Several of the Skills@Library tutorials have been developed using Articulate.

Designed to provide an introduction to a topic, the tutorials include a simple self assessment followed by quizzes and drag and drop activities. The aim is to encourage the students to think about the elements of the topic before deciding what further development they need. At the end of the tutorial they are directed to the relevant topic page on the new website.

These tutorials can be accessed via the VLE or the Skills@Library website http://skills.library.leeds.ac.uk.

The National Network for Interpreting project website contains numerous interactive resources created with Articulate Studio 09 Pro. Most of them are concentrated around the Interpreting Skills map, but there are many others throughout the website. Here are a few direct links, but feel free to have a thorough look around the website for more:

http://www.nationalnetworkforinterpreting.ac.uk/tasks/can_i/player.html
http://www.nationalnetworkforinterpreting.ac.uk/tasks/psi_jerome/player.html
http://www.nationalnetworkforinterpreting.ac.uk/tasks/psi_m4/player.html

This presentation was developed by Patrizia Lavizani in a response to the need for dynamic learning materials, accessible on the web, for students of Italian.  Both Lara Cortesi and Anne Buckley helped with materials for this presentation whilst Lucy Parkin developed the flash materials and produced the Articulate presentation itself.  This is one in a series of four presentations which Patrizia and Lucy have worked on.  They are currently developing another unit and aim to fully capitalize on all that Articulate has to offer.

John prepared this page for the June University of Leeds e-Practitioners workshop Articulate: The Power of Speech. Apart from links to short and extremely effective presentations on WHY you'd want to use Articulate, as well as HOW to go about planning your presentations, John also highlights how Articulate allows him to combine several previously separate resources into single coherent packages that have been highly appreciated by his students.

Articulate Engage has also become one of John's favourite applications - have a look at the example page linked above for inspiration on how to use Engage interactions in your teaching.

Neil's presentation is part of a blended learning programme that he designed and implemented together with his team. This programme comprises face-to-face sessions supported by a significant body of resources integrated into Blackboard - such as Articulate Presentations, video demonstrations (created with Captivate), suggested reading materials, quizzes and guidelines available to the staff in the Faculty of Biological Sciences and aimed at making the transition between Nathan Bodington and Blackboard as painless as possible.

CONTEXT

Over a number of years, Microbiologists have produced short video presentations to introduce practical exercises. Microbiology is not a subject that is widely taught in schools and the opportunities for students to undertake practical exercises are limited even more severely.To help students to understand the techniques that they are to perform in class, we have found short videos to be most helpful. In a large class, it ensures everyone can get the same information. It also has the benefit of showing the expected results so that if the technique fails for a student, they have access to actual result.

The University Library holds copies of all of the VHS tapes. Although initially, the videos were delivered in VHS format, the producer had the foresight to record material digitally. This meant that with the advent of DVD technology, the material was transferred easily to that medium. Life moves on and a recent development has been to convert the DVD files into Flash movies. For anyone who is interested, these can be viewed from the Faculty of Biological Sciences website (http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/institutes/ilse/movies/microbiology/index.htm).

Recently, we have expanded practical teaching of Microbiology to other students in the faculty. It is likely that many of these will have had no previous experience of Microbiology. To help them to revise this unfamiliar material, I have taken screen shots from the video exercises that they have performed and pasted these into a PowerPoint file. The next logical step was to add a commentary and the result is this Articulate presentation.

John is constantly producing additional Articulate resources, some of which are designed specifically as feedback for the Questionmark tutorials that he has created independently or in collaborations with colleagues - such as Dick Hobson - for his students.

"Cross-infection issues for dentists is an important subject for all health-care settings but because of the nature of the infections to which dentists are exposed, it is literally vital that the topic is understood by these students. The Articulate presentations are made available after I have delivered feedback to the class in a 'live' session." (John Heritage)

Furthermore, in order to cater for as diverse an audience as possible with significantly different learning styles and needs, John has also made use of the current VLE (Bodington) to enable his students to access other related resources: the transcripts of the Articulate presentations (both with and without images) in a printable format and audio files from the Articulate presentations which the students are downloading and listening to on their MP3 players.

So far John has finalised 8 Articulate presentations and as we speak (or read, rather), he is working on several more.

This presentation was created in order to pilot a blended learning approach to the training courses for Articulate Presenter run by SDDU. These courses are becoming increasingly popular and, in order to maximise the amount of hands-on practice that the staff have during the allocated 2 hours, this resource was developed and circulated together with several other relevant questions prior to the training session.

By engaging with this presentation and answering the related questions, the session participants have more realistic expectations related to what Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker can do and also regarding what PowerPoint expertise they need. Furthermore, the trainer also knows much better how to adjust the delivery of the session in order to cater for the participants' differences.

