CMALT Update

I was accepted into membership of the Association for Learning Technology at the grade of Certified Member on 03 September 2021. This is my portfolio update.

Contents

Summary of recent work/practice

I am still an Online Learning Technologist with the Institute of Policing at Staffordshire University where I support academic staff in the development and use of technology. I have maintained and developed induction resources for lecturing staff and police trainers to ensure that these are kept up to date and provide the best possible introduction to the digital options and capabilities which they can use to support their teaching delivery.

Onboarding of new cohorts

Over the last three years, I have also been updating and developing resources on my Digital Skills Induction for student police officers across four police forces, as well as upgrading the Blackboard component to Blackboard Ultra. Getting the students online and into their cohort’s team before their start date means that they hit the ground running and have the technological knowhow they need to navigate the learning environment from day one.

The onboarding process equips student officers with the digital skills they need to thrive in their academic journey and police careers. It also allows police trainers to communicate important information to students in advance of their start date.

Design & Development of EPA Process

The first of our End Point Assessments for our Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship began in 2022. I was tasked with improving the process and I looked at a Microsoft Teams/SharePoint solution. I talk more about that, below, in my ‘Overview of CPD activities over the past three years’.

The Migration to Blackboard Ultra

I led the migration of our Blackboard Learn VLE to Blackboard Ultra in 2023. I initiated communication with our Digital Services team and completed all the technical work required to move us to Blackboard Ultra, solving all technical problems during the process. I created new Blackboard Ultra modules and populated them with Blackboard Ultra content by copying/converting old Blackboard Learn modules. I completed all Blackboard Ultra work by the end of September 2023, meeting my deadline.

During this time, I was constantly communicating positively the benefits of the change to the new system. I supported Module Leaders and other lecturers to ensure a smooth transition by creating a Blackboard Ultra channel in our Institute of Policing Staff Room Team. I updated that channel with a ‘BB Ultra Training’ tab, a ‘Tests and Assignments’ tab and a ‘BB Ultra Source Modules’ tab. These were updated with various ‘how to’ training videos that I created to explain how to complete certain processes in Blackboard Ultra. In addition to the training videos, I trained module leaders in 1-2-1 sessions.

Development of Interactive Learning Resources

In the Future Plans section of my CMALT portfolio, I wrote that one area that I would like to experiment with would be interactive video. I also mentioned software called Thinglink which is used to create interactive images, 360° images and 360° videos. Since then, I have been investigating the use of 360° media as a teaching tool. I talk more about that, below, in my ‘Overview of CPD activities over the past three years’.

CPD: MIE Expert

I was selected as a Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Expert in 2021 and have successfully renewed my MIE Expert status ever since. I have continued updating my knowledge of Microsoft technologies in education by completing training and professional development in the Microsoft Learn Educator Center.

Digital Skills Award System

I have promoted Digital Training CPD for staff. This began with encouraging staff to achieve their Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) badges. I created a ‘Microsoft Training for CPD’ channel which included information on how staff could use the Microsoft Educator Program to achieve Microsoft Educator, Microsoft Advanced Educator and MIE Expert.

I presented at the IoP CPD Day in January 2024, where I talked about CPD opportunities for Police trainers and policing lecturers in the Microsoft Learn Educator Center. More recently, I have identified areas for improving digital skills of staff in the IoP by creating a digital skills award system and aligning it with the University’s Values and Behaviours Framework. I have presented my proposal of a Digital Badge Framework involving the JISC Digital Skills Diagnostic tool to our Senior Leadership Team and I talk more about that, below, in my ‘Overview of CPD activities over the past three years’.

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Overview of CPD activities over the past three years

Example 1 – Design & Development of EPA Process

Some of our students study for a Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA) and these culminate in an End Point Assessment (EPA). The first few EPAs were carried out on Microsoft Teams, with student work being downloaded from Blackboard and emailed to Assessors beforehand. This EPA process was clunky and disorganised and I was tasked with creating a more efficient process. Problems were:

• the EPA meeting recordings were automatically saved in the personal OneDrive of whoever clicked the Record button.
• meeting recordings had to be moved and stored elsewhere which was time-consuming.
• by default, the EPA student had access to the EPA meeting recording, so settings needed to be changed to remove their access.

