Viewpoints at the CIES Reward and Recognition Residential

The Viewpoints A0 worksheets were available for each group at the CIES Reward and Recognition Programme IV: E-facilitated Assessment and Feedback Residential event, at the Rosspark Hotel, Kells on 14th and 15th December 09.

This event gave each group the time to develop a reusable learning object as part of their assessment and feedback project. External facilitators Tom Boyle (RLO-CETL Director, London Metropolitan University) and Dawn Leeder (Reward and Development Manager, University of Cambridge) helped them with this task.

The Viewpoints worksheets, developed in the assessment and feedback sessions with each group (delivered from the 1st -11th December), proved to be a good starting point and valuable resource for each group whilst developing their projects at the Residential.



Each group commented on how useful the Viewpoints sessions and worksheets were in the final group presentations at the end of the event. The facilitators also commented that they felt each group was better prepared as a result of the Viewpoints sessions, compared to previous Residential programme groups.

Viewpoints Assessment and Feedback sessions (1-11th Dec 09)

Fiona Doherty and Catherine O’Donnell have been delivering Viewpoints assessment and feedback sessions to Ulster groups (consisting of several staff and a student) on the CETL Institutional E-learning Services (CIES) Reward and Recognition Programme IV: E-facilitated Assessment and Feedback.

The one-hour sessions let each group reflect on their chosen Reward and Recognition programme project. The session is based on six group tasks that encourage reflection, consider the student experience and provide some creative ideas on how to implement their project objective.

The hands-on session uses prompts, including a large laminated worksheet with a student timeline and nine assessment and feedback cards. The group work together using the worksheet, cards and markers to create an output tailored to address their chosen project objective.



The nine different coloured cards each depict an assessment and feedback principle (revised and adapted from the Re-engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) Project principles of good formative assessment and feedback). On the back of each card are several implementation ideas (revised and adapted from the QAA Enhancement Themes: The First Year Experience – Transforming assessment and feedback: enhancing interaction and empowerment in the first year
written by Professor David Nicol from the REAP Project).



Each participant gets an assessment and feedback pack at the end of the session. This pack contains several handouts that aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice at Ulster, e.g. the nine principles mapped to Ulster documentation (guidelines, strategies, etc.) and the principles mapped to e-learning technologies available at Ulster.

The completed worksheet outputs can then be used to help inform each group’s project development. The outputs are emailed to each group in a word document and as an image. The worksheets will be available for each group at the CIES Reward and Recognition Residential event on the 14th & 15th December at the Rosspark Hotel, Kells.

These initial sessions have been evaluated and will be analysed to inform future development of the Viewpoints workshops. Early feedback suggests that the sessions were very successful in helping the groups reflect on and plan their projects. One group member commented that the cards helped ‘to concentrate broad ideas’, while another said that the session ‘helped to clarify what is currently a problem for the group and provided some potential solutions’.

CAMEL meeting, Open University

The second CAMEL meeting for JISC Curriculum Design Cluster C took place over two days, on the 11th and the 12th November at the Open University, Milton Keynes. Peter Bullen, our Critical Friend, chaired the sessions, attended by project representatives from the University of Ulster, University of Strathclyde and the Open University. Helen Beetham and Alison Muirhead also attended.

On the first day, Helen Beetham introduced a session on the cluster's recently completed project baseline reports, talking about issues arising from the three reports and highlighting similarities and differences. Afterwards, Alison Muirhead led a discussion about evaluation challenges and solutions, getting small groups to talk about potential ways of approaching evaluation.

Day 2 of the CAMEL meeting was centred around the Open University's recent work on curriculum design and curriculum representation. It kicked off with a short activity to get academics familiar with using Cloudworks, the Open University's social bookmarking system.

Simon Cross then talked to us about the recent survey looking at staff perceptions around learning design in the OU, and talked about Open University design solutions.

Gráinne Conole's session on course representations introduced a number of different course views being worked on at the Open University. You can view her presentation here:

Curriculum Representations

View more presentations from grainne.

Finally, Paul Mundin introduced a short session on curriculum mapping in the Open University.

JISC Learning & Teaching Practice Experts Meeting

Alan Masson and Karen Virapen attended the Learning and Teaching Practice Experts meeting today at The Studio, Birmingham.

This meeting showed the group the newly launched Design Studio, and a group discussion on the development of this resource followed the presentation.

Breakout sessions for Cluster C and D Curriculum Design and Delivery projects gave delegates the chance to view the project posters (including the Viewpoints poster) and discuss the various challenges projects were facing. This session generated a lot of useful feedback or Viewpoints, which will help us when moving forward with tool development.

Selected members of the Experts group then showcased their work for delegates in presentation sessions (presentations are available on the JISC site).

Finally, Ros Smith chaired a group discussion around the area of e-assessment.

A Twitter feed from the meeting is available at http://twitter.com/#search?q=jiscexperts09.

JISC Programme Meeting

Alan Masson and Fiona Doherty attended the joint two-day meeting for the Curriculum Design and Delivery Programmes at the Midland Hotel in Manchester.

The meeting provided the opportunity for the Curriculum Design and Delivery projects to network and gain an overview of each other’s work (by poster and video presentations) and to identify synergies between projects.

Further information about all the projects is available at:
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/curriculum/projects
http://www.netvibes.com/circlejisc
Video presentations are available at: http://www.youtube.com/jisccdd

Projects were introduced to the Design Studio, a wiki based toolkit that draws together a range of existing and developing resources around the curriculum design and delivery and the role technology plays in supporting these processes.


The Viewpoints project fits best in the Initiate or review and Develop or redevelop nodes of the curriculum lifecycle.

Tweets from the programme meeting are available at: http://twitter.com/#search?q=jisccdd

Ulster Curriculum Design Processes

Catherine O'Donnell has mapped out Ulster curriculum design processes for the JISC Baseline Report.

These processes include:

- Course Revalidation
- Course & Subject Management
- Minor Revisions
- Quality Management & Audit
- New Course Approval

Each process has reference information, a framework and support feeding into it - and creates outputs with associated audiences. Fiona Doherty helped illustrate these mapped processes in a series of easy-to-understand colour-coded diagrams.

These diagrams are available to staff in the University of Ulster, in order to help them understand curriculum design processes.

Viewpoints video

Viewpoints now has a video about the project live on YouTube.



This video was originally created for the JISC Programme Meeting for its Curriculum Design and Delivery projects. All the videos and posters produced for this meeting provide an opportunity for the other projects to get an overview of everyone's work to date.

The video is just over three minutes long and gives an overview of our work to date, including interviews with four stakeholders within the University whose feedback has informed tool development.

Videos from all the other Curriculum Design and Delivery projects can be viewed via JISC's own YouTube channel.