How the community have been using Talis Elevate: Dr Fran Garrad-Cole, Bangor University

We invited Dr Fran Garrad-Cole to talk on a webinar about her use of Talis Elevate in a seminar she taught last year. She was unable to attend in person and recorded a video for us to play live during that session. Here’s what she told us…

Fran teaches a compulsory Year 2 module on the Psychology programme at Bangor University with over 180 students.

The content of this module can make it hard for students to engage. It covers historic theory, which Fran explains they must understand the value of, but it’s difficult to deliver in a lecture environment.

Last year, as teaching went fully online, Fran used Talis Elevate in online seminars to interact with students more.

Fran provided content in Talis Elevate either before the seminar; to gauge students interest in a topic or to see what kind of discussions they are having before the seminar, which then feeds into what is covered in the online teaching.

One example of this was when Fran presented a short Youtube video before the first seminar in the module and asked students to place comments. This enabled her to get a good understanding of where they were in their understanding ahead of the class

Fran also presented a case study in Talis Elevate and asked students to annotate it whilst thinking about a specific psychological theory in class. Fran was able to interact with these comments and better understand gaps in students knowledge throughout the classroom activity.

In another session, Fran posed questions on content in Talis Elevate and broke off students into breakout groups in Blackboard Collaborate. She wanted them to engage in formative peer-led sessions before writing a critical evaluation essay to enable them to get the best marks they could. Fran uploaded multiple versions of resources to subdivide the students into distinct versions of the breakout groups, giving each student a greater voice within the smaller groups.

“I’m certain I wouldn’t have as many comments had I been doing it in a lecture environment, so Talis Elevate has really helped me with my online teaching this year”

Fran did a number of different tasks using Talis Elevate, from live, collaborative peer review on previous student submissions to build assessment literacy knowledge, to posing questions to breakout groups informing in class conversation. You can see her talk through those examples in the video below:

Thanks very much to Fran for sharing her experience of Talis Elevate. To see more Talis Elevate academic user stories, click here.

If you’d like to learn more about the ways other academics are using Talis Elevate, join our community discussion group on Microsoft Teams. Sign up here.