 Good afternoon and welcome to this session of Pivots and Pirouettes, a Digital Transformation Case Study in Dance and I'd like to welcome Viva Adamonita, Sarah Baker, Anna Ball and Alex Spears to present to you. Alex over to you. Thank you Roger. Good afternoon everyone, welcome to this presentation and I guess I'm really pleased to kind of like ask you to be here to join us for a wee jig, a wee sashay through a little transformation case study and as you can probably tell the theme is dance so by way of a little icebreaker an introduction what I'd like you to do is share some of your favorite dance moves or dance steps in the chat if you've been mind doing that just now and obviously I know you can I can tell that you're all waiting to find out what mines is obviously I'm kind of the greatest break dancer in the world but yeah please do join in. Okay this man some of you might recognize a couple of years ago he was my boss and this is Sir Paul McCartney who makes you work eight days a week but seriously he is the head alongside Mark Featherstone-Whitty of an organization that I previously worked at called the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and this was set up over 20 years ago to support the development and sustained deployment of artistic practices so that's dance, music, sound engineering, theatre performance and a whole host of others and it's a small perfectly kind of like run organization with 900 students and around 120 teaching staff but the key thing to say about this is that it's probably recognises of being a very traditional skill of performing arts so technology while really important in certain areas as music and sound design was not necessarily being utilised to its fullest extent in teaching and learning so around about 2017 they recognised this and put in for some Hefke Catalyst funding to support the development of LIPA 2022 and that project basically was to develop the teaching environment and that wasn't just the teaching environment within the physical space but also the digital space and that is where I come into this story so three years ago the advertised for a digital technology enhanced learning manager applied for the role because basically I was walking into a space that had a blank canvas and as many of you will know as learning technologists you rarely get that opportunity to step into an organisation and really mould and design how teaching and learning can be done with current systems but also bringing in brand new systems as well and that that was really exciting for me it was a great opportunity to help utilise some of my experience which had kind of like come around over the past 15 years to really develop what they had now I'm not saying that they necessarily didn't have any kind of like technology they did they had a Moodle set up which had been there for around about 12 years but it was quite unloved certain disciplines within the organisation didn't even use it and so there was very much an opportunity to build upon its use for students and for staff okay so how do we go about this well um I think it was Diana Laurelard said that people are the kind of the central part of what technology transformation is all about and for me I completely and I to agree with that and so technology always begins with a conversation so as soon as I started working at this organisation I interviewed all of the teaching staff the heads of departments and also surveyed the students and support staff about what the expectations of technology were in teaching but also their current experience as well and that led to me developing a plan it backed up by the wonderful Neil Morris's resource here so basically changing the learning landscape this isn't a crucial part of how developed and changed what was going on so we built up an evidence we kind of developed a vision and then implemented it and we'll talk a little bit more about that in detail next you can see from this we developed the Moodle set up as so as I said previously being unloved and wasn't actually working in a very effective way we made sure that it was restructured reskinned all teaching staff were actually taught how to use it effectively as well as using term in effectively as well and we looked at ways that we could make it more accessible by using some of the features within it but also with a half an eye on the current changes in the legislation and we also kind of like brought in obviously 65 features and we recognised that in the structure and setup that we had at the moment our teaching staff and their students were missing a trick in terms of enhancing their digital skills and their employability skills and that was central to the mission of Lippa so we introduced LinkedIn learning to bolster and enhance that and finally we also introduced something which I would have expected to have seen there and but wasn't there was a digital video streaming storage and recording platform and the platform that we chose was Pinopto and we're just going to have a little presentation from a colleague Anna about her use of Pinopto in the desk department. Thank you Alex so I've been teaching classical ballet technique since 2005 after finishing my professional ballet career with the Hamburg Ballet I've been at Lippa since 2007 delivering ballet technique to level three four and five students on our foundation certificate program and our BA programs the physical demands on the body are great and I'm still required to demonstrate a good proportion of classwork to especially for students who have never done classical ballet technique before so I often wondered if using technology in the form of pre-recorded material as in demonstrations of me performing the steps could this save time and repetition on a personal level but could it enhance student learning so to put this into context of traditional ballet class has three sections we have a bar which is static practice center practice which is static and traveling and jumps which are also static and traveling and generally in classes we normally spend more time at the bar because that's where we perfect all the moves that we then need later on in the classwork I will hold my hands up now and admit that I avoided using technology in