We use Blackboard and Microsoft Teams and I was asked if Assessors would be able to access work on Blackboard instead of through Teams, so I first looked at a comparison of using Blackboard for the external assessors to access student work versus Teams. Feedback I obtained from Assessors was that it would easier for them to see feedback for graded projects on Microsoft Teams rather receiving them via email, so I looked at a comparison of Blackboard with Microsoft Teams.

I decided that giving Assessors access to Blackboard modules would possibly cause issues, as well as creating more work for the Admin team, and so I looked at a Microsoft Teams/SharePoint solution. I realised that the problem that the EPA team had encountered with EPA meeting recordings was because they had not organised meetings in a channel. If a meeting is not scheduled in a Microsoft Teams channel then the person who clicks on ‘Record’ is the person who is the Owner of the video. Also, default settings meant that all participants would be able to access the video, including the student. I knew that this problem could be solved by scheduling the EPA meetings in a channel.

End Point Assessments in Microsoft Teams

I decided to create an EPA Microsoft team for each police force and, in the Files section, I created a folder for each cohort. I created a folder for each student within each cohort folder and this was where their projects and portfolios were uploaded to.

Lecturers and Police Trainers were added as Owners and Assessors were added as Guests. Students were not added to the teams, so it was impossible for them to see folders and files.

Scheduled meetings

The solution to the problem of where the EPA meeting recordings were stored was to schedule them in a Channel (the General Channel) in the EPA Team. The Meeting Invite included instructions and other information for the student. The people who would be attending the meeting were also invited:

The EPA meeting and meeting recordings

A Recordings folder was automatically created in Files the very first time a scheduled meeting was recorded in the General channel, and subsequent EPA meeting recordings were then automatically saved in that Recordings folders in Files.

After the End Point Assessment meeting, the EPA meeting recordings were dragged into the student’s folder in seconds. There was no time-consuming downloading and uploading of meeting recordings.

Reflection

The new EPA meeting process that I created was much more efficient than it had been and the meetings have run smoothly since. It is now a very organised process and the improved file management has made it very easy to locate and access student work and the EPA meeting recording at a later date. This project contributed to my professional development because I learnt a great deal about Microsoft Teams meeting recording storage and permissions, and other Teams meeting settings.

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Example 2 – Development of Interactive Learning Resources

Crime Scene House Project

I purchased an Insta360 One X2 360° action camera to experiment with creating 360° images and videos which we could use to make interactive learning resources.

After researching how people used 360° media, I found that most people created their own websites and had dedicated 360° viewers. This was not an option for our work and so I looked into how we would be able to view 360° media resources on Blackboard and/or Microsoft Teams instead.

360° images

360° images are very different to those that you might take on your phone camera. Firstly, the files must be converted using software into a format that is more easily recognised (jpg). When you open a 360° image, all that you will see is a flattened out image of the 360° panorama, such as this image I took with the Insta360 One X2 camera in our Crime Scene House:

To allow people to view 360° images, you need a dedicated platform which includes a 360° viewer. Facebook and Instagram upgraded their platforms to allow uploading and viewing of 360° images, but we weren’t allowed to use social media platforms for our modules. The problem I had to solve was to find a platform to be able to view 360° images.

360° videos

360° videos are also very different to anything that you might take on your phone camera. Again, the 360° files must be converted to a file format that is more easily recognised (mp4). To allow people to view 360° videos, you need a dedicated platform which includes a 360° viewer. One such platform is YouTube which allows uploading and viewing of 360° videos, such as this 360° video I recorded with the Insta360 One X2 camera in our Crime Scene House:

Experimenting with Microsoft SharePoint Spaces

From my research, I discovered that SharePoint includes a feature called SharePoint Spaces. SharePoint Spaces become available in around 2021, just over 18 months before I started this project and so was a relatively new technology, described by Microsoft as “a web-based, immersive platform, which lets you create and share, secure mixed reality experiences”.

SharePoint Spaces is available in any SharePoint that you create, but it needs to be activated. Once activated, you can build your 360° environment. I created the following video to show some of the features of SharePoint Spaces, including how to open/close 360° images, 2D images and 3D objects, labels, 360° tours and 360° videos from YouTube:

I created a Crime Scene House SharePoint Space, as can be seen in this screenshot:

I used a 360° photo of Staffordshire University’s Crime Scene House for the background and placed each 360° media item as a globe on top of its own podium. I was able to alter the height of the podium, the distance between the image and the podium, and move the podiums around the stage.

This video, below, shows how the Crime Scene House SharePoint Space was used to show a 360° image of inside the Crime Scene House:

The 360° photo was taken in the dining room simulation and crime scene markers had been placed next to evidence.

