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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

Review of Elluminate for S282 resit

Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:17
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Edited by Dave Edwards, Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:17

After a bit of reflection I decided to add a few quiz questions to the session.

This did actually help in the session, because the students were very reluctant to speak (though occasionally they did speak). I was very pleased I made this change, because it forced some interactivity.

The session ran to 1 hour 20 minutes. I liked the fact that I managed to review some of the astronomy whilst discussing revision and study skills.

I spotted a couple of minor issues with slides and corrected them afterwards (a version of the file is here . The spray diagram example needs to be replaced next time with either an electronic version or (probably better) a hand drawn diagram with much thicker lines.

There was some technical difficulty for me at the start of the session. I had planned to use my Tablet PC to write on the whiteboard during the session. I also wanted the benefit of my large monitor. However this took me down a path of screen resolution and orientation problems, culminating in the microphone button (conveniently located at the bottom of the Elluminate window) being off the bottom of my screen. I had to settle for just using the monitor.

[4 April 2013]

Tags: spray, elluminate, s282, study, revision, microphone, skill, monitor, diagram, tablet
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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

Elluminate for Astronomy exam resit tutorial

Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:15
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Dave Edwards, Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:16

I have been asked to provide two one-hour long Elluminate sessions for students resitting their S282 'Astronomy' exam.

I will follow my original proposal for the task. This was a skill based first session:

Revision skills
Exam technique
Maths skills
And a summary of key physical principles.

My intention was to build a discussion oriented session. As students may not have started revision I do not think quizzes are appropriate. However, some of the examples will lend themselves to asking students to spend a few minutes looking for information or solving problems.

I drafted an outline plan on a sheet of paper. then I started to work on PowerPoint, reusing an introductory screen on using Elluminate.

I used a pdf copy of a module book to extract one page and annotate that with my Tablet PC to illustrate the idea of using diagrams and annotating the module book. this was difficult to do - I had trouble extracting a copy of the page from the huge book. I found a copy of the appropriate chapter only, and managed to delete the other pages.

I also wanted to illustrate the use of spray diagrams. I used a chapter summary section to prepare a hand written spray diagram. I then scanned this in, rotated it and inserted it into the PowerPoint. The quality was poor. I tried to improve the legibility of the diagram but did not manage to find an appropriate tool. It would be too time-consuming to prepare the diagram electronically, so I decided to accept the slide as it stood.

I used an extract from an old exam question to create an exercise on writing. Simlarly for a maths skills example I used an old TMA question part, and the excellent example answer I had supplied to students.

To help me discuss the the revision period I took a hand-drawn diagram from an S282 handout I have often provided to students.

Then I prepared a list of key ideas (extending over four slides)by skimming through the book.

While working through the preparation I kept in mind the need to have dark colours and large text and images so maximise legibility in Elluminate.

I also adapted the first screen to place on the Elluminate site, in the hope that I can encourage students to use their mircophone.


All this work took about six hours.

[1 April 2013]
Tags: spray, elluminate, astronomy, exam, s282, revision, pdf, powerpoint, diagram, annotate
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