Teams, team-working, and design principles for supporting it
I recently published an article in which I argued that Microsoft Teams is a team-working platform, works well as such, and we should not try to...
July 1, 2020
Senior Academic Technologist, IT Services, University of Warwick
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
National Teaching Fellow
Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence
Microsoft Teams is not a VLE, and perhaps should never become one
In his book Well Designed, Jon Kolko explores “how to use empathy to create products people love.” We start from understanding real people, both in what...
June 30, 2020
5 key roles for supporting teachers and students to change educational practice
Changing how we teach and learn is often a messy and inefficient process. In this article, I will describe an ideal change cycle, which I think...
June 25, 2020
Should we use anonymous discussion and messaging channels?
There are very good reasons for wanting to allow anonymous student participation in discussion forums and messaging channels. Students can feel less inhibited, more open to...
June 25, 2020
For teaching we must now adopt a connectivist mindset
Education has very suddenly moved to a hybrid and flexible mode, sometimes referred to as “hyflex”. What does that mean? Hybrid: The media in which these...
June 11, 2020
Use MS Teams like a pro
That’s an attention grabbing headline, but the message behind it is simple: You can use Teams for videoconferencing, and it’s OK. But that’s like using an...
May 27, 2020
6 key dimensions for choosing collaboration options when teaching online
Medium, synchronicity, scale, lifecycle, control, and flexibility – the six key dimensions, defined and explained in this article. For successful online teaching, choose the options that...
May 26, 2020
When should we choose to teach live rather than asynchronously?
In an earlier article, I dissected a sophisticated learning design for live online active learning, with responsive teaching, peer-learning and group work in breakout rooms. As...
May 22, 2020
Two (virtual) heads are better than one for online lectures
Bo Kelestyn and I were asked to do an online version of our Introduction to Design Thinking lecture for the Humanitarian Engineering MSc at Warwick University....
May 21, 2020