A strength of learning in a classroom has been the immediacy of interaction between learners and teacher. Teachers are looking for a balance between having a culture of collective and common effort and personalised methods of achieving it. How might teachers guide, and interact with learners in...

Digitising content has kept the language of files and folders associated with paper storage, but replaced its office-based storage into condensed, highly portable, indexed stores, that can be carried in the pocket or accessed from an online store.

Technology can help find learning advantage through group working. Groups are formed around identifiable common goals or interests, in the belief that working together is more productive or satisfying than working alone and simulates real working environments.

This module looks at how learners can be encouraged and supported to take greater responsibility for management of their own learning. This is by using widely available technology to build the self-reliance and resilience needed to succeed in employment or higher education.

A quality learning experience can be found in learners recognising learning that exceeds their expectations in terms of how they worked and what they learned. It leads to a desire to repeat or learn more. Digital technology used well contributes to this in both the administration and enterprise...

Managing and organising personal and curriculum team workload is an essential task for teachers in an increasingly complex work environment. A growing emphasis on team working, with many colleagues on sessional contracts across a number of institutions can make it difficult and time-consuming to...

How communities of learning can be formed and become effective through technology. Successful groups are characterised as being able to have a greater output than the sum of its parts. This principle applies to learning, which is why group learning is so common.

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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.

Intermittent and disrupted attendance of learners is an early warning sign of potential drop out or underachievement. This module looks at the ways technology can help us to intervene early with effective solutions.

This module looks at why it's worth creating and delivering personalised learning pathways and how to make them work in practice. It follows on from the Personalised learning pathways module.

A fundamental requirement for effective learning is to understand and be understood. Inadequate language skills are a barrier at each stage of the learning journey. This module looks at the ways technology can transform the learning experience and outcomes for ESOL learners and those who...

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...

The culture that we grow up and live in can influence the way we prefer to communicate. This module looks at how we can draw on this rich diversity to improve the learning experience for all.

In a world of competing voices, reputations for one's ideas are hard won and easily damaged and are only as good as the last contribution to a body of work. Consequently, professional standing as a teacher is important and can be managed through maintaining the quality of contributions to...

Using technology, like any other human activity, has an impact on the wider environment. Consumption and pollution from how our devices are made, used, and disposed of, is offset by the changes in environmental costs of behaviour changes that come from where and how those devices are used.

Our online identities are the keys that unlock personal, social and commercial accounts and transactions. They create portraits of ourselves that others can access and by which they will judge us - as friends, colleagues, and potential employees. We explored the importance of a digital...

Using technology has taken teachers ability to interact with one another onto a global platform. The challenge is matching up the right audience with the content shared. It follows that extra care is needed when posting to a site where the audience isn't known.

Simulation refers to creating a model of an activity, environment or situation which reproduces the characteristics of real-life events and delivers authentic responses to the learner’s choices and actions. The consequences of error in decision-making, judgment, manual or cognitive skills...

Teachers can achieve better outcomes by imaginative re-use, recycling and repurposing of existing content – whether it be their own, their colleagues', or resources and materials found on the internet. It also looks at the role and importance of organisations in creating and promoting...

Surveys show that over half of the people on the planet use social media platforms. Social media are embedded into work and daily life so being able to use them is an essential vocational and life skill.

EdTech enables us to deliver scenarios online and bring them to life through the application of technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) role playing and games formats. This module looks at how to create authentic scenarios and apply them to effective learning.

Productivity software (office business applications) such as word processing, presentation software and spreadsheets are amongst the most common applications most of us encounter and use on a daily basis. Continual development of functionality has taken them beyond flat text production, number...

An e-portfolio allows you to gather together in one place a record of your PLD and evidence of achievement. It can host different forms of evidence such as sound and video files, as well as whole presentations, URL links and other resources. You can see and hear as well as read about what...

This module expands on the guidance given in Recording teaching sessions and Digital tools for personal learning. It looks at three forms of video and video streaming where the combination of presentation, discussion and viewing open up opportunities for personal CPD and in supporting the CPD of...

Whenever people with a common interest have an identified online place, forum or method to connect with peers and discuss issues of common interest, we can say that a community of practice exists. This module explores where communities for supporting online practice might be found and how you...

Many problems can be examined and innovative solutions implemented by the creativity of individual teachers and teaching groups. This module follows on from and extends the example and analysis introduced in Identifying the Need for Change and leads into Identifying and Assessing...

The goal and measure of successful innovation must always be that each individual teacher can work with their learners in new ways to achieve better outcomes. This module looks at the part to be played by teachers in implementing such innovation and innovative practice.

This module is related to the Effective teaching and learning online module because supporting learning is a feature of effective TLA. With online learning, similar to learners in traditional content, support is needed to ensure learners can be successful.

It is difficult for teachers to maintain effective oversight of learning activity during remote online working. Records of learner logins can’t show if a learner was engaged in learning and making progress, or even physically present at a device.

