you're up to.
• Social networking: if you're going to spend the next hour in the Gulbenkian cafe, are excited about your football team just winning a semi-final 7:4 on aggregate, or wish to bemoan the state of the weather, a tweet will let all your followers know.
• Crowd sourcing: a buzzphrase in it's own right, but if you're puzzling over something or want to solicit thoughts and ideas on a certain topic, send out a call for help over Twitter and sit back to see the responses flooding in.
• Conference back-channel chat: during keynotes, presentations, and at any other time during a conference
• Sharing interesting thoughts/links: If you've just had an interesting thought, or come across and interesting website and would like to share it with friends, colleagues, etc, put the thought/link into a tweet and post.

Anyone out there using Twitter in interesting ways? Let me know!

How do I use Twitter?

• Visit the Twitter website and click on the Sign up now link to register an account.
• Check out the Twitter Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page.
• Post your first Tweet, and if you aren't sure how, Twitter provide guidance on posting a tweet.
• If you aren't happy with using the Twitter website and want to download a dedicated Twitter application, check out the Twitter downloads page for suggested clients.
• Ask friends and colleagues if they are on Twitter and if they are then follow them.

Tagging and hashtags

Tagging is a mechanism to associating keywords as metadata to describe and define something (i.e. a blog post, a journal article, a tweet). Hashtags are the method by which tags are used to define tweets. In order to use hashtagging, simply precede your tag term with the # character.

I logged into the VLE today to submit an assignment #unikent #moodle

This is an example of a tweet which contains two hashtags which define and describe the tweet as involving something to do with Moodle and UniKent (abbreviated form of University of Kent).

Hashtags are useful not only to describe the context of a tweet to those that are following you, but also as a great way of adding to a conversation with others that you aren't in a follow-relationship with. There are many Twitter tools that take advantage of hashtags, one of which is Twitterfall, which allow you to follow all messages containing a hashtag even if you aren't following the authors. This provides a way to follow a conversation on a certain topic, and also discover new tweeters you'd like to follow. To get an idea of how this works, you can view the #unikent hashtag on Twitterfall.

If you are tweeting useful information as part of your teaching, you are advised to use hashtags to differentiate between tweets you want your students to pay attention to and other less formal tweets. Associating a hashtag to your lecture will also allow your students to tweet on-topic messages that you and your whole class can read without needing to follow each and every member of the class. This can be especially important if you have a 'not following students' policy (see follow policy below).

URL shortening

URLs (web addresses) can get quite long and cumbersome, which is why URL shortening services have been popular for some time. When it comes to putting a URL in a tweet, URL shortening becomes essential due to the 140 character limit. Two popular URL shortening services are:

• http://tinyurl.com/ - classic URL shortening service
• http://bit.ly/ - URL shortening with optional tracking service (free account registration required)

I updated the elearning website today, http://bit.ly/7R8yn check it out! #unikent #elearning

Twitter lists/groups

Twitter lists are a Twitter provided mechanism of organising people you want to follow into different groups. In fact you don't even need to be following someone to add them into a list. Lifts can be private (only you know who you've put into a group) or public (anyone else can benefit from your group by following it as they would follow a single user).

Once a list has been created then you can look at tweets belonging only to that list by visiting the list URL. For example, the Twitter user peopleinkent has created a list called learn: http://twitter.com/peopleinkent/learn

Follow Suggestions

There are already a few University of Kent tweeters you may want to follow:

• @UniKent - Providing official University of Kent news and information.
• @TheGulbenkian - Official updates with cinema and cafe news.
• @KentUnion - For tweets from Kent Student Union

There are probably a lot of people and organisations on Twitter that match up with your subject and areas of interest, so have a look on their websites and blogs to see if they're already tweeting. Once you are following a few people, have a look who they're following as that is a great way to find other interesting tweeters.

Follow Policy

If you've decided to use Twitter as part of your teaching activities (i.e. to share interesting thoughts/links) then you may start being followed by your students. At this point you should probably formulate a follow policy.

• Decide who you are going to follow.
  • Follow everyone who follows you, or;
  • Follow people and organisations related to your organisation or teaching. Alternatively/additionally create interesting lists that your students view/follow.
  • Do you want to follow your students?
    • Not following students but only follow the hashtag allows them to use Twitter personally without a lecturer looking over their shoulder. This can increase their Twitter use which can in turn mean that they use Twitter more effectively.
    • Instead of following all your students you may want to assign them to a group (public or private) to allow you to look in on what they're tweeting without their tweets taking over your main twitter stream.
  • Whichever you choose, assess the people you are considering following before you do (most important if following everyone who follows you). You don't want to accidentally end up following spam bots.
• Don't follow someone to get them to follow you back and then unfollow them. It's bad twitiquitte and will probably annoy the person that starts following you.

Web Seminar technology allows online collaboration in the form of a virtual classroom.  It enables students and teachers to come together and collaborate in real time at a distance. Within the environment users are able to work, present, share, interact, talk and have discussions. Features may vary depending on the tool you are using, but generally include the following:

• Shared interactive whiteboard, which can be used to display notes and presentations
• Break out rooms to enable a group to break into smaller groups for group work
• Instant messaging
• File transfer
• Audio and video capabilities
• Option to record sessions

At the University of Kent, we currently hold licences to Elluminate and DimDim. If you are interested in hearing more about these tools, and would like advise on how they can be used, please contact your FLT.

Add an interactive element to your lectures by using a Personal Response System to engage with your students. TurningPoint technology allows you to connect with your students during lectures by posing questions to them via a presentation, this has proven sussessful in engaging with students and adding an element of interactivity within lectures.

What can I use it for?

• Testing student knowledge
• Initiate discussion amoungst the class or groups of students
• Formative feedback
• Peer feedback

How do I use it?

To start with, you will need to download TurningPoint software onto your PC; this can be downloaded from the Turning Technologies website. The next step is to create your questions. The TurningPoint interface is very simple to use. The software is integrated within PowerPoint with an added menu option for TurningPoint which allows you to add various questions. You are able to create a variety of question and slide styles. Questions can be simple yes or no and true or false, or you can incorporate more in depth questioning techniques. Once a set of questions are answered by the students using the handsets, you can then choose to display the correct answer, display the percentage of voters that have answered under each possible answer or to simply go to the next question.

You can also choose to collect this data for analysis after the lecture by generating a variety of reports, alternatively show the data in the lecture to initiate discussion or give immediate feedback and check the understanding of your students. To read more about the use of TurningPoint at the University, please read this case study.

Currently UELT have 100 handsets available to book out. However we also have 25 ResponseWare licences. This enables anyone with a web enabled device to use it as a voting handset. For example, mobile phones, netbooks, laptops and PDA's, so that's most devices thats can connect to the internet!

For help on how to use TurningPoint and ResponseWare and to book the handsets contact elearning@kent.ac.uk