As students ourselves, we know that University can be daunting at the best of times, especially when you are faced with a whole host of uncommon and unfamiliar terms, abbreviations and jargon which are often less than straightforward to understand. As Student Digital Champions, we have come together to try and make life a little easier for our peers by sharing a list of terms surrounding our digital learning that we feel could benefit from a student informed and oriented explanation. You can look by letter or hit Ctrl+F on your keyboard and enter the word or a relevant keyword to find it in the page.
Project run by the Student Digital Champions, led by Olivia Muggleton.
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Academic Integrity - acknowledging all sources used through citations and referencing, presenting accurate data, declaring where previously submitted work has been re-used, complying with ethical and other obligations, and meeting the standard of behaviour required for all academic endeavour.
Alternative Exam Arrangements (AEAs) - adjust your exams, so you are not disadvantaged because of a disability. They aim to give you a fair chance to display your learning.
Assistive technologies - Technology and software aimed to help you study and support your learning.
Asynchronous - The tasks and assignments given to you to complete in your own time and on your own schedule. Normally these are completed before your synchronous sessions.
BILT - Bristol Institute for teaching and learning
Blackboard - is the University of Bristol's centrally supported virtual learning environment. It has a range of tools for communication, collaboration, assessment, feedback, reflection and content management, as well as providing an online space for activities to support your learning.
Blended learning - a style of education in which students learn via electronic and online media as well as traditional face to face teaching.
Bristol Futures - The open online courses are designed for students and keen external learners, Bristol Futures provides you with an opportunity to tackle the key challenges in Global Citizenship, Sustainable Futures and Innovation and Enterprise.
Bristol Plus Award - The Bristol PLUS Award rewards you for extracurricular activities you have completed at any point during your degree, and provides a structure to reflect on the skills you have developed.
Browser - A browser is an application you use on your computer to access the internet. Examples of this are Chrome, Edge and Safari.
BYOD - Bring your own device
Cache - Your browser’s temporary memory used to help pages you use regularly load more quickly. You may sometimes hear that you need to clear your cache to resolve an issue on your computer.
Collaborative learning - An educational approach that involves students working together on activities or learning tasks in a group small enough to ensure that everyone participates. Students in the group may work on separate tasks contributing to a common overall outcome, or work together on a shared task.
Digital Capabilites - ‘Digital capability is the term we use to describe the skills and attitudes that individuals and organisations need if they are to thrive in today's world. At an individual level we define digital capabilities as those which equip someone to live, learn and work in a digital society.’ jisc.ac.uk.
Digital Skills - Essential skills you can develop to be successful at university and in your future career. Digital skills can range from writing emails to coding.
DigiTalk - A blog written by the Digital Education Office and the team of Student Digital Champions. Contains information on all things digital, such as digital learning / teaching, useful apps for students, employability tips and more.
Digitally Ready - A short course designed by the DEO to provide information on Blackboard and the online learning environment at Bristol. Go to Digitally Ready.
Digitally Skilled - A video series created by the DEO focusing on digital skills and capabilities.
Discussion Board - A general term for any online "bulletin board" where you can leave and expect to see responses to messages you have left.
Distance Learning - Studying learning material online. Allowing you to access content through an online portal, providing more flexibility to your studies.
eLearning - A learning system based on formalised teaching but with the help of electronic resources is known as E-learning.
EMA - Electronic Management of Assessment
ePortfolio - An ePortfolio is a collection of work (evidence) in an electronic format that showcases learning over time.
F2F - Face to Face. In the context of university learning, a F2F seminar or lecture will mean that you and your tutor/lecturer will conduct the session on campus and in person.
Flipped learning - A form of blended learning. Where students are introduced to the learning material prior to the lecture, so that lecture time is used to further their understanding through discussion, collaboration and interactive-learning techniques.
Gamification - Using game elements in your teaching, usually to motivate behaviour that will promote learning.
In person teaching - Any teaching interaction that occurs in real time, face to face.
Interactive learning - Incorporating social networking and computing into course content to facilitate achieving a particular learning outcome. These may be delivered as a supplementary resource or integrated into your lecture content.
Learning Analytics - refers to the collection and analysis of data about learners and their environments for the purpose of understanding and improving learning outcomes.
MOOC - A course made available over the internet to a very large number of people. It stands for Massive Open Online Course.
My Skills (personal development plan) - A tool to help you reflect on, record and develop your skills for now and in the future. Go to My Skills.
Netiquette - A combination of the words network and etiquette and is defined as a set of rules for acceptable online behaviour.
Online learning - Education that takes place over the internet.
Re/Play - The University of Bristol’s media and video system, which provides automatic lecture capture, as well as on-demand videos uploaded as pre-recorded lectures or as additional learning materials. The software we use to provide the service is called Mediasite.
Self-paced learning - Self-paced learning means you can learn in your own time. You don’t need to complete the same assignments or learn at the same time as others. You can proceed from one topic or segment to the next at your own speed.
Student Digital Champion - Students hired by the DEO to channel the student voice into the work the DEO are doing.
Student Reponse Systems - (SRS) is a tool used to quickly collect answers to questions from every student, normally anonymously. It's often referred to as pollingm and you can use your own device to send answers back to your lecturer. Some toolsused at the University are Mentimeter, PointSolutions and Poll Everywhere.
Study support plan - An SSP summarises recommendations for adjustments to your teaching and assessment, including alternative exam arrangements and any assistive technologies you are granted. Your School Disability Coordinator and the Library team use this plan to support you.
Synchronous - The tasks / lectures / seminars that are completed ‘live’ and in group.
Turnitin - A text-comparison system which is available through Blackboard. When assignments are submitted to Turnitin, the text is compared with sources in the Turnitin database, which include websites, online journals, newspapers and e-books, as well as student work submitted either at Bristol or other institutions. A similarity report is automatically produced, which highlights any text matching a source in the database and provides links to the sources of these matches. Turnitin also includes Feedback Studio for online marking and Peermark for peer review.
Webinar - A lecture or other presentation that takes place online, allowing participants in different locations to see and hear the presenter, ask questions, and sometimes answer polls.
Xerte - An online tool that enables you to create engaging, interactive and accessible online learning materials. It provides simple tools and template pages with a variety of interactions that can include text, images, media and more. Xerte is a powerful tool, available to everyone with a UoB login.
If you have come across any particular digital learning terms or abbreviations that are not described in this glossary and feel like others would also benefit from them being included, then use our Mentimeter word cloud poll to let us know. We’ll endeavour to provide as many helpful explanations as we can!
In the meantime, take a look at these links which might contain some helpful information on what you’re looking for:
