Change at the University of Northampton, especially in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020.

Presented by Rob Howe. Session chaired by Neil Dixon.

This presentation will discuss the main opportunities that could be learned from the Covid 19 online delivery. It will be concentrated mainly on the online assessment, feedback and student experience.

Presented by Dr Mohamed Saeudy. Session chaired by Neil Dixon.

As many change management scholars can attest, change is difficult and uncomfortable for people, and it often ends in failure (88% of change initiatives fail according to MacPherson, 2017). I was failing in moving through the five stages of Rogers’ (2003) adoption of an innovation: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation in this 1 year long technology adoption journey. Then the ‘big bang’ of adoption happened. When COVID-19 hit the UK, a solid groundwork had been laid: I had the systems (a network of 6 champions), the means (a team space), and the skills (knowledge of the functionalities). The Champions Programme shifted and all theories of change management were thrown out of the window together with the stages in the diffusion of innovations. It was the ‘burning platform’, and a whole institution was forced to jump into the freezing water. In this session I explain the roadmap of the University of Liverpool Microsoft Teams Champions Programme, and elaborate on the ways this technology adoption strategy empowered a whole institution to implement Microsoft Teams for teaching and learning in times of great challenge.

The University of London, with over 48,000 students in 190 countries on 120+ programmes, is moving our 110,000 traditional pen and paper exams online this summer. This session will explore some of the challenges including: access, student experience, assessment approaches, regulation changes, assessment offences, proctoring and coordination in the time of lock down.

Presented by Linda Amrane-Cooper. Session chaired by Uwe Richter.

We will demonstrate the problems have having Multiple-choice Question in an exam that has a fixed pass mark. For instance, if all your questions have 4 options and the pass mark is 40%, students only need to know 20% of the exam content to pass. We also look at the even bigger problem of having multiple-answer question where you can select more then one answer and you get points for each option you get correct. We look at several possible solutions to these problems. At the end in a discussion we will gauge what the situation is at the instructions of delegates.

Presented by Greg Sutton. Session chaired by Jennie Dettmer.

The University of Bedfordshire is accredited to award Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AdvanceHE), which we do through completion of a PebblePad portfolio and a presentation to a panel, 4 times a year. Due to the current lockdown we were unable to hold the panel as planned in March; but all of our candidates were keen to proceed with their applications so we had to think of an alternative means of holding the panels. This presentation will describe how we did that, and will reflect on the process and our thoughts for future development.

Presented by Averil Robertson. Session chaired by Uwe Richter.

The current COVID lockdown has forced us to review our delivery and practice across a number of subject disciplines. In the school of History and Heritage at the University of Lincoln, we wanted to ensure we were maintaining the community aspect of our courses , whilst ensuring we created an accessible, inclusive, and open environment for collaboration around the resources used in teaching, when shifting to online. Over the past 18months, the University of Lincoln has been expanding its use of Talis Elevate into new disciplines. The COVID lockdown resulted in a rapid expansion of use of Talis Elevate in the school, as it enabled us to maintain the collaborative nature of resource engagement. In this session, we will detail our rationale, pedagogic underpinning, and approach to getting staff onboarded, trained, and comfortable using Talis Elevate to grow the active reading approach with an online focus.

Presented by Jamie Wood, with contribution from Matt East (Talis). Session chaired by Rob Howe.

Vevox is a technology supplier to many ALT members providing live polling, Q&A and surveys to engage students, facilitate discussion and measure understanding, but in April 2020 lectures stopped so usage dropped, uptake dropped, priorities changed, and customers weren't at the end of the phone anymore. Our reaction to Covid-19 has been aimed at being supportive, extending use of the platform and being proactive by anticipating what people will need from us in this new phase of teaching and learning. We'd like to share how we've seen the change happen, and what Educators (and business users) have achieved using Vevox alongside video conferencing and lecture capture systems. How have they done it? What did they do? Using what other systems? What did the students think? Was it all that different to a F2F lecture?

Presented by Amie Fletcher. Session chaired by Rob Howe.