Robots, VR and social media

Quick round up of the rest of the day at Digifest. A very packed session from Eric Stoller on the use of social media in education. Lots of interaction, and discussion about how social media can be used to enhance various aspects of the educational experience. These include student engagement, employability (interesting discussion about how we should be encouraging students to build up profiles and endorsements on sites like LinkedIn), critical thinking and Alumni engagement.

Favourite quote of this session- "Social media takes time to learn. We haven't got the hang of email yet."

Then there was a session about engagement with students, and a progress report of the JISC digital student initiative.

Many of us collect feedback about what our students think, but few of us engage students in the development of our digital strategies.

The project has produced a tool to benchmark our student digital practices.
Have also developed a student digital experience tracker. Enables universities to gather evidence from students about their digital experience and track changes over time. Make better informed decisions about the digital environment and better target resources. This is being piloted at the moment,
Couple of examples of digital student engagement:

Harlow college have created a student digital partnership. They have appointed Student Digital ambassadors who do the following:

• Represent the college in digital focus groups
• Help in organisation of at least one digital activity
• Promote use of technology with fellow students
• Act as role model for good use of technology, eg staying safe.
• Paired with digital leaders
• Help in creation of resources

Birmingham City University work collaboratively with students and pay them to work with members of staff to enhance the student experience. Lot of work has been done around improving retention by creating a mentoring programme for first hers using social media.

There's also a lot of technology to play with here, including virtual reality headsets

Fetching aren't they? At least it matched what I was wearing. And of course there's robots, including my favourite, Nao. I want one for the department, I think it would do a lot to enhance our wellbeing!

Posted with Blogsy