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Improving deep learning with MCQs and EVS Abstract — Staff and students in the UK often dismiss MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions) as being associated with rote learning, but not understanding. However one of the biggest results ever published in education shows how mistaken this attitude is. The most important aspect of deep learning is probably being concerned with reasons rather than only with conclusions. If you want to test for knowledge of reasons then you can easily design MCQs to give the facts and ask about reasons....

As noted in Innovating e-Learning 2011 : JISC and Poacher turned gamekeeper I am attending the Innovating E-Learning Online Conference during the gaps in my full calendar. Today there was a quite large gap between the morning session (on Work-based Learning) and the final plenary session on Theme 1: Learning Landscapes and I was able to fill in a locally arrange Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching (SALT) seminar lunchtime seminar on Multiple Choice: The smart choice or dumbing down?...

FASTECH: Feedback and Assessment for Students with Technology : JISC “FASTECH is designed to use readily available technologies to support the systemic enhancement of assessment and feedback strategies and practices at programme, faculty and institutional levels. A key aim is to provide evidence of, and guidelines for, technological improvements and change processes that can be used to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of assessment and feedback at these levels throughout the sector....

I think that this is my third JISC Enhancing e-Learning conference. During the first one I was definitely a lurker. By the second, I’d been involved in a MOOC (Plenk) and a couple of the streamed ALT-C events so I was more comfortable with the asynchronous forums and Elluminate and contributed more. (Though I haven’t had the nerve to press F2 yet.) In all cases, I was attending as an academic looking for ideas that I could use in my own practice: and there’s been a rich seam of good ideas to mine....

This is the first of a planned short series of screencasts that I am creating to help my colleagues at Swansea and further afield do more with Blackboard. One thing we ask staff to do is provide a receipt for coursework submissions. But if the classes are large, this can be difficult to do. Blackboard has an assignment tool that can be used by students to upload electronic documents. If provides a receipt; can enforce submission deadlines; and the submissions can be graded and feedback provided all from the same interface....