At Teesside University, we are committed to building confidence and fluency in staff and working towards Digital Excellence in meaningful and impactful ways by investing time to coach and guide staff in the art of the possible to become recognised as leaders for innovative digital solutions and creation of Education 4.0.
Since the introduction of the Digital Transformation section within SLAR, we have been focused on identifying impactful approaches to building confidence and fluency in staff towards embedding digital teaching excellence that enable teaching practitioners to create outstanding academic learning experiences and develop a best-in-class workforce equipped with the capabilities to deliver cutting-edge Education 4.0 learning experiences in a rapidly changing education and employment context. We will deliver these services in ways that enable flexibility and resilience in our approach, including long-term sustainable practices to learning design through digital solutions.
Digital Transformation: Our Services
The Digital Transformation Team in SLAR are delivering the following services that enable long-term sustainable practices to learning design through digital solutions.
Digital Learning Design bootcamp
A programme of coaching and mentoring in a practical team-based design event leveraging the impactful partnership between the DX team in SLAR inspire and empower innovative learning design solutions, unleash the affordances of digital solutions, transforming their learning and teaching practices using TU’s Principles of Module Design (now developed with Jisc UK Digital Learning Design framework and toolkit)
Adobe bootcamp
We are proud to be the first Adobe Creative Campus in the UK and Europe (link to media release). Teesside University will not only provide access to Adobe’s industry-leading creative and design tools and digital learning resources, it will also benefit from dedicated activities to help staff embed the tools into their curricula. In order to effectively integrate Creative Cloud into the curriculum to help develop the communication, creativity and digital literacy skills that will set students up for success in the workplace and society, we have developed Adobe Labs in partnership with colleagues in Adobe. The aims of Adobe Labs are:
- To facilitate the Adobe Grant through school-led plans to embed creative assessments into course designs.
- To facilitate bespoke interventions for colleagues outside the scope of the Adobe Grant in utilizing Adobe Creative Cloud applications into course designs
DX bespoke coaching and mentoring support
Staff can write to us for individual support and enquiries around digital learning and our learning systems via the elearning@tees.ac.uk central mailbox.
The Digital Delivery: Learning and Support pages
These provide a rich array of resources which can help to empower staff to create innovate digital solutions and creation of Education 4.0. Moving the teaching practices of our staff from digital literacies to digital fluencies. Use the links below to access help and support.
Blackboard VLE for teaching delivery
All staff are enrolled on the ‘Blackboard Ultra Self Study CPD’ organisation in the Organisation area of Blackboard Ultra. This resource will provide you with guidance on using all aspects the VLE effectively for your teaching delivery.
This site will be continually updated and so it is recommended you revisit as often as possible.
Use the links below to access help and support:
- Blackboard for Hybrid Delivery – The content in this section will help you manage the transition towards hybrid delivery. You will find helpful guidance relating to:
- Staff Quick Start Guide to Blackboard Ultra
- Student Quick Start Guide to Blackboard Ultra
- Creating Content in Blackboard Ultra
- Assessments & Tests
- Communication
- Asynchronus (Announcements, Email and Discussion Boards)
Getting started with ReView (Panopto) explains how you can use ReView (Panopto) in Ultra to record videos to share with your students. - Synchronus (Blackboard Collaborate Ultra)
- Asynchronus (Announcements, Email and Discussion Boards)
- Guidance for making alternative online assessment arrangements
- When considering alternative online arrangements for assessment it is important that we keep in mind that the overall aim remains facilitating and capturing student learning through equitable and appropriate methods, aligned to course learning outcomes. When seeking to make such alternative online assessment arrangements we need to ensure we are preparing them in a robust way to ensure the quality and equity of the assessment. These principles should be considered alongside Teesside University’s ‘Considerations and Resources for Digital Platforms and Tools Supporting Alternative Assessments’ resource.
- Think about how you can Plan for Diversity with Universal Design for Learning.
- Digital Empowerment
- Future Facing Learning Digital Development Support
- Apple iPad – User Guide and Apple Teacher Resources – A free professional learning programme designed to support academic colleagues in using Apple tools and software.
- Microsoft Teams Help – The ultimate real-time collaboration and communication application for meetings, file sharing, and even the occasional emoji!
- Online Communication & Collaboration
- Microsoft Teams
- Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
- Online Communication & Collaboration Advice
- Delivering Personal Tutoring Remotely
- StREAM
- Using StREAM – Video Resources
- Virtual Personal Tutor Meetings
- Accessibility Help Guides – A comprehensive set of accessibility guidelines to help you meet accessibility requirements. Guidance covers accessibility features of various tools available to us all and simple techniques we can use to ensure resources are accessible as possible.
- Introduction to Accessibility Legislation
- How to make your PowerPoints accessible
- Making Word Documents Accessible and using the Accessibility Checker
- How to make your PDFs accessible
- Using Adobe Acrobat PDF Text to Speech
- Making Video and Audio Accessible
- Video Captions and Transcripts.
- Making Images Accessible
- Visual Data Diagrams and Charts
- Captions in ReView (Panopto)
- Captions in Microsoft Teams
- Live Captions in Blackboard Collaborate
- Enhancing accessibility within your modules
- TU Online – For colleagues working on the STC Online Learning project with the OL team in Student Learning & Academic Registry