all of my classes because I felt that it was very time-consuming and at the time of overall little benefit to the students so I started to complete my PG cert in October 2019 and part of the course was an action research project so with the reluctance my own reluctance of using technology in classes and my worry of always being able to physically demonstrate steps my AR topic was born and that became how the use of technology as a tool could enhance teaching and learning I was really intrigued as to whether it would be helpful for students to have access to a catalogue of steps 24 hours a day if they so wished embarrassingly when Alex interviewed me and one of his first questions was how much tail do you use Anna in your classes I was honest and open and said very little actually none so the project could technology enhance learning really I wanted it to look at could it save time within a normal dance class and how would the students respond to this method of learning so to begin with I made sure that all students had access to a phone and iPad a tablet so that no one was disadvantaged and participation in this project was voluntary and it was made available to the 78 students that we had over those three-year groups so I decided I would pick four or five steps that focused in the latter section of class of the Allegro work which is the area that we have little time for on a day-to-day basis to be filmed and made available to students using Pinotto so we decided that we would film the steps early February which Viva did very kindly for me and we would make them available during their directed learning week in mid-February of 2020 students were made aware that the steps will be reviewed upon returning to the class the following week and they were also able to upload footage of themselves performing the steps for feedback in this initial stage one-to-one written feedback was provided to all students I was not expecting that 78 percent of our original 78 students would upload videos for feedback so that was very time intensive for me and the view was that we would also repeat the process a couple of weeks later adding more vocabulary to enhance their the students learning learning further so Alex the next slide please which is for Viva thanks Anna hi my name is Viva and I provided tell support to Anna's project so Alex and I were very excited about Anna's project and were keen to support it as we saw its potential and once I knew what Anna was after we did two rounds of filming the steps I filmed eight videos in February and then nine more steps videos in March immediately after the first round of filming we arranged sessions with students to train them in using ponocto mobile app we met the groups face to face and asked them to download ponocto app login and record a short test video which they had to upload to the practice assignment folder in ponocto this was an incredibly useful experience which ensure ensured that all students knew how to use ponocto video editing was laborious and took three rounds of consultation with Anna initial round was to check for accuracy in instruction second round was to check accuracy in introductory slides and third route to check and correct subtitles subtitling was very time consuming especially due to french bali terminology for students who would be viewing the instructional videos on their mobile devices we ensured that first slide containing instructions was accessible and so I built it in as ponocto quiz question because the text size would adjust based on the device screen size once the videos were ready I embedded them to the module space in the Moodle VLE hoping to drive student engagement with the virtual learning environment meanwhile lockdown was fast approaching I put together the second round of instructional videos on Friday just before we were told to work and study from home and due to lack of time unfortunately some corners had to be cut and we were unable to sort out the captions in time but we made sure that the videos were there for students to use in their home practice I'm going to pass the mic back to Anna who will tell you about her findings and results so here you can see on the far right this is a screenshot of me in action and so it was really important that I broke the step down as I would do in a normal class and not just deliver the step in real time so I asked Fiverr kindly to film from different angles so that the students could get the most benefit from almost like a 360 angle of what my body was doing in space so in terms of the actual project the survey that I launched was completed by 36 participants which was a relatively high response rate Anna was pleased with and no one found Penocto difficult to access the lowest score of 6 out of 10 having only two responses the majority 33.33% ranked the accessibility of Penocto as 9 out of 10 the quantitative data in the middle image shows the frequency of how often the steps were accessed before they uploaded their final attempt of the video for feedback and it's interesting to note that 94% of participants found that after observing their videos between one to seven times they felt confident enough to attempt the step and film themselves to receive feedback. Following on from this the following question was when reviewing the steps in class how confident did you feel performing these steps 22% answered very confident 64% answered confident and 19% answered fairly confident it would have been really good for me to ask as a comparison for them to monitor how confident they felt performing the steps in a normal class setting but time was a constraint at this point when asked how did you find this way of learning steps as Alex has very kindly moved the slide on you can see some of the feedback of the responses I received on my survey so whilst initially the project was launched pre-COVID it became essential to use this going forwards not only in terms of progressing the students learning but also to keep them engaged during lockdown periods not all classes became practical online classes and it became evidence that space was a massive issue for our students at home practice could only become static as we were unsure of the suitability of flooring however with