Plagiarism tutorials now creative commons

Nearly three months back I blogged about Making the plagiarism tutorials creative commons. Well, it took a while but they're now finally done. You can see them all here. It probably took about 30 minutes per tutorial to make all the necessary changes, and I just did them one at a time, as I had the time. Hence it taking nearly three months.

Track back to the original post if you want to access the original files.

OER study skills tutorials

In my Inspired by Shirky post a few weeks ago I finished up by saying:

If there’s enough interest this post will need a part two, which will be more of a how-to, including the original template files.

Well, I kind of followed it up with Making the plagiarism tutorials creative commons (this is a very self-referential post!), including a link to the template file for the plagiarism tutorials. But it's the critical student tutorial format that I think has more mileage because of the reasons I mentioned in the original post:

• you don’t need much technical skill (other than a good working knowledge of PowerPoint animation) to create them;
• other than PowerPoint the tools you can create them with are free (I used Screenr to do the screen capture and audio);
• neither do the tools require any installation (useful when working in an environment that restricts such things);
• when published on YouTube you can add closed captions (useful for accessibility reasons);
• it’s embeddable;
• and the format is even suitable for mobile devices (like the iPhone).

I also mentioned that we'd need 'a space to discuss and collaborate on the development of the resources.' So I've set up a friendfeed group called OER study skills which will aggregate anything tagged in delicious with 'oerstudyskills' and the hashtag in twitter #oerstudyskills. It will also, of course, allow threaded and searchable discussion to take place.

I had a number of useful and some useful ones on Twitter too, including this one from Michael Fawcett in New Zealand:

So I looked up WikiEducator, the purpose of which is:

I did a search for study skills and it looks like something is already started, but it's at a very early stage and mostly just consists of links out. I think it's a project that will be good to contribute to but but I think the  will be an easier space to discuss and collaborate in, however we can put content on WikiEducator when it's developed.

This post will now need a part three (or part four if you include the Making the plagiarism tutorials creative commons post). The focus of this post ended up being about ideas about facilitating discussion and collaboration (please let me know what you think), the focus of the next one will be the promised 'how to'.

Making the plagiarism tutorials creative commons

Since my recent Inspired by Shirky post I've decided to make the plagiarism tutorials creative commons. After some very helpful advice from Tania (who's the Copyright Administrator for BDRA's OTTER Project) I've made the following changes to the tutorials to enable me to legitimately add a creative commons license:

• removed the clock animation (that I can't remember where I sourced) and replaced it with a creative commons licensed image;
• removed the screen shots of the various book covers and replaced them with generic ones;
• referenced the definition of plagiarism appropriately (previously the source was merely implied from the screen shot of the dictionary cover).

I've only managed to update the Biological Sciences version so far but I'll be working my way through all of them over the next few weeks.

The creative commons license that I've chosen is Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales. Just to be clear, this means...

You can access the original PowerPoint file here. If you want to republish your own version you'll need Adobe Presenter. But don't forget - attribution, non-commercial, share alike! Also, it would be good to hear from you if you do make your own version.

By the way, this isn't the part 2 to the Shirky post that I promised - that will focus on the video animation format as per the critical student tutorial - and I'll try and write next week.

Inspired by Shirky

I'm sure other people have written reviews on Shirky's brilliant Here Comes Everybody (not least this interesting page on Wikipedia) so rather than attempt a review I'm just going to try and think about an application of one of his ideas in the book that I found particularly striking.

For a while now I've been thinking about how I could develop more academic skills resources for students here at Leicester (and anyone else who would find them useful for that matter) and I've come to the conclusion that I can't. At least not at the scale I'd like to. My job involves various aspects including teaching, student consultations, managing the website, overseeing our helpdesk, and resource development. The resource development bit just gets squeezed into the gaps around all the other stuff. However, without wanting to blow my own trumpet (okay, maybe just a little bit), many of the resources I've developed have been well received - having more than 50,000 views (yup, fifty thousand) and lots of good feedback. The resources are:

• the plagiarism tutorials that I started to develop in April 2007 (there are now 17 versions for different disciplines) and they've had more than 32,000 views;
• a tutorial on designing academic posters that I published in April 2009, which has had more than 18,000 views;
• and in September 2009, with Steve, the What it means to be a critical student tutorial, with more than 1,600 views.