Experimenting with ThingLink

I experimented with ThingLink which is an award-winning education technology platform that makes it easy to augment images, videos, and virtual tours with additional information and links.

I first experimented with a 360° photo that I took of the inside of a Police car. I uploaded it to ThingLink and added hotspots on different pieces of equipment.

The hotspots linked to a larger image of the piece of equipment with some accompanying text explaining its use. This is the link to the 360° Inside a Police Car on ThingLink.

I found that ThingLink was very easy to use with 360° images and some lecturers used my 360° photos (below) to create a learning resource which involved a 360° tour of inside the Crime Scene House.

Feedback from students

I am not allowed to show the resources created, but we did obtain detailed feedback from student police officers. When asked, “Would you like to see the 360 camera interactive technology used in your lecturers in the future?” 92.6% of students replied “Yes” and the remainder replied “Maybe”.

Here are some summary comments from the students:

1. Enjoyable activity
2. Made it easier to visualise the scenario
3. Made me feel more aware of the situation
4. helped to actually visualise the crime scene and made the task easier to complete. it was something different.
5. It allowed us to see a crime scene without physically going there and we could use our findings to develop investigation ideas.
6. it was more interactive and also helped to have a visual representation of the crime scene
7. I think this is a brilliant thing to use as a technological standpoint. I would try and add a zoom function myself and so if in the future you made it harder (identify the blood stains yourself, Find the gun), It would make the process much easier and more enjoyable.
8. The crime scene activity brought it to life more, rather than just reading a task sheet.
9. the more interactive something is the more likely you are to engage in with the activity
10. Very good tool! Never done anything like that before – Just had a poor internet connection throughout so couldn’t interact as much as I would like too
11. It was useful to see what a scene could actually look like and to identify the kind of evidence that might be available
12. Found it was different to what i have used before and found this a nice activity to do.
13. It was good to physically view the crime scene and interact rather than just a video walkthrough
14. there’s nothing that has got me to engage more in a lesson ever, its a perfect way to teach officers, as it gets us an insight and we are able to assess things in detail as if we actually attended, it was very educational and interesting
15. It is an engaging way of teaching/learning from distance, it gives the student the opportunity to consider more options as opposed to generic media which can be more prescribed.
16. It was a relatively useful tool
17. Allowed you look around the room but there were areas pointed out to you which provided evidence
18. It was interactive and helped us identify key pieces of evidence for example.
19. made no real difference to having photos to look at
20. makes learning more engaging
21. I am a visual learner so by using the 360 camera it helped me visualise the scene itself and how I would actually apply the scenarios
22. Was interactive and more similar to real life rather than a power point.
23. It was much better using this to explore the ‘crime scene’ rather than just trying to visualise something through description and just work through an image in your head.
24. It was good to be able to have the ability to interact from home. Interactive, for me, helps me to understand easier and quicker.
25. for an online learning lecture, it is easy and readily available.
26. Enjoyable and unique experience that allows you to virtually tour the scene and view all the information
27. it adds a new dimension to learning and helps keep me engaged with the learning though interaction
28. good to have visuals
29. I found it a very good way to consolidate learning
30. interactive and allowed me to visually learn
31. can see how we would logically work around a crime scene
32. Was enjoyable and when it’s enjoyable it makes it more interesting.
33. It was more engaging than just listening to power points and made sure that I was focused and concentrating. Sometimes it is easy to lose concentration and not focus when someone is just talking through a powerpoint, so this was a good way to stay engaged and actually think about the task at hand.
34. real time place yourself there as if you’re in a real world crime scene
35. It was useful when used properly

Reflection

Clearly, there was a lot of positive feedback from students and so we are looking for opportunities to use this technology in other areas. On reflection, using the 360° camera was very straightforward and the use of 360° images with ThingLink was very easy to do. However, learning how to convert and edit 360° images (for example, when blurring out car number plates in Adobe Photoshop) was quite challenging to begin with. There was also a very steep learning curve when I attempted to edit 360° videos in Adobe Premiere Pro. That is something I would like to do more of if needed.

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Example 3 – Creation of Digital Skills Award System

I was an online attendee at JISC’s DigiFest, which was held in Birmingham on 12-13th March 2024. This year’s DigiFest celebrated the power of digital, its potential to transform and its capacity to revolutionise learning and teaching.

