Ideas​ for digital teaching​

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If you are looking for suitable tools for your in-class teaching, your Moodle room, or your online teaching, you can find inspiration here. We are also happy to  give you individual advice on which tools fit your specific teaching objectives.

  • 1. How to make teaching and learning material available for your students?

    A rather simple form to support remote learning is to give your students access to material online (e.g., scripts, papers, videos, audios, or links).
    You can encourage your students’ engagement with this learning material by either assigning tasks or phrasing questions to this material or by giving students the opportunity to exchange their results and/or to receive feedback.

    I. Learning Management System Moodle

    MoodleExternal link is the Learning Management System provided by the University of Jena (for a short introductory video about Moodle please see https://youtu.be/wop3FMhoLGsExternal link). Moodle is a module based, adaptive teaching and learning platform. It helps to support classroom teaching, to enable blended learning (a combination of classroom and online teaching and learning), or to facilitate online teaching and learning. It is also convenient for storing knowledge and information and as a platform for communication with your students.

    Moodle enables you:

    • to upload information and material (e.g., data files, links, vidoes via Opencast)
    • to support communication (e.g., via formus, chats, votings, calendar management)
    • to support cooperation (e.g., via Wikis, mutual assessments, glossaries)
    • to measure learning progress (e.g., via tests, quizzes, questions)
    • to give and receive feedback (e.g., via different feedback tools)

    Further information on how to set up and start Moodle you will find in section 8 “First steps in Moodle”

    II. University of Jena Cloud

    As an alternative to Moodle, material for students (e.g., scripts, papers, reader) can be made accessible via FSU-CloudExternal link. After uploading the material to FSU-Cloud it can be shared via link. FSU-Cloud has a capacity of around 10 GB.

    III. Electronic course reserve collection – Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen (DBT)

    Electronic course reserve collections allow you to collect your course material (e.g., literature, scripts, URL links) at one central digital place. Your students can access this collection any time and independent from where they are.

     

    An instruction of how to start and use electronic course reserve collections can be found hereExternal link (in German only).

  • 2. Which tools (besides web conferencing tools) can be used to design interactive teaching and learning settings?

    I. Interactive formats with Moodle

    Moodle offers a whole range of possibilities to support communication and cooperation.

    • Forum enables participants and instructors to have asynchronous discussions.
    • Chat enables participants to have text-based synchronous discussions with each other or exchange opinions and different perspectives.
    • Choice enables instructors to ask a single question and offer a selection of possible responses. A choice activity may be used as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic, to quickly test students’ understanding, to facilitate student decision-making, e.g. allowing students to vote on a direction for the course.
    • Feedback enables instructors to create a custom survey for collecting feedback from participants using a variety of question types including multiple choice, yes/no or text input. Feedback activities may be used for course evaluations or to collect expectations and experiences concerning a certain topic.
    • Glossary enables participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary, or to collect and organizes resources and information, e.g. by uploading the handouts of students’ presentations.
    • Wiki enables collaborative work with texts. Participants create and edit a collection of web pages.
    • Workshop (in German: Gegenseitige Beurteilung) enables the collection, review and peer assesment of students‘ work. Students submit their work, peer assess themselves and are assessed by the teacher.

    Instructions how to set up these activities can be found in the course "Moodle für Lehrende und Autor*innen"External link and in the official documentation of Moodle-tools at moodle.orgExternal link.

    Further information on how to set up and start Moodle you will find in section 8 “First steps in Moodle”.

    II. Small tools – big impact

    There are many small tools that help to activate students and to further exchange between them in online learning. These tools are a supplement to the tools provided by Moodle and can be integrated in or connected with Moodle. Here are a few examples:

