Viewpoints videos now more accessible

Viewpoints videos are now more accessible to a wider range of users - they all now have closed captions available in YouTube. All of our subsequent videos and 'digital stories' will also use closed captions.

'Closed captions' are subtitles that appear on screen as a video plays, providing a text representation of the audio content of the video. They are called 'closed' as they can be turned on and off according to the user's preference.

Captioning video is good standard practice - it helps meet W3C accessibility guidelines by allowing users with hearing impairments to access the audio content of the video.

It can also benefit users with no audio playback hardware, mobile users sited in a quiet area (like a library), those learning to speak a non-native language, or in an environment when the audio is difficult to make out.

To sample closed captioning in YouTube, you can view either of the videos below.

1. Click Play on the chosen video, then hover over the grey-and-white triangular button on the bottom right of the YouTube screen (second from the right).
   
   
2. Then, select the CC (closed caption) button that pops up, and your captions should appear automatically.
   
   
3. To make the captions disappear again, follow the same process, hover over the triangular button and deselect the CC button this time.

Notice how the captions are synced with the audio - this is all done with automatic timecodes.

Do you want to know how to add closed captions to your YouTube videos? Follow this simple step-by-step guide written by Viewpoints, which will walk you through the straightforward process. (You can download this document from SlideShare as well, if you want a copy on your hard drive.)

As a rough guide, it will take 30-50 minutes to create and upload captions for a 3-minute YouTube video. A simple online tool specified in this document (with full instructions for use) will help you add timecodes so that your text is synced properly to the audio on screen.

Viewpoints workshop delivered at ALT-C conference

Catherine O'Donnell and Alan Masson delivered an interactive Viewpoints workshop today at the ALT-C 2010 conference in Nottingham, the 17th International Conference for the Association for Learning Technology.

The workshop was entitled 'Encouraging creativity and reflection in the curriculum', and aimed to stimulate constructive dialogue around curriculum planning, allow collaboration and creativity, and help participants plan a student-centred curriculum design model.

The workshop was one hour in duration and allowed participants to try out one aspect of the Viewpoints tool strand in a hands-on session. Afterwards, participants or interested parties can communicate via the forum on the Viewpoints social networking Ning area (sign-up required).

Slides from this workshop are available to view here:

Encouraging creativity and reflection in the curriculum

View more presentations from Viewpoints, University of Ulster.

Creativity workshop in Belfast Campus

Alan Masson, Catherine O'Donnell, Roisin Curran and Jill Harrison today delivered a Viewpoints creativity workshop on Belfast Campus.

The workshop was delivered to members of staff from Hospitality and Tourism Management. The team wanted to generate some ideas around creativity in the curriculum, although they are not undergoing revalidation until 2012/2013. Creativity card prompts were used, as well as Assessment and Feedback and Information Skills cards. 22 members of staff attended

In the evaluation exercise afterwards, most staff indicated they found the session useful to help them reflect on creativity in curriculum design and the learner perspective, although many indicated they would prefer more time to explore the concepts.

Information Skills cards version 2 now complete

Viewpoints have now completed a new set of the Information Skills cards, with the help of key stakeholders in the University of Ulster, such as Ulster librarians.

The new versions of the cards have been extensively reworded to reflect current Information Skills practices in Ulster and in other higher education institutions.

They have also been 'branded' with the Information Skills logo, to distinguish them from other sets of workshop cards.

These cards have been printed but also can be viewed or downloaded as JPEGs on the Viewpoints Flickr photostream:

Viewpoints Poster presentation at CAA Conference 2010

Fiona Doherty and Jill Harrison today presented a Viewpoints poster at the 2010 International Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA) Conference: Research into E-Assessment.

This two-day research-led conference was hosted by the University of Southampton and organised by its School of ECS and the IET at the Open University. The theme of the conference was e-assessment and there was a great deal of interest in the work that Viewpoints are doing, especially regarding the online tool and the Assessment and Feedback strand of the tool suite.

You can view the presented poster here:

Module Worksheet

This is the Module Perspective worksheet that Viewpoints staff use when delivering a face-to-face workshop with Ulster staff.

(You can download a JPEG of the worksheet from our Flickr photostream)

It allows academics to think about their curriculum design at a module level, and plan their curriculum for that particular module.

Staff are encouraged to identify their objective for their group activity, write it on the module worksheet, and then they are shown the relevant cards for their strand (for example, Assessment and Feedback, Creativity in the Curriculum or Information Skills cards).

They then choose the principles that are relevant to their objective, and map their principles to the worksheet by placing them on the timeline.

Next, they turn the chosen cards over and select the relevant implementation ideas or examples. Finally, they can tailor the plan by adding their own notes and action points to the worksheet.

Assessment and Feedback/Creativity session - Economics

Catherine O'Donnell, Roisin Curran, Karen Virapen and Jill Harrison today delivered a workshop session looking at assessment and feedback strategies and creativity in the curriculum. This session was delivered to staff from the School of Economics.

The group wanted to focus around the first year experience, particularly looking at assessment and feedback strategies for this group. They have some retention and student engagement issues with first years, so are keen to revise their curricula. They also need an overall look at their course strategy in preparation for revalidation next year, and so Roisin Curran gave them a talk on how they could bring creativity to their courses.

Some groups were initially unconvinced as to the merits of using the workshop approach in revising their assessment and feedback strategy, but by the end of the process all the groups were able to come up with a suggested plan to move forward and revise their courses for students.

Slides for this session are available here:

Curriculum Design - Economics workshop

View more presentations from Viewpoints, University of Ulster.