 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for one of the final sessions of Alt-C 2022. I'm joined by Sharon McClemmons from Ulster University and Sharon is going to be telling us a bit about a project she worked on supporting an inclusive learning environment using Microsoft Teams and YouTube. There will be some time at the end of this session for a Q&A so if you have any comments or questions for Sharon please do pop them in the chat but other than that I'm going to hand over to Sharon for use of learning technology to support an inclusive learning environment for a diverse MSc student community. Caroline thank you very much for the introduction. I realise now my type is quite a mouthful. You're right I work at Ulster University as an academic there and had the same challenges and issues as all of the presenters that I've listened to today but I'm going to give you a short talk on one of the key issues that I had and in essence then I developed a presentation. I developed a number of different strategies that has now developed into this presentation and you'll see later on in my presentation some of the opportunities that these interventions have actually delivered for Ulster for our students and of course enhanced that student experience. So the big grand title again is the use of learning technology to support an inclusive learning environment for a diverse MSc student community so I could break that down a wee bit for you. We have all got well used and apt at using learning technology to enhance our teaching and in some cases during the 2020 lockdown to replace our face-to-face teaching but I'd never considered it as a tool to provide an inclusive learning environment. I still think I suppose it was tacked on to enhance the learning but not to create this inclusive inclusive environment. I'm delighted with results and delighted that I can share that with you. The second part of the word in the presentation is the word diverse. MSc students do tend to come from a very diverse background, race, ethnicity, age but also their degree background which is very unlike our undergraduate students who tend to come with this particular Korean mind so you have a very similar cohort. When you get to MSc you have a very diverse cohort and very different needs and support mechanisms are necessary. So that's the rationale if you like behind the big grand title. So in essence what are we going to hear about in this presentation and maybe take away. I'm really hoping at the end of this presentation I will have demonstrated my use of learning technologies specifically MS teams and YouTube to support a diverse community of students. These students felt very isolated and felt very anxious and I'll expand on that in the next few slides. I'm also hoping by the end of this presentation you will have got a message I suppose from this presentation that I was successfully used to learning technologies to deliver student learning in an inclusive way that was supportive and the net result then the bottom line is that these learning technologies these interventions using learning technology specifically realize positive benefits for the students and enhance their overall learning experience. So there are the two big things I used learning technology specifically MS teams and YouTube to support students which was more than just to deliver teaching learning and assessment to support them and secondly it worked and there were a lot of benefits that I will allude to but actually I'll show off later on. So set in the same in 2021-2022 I was responsible for delivering face-to-face teaching on MSc construction management. Like all institutions globally we battled with do we continue face-to-face do we try and do online and the feeling was from the entire community of learners that they would like back in the classroom and one of the reasons they would like back in the classroom is to have that peer interaction. So one of the modules that I delivered was to 23 students the vast majority of those students were international students and seven were home students. So this was a second semester so the first semester a lot of our stuff was still kind of online we weren't really sure where we were going with the vaccinations and COVID but by the second semester we kind of were going to take our chances we want it back into the classroom but nonetheless employers all around were ensuring that safety was paramount. So therefore there were a lot of mitigations in place for us to be able to deliver face-to-face teaching. These mitigations included, and I'm sure yous are all aware of, face masks, social distance, limitations to group interactions and because these students were from international students of vast majority of them and very different and diverse backgrounds even the home students they didn't have that peer that contact that friend that guy that they knew from home that girl that was in their class for a few years during A levels or whatever as an undergraduate would tend to have they really knew nobody and we couldn't do that social interaction because they were the current regulations. It was very evident after my first face-to-face class with this group of students I just wasn't getting the vibe from them I wasn't sure was it me I just I didn't understand we had been teaching in this sort of environment now for six months but there was something very different and there was a girl at the back of the class and she very bravely said I just feeling numb I don't know who to turn to and I just I didn't know where to look where to turn hard to help her and I started to look around the class and they were all in recognition yeah I'm a bit lost I'm kind of on my own I'm isolated but above all I'm really nervous and I'm really anxious so I started to do a bit of research about these feelings of isolation and being anxious and of course as an academic car that was going to impact on student performance or go the student experience and I found lots and lots and lots of literature about it loneliness here and one of the definitions that I'm using is very simply but sadly a situation where a person experience a subjective deficiency of social relationships and that was exactly what the student at the back of the room felt she felt isolated she felt alone and she didn't know where to turn to make these social relationships I was supported by my institution who recognizes that loneliness can be and is as I found a significant barrier to learning and advocating that students themselves should be entitled to an inclusive and supportive learning environment so I was made aware of an issue in the room that I hadn't thought of before I started to research about the impact of loneliness in the classroom which had never occurred to me before and find it really was that simple they do need peer support we all need those social interactions and I didn't realize that they weren't happening naturally even with the covid barriers in place I just thought somehow they still met up and had coffee but that wasn't happening and I also was very aware that I was with an institution that recognized this as a barrier and provided lots of help and support and advice so what did I do about it I decided I had to act upon that I had to reduce anxiety and isolation so I couldn't break the law I couldn't have them gathering around a table and masks off and windows closed and less than one meter social distance I couldn't do that so we were all compliant with the regulations and making sure that everybody felt safe from covid so I had to turn to learning technologies and it was suggested to me that I could set up or establish a microsoft team module support area now teams has become the bane of a lot of our lives I have another team meeting I have another team meeting and that's my interaction to that point with microsoft teams but teams was then demonstrated to me to be a much more supportive tool a much more engaging tool and it's not just a meeting tool there is a support area to it and that support area could facilitate that virtual peer interaction and support and thereby reduce the anxiety making the learning experience much more open inclusive but fundamentally welcoming if you feel part of the group you're going to contribute to that group and that in itself is going to enhance your experience it was suggested that to reduce isolation and anxiety that cooperative learning working alongside somebody talking listening can help reduce loneliness just having that person to turn to so I had high hopes that the use of learning technologies very specifically microsoft teams would be used within the module support area to overcome the current covid mitigation barriers I the laws of the UK and of course of the employer but at the same time provide the least restrictive environment where students could have some form of peer interaction so off I went and got some training and our best I could use teams to support peer support so very quickly after that meeting within a few days probably a week I then established a group of 10 spaces so I created 10 teams group one group two group three and within each of those teams I had either two or three students within that space where they could join up and they had that interaction and it was filled within probably within an hour I did it in one of the classes okay he wants being grip one hands up and I typed in the name who wants to join the group one another hand went up grand group two who wants to be in group two typed in the name signed them into the group who wants to be in group three got them all onto their phones so that they could then see each of their group ones and they then had a student appear more importantly that they could turn to so to try and I suppose break the ice okay who's going to go first who's going to talk within this peer space that I had created in teams I started to facilitate some of this information so one of the first things I did was I posted the assessment detail into each of the groups hi guys we're here for a reason not just a chat we actually need to pass this module here's what the assessment is about here's what I'm looking for here's some of these deadline to need to be thinking about what's troubling you at the moment and I kind of then test the water a bit with them and I wait it for those peer interactions to happen and they did and they happened a quite quick guy I don't know if my intervention was useful or necessary I think looking back on it maybe one of the things I would do would be facilitate it but then possibly remove myself from that group so that they didn't have that big brother scenario as well where they thought I was dipping in and dipping out but what did become apparent in these interactions was a lack of understanding of the assessment and this was another one of these barriers so what I presented and talked about was that peer barrier that they had they couldn't nudge up beside somebody and say my name is what do you think of the class because of the restrictions but it also was the same for me we had a line at the top of the classroom students weren't allowed to come up near that line and we do mean a physical line and that was our one meter or two meter barrier to prevent covid so they also didn't have the same interaction with me and you know farm work it said in that chance conversation that conversation walking out of that classroom that two minute conversation at the break where understanding just clicks where you have that freedom to ask the questions and it's not in a formal email so it became very obvious with the students interactions I suppose more importantly the tangents that they were going off to answer this assessment that there was a problem with the context of the assessment so at MS level it is a case study problem based scenario you need to have some background knowledge of the context then the case studies presented and it's up to you to come out with this innovative and creative solution so I got to look at this and I started to drill down well what is it that you don't understand about the assessment specifically this background this context and then I realized that the students were mostly in this module were mostly from very different backgrounds and I don't mean cultures I do mean disciplines we had students from business we had students from engineering we had students from design we had students from teaching degrees we had students from agricultural degrees everything within that room so again what would have probably would have happened is we would have brought in a number of different guest lectures we might have done site visits case studies but none of those were opportunities that I could take under those particular circumstances of cohort so again I turned to technology and of course I'm looking at the age of the students too and I'm thinking what they don't want is another powerpoint what they don't want is another click in this link so I work with the student to try and capture the essence of the assessment the whole backdrop the rationale the background that I just hope that they would have picked up but they didn't because they weren't having these interactions