These slides are from the internal University of Leeds, School of Modern Language and Culture, Student Education Forum 2013 on Friday 10th May 2013. It discusses the experiences of students volunteering to produce their assignments as eBooks. This project was part of a HEA collaborative grant funded project on evaluating interactive multimedia eBooks for enhancing student engagement.

1. School of something
FACULTY OF OTHER
Using eBooks for assessment
Hayley Atkinson & Sierk Horn

2. Background
Collaborative Project (HEA & SMLC funded)
- Faculty of Biological Sciences
- University Library
- Faculty of Medicine & Health
- EAST
- University of Hull
Objective: Potential for iBooks in HE environment
- Student access to, and interaction with, learning resources?
- Enhancement of learning, engagement and student experience?

3. iBook Author
•Free proprietary software to create interactive
books for the iPad
•Aimed at educators and publishers
•Allows addition of interactive galleries, pop-
ups, videos, audio, glossaries and widgets

4. EAST3262
Advanced Japanese in Context
- Original Japanese Texts
- Contextualisation
- L3 (Final Year)
Assessment Task (50%):
- Critical essay
- Participation optional

5. Impact

6. Learning Enhancement

7. Examples

8. Learning ‘Intervention’

9. Student Feedback
About transferring an essay into Presentation
“You really think about the flow and how you present your essay, and a lot of that is
not the same as what you had in mind when you just wrote it.”
“I think as far as you are presenting the essay you are really aware of every step of
your arguments.”
Enhancing engagement
“I thought quality was important for the essay, so, having the iBook, I could actually
put pictures and actually show that and I rather liked the idea.”

10. Student Feedback
About language learning
“I was aware while writing my essay that I would be able to do a glossary type type
tool, and so I made sure that I highlighted key words and key names and that type
of thing and that I would have a ready definition next to it. Just to make it easier.”
“You went through first and translated it for yourself, then when I was getting ready
to put it into the iBook I went through and looked at the words again so just like by
repeatedly encountering the words really helped in the learning of them.”

11. Student Feedback
Multiplicator effects
“Yeah, I thought it was really good to get each others essays, cos like, every other
module you ever do everyone goes away an does a load of work on something
and you never have any idea what it is and like going around everyone’s you
kinda learn like, even if it’s just a snippet of what they did you pick up loads of
little interesting facts, so it was really interesting hearing everyone’s essays
back.”
“Anything involving presentation type focused modules would work, so modules like
in my first year French we had a module where we had to mark each others
work as part of the compulsory thing and anything that could be distributed in
this format, that would make it far easier than the system we had where we had
to try to organise a time to meet up and some people were really bad at doing
that.”

12. Implications and Outlook
iPads
-Apple system
-Access to computer cluster & Ease of use
-Iphone?
Need for further evidence
• Novelty (but see LUBS)
• Language versus studies modules
• Dissertation
• Social media & Interactivity
• Multiplicator function