Many students will be busy finishing their dissertations and assignments as the spring semester goes on, which frequently raises concerns about word counts. In this post, we look at the purpose of word counts and how they can work in your favour instead of against you. Word counts: urge writers to be explicit about what they are attempting to say, which guarantees that the message is clear and succinct. Writing advice: the word count gives you a general idea of how much detail is needed in a certain piece of writing. They can guarantee that the desired degree of detail is reached or that extr ..read more

Throughout the 2023–4 academic year, we are running a new feature on the Learning Technology (LT) blog: a faculty takeover month! Each month, we will feature posts from different faculty members at the university. Every Friday, posts will highlight interesting work and ideas related to technology in teaching and learning and showcase unique projects from within the various disciplines across the UoN. So far, we’ve featured content from all the faculties at the University. This month, we welcome posts from degree apprenticeship programmes at UoN. For this week’s post, we would like to tha ..read more

Today I share my reflections from attending a very thought-provoking empathy lab. The Digital and Technology Services at the University of Nottingham provides a pop-up empathy lab with simulator kits to offer staff and students the opportunity to gain insight into the potential experiences resulting from certain disabilities. Image 1 – For one activity, restrictive gloves were provided to provide insight into the difficulties of completing manual dexterity tasks. In total, there were seven learning stations, each of which provided a different insight. The types of activities included, Rest ..read more

“We’re in this together” TeachFest@University Park is returning on Friday 5 July to the Sir Clive Granger building. It is modelled on the annual TeachFest conference each December at Sutton Bonington and these two events together complement the annual Teaching and Learning Conference in April. TeachFest@UP is intended to be a very informal and friendly gathering where people can share something of their own practice (not necessarily ‘best’ practice, though it may be!), discuss what other people have been trying, reflect together on how we might develop the teaching and learning experience at U ..read more

Throughout the 2023–4 academic year, we are running a new feature on the Learning Technology (LT) blog: a faculty takeover month! Each month, we will feature posts from different faculty members at the university. Every Friday, posts will highlight interesting work and ideas related to technology in teaching and learning and showcase unique projects from within the various disciplines across the UoN. So far, we’ve featured content from all the faculties at the University. This month, we welcome posts from degree apprenticeship programmes at UoN. Our second post is written by the Data Sci ..read more

Many thanks to our guest author, Claire Storr, Learning Technology Consultant for Placements, for this week’s post. Claire shares some top tips for helping students make the most out of Moodle, from customising the Dashboard, to setting up Forum preferences. 1. Customise the dashboard Click on the ‘Edit Mode’ toggle switch (top-right) and then select ‘Add a block’ to customise your Dashboard. You have the option to add the ‘Module Overview’, which enables you to see all your modules on the Dashboard, and you can also add your ‘Recently accessed modules’ for quick and easy navigation.   ..read more

In recent weeks the Faculty of Science have been undertaking work to review the layout and design of Moodle module sites in the faculty. This work has developed out of the move to Moodle 4.1 in December 2023 and feedback received from student reps in each school around the usability of Moodle sites. In part two of our series on Moodle content and layout ideas, we showcase further ideas for disseminating teaching and learning content in your Moodle site. All the approaches outlines in this series make use of the layout and activity types built in as standard to Moodle 4.1 Lists with Hidden Fol ..read more

In recent weeks the Faculty of Science have been undertaking work to review the layout and design of Moodle module sites in the faculty. This work has developed out of the move to Moodle 4.1 in December 2023 and feedback received from student reps in each school around the usability of Moodle sites. The new version of Moodle has highlighted some inconsistency in design across module sites and lead to a piece of work which considers how best to utilised the built in activities and layout features of Moodle to avoid creating a very long, confusing module site which inevitably requires users to ..read more

Call for papers is now open for the 2024 Digital Accessibility Conference hosted at the University of Nottingham! Please submit a proposal. The deadline for proposals is May 17th. Please address one of the conference themes. We want to keep the pace high during the day, and so we are keeping sessions quite short. A Distrubuted Conference With finances stretched cross the sector, we’ve taken the decision to run this year’s event online. But we still want to create opportunities for people to come together to share the experience. We are encouraging participating institutions to use the event a ..read more

Following the huge success of last year’s Digital Accessibility conference, we’re pleased to announce that University of Nottingham Libraries will be hosting the conference again on Wednesday 26 June 2024.   This year’s conference, Transforming the Culture, will be held online and will bring together practitioners from right across the sector for a day of talks, discussions and networking across three themes connected to cultural transformation:  Leadership and governance  Delivering the capability  Realising the benefits  Whilst this year’s conferenc ..read more