At CSM, the Digital Learning team is a small multidisciplinary team of four with expertise in educational technologies, learning design and digital pedagogies. Over the past two years, they have been working closely with course teams and students to improve Moodle and access for teaching, learning and assessment across M‑School and C‑School.
This year, the team has launched a new multi‑year project that goes beyond improving inclusion and access in Moodle. The aim is to explore how educational technologies are used more broadly in teaching and learning at CSM to strengthen access, engagement and collaboration. With an incredibly diverse student population, wide‑ranging disciplines and varied teaching formats, educational technologies offer ways to experiment, involve students and foster greater collaboration inside and outside the classroom.
The new project coined the Blended Learning Initiative works with tutors and students to share examples of how they are using educational technology both in the classroom and online. Early conversations with staff highlight interesting examples of practice. As one tutor reflected on using Mentimeter in the LMVH:
“When you ask a question to 150 students in a lecture room nobody puts their hand up. Using Mentimeter (a polling platform) helps them to think about the question and what they would say. Seeing that others have the same answer as them in the poll, helps them to speak up. It helps start the conversation between them as well. They say they love it.”
The timing of the initiative coincides with the launch of Mentimeter, now freely available with full features at CSM, as well as ongoing work between the CSM Digital Learning team and colleagues in LTS to simplify and promote lecture capture through Panopto in the seminar rooms. Since the pandemic, CSM staff have access to a wide range of educational technologies that can support and extend teaching and learning, including Padlet, Moodle, MyBlog, Miro and CoPilot.
If you are using technology to support your students’ learning, collaboration and engagement or you would like to explore this further with us, we would love to hear from you. Csmdigitallearning@arts.ac.uk