Synchronous learning occurs when the teacher and learners are present in real time. Meeting face-to-face remains central to most statutory and higher education. Asynchronous learning allows learners to choose the time and place at which they learn. It depends on access to resources rather to a...

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...

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 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...

Virtual Reality (VR) is a wholly manufactured experience. Learners can use mobile devices, often worn (so as to respond to head movements), to see and interact with a visual depiction of a place, person or object. The location of the learner is not material to the experience because it is...

Augmented Reality (AR) superimposes either graphics, visual presentations or text as an overlay on a given view, looked at through a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet. Location is important for AR and where the device being used and what it is pointing at because AR is rooted in the...

The module explores the practical underpinnings of good attribution and referencing. It looks at how to develop and reinforce the judgement learners need in order to avoid plagiarism. This module pairs with Dealing with plagiarism.

This module looks at a systematic approach to assessing the reliability and validity of information that is likely to end up embedded in learning resources and teaching practice.

Developing independence in solving practical problems is an important life skill and essential for employment. This module looks at how we can go beyond reliance on chance and build some of these events into the assignments, tasks and experiences we create, making a controlled space for...

The module Developing digital problem-solving skills looked at the way one teacher develops each learner’s independent problem-solving skills through a simulation of practical difficulties arising with the digital technologies they are using. This module extends that exercise to...

The scale of smartphone ownership coupled with the transformative nature of smartphone technology and the apps and tools that it supports give it great potential as a learning technology and platform. This module explores some of the opportunities and possibilities for adopting smartphones into...

This module looks at the potential and role of mobile technology for learning, how best to make use of the affordances of mobile devices and how to ensure that appropriate support and guidance is in place for learners to succeed. It pairs with the module Using smartphones for learning.

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...

This module looks at how to combine and mix existing resources to create more relevent content for learning. It examines how this can be used to enhance the development of your pedagogical practice with EdTech. It follows on from the module Creating content: adapting and editing.

Learner created content is a foundation stone of the shift from dependence to independence and on further to the collaborative interdependence that characterises modern employment. This module looks at ways that teachers can support development of the necessary skills, behaviours and attitudes to...

Active learning can make a measurable improvement to learning outcomes. It’s been shown to be more effective for all learners including SEND learners. This module looks at the elements of successful active learning and the role that digital technology can play.

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.

Adopting digital technologies to collaborate and share practice beyond your own institution will enable you to: - find out what colleagues in other organisation's in the sector are doing in their teaching. - share, adapt and adopt good practice and learning objects and resources more...

A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) attempts to replicate in an online space everything learners might want to do and what a tutor might want to share as part of a programme of study. Learners are 'enrolled' to the course area. It contains a library, assignment and announcements areas....

Rather than faithfully represent an online version of a standard course, Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) enable you to add extra features and offer learners: - flexibility in engaging with learning material, - an opportunity to repeat a learning activity for reinforcement, and - a...

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...

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.

Producing effective online learning activities takes time, effort and creativity. This module looks at the process of creating learning resources with the intention that they are shareable resources; making them available to others, driving the concept of collaborative creation in your own...

This module looks at the practical issues of how to build synchronous online learning into a balanced programme of online and face-to-face learning. It examines the challenges of real-time online activity (technical, social and personal) and things you can do to ensure that learner experience...

Synchronised working uses technology to deliver learning normally done in a classroom or workshop, without having to be physically present in the room. Learners can observe and take notes, but also engage with the teacher and fellow students. All the benefits of working together,...

This module looks at how to improve the elements of an organisation's digital technology strategy that relate to accessibility and its significance for bringing about change in teaching and learning practice.

Legislation for accessibility changed in a very positive way with The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations (2018). This module looks at how to stay on the right side of these regulations.

This module considers how issues of equitable access to digital technologies can have an impact on the quality of learning and how this may be redressed.

This module follows on from the module Creating inclusive content: Principles. It shows how the principles from Creating inclusive content: Principles can be applied to create resources that are good for all users.

This module looks at an individual's digital context based on personal access to the appropriate technology, their awareness of it, and the digital skills to make use of them.

This module looks at navigating online content to search for and find useful content. It looks at using searches, hyperlinks, menus and other navigation elements to locate required information. This will include how to retain and save useful links to content for future use or for reference. Users...

This module looks at using technology to support the learning activities of SLDD learners who are working towards living independently.

This module looks at a broad classification of learning disabilities and the forms of technology that are best suited to overcome the associated challenges to learning.

This module explores the use of spoken text through devices such as e-readers and eBooks to overcome barriers to learning for a range of learners, not only those with a sight impairment.

This module explores the range of accessibility assistance, from common mainstream software, apps and tools, through to the specialist or bespoke technology for complex individual needs, and its implications for teaching and learning practice.

This module shows some principles of good practice for creating content that meets the needs of learners with a disability or learning disadvantage.

This module looks at the impact on teaching strategy of learners who bring their own devices. This has implications for users of assistive technology and for those learners who prefer to work on their own devices.

This module looks at the basic components of personal computing through the use of the various devices, the systems that run on them, setting them up as preferred and keeping them in good order.