One of the areas DigiFest looked at was ‘Future Educators, Students and Researchers’ and the question asked was, “How we can prepare ourselves now for these roles in the future?” It was explained that digital skills are important because they empower employees to adapt to shifting roles, embrace emerging technologies, and drive innovation. They facilitate the adoption of new strategies, tools, and processes that are vital for an organization’s digital growth.

One of the videos I watched was a very interesting presentation by Phil Whitehead who described their Digital Badge Framework.

Since DigiFest 2024, I have identified areas for improving digital skills of staff in the Institute of Policing by creating a similar digital skills award system and aligning it with the University’s Values and Behaviours Framework. I believe a digital skills rewards system within the Institute of Policing would help:

• Build digital skills and confidence
• Boost personal digital development
• Make the Digital section of PDR more relevant by aligning the digital reward system with the University of Staffordshire’s Values and Behaviours Framework

I believe that it is important that our staff know exactly what they need to do for the digital part of their CPD. This can be done with clear goals, using a system where we direct staff towards the skills and platforms they need to improve their performance. The platforms are:

1. The JISC Discovery Tool
2. The Microsoft Learn Educator Center

I also want to encourage:

• interaction with posts in our ‘Institute of Policing Staff Room’ Microsoft Team, and
• staff to attend, contribute to, and deliver training within their area and the wider Institute of Policing.

The digital award system that I have developed aligns with the University of Staffordshire’s Values and Behaviours Framework, where staff improve their performance in a variety of areas from Citizen to Performer, then Expert and finally to Adventurer:

Reflection

I recently presented my proposal of a Digital Skills Award System involving the JISC Digital Skills Diagnostic tool and Microsoft Learn Educator Center to the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). Between two and three years ago, I encouraged staff to complete the necessary training to be awarded the Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) badge and I received MIE lanyard badges from Microsoft that I was able to hand out to those who had completed the necessary training. I discovered that staff love collecting badges! I suggested to SLT that it would be an added incentive to have a tangible reward – a lapel badge for their lanyard. SLT liked my proposal as it is a very useful for CPD and said that there was a budget available for the purchase of lanyard badges and so this Digital Badge Framework will be going ahead in the coming academic year. As an MIE Expert already, I am already in the ‘Adventurer’ column but I will still be able to learn more from the JISC Digital Skills Diagnostic Tool and from the Microsoft Learn Educator Center.

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Future Plans

In my previous Future Plans, I mentioned that I was looking to purchase a 360° camera to create 360° images and video and that I was planning to use those with Thinglink. I didn’t experiment much with video in ThingLink, although I did have a go at editing 360° video in Adobe Premiere Pro and adding content to the video.

I visited the Custody Suite at West Mercia Police HQ and captured some 360° video of a simulation of what happens after someone has been arrested. I found YouTube videos explaining how to add text to the 360° videos because what I wanted to experiment with was adding text so that it would appear at a certain point in the video as a prompt. I was successful in doing this, until I realised that if I happened to be looking around at a different part of the scene when the text appeared then I wouldn’t see the text.

I solved that problem by adding duplicate text at 90°, 180° and 270°. This meant that I could see the text prompt regardless of where I happened to be looking at the time, as can be seen in this screenshot of the YouTube video.

Although this kind of video isn’t as interactive as using ThingLink with 360° images with hotspot links, it was an immersive video and I found it more engaging than watching a flat video. I like the idea of having prompts at certain points during the video. As this uses YouTube and I wouldn’t have to purchase any other software, I would like to experiment with creating 360° video resources like this in the future.

I enjoy creating learning resources and, as I use Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro, I would like to look at some official training courses to improve my skills and maybe gain some accreditation.

I mentioned in my last Contextual Statement that, in the near future, I would like promotion to a role such as Senior Learning Technologist, Digital Learning Manager or TEL Learning Manager. However, I enjoy all aspects of being a Learning Technologist and I don’t think I’m as interested as I was in becoming a manager of people.

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Confirmation

I declare that, to the best of my knowledge, the statements and evidence included in this submission accurately describe my practice and are drawn from my own work, with the input and support of others duly and clearly recognised.

Craig Smith, 02/09/2024

Craig Smith BSc (Hons), PhD, PGCE, CMALT
Online Learning Technologist
The Institute of Policing
School of Health, Education, Policing and Sciences
Staffordshire University, Ashley 2, Leek Road, Stoke On Trent, ST4 2DF
Dr Craig Smith, Staff Profile

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