    • PadletExternal link – is a tool for creating virtual pinboards (padlets) that you can use to display information for any topic. Students and teachers can (synchronously and asynchronously) collaborate, reflect, share links, notepads, audios/videos and pictures. It can be used for brainstorming, to activate prior knowledge, to collaboratively design projects or to collect information.
    • EtherpadExternal link – is an open online editor providing collaborative editing. Students may remain anonymous or display their names. All changes will be marked live and in terms of colour. Etherpad can be used for collaboratively producing texts or for collecting ideas in a group work.
    • TweedbackExternal link – is a live feedback system supporting the interaction between presenters and listeners in a course, a workshop or during a presentation. In the sessions that you create within Tweedback, you have the possibility to ask live questions or to design a chat wall. Please note: Within the for-free version your sessions will be available for 24 hours. After that, they can be seen but are inactive and cannot be further processed.
    • PingoExternal link – is a live feedback tool that allows you to involve students in very large classes. The tool mimics the joker of the audience in the TV show “Who wants to be a millionaire?”. Instructors ask questions and students try to answer them with the help of their notebooks, smartphones, etc. within a certain time limit.
    • Office-Funktion der FSU CloudExternal link enables you to create a document directly in the cloud, to share it with others via a link, and to collaboratively work on it, even synchronously. The cloud is hosted by University of Jena, so that your data remains directly on the server of the university. Storage is limited to 10GB.

    Further tools and their descriptions can be found on the following website: E-Learning an der Universität JenaExternal link.

  • 3. How to provide students with feedback to their work and results?

    I. Tasks in Moodle

    The activity “Assignment” within Moodle allows students to submit their work results to a certain task (via document or text in the online editor). You can see these individual results and assess them.

    Short video tutorials on how to set up this tool can be found in the course "Moodle für Lehrende und Autor*innen"External link within your Moodle account. Please use your URZ data to register.

    https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Assignment_activityExternal link - Instruction on how to set up “Assignments” in Moodle.

    II. Quizzes in Moodle

    The activity “Quiz” within Moodle allows you to create tests and quizzes with a variety of question types (e.g., multiple choice, true-or-false questions, short answer questions and to use them as a learning control. In the case of closed and semi-closed answers the kind of feedback can be predefined.

    https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Quiz_activityExternal link - Instruction on how to set up “Quizzes” in Moodle.

    III. Peer Feedback in Moodle

    The activity “Workshop” within Moodle is a peer assessment activity with several options. The students submit their work, assess their peers and are assessed by the instructor.

    Peer feedback helps students to take a more active role in the learning process. They learn how to phrase constructive feedback. Above that, peer feedback allows for a deeper involvement with the learning goals, the content and the assessment criteria.

    https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Workshop_activityExternal link - Instruction on how to set up “Workshop”/ peer instruction in Moodle.

    Further information on how to set up and start Moodle you will find in section 8 “First steps in Moodle”.

  • 4. First steps in Moodle

    Moodle is the learning management system of the University of Jena.

    How to connect your course with Moodle? For all courses listed in FriedolinExternal link, corresponding Moodle-environments can be established directly via Friedolin. In case your course is not listed in Friedolin, please directly contact the Moodle administrators (moodle@uni-jena.de).

    Information about Moodle und helpful instructions can be found on the Moodle-WikiExternal link and on website of Moodle (https://docs.moodle.org/403/en/Main_pageExternal link).

    Further information about the individual Moodle activities can be found in the Moodle-Tool-GuideExternal link.

General recommendations for digital teaching

  • Focus on the essentials of your course. Decide which content is really necessary in view of the learning objectives you have set.
  • Leave room for students to actively engage with the learning content in order to enable sustainable learning. In digital teaching, students frequently have to deal with new teaching formats and develop new learning strategies.
  • If necessary, provide your students with a short introduction to and explanation of the digital tools to be used in your course.
  • Consider that not all students may have access to sufficient technical equipment. Try to offer alternatives to participate in the course to these students.
  • Please think about which parts of your course are best accomplished in self-study, face-to-face teaching, alone, or collaboratively. Based on this, you can appropriately combine asynchronous and synchronous learning units in your teaching scenario. You can also outsource parts of the course that can be better completed in self-study, e.g. by means of tasks that can be solved outside class or via recorded or streamed input (e.g. lecture sequences and presentations).
  • Give students clear work assignments and include them in your materials. Similarly, formulate the assignments in a specific manner. This helps to guide students and optimize their engagement in accordance with the learning objectives you have set. Students are also motivated by assignments with a clear scope of tasks and measurable outcomes motivate students. Thus, try to take away the ‘infinite potential’ of some assignments by making them specific.
  • Make your expectations transparent to students. For example, make it clear how you expect students to contribute to the course and how you will continue to work with their results in class.
  • Ensure regular feedback by students. Thereby, you can learn how they are coping with the teaching scenario you have provided, where obstacles occur, and how these obstacles may be removed.