Kia ora koutou,

If you get students asking about exemplars for their ENGR101 assignment, they can be had in the ENGR101 Learn course, under the section titled: Module 4: report writing (Week 3).

Ngā mihi,

Brian

Yesterday, I (Brian) took our managers up on the offer to go and volunteer for a day. Wanting to do something in my own area/community, I decided to head to Charlesworth Reserve down near the estuary.

Mercifully, the weather from the weekend had broken, so it was a lovely day. Our group was composed of 50% wisened hardcore gardeners, and about 50% Deakin students who were there I think as part of their course.  Apologies for my phone camera being trash:

We spent the first part of the day pulling up grass. I didn’t know that Charlesworth Reserve is only about 2 years old. It baffled me that I hadn’t noticed it growing over the past 2 years, but it used to be farmland, so there’s a whole load of pasture grass growing rampant and choking all the natives. We had to yank up the grass and not the native plants. This looked a lot more impressive to my eyes than it will to yours 🙂

After that, we started pruning back some of the trees that were muscling out other trees and Stealing their Sunshine. I got to feel very manly sawing branches and chopping them down to size with loppers. Behold!

(This is not me but you get the idea)

I had a great time, learned a bunch about the reserve, and got to contribute to my community a bit. I’m aching today though, so I think maybe manual labour isn’t for me!

I want to encourage y’all to take the volunteering opportunity too. It’s good for the soul to give your time to help others. Post up on Counterculture and let us know what you’ve done!

I’m grateful that managers have again offered us the opportunity to take a day to do some volunteering this year. Last year, a few of usvolunteered at Smith Street Urban Farm, where we had a really pleasant and rewarding day: https://blogs.canterbury.ac.nz/counterculture/2021/12/14/report-back-volunteering-at-smith-street-urban-farm/

This year, I’m selfishly sticking to my Eastside roots(!), planning to do some weeding and other plantish maintenance  at Charsleworth Reserve on 28 November 2022. You can see a bit about it here: https://bookings.conservationvolunteers.org/project/charlesworth-reserve-3

If you’d like to join me in the volunteering opportunity, please let me know. I’m hoping it’s going to be a fairly chilled day of pulling weeds and watching wildlife and enjoying Bromley’s post-stench environment. Any takers?

brian.mcelwaine@canterbury.ac.nz

Future Learning are doing a redesign of LEARN to try to provide some consistency for students. They’ve asked for feedback, and any of us with an interest can give it.

They’re ONLY (for now) interested in feedback on the Kāinga|Course Home, Course Information, and Assessments sections. The idea is that these sections will look the same across all courses, and the same information will be in each. They’re not seeking feedback on look & feel or colour scheme or the like at this stage. Just whether these sections make sense and contain the information they should contain: Are things in the right place? Do they look intuitive to use?

They have a Demo site where you can check it out, and then you can give some feedback via their feedback survey.  Why not take a look and put in your two cents?

Our Visualise Your Thesis competition is reaching its final stages. Our People’s Choice award opened on YouTube- the most likes by Monday 11 July at 3pm will be the winner. I hope you’ll watch the videos, and consider voting for your favourites. Each is only about a minute long, so check them out: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOjs3_qT0lFxG7UL3-0VlqY5yXOc-pCs0

Brian

Today marks the start of UC’s 2022 Visualise Your Thesis competition. It’s open to all postgraduate students who are undertaking research (so excludes taught Masters,  or lecturers, for example). We’ve had a great response in previous years, and we’re keen to get more entries than ever this year. Here are the details that you can share with the  researching postgrad in your life, or at the desk, but all the details are at: https://canterbury.libguides.com/visyourthesis

What’s Visualise Your Thesis?

Entrants create a short audio-visual presentation that explains their research project to a general audience. It’s an opportunity to be creative and develop digital communication skills, as well as win cash prizes. The first prize winner’s entry will also go into the international Visualise Your Thesis competition.

What are the prizes?

• 1^st prize – NZ$1000 (& entry into the international Visualise Your Thesis competition)
• 2^nd prize – NZ$500
• 3^rd prize – NZ$250
• People’s Choice Award – NZ$250

The international Visualise Your Thesis competition is run by the University of Melbourne and offers the following prizes:

• 1^st prize – AUD$5,000
• 2^nd prize – AUD$2000
• 3^rd prize – AUD$1,000

Who’s judging the UC competition?