You'll see I've tried a number of formats; the flash-based tutorial using Adobe presenter (inspired by the Vaughan Library tutorials), I once also tried to ape (briefly) the CommonCraft in Plain English videos (though you can't call your own creations that) but they were deceptively difficult to produce. The critical student one was inspired by Steve Boneham's Overview of microblogging from JISC web2practice. What I really like about this last format is:

• you don't need much technical skill (other than a good working knowledge of PowerPoint animation) to create them;
• other than PowerPoint the tools you can create them with are free (I used Screenr to do the screen capture and audio);
• neither do the tools require any installation (useful when working in an environment that restricts such things);
• when published on YouTube you can add closed captions (useful for accessibility reasons);
• it's embeddable;
• and the format is even suitable for mobile devices (like the iPhone).

So, how does this all relate to Shirky? Well, it comes back to the point that I can't develop online resources as much as I'd like too. So how about I try and demystify the process a bit and try and get others more involved (either other learning development professionals or subject academics interested in academic skills). The last chapter of Shirky's book is called Promise, Tool, Bargain, in it he says this (p.260).

Every story in this book relies on a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The promise is the basic "why" for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the "how" - how will the difficulties of coordination be overcome, or at least be held to manageable levels? And the bargain sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect, and what will be expected of you?

Although he does say in the next sentence...

[...] the interaction of promise, tool, and bargain cannot be used as a recipe, because the interactions among the different components is too complex.

But even though he says it can't be used as a recipe, I still think it's worth a go. I could apply for funding for this but there's little of it about in higher education at the moment, in any case, I'd like to see if it can be done without funding. So...

Promise

Or why would anyone want to be involved in this project? Well, I think it's a good opportunity to contribute some valuable creative commons, open educational resources and learn some valuable new skills.

Tool

We'd need a space to discuss and collaborate on the development of the resources. It could be Twitter, it could be this blog, or it could be a space we set up especially for the purpose (as long as it was public and not a walled garden like Ning). In terms of developing the tutorials themselves I guess people could use whatever tools they liked but I think it's important that the final output should be in YouTube with closed captions for reasons of both consistency and accessibility. My recent experience, as mentioned above, has been with PowerPoint and Screenr, but people could use whatever animation (I'd love to see it done with Open Ofiice's Presentation tool) and screen capture software they were most familiar with.

Bargain

Shirky says this is difficult to pin down at an early stage, but it would include receiving feedback, comment and support from me and whoever else joins.

It might not work of course. This whole idea also relates to another of Shirky's chapters, Lowering the cost of failure, but that's probably the subject of another post. If between us we could make 5 or 10 decent tutorials I think it would be a worthwhile project.

What have I missed? If there's enough interest this post will need a part two, which will be more of a how-to, including the original template files. Who'd like to help?

University Teaching Fellowship

I wasn't blogging when I got this so just for completeness, here it is.

It was mostly for my work on the plagiarism tutorials.

A new tutorial on being a critical student

Steve and I have just produced a simple tutorial to try and explain/demystify what it means to be a critical student.

The tutorial is created using a simple PowerPoint slide show which is then recorded and audio added using screenr.com. Screenr is exceptionally easy to use - especially when you discover the pause button. The 5 minute limit is a useful discipline. Files can then be uploaded to screenr or YouTube or downloaded as MP4. It's brilliant.

I had some really useful comments back via Twitter (most of them within 30 minutes)  - which are listed below. If you have any comments then please let me know. This is our first experiment of doing tutorials using PowerPoint plus screenr and I think given our first experience, we'll be doing more soon.

