Author: Clara O'Shea

Come one, come all to the MSc in E-Learning’s Dissertation Festival – running all this week!

The Dissertation Festival is being held on our special Festival Island in Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vue%20South/191/58/24

The Festival is a chance for students on the MSc in E-Learning programme to share their thoughts on their dissertation in the lead up to their submission date.  It’s a place for sharing ideas, issues and inspirations with each other.

View and feedback on student work

When you visit our island, you will find four groups of boards – each group relates to one student’s work – a poster capturing some key aspects of their dissertation, a powerpoint presentation that they will give as part of the festival, and a haiku neatly (and poetically!) summarizing their topic.

There is also a board next to each for you to leave comments.  Feedback is greatly welcomed and will help our students refine their ideas as they grapple with the challenge of writing up their research.

Synchronous events

As well as having posters, presentations and haikus on display, we are also holding a few synchronous events.

A champagne viewing of posters and question and answer session with tutors on the end-of-dissertation process.  This a text-based event will be held Monday 8 August at 4pm UK time (8am SLtime).

Two voice-based presentation sessions where students will discuss their dissertations:

Tuesday 9 August 8pm UK time (12noon SLtime)

• Jim Gritton will present on the use of e-learning to develop “soft” leadership skills on MBA and masters-level leadership programmes – ‘To blend, or not to blend, that is the question!’
• Masniza Sore will present on information and study skills.

Thursday 11 August at 8pm UK time (12noon SLtime)

• Andy Miller will present on the attitudes, knowledge and understanding of e-learning by postgraduate Haematologists.
• Jeremy Knox will present on educational research and posthumanism, reviewing the existing literature.

Please remember to:

1.    Update your Second Life viewer prior to any synchronous event

2.    Bring headphones along, if possible, to the voice-based presentations to help cut down on any audio distortions

See you at the Festival!

Clara

Hi all

We have confirmation on times for the synchronous parts of the Dissertation Festival! They are:

Poster viewing and Q&A with tutors on the dissertation
process (text-based):

• Monday 8th August 4pm

Presentation sessions (voice and powerpoints in SL).

• Tuesday 9th August 8pm
  
  • Jim Gritton will present on the use of e-learning to develop “soft” leadership skills on MBA and masters-level leadership programmes – ‘To blend, or not to blend, that is the question!’
  • Masniza Sore will present on information and study skills.
• Thursday 11th August 8pm
  • Andy Miller will present on the attitudes, knowledge and understanding of e-learning by postgraduate Haematologists.
  • Jeremy Knox will present on educational research and posthumanism, reviewing the existing literature.

All times given are UK times.

All events are happening on our fab new island for the Festival – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vue%20South/191/58/24

So – make room in your diary next week! It’s going to be awesome! 🙂

C.

Hi All

I’m sending out a second call for folk who might be interested in participating in the Dissertation Festival (the week of Monday 8 August).

I know for my own dissertation that having a chance to present on it and talk through the ideas with others made a real difference – it gave me new perspectives, helped solidify arguments and brought a clearer structure to my argument.  So, if you are interested or considering it but want to know more – get in touch with me clara.oshea@ed.ac.uk

For those who aren’t at the dissertation stage, but eager to check out what others are doing:

• The Festival will held entirely in Second Life on the week of Monday 8 August. (You can take a quick peek at the building in process at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vue%20South/191/58/24 but we won’t have student posters etc up until the Festival start date.)

• You will be able to pop by Second Life anytime during that week and view posters, presentations and haikus (there’s even a space to leave comments for the authors).

• We’ll have some synchronous events that week including:
  • Monday 8 August at 4pm (UK time): champagne, poster viewing and a q&a session in Second Life with tutors about the dissertation process (including end of dissertation issues for those about to submit).
  • Presentations from current dissertations students – also in Second Life, using a combination of voice and powerpoints, also located in our fab festival space. (Exact dates and times coming soon!)