We have received significant positive feedback about this presentation. Given that, after watching it, workshop participants were on the same wavelength, a lot more demonstrations and hands-on practice could be delivered on the day. In fact, from an initial introductory course on adding audio to PowerPoint, the new approach gave session participants the opportunity to practice adding and editing audio, synchronising audio and PowerPoint animations, changing the layout of the Articulate published presentation, inserting video and creating Quizmaker quizzes. Not bad at all for 2 hours' solid work and 30 minutes preparation.

Overall, the blended learning approach consists of interacting with the presentation (and engaging with the online support and training resources it contains), coming to a 2-hour hands-on training session, checking regularly the University of Leeds Articulate support website and blog for news from the local user community, and keeping in touch with the University of Leeds Articulate support officer regarding any further help and advice.

Based on your comments, further online 'in-a-nutshell' resources can be developed for advanced features of Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker.

The latest piece of exciting news is that we are now looking into acquiring a number of licenses for Articulate Engage, which will in turn require an intro presentation, too. All in due course, of course. Please let us have your thoughts on this matter. At the moment we are working on developing engaging materials with ... Articulate Engage and will showcase them on this website as soon as possible.

This presentation is part of an online Plant Science Teaching Resource named Gatsby Plants which is being developed at Leeds. Articulate is the software of choice to author on-line plant science undergraduate research lectures delivered by internationally recognised experts in their field.

This Teaching Resource resource will be evaluated in the next 12 months and user feedback will be provided on this University of Leeds Articulate support website.

The Gatsby Plants project website is http://www.gatsbyplants.leeds.ac.uk.

The latest resource developed as part of the Gatsby Plants Lecture series is available here. It contains a presentation by Prof. Monique Simmonds, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: 'Plants in our Lives: from Beauty to Death'

Description:

Plants have been used for centuries as skin lotions and soaps, as well as medicines and as poisons. However, as organic chemistry developed, many products for the cosmetic and drug market relied on synthetic leads rather than plants. Over time as plant-derived compounds or extracts were replaced by synthetic products the specific details about how plants were used traditionally has been lost. Currently there is an increased interest in returning to nature and plant-derived products but there are many challenges in not only obtaining the current plant material but ensuring that appropriate extracts are used. This talk will provide an overview of the potential of plants as new leads and the importance of conservation in selecting plants. It will also provide examples of the social and scientific challenges that face companies developing plant-derived leads. The talk will illustrate the importance of different aspects of plant-based science in understanding nature and how this knowledge can lead to innovations as well as solving mysteries.

Monique Simmonds is Deputy Keeper of Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Head of Sustainable Uses of Plants Group (Biological Interactions and Centre of Economic Botany). She is interested in understanding the chemistry of plants: how plants defend themselves from being attacked by insects and how plants can be used as medicines. At the Jodrell Laboratory, they look at traditional plant remedies and use knowledge of plant chemistry and DNA-based taxonomy to select which plants justify further research. Monique uses her background as an entomologist to identify and isolate active compounds from plants that have medicinal properties in the areas of the treatment of cancer, diabetes, HIV and malaria. She also spends an increasing amount of her time on projects that involve the authentication of plants entering the trade to ensure the correct species is being used. In addition, Monique is involved in conservation projects abroad. Her knowledge of plants that are economically useful and culturally important is invaluable in devising strategies for working with local communities to protect against loss of habitat and biodiversity.

The University of Leeds Centre for Translation Studies offers a portfolio of vocationally oriented MAs and PG Diplomas, all supported by state-of-the-art facilities and contributions from experienced practitioners. This presentation was produced to give prospective students a better idea of the type of translation studies topics that the tutors address in their lectures, as well as of the kind of interaction that happens regularly between the students and the lecturers.

A number of 9 Articulate presentations were produced for the Methods and Approaches module taught in the Centre for Translation Studies. They all contain the video recordings of the lectures delivered as part of the Methods and Approaches module, synchronised with the PowerPoint presentations of the tutors.

Whenever the live interaction with the students resulted in the tutor writing additional content on the white board, additional slides were created with that content when the Articulate presentations were being produced so that the end product would be as comprehensive as possible. PowerPoint animations were also timed to appear at appropriate times in the tutors' presentations.

The feedback from the students was very positive:

• "Fantastic! As a part-time student who lives in deepest rural Cumbria, this is a lifeline!"
• "In comparison to other universities, I have found that this course has offered me a vast amount of resources online and on shared drives. I believe that these resources are a great asset to the course as a whole, as they enable students to reassess the information provided at their own pace."
• "It is excellent to have these resources available to highlight points that may have been missed when writing notes during the actual lecture and very useful for the assessment to be able to go back and listen to the lectures again after having done more reading around a particular subject."