Digital teaching
Digital teaching
The path to digital teaching does not mean that analog teaching should be replaced. Rather, it is to be enriched by digital teaching components and thus represents an expansion and potential for your teaching. Information on the didactic design of digital teaching can be found on this page.
On the pages of Campus Support you will find further information about the learning platforms used at Bielefeld University, such as LernraumPlus or Zoom. What you have to consider legally can be found in this overview.
General didactical aspects of digital teaching
- Making teaching more flexible through online offerings
By incorporating digital teaching elements, you can make your teaching more flexible. This can bring many benefits not only to you, but also to your students. However, turning to digital teaching also requires you to follow a few rules and pointers. Below you will find an overview that combines the potentials and the things to consider when making teaching more flexible through digital teaching elements:
Potentials
- Making teaching more inclusive
In addition to improving internal differentiation, a flexible choice of media channel for developing content can also have positive effects on the accessibility of teaching. Students with children, for example, can participate in courses flexibly in terms of time and location. Likewise, content in asynchronously provided learning offerings can also be made usable for individual learning speeds.
If parts of the course are recorded as a video, students can catch up on courses they have missed and review content at their own pace or use the content to prepare for exams.
- Encouraging student autonomy
In more flexible learning options, students must take responsibility for their own success in the learning process (in some cases more so than before). At the same time, however, it is also made possible to set priorities according to one's own learning preferences and interests.
- Better tracking of learning progress
Self-tests during digital learning opportunities give students direct feedback on their current learning status. It is much easier to implement such self-tests in digital format than in analog format. Self-tests can be created, for example, via the Learning SpacePlus with the activity Test. A guide from the Fachsprachenzentrum [Language Centre] on the basics and use of activities in LernraumPlus can be found here.
Things to consider
- Initially the time may increase required to prepare your teaching
Less is often more: Concentrate on teaching formats, media and tools that you yourself feel as comfortable with as possible and that are accessible to all students at Bielefeld University.
Functionality instead of glossy production: Be pragmatic when creating teaching material. Recorded teaching inputs do not need to be elaborately post-edited and mobile phone microphones and laptop webcams are perfectly adequate in terms of quality.The Media Practice team offers you support in the technical implementation of recording your course or designing digital teaching and learning formats.
- Legal regulations must be observed
When creating learning videos or using digital tools, legal frameworks must be observed. You can find an overview here.
- Students must have access to suitable digital infrastructure
When creating digital teaching and learning formats, make sure that all students can participate. To do this, please follow the instructions for creating accessible content. Accessibility means that the requirements of students with disabilities are taken into account when designing courses. The Central Accessibility Office provides an overview of the accessibility of the digital teaching tools used at Bielefeld University and how documents and other media can be designed to be as accessible as possible.
Student consulting hours and advice
Fundamental
The switch to online communication means that many things have to be made explicit that are not discussed in personal interactions, or only in borderline cases. For online communication to work, many more things need to be clarified and voiced.
Individual consultation hours
The need to hold individual Student consulting hours at a distance, e.g., for homework or final papers, requires that conditions and possibilities for communication be made clear. Inform students on your website when and how you can be reached and within what time frame they can expect responses to mail inquiries.
The Department of Philosophy has designed rules for video conferencing communication that you may be able to use. However, not all students have the technical facilities at home for online videoconferencing. Therefore, it makes sense to offer Student consulting hours by mail or phone as well.
To better schedule Student consulting hours, you can ask students to email their concerns in advance.
Group consultation hours in large courses
In large courses, it is possible to hold regular online Student consulting hours for all participants* to discuss questions about readings, writing assignments, uploaded slides, or instructional video inputs:
Students post their questions in the learning room forum or chat at a set time or by a defined deadline. The teaching staff sifts through and groups the questions (with support if necessary) and comments on or answers them. This can be done synchronously and verbally, e.g. in a videoconference meeting where students have the opportunity to ask again 'live', or asynchronously in written form if students do not have the possibility to participate in videoconferences. (Example for group consultation hours: TU Darmstadt "Aus der Lehrpraxis").
Student consulting hours and advising as a teaching format
Individual subjects, e.g., Philosophy, have made the shift from teaching material to advising the starting point for planning new study and teaching formats in which individual and group consultation hours play a systematic role: Students are addressed directly on the department website and invited to register for online consulting hours - e.g., with term paper projects - or to participate in a "digital study group."
