Active learning can deliver significant benefits in terms of improved learning outcomes and learner experience. This module looks at the coordination of skills, resources, planning and organisation that is required to design successful active learning and empower teachers to deliver it.

Technology makes meaningful personalisation a practical reality. Assistive technology, with materials and resources designed for accessibility and inclusion provides the essential foundations to support learners with a disability or learning disadvantage. This module looks at the ways in...

Search engines will present you with online content for just about any subject, much of it free to use; presentations, videos, images, quizzes and more. But often there is so much to choose from - where do you start? This module looks at how you can make your searches for subject-specific...

Peer assessment happens when learners find inspiration and insight in the ideas, suggestions, criticisms, contributions and thoughts of other learners, relative to their own contributions. As a result, learners can refine actions, comments and contributions to make their own learning and work...

An e-portfolio is an online repository, belonging to and managed by the owner. It's a personal technology rather than shared, like a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It contains artefacts added by the owner that are curated, arranged and presented, either in their own right or as...

Polling tools have stretched far beyond their original function of carrying out surveys and reporting results. Anyone who bought goods or services online will have encountered them; they underpin user satisfaction reporting across the board in the burgeoning online retail market, from...

Using videos, structured sets of annotated still images and sound recordings can be a great way to provide feedback. This is particularly true when the work you are assessing is an event or performance of a task: when you want to know how well an apprentice changed a washer, not how well they...

Quizzes have long been recognised as a useful method to test learners' knowledge and check their understanding, but they offer more than that. Their effectiveness lies in their ability to be accessed when learners want to check learning and can be repeated as often as leaners want,...

Computer-based tests and digital media are widely used in formative assessment. This module looks at their use for enhancing low stakes summative assessment activities, where the goal is to test and confirm that a learner has completed a block of work, and for programmes such as NVQ, where...

Feedback response times are a critical lever for improving learner engagement and success. This module looks at how technology can support improved assessment and feedback methodologies and interventions, to lower turnaround time.

This module looks at how identify situations where personal information may be stored securely on personal devices as well as online. It includes how to manage the movement of persona data in a secure way and the use of simple methods to protect personal information and privacy.

This module looks at the knowledge and skills you need in order to teach Being responsible online. The first chapter deals with behaviour that is socially inappropriate and how to protect yourself from it. The second chapter focuses on behaviours that are illegal and how to stay within the law.

This module looks at how to overcome or find ways around some of the technical compatibility issues you can encounter when searching for resources on the web to use with learners.

We all have a preferred set of tools, apps and software that we use for teaching and learning. Making sure you know how to use this to the best of its ability is the first step to effective teaching and learning with technology. Then, it’s time to extend your range. There are countless...

This module looks at ways to deal with technical problems that emerge while teaching. Technical problems can happen at awkward moments in a session. There are some quick and simple ways to try to resolve them, but if these don’t work then teachers can turn the situation into pedagogical...

Technology-based assessment has become increasingly sophisticated in the design of tests. This is through automating the collection, and the immediacy of the presentation, of the results.

Written text remains the most common way of providing feedback to learners on their outcomes and performance in assessment. Many digital tools are now available for creating and delivering written feedback in different formats and media, annotating, overwriting, converting speech to text,...

Taking photos, making videos and creating sound recordings is easy work for anyone with access to a smartphone or tablet. Once captured, image, video and audio files can be easily uploaded and stored online, edited, mixed with other evidence, shared for assessment and annotated for feedback....

Video is a powerful tool for teaching, learning and assessment. High quality recording capability built into mobile devices make it easy to create, edit and apply video to everyday practice. The resulting footage can be uploaded, shared and accessed on a number of sites and platforms.

Animated images can provide a way into a complex idea, enliven content, engage attention, consolidate, reinforce and make learning memorable. It can reveal the impossible and invisible – the structure of an atom or how a virus attacks the body.

A useful definition of Blended Learning is the “combination of face-to-face learning and dynamic digital activities and content that facilitate anytime/anyplace learning.” (Jisc, 2017). This module follows on from the New forms and formats for face-to-face learning module and looks...

Knowing how to choose the right tool or app for a task is a key skill for life and work. It requires more than understanding the broad purpose and technical capabilities of tools and packages. It calls on a learner’s ability to analyse a problem, plan an activity, monitor progress and...

Confidence in your digital practice comes from success: success in improving your teaching and learning rather than being good with gadgets. This requires the capacity for personal critical reflection and a means to share what you did with colleagues, at your workplace and in wider...

An increasingly important definition views learning as a change in long-term memory. Theories of effective teaching and learning focus on enabling the progressive acquisition of knowledge by learners. This module looks at Barak Rosenshine’s widely used Principles of Instruction. They...

This module looks at improving learner engagement by rethinking the use of technologies within the classroom. It examines the possibilities for involving learners actively in sessions, embedded in a carefully structured approach to teaching face-to-face through technology.

This module explores the notion of face-to-face learning in a physical space such as a classroom and the place of technology in emerging pedagogy. It describes a framework for considering the activities and intended outcomes of face-to-face interaction.

The best basis for improving practice is evidence from research. This often just confirms our own experience. This module looks at metacognitive strategies and considers how technology might support their introduction into learning.

This module is the first of a pair, with the New forms and formats for Blended Learning module following on. This module looks at how changes in pedagogical thinking and our understanding of learning give the opportunity to renew the way we use technology in face-to-face learning.

Homework traditionally follows classwork: a teacher introduces the subject matter then homework reinforces the learning. Now that facts and information are just a quick search away, learners need to know more than ever how to evaluate, understand and apply information. Flipped learning...