'Digital Badges: Signposting learning'. Presenter: John Parkinson (Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement).
To read the abstract which was submitted prior to the conference please click here.Digital badges are becoming an increasingly popular tool to award skills, knowledge and achievements of students within the educational setting. During this presentation, John talked about the use of digital badges in the higher education context, specifically in relation to projects undertaken at Middlesex University. Participants learned about the process from designing and creating a badge through to storing and sharing it with others.
Example of nursing module was presented illustrating how use of badges was planned and implemented including design stage and integration with My Learning platform. Detailed information was provided on how My Learning platform allows to easily embed and award badges to students. He explained the requirements and common software to create a digital badge as well. John also talked about how digital badges can be stored within the ‘digital backpack’ tool and shared with potential employers using social media such as Linkedin, Facebook etc. There was a lot of interest and discussion within the room on how badges could be used by other colleagues and possible requirements and challenges that such an initiative brings.
'A learning journal with a difference: The behaviour journal supporting understanding of and increasing informed behaviour management by trainee teachers'. Presenter: Dr. Sonia Burnard (Forest Independent Primary Collegiate).
To read the abstract which was submitted prior to the conference please click here.In this presentation Dr. Sonia Burnard took us through her journey of using behaviour journals to enhance learning and reflection of trainee teachers. She argued that using traditional, hand written, journals focused on behaviour helps analyse how people behave in different situations and think about the implication of different types of behaviour on others. It stimulated reflection about own behaviour in the past and in current situations as well as the behaviour of people around. This applied to educational setting helps the trainee teachers see different types of behaviours children may demonstrate and approaches that can be taken to either tackle bad behaviour or reward good behaviour. The emphasis was placed on the fact that when writing a journal in a traditional hand written form, the author spends more time on reflection and thinking as compared to using a keyboard. Examples of journals were shown to the audience to demonstrate the impact of this initiative. Sonia also talked us through the students feedback and how they feel about using this form of assessment stressing that the initial response was usually negative. This however changed after completing the process the response was very positive and students felt that they’ve learned a lot about behaviour.