• Professor Carl Mika
• Jacinta Cording
• Associate Professor Enrica Sciarrino

How do I enter?

Register to compete at https://canterbury.libguides.com/visyourthesis and you will be sent a link to the Competition Pack with all the details. This page also contains information about workshops to support you in developing your presentation as well as the link for submitting your entry.

When’s the deadline?

Entries open on the 2 May 2022 and close on 12 June 2022. Prize-winners will be announced on Friday 15 July 2022.

Still have questions? Contact Brian.McElwaine@canterbury.ac.nz

I’m (Brian) part of a reference group that’s been assembled to give advice and feedback for the redesign of the Learning Management System, Learn. It’s being upgraded to Moodle 4.0, and they’re taking the chance to redesign things a bit.

As the library rep, they want me to funnel feedback to the group from you fine librarians. Carmen Weaver is leading the work, and in our meeting today she said something along the lines of “There’s no better time to ask for something in Learn.”

You can reach me at brian.mcelwaine@canterbury.ac.nz

Subject librarians, I’m interested in your feedback since you’re in there a bit and spend time with students.

LAC, if there are any issues related to your work, I’m keen to hear about it, though I’m also assuming Library Digital Services will be talking to them independently.

MB folks, we have Mary Boyce on the team, but I would welcome any input or suggestions you have about how we could take the opportunity to enrich the platform.

ELS, particularly those of you that have recent memory of studying at UC, but also all of you that help students deal with the vagiaries of Learn, I’m really keen to hear from you about what would help.

You can watch an introductory video about Moodle 4.0 here: https://youtu.be/sZxZ_YzsD_w

If you’d like to take a look at how it’s shaping up here at UC, you can watch some of the meeting from this morning. Donna Thompson’s demo runs from about the 12:30 mark to about 22:30. The link to the meeting is here: https://ucliveac-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/carmen_weaver_canterbury_ac_nz/ETmjdKC2JuBHrAZCTzyxJekB1TRf7pEO08XzrF9yR041VQ?e=Pd7VMG&isSPOFile=1

Thanks!

Brian

Kia ora folks,

I’m looking for an intrepid soul to join Kiera and I on this year’s Visualise Your Thesis organising team. There’ll be some organising work between now and August or so. Anyone with video editing skills would be especially welcome, as would applications from outside the LTR team, since we’re keen to involve the rest of the library too.

Workload will vary, but you’re probably looking at an average of 1-2 hours work a week max, with plenty of times where there’s nothing you need to do.

We’ve done this twice before under Fiona’s watchful gaze, and it’s a lot of fun. If you’re interested, chat it over with your manager and drop me an email at brian.mcelwaine@canterbury.ac.nz by the end of the week!

Brian

I’ve been doing a bit of work this week on mothballing closed projects into the _Closed-Projects folder. I’ve tried to get only projects that are closed, but I’ve already been notified of one mistake! So, if you’re leading a project and the folder is missing from the Projects folder, look in the closed projects folder and drag it back out into the main projects folder, or let me know and I’ll do it.

Thanks – Brian

On Monday, the intrepid team of Helen Thomas, Kathryn Andrews, Kim  Hall, Sarah Johnston and myself (Brian) spent the day volunteering at Smith Street Urban Farm.

We started our experience weeding a couple of rows of carrots. The community farm space is HUGE, tucked away behind a council building. It was kinda nice to  sit about having a yarn and plucking weeds from the dirt, and there’s a senes of satisfaction in looking at your work after it’s done.

After a quick break (some library rituals must be maintained! Shout out to Caroline for gluten free cupcakes and Sarah for spicy Christmas tree gingerbread) we moved to the pleasing tactile experience of harvesting beans from a big row. The real joy in this experience (for my tiny lizard brain at least) was that you got to break up the stalks afterwards, which were partly hollow and cracked and crunched as we completed our task.

After lunch, we moved on to the titanic job of weeding out a garden that clearly hadn’t seen any love in a while. We got it fairly well cleared out , making an immense pile of detritus in the middle of the garden, as instructed. By the time we were done, I think most of us were tired but happy- you could really see the difference we’d made.

Thanks to everyone who came along, and to Georgina Staley, the facility’s manager, who kept us right and taught us heaps about how the farm supports the local community as we went.

Have you done your day of volunteering yet? Let us know how it went!