Thanks to all who have got in touch with me so far – I’m really excited to see how the Festival  goes!

Clara

Hi All

Are you aiming to hand in your dissertation for the 31 August deadline? Do you want a chance to talk through your ideas?  Perhaps see how other people are tackling their dissertations?

Well, we thought it would be fun and useful to throw a dissertation festival.  This is a chance for folk handing in soon (or even mid-way and wanting to get some extra input) to share their ideas, issues and inspirations with each other.

The festival idea is in it’s early stages, but we’re imagining it running throughout the week of Monday 8 August.  Festival events would include:

1.   A poster display in Second Life

Posters are a great way to re-imagine your argument and draw out the key points you might want to drive home in your write up.  There’s also a great way of giving folk a handy overview of your work.

So, we think it would be fun to have posters up of each folk’s work.  They can be as creative or ‘elegantly simple’ as you like!  All you have to worry about is creating a jpeg or pdf or the like, we’ll take care of mounting the posters in SL.

To add to the creative spirit, we’d like to try experimenting with haikus describing your topic (check out  http://dissertationhaiku.wordpress.com/   for some great examples)

2.  Synchronous sessions in Second Life and Wimba

Second Life Champage and Q&A:  We’ll start the festival off  with a champagne gathering among our lovely Second Life posters, along with a question & answer session with some of the MSc team staff about the final stages of the dissertation process (though folk just considering the dissertation are welcome, of course!).

There’ll be a mechanism for folk viewing your posters and haikus to leave feedback.  We’ll also have links from the posters to the synch sessions we’re planning – so the posters will be a handy ‘taster’ for your dissertation presentation.

Wimba dissertation presentations: We’ll then run a few sessions in Wimba.  Each session will last about an hour and include 2-3 student presentations (10 minutes of presentation, 10 minutes of discussion).  The presentations will be grouped according to topics.  Again, any students, staff or other interested parties will be welcome to attend and the events would be advertised via the Hub and student email list.

So, do you want to join in?

If you’re about to hand in, or even part-way through and wanting to take advantage of this opportunity, do get in touch with me.   (clara.oshea@ed.ac.uk)

Let me know your topic, your availability for synch sessions (i.e. preferred UK times and days), and if you are up for creating a poster and haiku.

Also – let me know if you have any other bright ideas for what we could do with the festival idea.

For those who aren’t in the throws of the dissertation – I’ll be emailing/hubbing out closer to the date with dates, times, venues and topics.  Do come along – you’ll get fab insights into the dissertation process, inspiration for your own dissertation and I’ve no doubt you’ll have handy insights for folk tackling this all important part of the MSc.

Cheerio

Clara

This project is part of research being conducted by two of our MSc graduates (Karen McKenzie and Tim Fawns) and myself.  We’d really appreciate your involvement.

Assault Cycle Quandary Research

You are invited to participate in our project which is looking at the effect that a short online learning activity has on knowledge of and confidence in managing aggression.

The project will involve three things: completing a short questionnaire, working your way through the online activity and finally completing a further short questionnaire. The questionnaires take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete and you can spend as much or as little time as you like working through the learning activity. It will be assumed that you consent to participate if you undertake the questionnaires, although you can exit at any time. All your answers are completely anonymous. You will be asked to provide a code to allow us to match your questionnaires, but only you will know what this code is. The project has been through the ethics process at the University of Edinburgh. There are no identifiable risks to you in undertaking this survey.

If you have any questions about the project or would like a copy of the results, please contact Karen McKenzie at kmckenzi@staffmail.ed.ac.uk

Thank you.

_____________________________________________________

The following links will open in a new window.

Stage 1: To access the first questionnaire, please click on the following link:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q95P877

Stage 2: To access the online learning activity, please click on the following link:  http://www.gcmrecords.co.uk/quandary/assault_latest/assault_cycle_quandary.htm

Stage 3: To access the second questionnaire, please click on the following link:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NBYMKKF