Distance and E-Learning Unit » Gill Ritchie

Terms and Conditions with Selective Release

Gill Ritchie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:18:00 +0000

In the past, people have asked how to set things up on Blackboard so that students have to accept some terms and conditions before they can access a particular piece of content. This can be done with a combination of an Assessment (i.e. a quiz) and the Selective Release functionality. This article describes what this solution looks like and goes through the steps required to achieve it. The steps should take no longer than about 15 minutes to carry out and in doing so you will learn about both the Grade Book and the Selective Release functions in Blackboard.

What’s going to happen tonight?

Gill Ritchie — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:55:35 +0000

As I’m about to leave for the day, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen this evening. What am I talking about? Well obviously the much talked about announcement sometime today (5pm on the west coast of the USA?) of the eagerly awaited Apple tablet computer of course…what else? I’m not really [...]

Training session: Introduction to QM’s VLE

Gill Ritchie — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:37:27 +0000

If you are just starting out with the central College virtual learning system (VLE), Blackboard, or you are wondering about what it might have to offer, you might be interested to know about our “Introduction to QM’s Virtual Learning Environment” session which is taking place this Wednesday afternoon. The session is aimed at staff who [...]

Learn about the Q-Review lecture capture system

Gill Ritchie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:31:01 +0000

The Q-Review lecture capture project has been gathering pace in the College recently with installations being completed in 3 of the College’s centrally bookable lecture theatres, Skeel and Fogg at Mile End and the Perrin in Whitechapel. Several departments across the College have already been making use of the system through bespoke installations and [...]

Fun with words: Wordle

Gill Ritchie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:35:05 +0000

I’m way behind the crowd here but I’ve just discovered Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/). I’m writing this blog post for all those other folks out there who may also be slightly behind the bandwagon. Even if you haven’t created a Wordle yourself, if you’ve been to a presentation lately, the chances are you may [...]

Jobs in the Distance and E-Learning Unit

Gill Ritchie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:17:51 +0000

The Distance and E-Learning Unit (DELU) in Educational and Staff Development (ESD) is responsible for developing, promoting and providing support for e-learning across Queen Mary, University of London. We are expanding our range of activities to engineer a step-change in the College-wide provision of e-learning and are currently seeking to fill 3 new positions:

E-Learning Services Manager
E-Learning Support Adviser
E-Learning Student Support Adviser

Training Session: Ask the Audience

Gill Ritchie — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:50:16 +0000

Although not a new technology, audience response systems have been gaining in popularity recently. This session will give participants a chance to try out a particular audience voting system, gaining experience of the types of activity that are possible and allowing them to think about whether this might be a useful technology for their own teaching.

Adobe Kuler: Help with your colour schemes

Gill Ritchie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:53:59 +0000

An interesting blog post popped up in my RSS feeds today. It’s on the Presentation Zen blog written by Garr Reynolds and it’s called Using Kuler to create color themes. Kuler is an online tool hosted by Adobe which allows you to experiment with creating your own colour schemes. You can also [...]

Roles in Blackboard

Gill Ritchie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:15:26 +0000

Course Instructor, Designer, Teaching Assistant, Student, Auditor...you may be aware of the terminology but how much do you know about roles in Blackboard and what they mean? This article explains what the various roles are and provides you with enough information to allow you to ensure that the right people have the right level of access to your Blackboard course area.

The internet is 40

Gill Ritchie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:23:13 +0000

The grand thing that we all take for granted now, the internet, is 40 years old this year. To celebrate, the Guardian Technology has been running a series called Internet at 40. As part of this series they have just published a rather nice interactive People’s history of the internet made up of [...]