Overview

a) An understanding of the constraints and benefits of different technologies

Until around 2010, both the School of Mathematical Sciences and I personally ran conventional web sites. To be more precise, the School nominally used Adobe Dreamweaver for web pages maintained centrally and academic staff used whatever technology they preferred for pages that they maintained, including in particular the pages to support the modules they taught, and I personally used Microsoft FrontPage for the web site that I ran on my office computer, called Centaur. I set up my official home page URL to redirect to the web site that I hosted on Centaur. Then the main School web site was converted to use the Drupal CMS although the staff intranet was not converted, and module web pages were moved to Moodle. I will discuss the constraints and benefits of using a conventional web site, a Dreamweaver or FrontPage site, and a CMS such as Drupal or Moodle.

b) Technical knowledge and ability in the use of learning technology

I obtained a European Computer Driving Licence in 1999 and a Microsoft Office Specialist Excel 2013 core certificate in 2015 – click on the images for details. I discuss in part (a) how I maintain various web sites and use online learning environments (OLEs) and content management systems (CMSes).

I use Microsoft PowerPoint for preference when I am giving presentations and I have used it for putting documents that consist of a set of independent slides on the web via PowerPoint Online. I use PDF to publish most documents that I cannot easily or portably publish as HTML, such as documents that I generate in Maple, Microsoft Word or LaTeX, which are usually mathematical. I used XML and XSLT for a few years to maintain details of all our undergraduate modules, which allowed me to use standard technology to generate multiple HTML files from one XML data file for display on the web. I use JavaScript to create dynamic web pages and to change details of the default display produced by QMplus.

c) Supporting the deployment of learning technologies

I am currently the QMplus Administrator for the School of Mathematical Sciences, which means that I can do some of the things that would otherwise require technical support from the ITS helpdesk. I manage all the course areas in the School of Mathematical Sciences category, maintain enrolment mappings for course areas that need them, and roll our course areas over between academic years. This year, I initiated a new policy of recording all our in-term assessment marks in QMplus, set up appropriate gradebook items and transferred the marks from QMplus into our primary Student Information System (or occasionally vice versa). I managed the original transfer of teaching materials from our web site into QMplus, which was performed by e-learning assistants employed by the e-learning unit.

I maintain four QMplus course areas that do not relate to specific modules, namely the School of Mathematical Sciences landing page, a course area primarily for current undergraduates that is publicly accessible and one that is not publicly accessible, and our staff intranet. I recently finished transferring all the generic information for current undergraduate students from our web site to QMplus. I maintain a "sticky block" that appears on all the QMplus pages within our undergraduate module category and provides "quick links" to key generic information. I think I am currently the only member of staff in the School who can edit our reading lists maintained in Talis Aspire, a lot of which I created. My intention is that all reading list information should be in Talis Aspire and not in random other places but at present this is only partly true and needs some more work.

Francis Wright's CMALT ePortfolio

Francis Wright's CMALT ePortfolio

CMALT 1

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