the vocabulary in a central unit which students could then access in their own time they were able to continue to learn and progress as we would have liked them to in the studio with us thank you so when COVID-19 hit in March of 2020 we were faced with some challenges our first priority was the safety of our students and staff and our second priority was delivering the curriculum and ensuring the advancement and development of our students we were very lucky in March of 2020 as most of our regular class teaching had finished and we were about to go into our performance term so we converted our live performances to online projects which was not ideal but it worked and our students developed appropriately through these projects our students are predominantly kinesthetic learners as are our teaching staff having been professional dancers themselves which has been part of our resistance towards technology enhanced learning it's not that we don't like it it's just that we are more physical beings we've made various attempts to include more of it in the learning in the teaching and learning of our students but it has been tricky Alex you can move the slide please the one of the one of the things that is probably the trickiest and has been the trickiest for us as dance teachers over the past year and a half has been the fact that our probably our best fastest way of correcting and helping our students is by making hands on corrections which is obviously a very odd thing in higher education to touch your students but it is unbelievably fundamental to what we do and how we work with our students and over the summer of 2020 this was a massive learning curve for us because we knew we weren't going to have that ability and we had to find the best most effective way of teaching and advancing the curriculum without having that as a tool so we had a meeting we came up with a plan which involved hybrid learning but we had no idea if it was going to work we were very fortunate that Lipa got behind us they put over the summer massive television screens up on the walls in the dance studios a very good camera a computer and then they fitted mics for us as well because our studios are quite large and so the sound wasn't fantastic so we moved into hybrid teaching we had to split our groups into two fixed groups so each year group was split into two but we didn't have the time in the timetable or could sacrifice the time with the students to be delivering every single class twice so for ballet we were very fortunate because for level four for first year Anna and I team teach at level five Anna team teaches for the first term with Andrew Hall who's one of our other lecturers and so we were able to have Anna would be in the studio with a group of students I would be online with the other students the other half of the group that would be at home dancing as much as they could in the space as it was safe so ballet bar was usually fine they could find the space to do that and then when it came to the more center practice work they would sit down take notes watch we would engage them in conversation whoever was working with them online during that class so it was all happening live and then the next day the classes would swap and the students that had been at home would be in the studio with the teacher and then the other half would be online and this worked thankfully it allowed us to get through what we needed to get through from September till December and it was very very helpful coming down to January the lockdown we chose to move ballet to almost completely asynchronous learning they would have one class a week live with Anna that they would mostly a ballet bar and some other things that they could do safely in in their own homes and the rest of it we did thankfully because of Anna's action research we were able to implement this on a much larger scale so we felt that it was better for the students mental health and well-being it was better for all involved including the staff because of zoom fatigue there were certain classes that didn't suit asynchronous learning at that time so the students were having zoom classes and certain subjects but for ballet we decided to do this and thankfully it worked remarkably well Anna created to her library of steps the students learned them they would film them they'd be able to do that in their own time and then Anna and I would watch them and then we would give a feedback session with everybody in attendance on a team's meeting and so the students would be able to hear all the feedback for everyone and general feedback about what they needed to do to advance and we actually covered more petit a leg row jumping steps than we have in the past so last slide Alex yeah we got about one minute left please thank you thank you in terms of what's next we're still deciding how to safely approach teaching this year but we will definitely be using the already recorded petit a leg row steps for teaching because it did help us and the feedback from the students was really positive and students who are new to ballet especially first years have already said in their tutorials with their lecturers I'm going to review those steps over the summer so it's it's a library of information for the students and so we will be building on that regardless of what we are allowed to do into into September and this year so thank you so much thank you very much there we've got time for one very quick question from I'm not sure the name have you looked other methods of displaying dance moves and positions outside of video I'm not sure what they might be pitchers can help but the students can still their videos I think we've tried doing classes live but it is tricky to get good cameras the clarity of image is really important for the students to see as well but I'm not I'm not sure if there are any other things that somebody is considering other than pre-recorded video okay I'm afraid we've run out of time thank you for a fantastic session we can continue the conversations over on discord if there's further questions people want to pick up with you so please can I just have a virtual round of applause for Sarah Anna Alex and Viva thank you very much thank you thanks everyone thank you