Digital note-taking tools exist to cover all of the situations when what you need is a platform for informal rough working: planning, preparing and structuring a task; making sketches and diagrams. They are the digital equivalents of the back of an envelope or a blank sheet of paper, but they...

Hashtags have become one of the most useful ways of finding and contributing to communities of practice. This module looks at what they are, how to use them and some sector groups clustered around particular hashtags.

This module examines how we currently use the data available to us, how we might find ways to develop it further to improve teaching and learning and what the emerging field of learning analytics might contribute.

Formative assessment is a core part of instruction. It delivers challenge, embeds knowledge and enables learners to measure their own progress and needs; it is a natural candidate for delivery through technology.

The embedding of digital technology across all forms of subject-assessment creates opportunities for developing learners’ transferable skills over and above vocational expertise that is at the core of their learning programmes. This module looks at how you can make transferable skills...

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....

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,...

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.

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,...

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.

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...

A recorded teaching session can provide real opportunities for improving your teaching practice, especially if you share it with colleagues in a quality circle or improvement group where you all watch each other's recordings to review and reflect upon them. This module looks at some of...