Middlesex University: “With iSpring, we collaborate to turn presentations and quizzes into effective learning experiences for our students.”
7 minutes
Two years ago, we published a case study with Middlesex University London in which a team of subject liaison librarians discussed how they had been using iSpring’s interactive quizzes to train their students and fellow librarians to use library resources more effectively. In 2023, the team upgraded their iSpring QuizMaker subscription and started using iSpring Suite, a complete authoring tool with rich course creation functionalities.
Monna Rizvi, Service Development Liaison Librarian at Middlesex University, kindly agreed to talk about her experience with the tool. In this case study, she shares how iSpring Suite helped increase student engagement with learning resources and improved collaboration within the library team.
Background
Monna Rizvi
Service Development Liaison Librarian, Middlesex University
Middlesex University, based in North London, boasts world-class facilities and provides a diversity of career-focused courses for over 23,000 students. The university ranks second in the UK for course quality and is known for its collaborative, inclusive learning environment.
Monna Rizvi is a Service Development Liaison Librarian and part of the Library and Student Support (LSS) service. The LSS team provides comprehensive training on the effective use of library resources to help students excel in their studies, develop critical research skills, and achieve academic success.
The challenge: Increase student engagement with training resources
Since the LSS service team started using iSpring’s QuizMaker for creating interactive assessments, they have seen continuous increase in learner engagement, especially with remote students. The quizzes also help the university library team check students’ understanding of the provided material and track their progress and results effectively.
However, Monna Rizvi noticed some students’ tendency to skim the material quickly or even skip tasks, going straight to quizzes to complete them and receive their grades more quickly. This prevented students from fully grasping key concepts and developing a deeper understanding of the subject:
It was often the case with our library induction course, for example. I would get quiz results from students and see that they hadn’t done the tasks and jumped straight to the quizzes — it’s easy to track since I award them with digital badges for the completed tasks.
The library team was also looking to improve the overall learner experience by improving the design of their resources:
For a while I was relying on info slides, followed by the quizzes made with QuizMaker. Standalone quizzes worked great, but I felt there was definitely room for improvement in terms of the flow of the content.
The solution: iSpring Suite
When the LSS service team transitioned from iSpring QuizMaker to iSpring Suite, they quickly discovered that they could benefit from the extended course creation capabilities of the tool. Monna Rizvi shared some of her favorite and most frequently used features of iSpring Suite to improve the library resources for students.
Turning slides into easy-to-navigate courses in a familiar PowerPoint environment
iSpring Suite allowed the Librarian team to transform static informational slides into well-structured, easily shareable resources that are readily available to students. Now, Monna and her colleagues deliver knowledge in the form of courses with clear, logical chapters with convenient navigation that provides a better information flow:
It’s very convenient, especially when students need to revisit certain sections of the material: now they can click on a section and go straight to it, as opposed to having to go through the whole presentation.
The Contents page of an online library induction course at Middlesex University.
Thanks to the full integration with PowerPoint, the library team can turn slides into courses on a single, familiar platform. Monna readily assists her colleagues who need help using the tool’s feature set.
Adding dynamic multimedia elements to courses with a few clicks
When developing content, librarians also benefit from the ability to enrich courses with multimedia elements like images, videos, and backgrounds. This helps them provide more information and present it in a way that’s both dynamic and engaging while catering to diverse learning styles and making the material more accessible and memorable for students.
The Start Page of an online library induction course at Middlesex University.
Interactions also come in handy when bringing together effective learning resources. Monna’s experience shows that interactions are also great for breaking up monotonous learning sessions: they keep students engaged, promote active learning, and make complex information easier to digest.
The Librarian team also loves the flipbook functionality in iSpring Suite. It takes just a couple of clicks to create flipbooks from PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and PDFs, and the result is appealing and easy to share via links. Monna Rizvi has already created some books for her students:
I found that a flipbook is something that looks good and engages students more effectively. Giving them a book to flip through is a much better approach than simply providing another presentation.
A page from a flipbook for students.
Enhancing collaborative workflows
Another advantage of upgrading from iSpring QuizMaker to iSpring Suite for the LSS team at Middlesex University has been improved collaboration. The librarians and other staff members can now conveniently co-author and review content in iSpring Space, an online workspace that enables real-time feedback and efficient version management.
This capability is especially useful for the university’s LSS service, since it’s easy to exchange ideas and build on colleagues’ previous projects.
We’re always looking for new ideas and ways to present them. If anybody from the team wants to use or adapt something, it’s very easy to do. Plus, iSpring Space makes it easy to work on content together and review each other’s resources faster. We use this functionality a lot since we cover similar areas of teaching and we currently store 21 projects in iSpring Space.
The results: a spike in engagement and more advanced library resources
Introducing iSpring Suite into the learning content creation and delivery process via the LSS service at Middlesex University has made a noticeable impact on student engagement:
It’s made the learning experience for the students a lot easier, and it flows better, thanks to a more refined appearance and navigation of the courses. More importantly, the engagement has definitely been up in terms of how many students use the resources fully and complete the tasks, not just the quizzes.
On top of that, their vast experience with iSpring QuizMaker, along with improved collaboration, allows the team members to create assessments, particularly quizzes, quickly and efficiently. On average, it takes Monna just 30 minutes to put together an engaging, targeted quiz for students that looks great and provides an actual reflection of their understanding of the material.
The LSS service team at Middlesex University continues to benefit from iSpring’s eLearning tools, and Monna is confident that they’ll keep discovering new exciting features that enhance their teaching methods, optimize content creation, and improve the overall learning experience for their students.
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