Last week, after misreading an email from the excellent Terry McAndrew (@TerryTechdis) at the HEA/JISC, I accidentally produced a short interim report on the wrong project! In the spirit of not wasting what I’d written, it’s reproduced in part here:
Basically, all of the formal teaching elements using Xerte are completed now. Some of the student work is still to be assessed and we’re about half-way through running the evaluations (mainly via online surveys with students and short questionnaires with staff). There’s going to be loads of data, in addition to the actual Xerte objects themselves which we are hoping to write up into at least one paper, possibly more. I submitted a brief case study on the MDH project to the HEA’s Flexible Pedagogies project (http://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/2014/01/22/2-case-studies-submitted-to-the-heas-flexible-pedagogies-project/). There’s also the website/blog, which has updates on the project and other digital history things at Lincoln (http://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/). The website is in the process of development but contains a lot of information about the project. Some key points: we are aiming to publish all of the student Xerte objects (between 50 and 60, I think; we just published the first one here: http://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/learning-design/xerte-guidance-and-faq/xerte-gallery-by-students/), with the permission of the students and every member of staff who has used it is planning to use it again next year (there are also the 9 staff-produced Xerte objects: http://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/learning-design/xerte-guidance-and-faq/xerte-gallery/). No one experienced any total meltdowns in terms of the technology or students refusing to engage with it. On two of the modules concerned, students were given a choice of a Xerte assignment or something more traditional and on both modules about 10-15% of the students chose Xerte. In terms of future developments, we’ve secured some funding from within the institution to spread the word (http://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/projects/xerte-talking-students-producing-interactive-learning-resources/).
And here’s the couple of slides I made too, for good measure.