February 10, 2021
Workshop rooms 1 to 8
55 minutes
Jasmina Travnjak, UNIGE
In 2019 (before we even heard of COVID), I started a new hybrid course at the University of Geneva that aimed to immerse my students into a hybrid digital artifact based on institutional tools used by the Geneva secondary schools ("Ecole en ligne").
While teaching the pedagogical use of digital technologies, I realised that my students (as well as my teacher colleagues) had never used the institutional tools and had no idea of the possibilities they offered. While my course was supposed to teach them the theory behind the effects of technology of students, I realised that their need was more to learn to master the tools. Without an extensive knowledge of technology, they would never feel comfortable in using it in their own teaching environment.
This is why I decided to create an immersive experience, by using the institutional platform (Google Suite) and a collaborative whiteboard tool (miro.com) in order to make my students not only learn the theoretical concepts, but also acquire an extensive experience of all the tools that are officially used by the schools of Geneva.
My artifact is entirely managed with Google Classroom. It encourages the students to be autonomous, to collaborate, to share information and to interact individually with their teacher – all thanks to technology.
Jue Wang Szilas, Patrizia Birchler Emery, UNIGE
Digital transformation of university-level continuing education has become more and more urgent – not only as a solution for the pandemic situation, but also for its sustainable development. Well-designed e-learning programmes can provide learners with more flexibility, as well as a dynamic and personalised learning experience. However, several challenges arise: For example, time and human resources allocated to help develop online learning materials, scenarios to meet disciplinary requirements, and teachers' and students' technological affordance (digital skills). Faced with these difficulties, the Centre for Continuing and Distance Education (CFCD) of the University of Geneva has initiated and experimented a "Three-Level" solution to segment their service in terms of digital transformation of continuing education programmes. The "Three-Level" solution consists of the "easy option", "intermediate option" and "advanced option". The three options propose e-learning development models at different levels, that combine implication of LMS platform and video conferencing tools according to the institutional and pedagogical requirements, availability of teaching and coordination staff as well as the digital skills required. We will present the three options in detail and share several concrete examples. We hope to open the discussion with all participants after the presentation.
Oliver Schmid, Ambroise Bailifard, Henrietta Carbonel, UniDistance
During the pandemic, many Swiss universities switched to simultaneous bimodal teaching (classes were held with some students in physical presence and others online at the same time). UniDistance is currently carrying out a research project based on this experience with two objectives: to understand students' preferred mode of participation and the reasons behind their choices; and how to ensure quality learning through active participation of all students in such classes.
During the first 25 minutes, we will share the findings of the UniDistance study:
Interactive part of the session (30 minutes):
Michael Mittag, FHNW
In the past months, my average work week included two ninety-minute talks with guests from politics, arts, media and education, 90 minutes of talks with student groups and 3 to 4 hours of one-on-one talks with students. So, all in all, I've spent around 7 hours every week talking to interesting people, supporting them in their learning and learning from them in return.
According to student evaluations, students have profited from my classes, they were very happy with them and liked the class format. I've also profited, first by knowing much better what students actually need, and second from the guests I had invited, who managed to inspire both me and my students.
This talk will discuss different formats of engineering social processes, how to use tools like video conferencing to make this much easier, and also how you can and need to orchestrate social processes, if you want them to work in your favour.
Nicole Krüger, Salome Nesme, ZHAW
In this year of remote teaching and learning, higher education profited even more from learning materials that are freely available online, or even open for reuse and remix like Open Educational Resources (OER). Let's assume that all teachers in higher education have at least one learning material, that they would be more than happy to share: be it a set of slides, a video, assessment, simulation, experiment, a text book, an image or a graph. In this one-hour workshop we discuss benefits and best practices of opening up learning materials. We discuss differences between free and open materials, questions of platforms for publication, OER tools and versioning.
Experienced OER practitioners can benefit from the exchange with like-minded colleagues, and novices can get inspired by the idea of openness in the field of education – and after the workshop go home to publish their first OER or to spread the word.
Denis Gillet, EPFL
In the framework of its P8 Digital Skills programme, swissuniversities is co-financing a four-year initiative (2021-2024) for promoting and mastering Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Platforms (OEP): The Swiss Digital Skills Academy. The partners are EPFL (leading house), ETHZ, PHBern, HEP BEJUNE, HEP Valais, ZHAW, UZH, HEFSM, FHGR, PHSG, IFFP, HEP-FR and HEIA-FR.
In this workshop, the five core actions will be presented and collaboration opportunities will be discussed. The digital skills targeted through jointly developed and implemented learning modules are: 1) teach the teachers, 2) create and animate a community, 3) create and share resources, 4) provide access for all, and 5) develop data literacy.
Giorgia Mora, USI; Selene Gervasoni, SUPSI; Stefano Tardini, USI
During the spring semester 2020, USI – like all other Swiss universities – had to move all of its teaching activities online within a few days. From the beginning of the pandemic, USI has worked towards implementing and sharing the digital tools for remote class participation, while at the same time rethinking the design of the teaching experience and reducing the need of classroom attendance. The eLab (eLearning Lab) had a central role in handling this shift and the integration of digital technologies within teaching activities. It rapidly became a service of reference for both the academic body and students, by giving them advice about course planning and exam management.
During the presentation, we will share one of our best practices that brought a significant contribution in organisational terms and in keeping alive (as much as possible) the university community tissue and sense of collaboration and belonging that were strongly affected during the pandemic. USI’s priority has been to offer concrete guidance to teachers and students in educational terms. For this reason, to support the teachers in all the online examinations sessions, eLab has established the figure of the "eLab guardian angels". Each lecturer was assigned an eLab collaborator who had the task to assist their "protégé" in designing and managing online examinations. The eLab staff has also produced handbooks for students and teachers to enhance the quality of this unexpected online experience.
Reto Schürch, Careum
During the year 2020 online conferences have become much more important because of the two lockdowns caused by COVID-19. Online conferences are far more than just meeting in an online conference tool.
The session is a practical guide to developing exciting online conferences. It will show how to prepare and successfully manage live conferences.
Themes included in the session:
During the session we will show original scripts, didactical scenarios and drawings as well as pictures of technical setups used for conferences during 2020.
The session will include time for sharing experiences among participants.