outside of the classroom they weren't getting into the community they weren't walking around Belfast because nobody was walking around Belfast so they weren't picking up the people in the place what was going on so we used then YouTube and we produced a YouTube video probably about three minutes long and hey you want to study this module here's what it's about and what it mostly captured was big bold images of Belfast big images of current projects and big images of students working around these particular projects and that kind of then provided them the backdrop and the context for the assessment that they had been missing because again of those restrictions in the real world so I was delighted to have had the opportunity to work with a bunch of students I was delighted that I had a kind of bunch of students that were just kind of fed up and on the periphery and had we're brave enough to say no we need to try something here so delighted delighted that they've given us the opportunity to use various different technologies to enhance their and support their learning so what was the impact using technology to create student learning spaces provide most definitely an inclusive learning environment it paired up students and they did talk they did have peer support and it did go some way to mitigate student loneliness and isolation the technologies used both MS teams and YouTube helped to create that sense of belonging this was something new we're going to start to engage in this she's gone above and beyond to try and make us think welcome even the right act of me trying to bring along these students into groups into MS teams develop in the YouTube video all help create that we wanted to be there we wanted them to be there I wanted them to succeed and all of that feedback then started to decrease the students anxiety the impact was very positive students themselves were very successful in so far that they passed and achieved very high grades now in contrast with the year before the grip just struggled it was mostly on in fact it was all online I had a very high fail rate within the module there was nothing different in the in the content of the module or the contacts of the module the key difference there was nothing different either in the intake for the students there's roughly about 27 students again high proportion international but I believe that aside they were all from very very diverse disciplines and they didn't do so well and it wasn't a success story and had lots and lots and lots of assessments to repeat with these students which was very difficult and very hard so I know it wasn't exactly the same like for like but everybody passed everybody passed on this module and the pass rate was exceptional absolutely exceptional so not only did the pass which was a stark contrast from the previous year they also achieved high grades so to take the first comment about the students passed well it obviously enhanced their learning there was no doubt about that because they had now passed they had engaged and that would have increased their student experience is a good one achieving high grades means there was just more than get this across the line to get that over 70 to get that really good score in an assessment at this level required some dedication and some input it required a lot more from the student to personally get that grade above 70 so that showed me that I had invested in them I'd shown them that I had invested them but trying to do the whole peer interaction and YouTube video and set the scene for them because they couldn't do that naturally and they could see that and they started to invest in themselves and the results that they produced were just fantastic so I've mentioned there was a significant improvement on the previous year performance additionally the students confidence increased and because of their engagement with peers it was enjoyable to go into the classroom I had COVID mitigation measures throughout the whole of semester two maybe different institutions were different but we still have one meter social distancing masks on doors open but the crack if you like was really enhanced in that classroom and you could tell that they were much more relaxed they had a friend there were separate conversations going on across the room it was just a much more enjoyable and engaging experience for us all in the room and the final test on the fact blown away the students in that module then nominated us for a student union award we were nipped at the post but we were beyond delighted to have been nominated for an Ulster University student union award here I have an example of what's not an example here I have exactly what I posted or what I created within Microsoft teams so you can see there that I have created the number of different groups right on through I of course had administration rights and I've alluded to that being like a big brother but it was more than that it was kind of getting the conversation starting posting some information and kind of getting into students go I see you too and are talking about such and such in relation to the assignment that's really good keep going with that could I further recommend or if I thought they were going off tangent do you know that's great that you're talking about it but maybe you want to bring it in and all of that I suppose was very effective in the students engage in and enjoying it so there was many different things we post up and then too I was getting students then posting information up so if you were in a particular group no one could join that group other than the two members that were in it and I had administration rights so nobody could dip in dip out I never had an issue ago he isn't talking to me in this group or she hasn't talked to me or could I change I suppose that's just the maturity so it's very simple to set up and I hadn't set up that it didn't ping every day but I would have had it ping and maybe it was three times a week I would have went in and updated it and obviously there was a flurry towards assessment time as well and of course there was an audit trail then of any information I then started to roll it out for a number of different areas that I would deliver teaching on so you can see there I started to create all of these different tiles and started to roll that out because I was just so confident this was great students are loving it everybody's interacting so this is something I would very very very much like to keep I know we're going back mostly to face-to-face teaching but I thought that this was really really worthwhile and I have