Last week, my manager Claire Donlan and I did a workshop at the Moving on up... School/FE/HE transition event at Durham University, about the learner journey in our LRC for students coming in straight from school. This covered the inductions, ongoing support and what we hope they gain (transferable skills and a positive experience of using learning resources) from their time using our LRC.
For the workshop, we thought we would like to do something a little bit different and decided on using Prezi rather than PowerPoint, QR codes for one task and a quiz using an audience response system for another. This was a daunting undertaking, what if the technology let us down? After much deliberation we decided we would take the chance and just go for it anyway.
Although we worked on the content of the Prezi together, Claire put it together and did all the preparation setting up the QR codes, getting them printed out (a big thanks to Hilary for cutting them to size), preparing the quiz questions and linking the voting handsets to it. We hoped we had thought the whole thing through, taking with us the LRC's iPod Touches and our own smartphones (in case delegates didn't have access to a QR code reader via their own phone). We used Claire's laptop linked to a pocket projector to display the quiz questions, as we didn't know whether the University used the same smartboards as our College. The Prezi we were fairly sure would run OK on the University's computers, as it web based.
On the day, Claire was unwell and bravely came along, as in addition to not wanting to let anyone down, she had all the equipment. We always felt that it would either be fabulous or disasterous and thankfully it was the former. When we got to the QR code exercise where we asked delegates to rank what they considered the most useful marketing tool of those given by the QR codes, everyone was excited to be having a go, most had their own smartphones although some QR code readers struggled to read our codes. This exercise produced a great deal of debate within the groups. The next task using the audience response system again was met with interest and excitement, and even though we were running out of time and lunch was beckoning, everyone wanted to answer all the questions Claire had set - these were about how feedback was collected from students.
For more information about what we covered in the workshop, please follow the links as Claire has already blogged about various aspects:
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