1. AlexM11Nice subject-indepentent overview of critical thinking for students RT @stujohnson http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from Screenr
   
2. MoMAlearningRT @AJCannRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from web
   
3. nosnilwar@stujohnson I'm still baffled by the Heller quotation, but I think the academic/estate agent analogy is brilliant http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from Screenr
   
4. jon_scott@stujohnson Like the idea but it needs to move faster and could have a shorter introabout 4 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
   
5. dhtpTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 4 hours ago from Tweetie
   
6. virtualleaderRT @adamread: @stujohnson Love the screenr presentation about being a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Me too:0)about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
   
7. goze01@stujohnson screenr looks like fun! I feel a new project coming on...about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon in reply to stujohnson
   
8. adamread@stujohnson Love the screenr presentation about being a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 , will show to our study skills dept :)about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck
   
9. alan_hookRT @stujohnson Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student from University of Leicester http://screenr.com/WX7about 5 hours ago from Screenr
   
10. jobadge@stujohnson critical tut looks good stu. Any plans to customise it for Science subjects?about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck
    
11. scottuhi@stujohnson great, I'm blogging the link so maybe your followers will increase :-)about 5 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
    
12. scottuhi@stujohnson Like the video on critical thinking, do you plan to change the URL or can I send it to a few people?about 5 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
    
13. intuteRT: @universityboy: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from TwitterFox
    
14. JottersLtdTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from web
    
15. universityboyTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
    
16. universityboy@stujohnson Good to see a quick and easy to follow tutorial on being a critical student. Two thumbs fresh!about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
    
17. sboneham@stujohnson Pop filter=http://bit.ly/46uk9d. Move the mic a bit further away/to one side. Both should reduce plosive 'pops'.about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
    
18. muir31@stujohnson useful tutorial on 'critical thinking', i will use this for my students http://screenr.com/WX7 #mscelabout 6 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
    
19. pigironjoe@stujohnson This establishes the principle, but it is short on practical advice and subject specific examples - room for follow up?about 6 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
    
20. pigironjoe@stujohnson Yes, pretty good. Rooney's dulcet tones make it for me.about 6 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
    
21. msars@stujohnson Nice. Suggest 1. Gap in narration to allow reading of Catch 22 quote 2. Add e.g. for scientists to show it applies to them tooabout 6 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
    
22. pigironjoeRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Feedback gratefully received!about 7 hours ago from twhirl
    
23. sboneham@stujohnson Excellent - like the iconography! Critical friend bit...maybe cut bit of narration, up the tempo & get a pop filter/move mic?about 7 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
    
24. AJCann@stujohnson Nice. Cut some words at the start - they can read. Please blog about the process of how to make these.about 7 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
    
25. AJCannRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Feedback gratefully received!about 7 hours ago from twhirl

Thinking about a new online tutorial

The most useful thing for me about giving my presentation at our Teaching and Assessment Network (TAN) the other week was the discussion afterwards about what should happen next. So far I've only developed two tutorials, one on plagiarism and one on posters (although the one on plagiarism does have 16 different versions). For a while I've just not had the time (what with writing a book with Jon Scott and everything) but I'm very much hoping that I'll be able to create another one over the next few months. There were a couple of suggestions from the TAN crowd; something on revision and exam skills and something on analysis or criticism. Since having had a conversation with Simon Rofe in International Relations I've decided to try and develop something on the later, with the working title What is analysis? (although I really must come up with something better than that).

So here are my (and Simon Rofe's) early thoughts on what it might include.

Key areas to cover

• An explanation of how analysis (or criticism) is different from narrative (or description)
• Suggest different ways of using evidence to analyse/critique ideas
• The importance of the relevance of evidence to the point you're trying to make
• The importance of using your own words to express your views
• How to link paragraphs to develop argument

Introduction

An activity of some kind around the following quote from Joseph Heller, Catch 22.

"...the corporal and Colonel Korn both agree that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything."

Possible structure

Scene setting – these four students all read the same books, all used the same quotes and all worked hard on their essay – but they all got different marks…

Part 1 – stepwise creation of a paragraph using two quotes (each paragraph version is one submitted by one of the four students)

• only description
• paraphrase
• analysis
• comment

Part 2 – the creation of a second paragraph to link with the first using two additional quotes.

Development

As with the plagiarism tutorials I plan to develop and refine this with one department (International Relations) and then adapt it for other disciplines if it works. These are only very early ideas, but I thought I'd put it up to get some early comments...

Developing online tutorials at Teaching and Assessment Network

There are the slides and audio of my Teaching and Assessment Network seminar that I did on 25 March at the University of Leicester. Just putting them here really to kick off this blog as it's Friday afternoon and can't summon up much more energy!

Development of online resources to help students develop their academic skills from Stuart Johnson