created it now for semester one for new teaching here is a bit of a snapshot of some of the information that was kind of being posted just some of the conversations that were kind of happening I was very quick at the beginning to say you know this isn't about how are you getting on in your accommodation did you go to such and such a restaurant can't wait to the bars open it was not a social social platform but I very much from the beginning said the assessment how are you getting on are you eating into the work limit have you gone to the library so I very matured that within each of the groups that the focus was very much within the assignment and it wasn't moving into areas that it shouldn't be moving into that's their whatsapp that they can use so upon reflection you've heard me already mentioned that it was a success and you've seen already the times that I have created for the other modules and programs that I deliver learning to so personally what did I get out of it upon reflection the pandemic had forced me and everybody to use technology to deliver and as I've already mentioned and for a long time to replace that face-to-face teaching it is now an essential tool when we're working through timetables and we're looking for classrooms and spaces we're also considering but where's my time whenever I just log on with my students and that's now been built or online or virtual time it just seems essential I was very much surprised how effective technology can be used for just anxiety it was a lovely opportunity that was presented to me and I'm delighted I was able to do something about that but also to get into that area that anxiety isn't just about how am I getting on anxiety is just about feeling lost and feeling alone not about how good I am and the only way to overcome that isn't more coursework and feedback is having those interactions so using technology to support inclusive education has become considerable but largely unused potential so I'm delighted to have this opportunity to tell anybody that's listening today I'm going to say this but I'm not a hundred percent sure I am much more confident in my use and rationale rationale of adopting technology to create these inclusive environments to support a very diverse student community as you see I'm going to roll that out in the next academic year it also gave me an idea when I looked at that loneliness and isolation and that diverse community they started to look around the university to see what other support mechanisms were available not just for international students but for MSc students generally you know students that have done as I said an account degree and they're now coming in to do this construction masters with us in some cases there are similarities but on the whole very very very different so I started to look around me I didn't see an awful lot going on in one place seeing lots going on all over the place lots of different best practice so I've decided to apply for a funding opportunity it's gone I don't know the result to start to gather information on all of these best practices so that I can then deliver and develop a model of best practice to support our student community at Ulster University so that is a wee bit there about the funding opportunity I'm really hoping I get that if anybody's listening I hope I get this funding for it on the back of that we also found that students said you know what now that we've got you talking and interacting with and valuing us as a student and acknowledging us as a student you know we aren't really sure where we're going to find work are we going to promote our CVs because the world is still a wee bit lockdown so I was able to create you can see a very socially distanced post-grad industry mentoring event and I had some folk from industry come in and talked to our MSc students and three out of the 23 students got jobs within a week or two after that event so again that was something else realized gosh you know spend a lot of time working on our placement students and our undergraduates whenever they graduate to get graduate employability but our master's students were entering a very different environment as well and the support wasn't there so it was great I was able to do something that's just a wee bit more information about the yeah there's a wee bit more information about the application and I'm conscious of time in case anybody wants to ask me any questions so I'd like to thank you very much for listening I'd like to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk about why we haven't a go at reducing student anxiety in relation to using learning technologies thanks very much thank you for that Sharon that was lovely to hear and I'm sure she didn't agree that they were really lucky not only to have a teacher where they could stay in the classroom that they felt lonely but someone who put in so much effort to trying to resolve that issue for them I'm just checking the chat I can't see any questions specifically but I want to share a nice comment that's coming from Eileen Dawn Alexander nice when cooperative learning can start with a bit of teacher presence to note a springboard for the initial conversation and then to step back the cooperative group to carry on which I think is is exactly what you did and it seemed to work really well for you oh it did it was very enjoyable and yeah I just I don't know why I hadn't considered I just thought if you're anxious it's because you've got an exam coming up I just never reconciled being anxious and lonely or being anxious because you know I didn't realize that and I couldn't believe the information I found out about it so definitely change my thinking and as you've seen I've already set up the MS teams areas moving forward even my first face-to-face tutorial classes would have been hit the ground running this is what we're going to do this is what you need to know it's not it's who are you what do you do do you know the person beside you so I have changed entirely my first few weeks of teaching to try and reduce that anxiety and that loneliness so yeah yeah let's say yeah I've really enjoyed it don't know if that'll work but I'm going to give it a go and it's definitely changed my approach to teaching in the classroom well thank you so much for sharing your story today and there we're getting thanks in the chat as well for that session thank you everybody thank you and that's it for the online sessions for Alt B 2022 for now so thank you very much Sharon and thank you everyone who has joined us today and we'll hopefully see you all at the next one brilliant thanks