- Notes on synchronous and asynchronous teaching formats
Digital teaching formats can be asynchronous (non-simultaneous) and synchronous (simultaneous). Both formats have advantages and disadvantages that teaching staff should take into account when planning their courses:
Asynchronous formats are less susceptible to disruptions with regard to the technical infrastructure, as content of teaching created in advance can be accessed and edited by students flexibly in terms of time and location. For teaching staff, this also has the advantage of relieving them of the burden of moderating groups of students who are simultaneously online. In addition, Content of teaching can go through several revision steps before being made available to the students. However, direct interaction with students is lost in asynchronous formats and must be supplemented by other forms of consultation and discussion (see below, "Enabling interaction").
Synchronous formats are most similar to standard face-to-face formats and allow for direct interaction with students at a given point in time. Synchronous formats are more technically complex than asynchronous formats and place greater demands on students' ability to concentrate and teaching staff's facilitation skills. In addition, synchronous formats require that all participants have sufficient technical capabilities to participate (e.g., a good Internet connection and powerful end devices).
The choice between asynchronous and synchronous formats does not constitute an exclusive decision for one or the other. Rather, individual elements in teaching can benefit from one form or the other. Last but not least, teaching staff should work with the formats that best suit their Content of teaching.- Support by tutors in the development and implementation of digital teaching formats
We have compiled a guide (in german) for teaching staff who are planning to use student assistants or tutors to develop and implement digital teaching formats. The special potential of tutors lies in the learning process support of students, which should be considered from the start date in the development of digital teaching and learning settings.
Supporting teaching and teaching staff
Tutors can also be a valuable resource for teaching staff outside of the tutorials, for example by
- supporting the creation of digital teaching/learning materials or researching existing offers
- Moderating forums/chats and collecting student feedback (e.g. they can clarify where students have the greatest difficulties in understanding or misunderstandings).
- Answer students' questions as far as possible or in consultation with the teaching staff (by e-mail or in the Learning RoomPlus)
- give advice on additional learning materials
- manage student submissions in LernraumPlus
- Correct tutorials or assignments and present possible solutions
- Provide text feedback and revision instructions for texts
Support student learning
Tutors make a valuable contribution in supporting students by
- setting up study spaces in the Learning Space to facilitate work in smaller groups
- Encouraging students to get to know each other (via videos or Zoom) and exchange (in chats or forums in LernraumPlus), creating an open atmosphere for sharing questions and learning difficulties
- encourage collaboration among students
- encourage the use of appropriate learning and writing strategies
- Give advice on particularly suitable learning programmes, apps, tutorials or learning videos and encourage exchange on these.
Lecture
- Impart technical knowledge and methods
Livestreams
Livestreams of lectures or presentations are real-time transmissions of images and sound via the Internet, using Panopto or Zoom. Livestreams are technically and organizationally demanding, but allow direct contact with students in real time. If lectures are supported by PowerPoint slides, these should be kept as simple as possible. For example, no unusual fonts should be used and the slides should be as clear as possible. Key points that are placed in a context of meaning by the spoken word are ideal.
In these livestreams, the potential for distraction among students is higher than in face-to-face lectures. Therefore, it is advisable to include short tasks for the students after every 15 minutes in order to maintain the students' concentration.
Livestreams can be additionally recorded during the live session. The recordings can be uploaded to Panopto and linked in LernraumPlus. This allows students to access the information at any time from any location. See also "Recordings".
Recordings
Recordings are similar to a lecture or presentation in presence and can be realized in different forms, e.g. as video with or without PowerPoint (Panopto) or as audio recording. In general, recordings are about content and not about professional recording quality.
It is a good idea to divide lecture recordings into sense sections of maximum 15 minutes and to include tasks for the students after each sense section. These could be questions that revisit the most important content, joint text work via a collaborative real-time editor or various activities in the Learning SpacePlus (e.g. test). A guide from the Fachsprachenzentrum [Language Centre] on the basics and how to use activities in LernraumPlus can be found here.
Challenging text passages, calculation paths, etc. can be read aloud and made available as a podcast. By having speakers provide emphasis, students can access the text in a different way than by reading it themselves.
Script
Providing students with scripts in advance makes it easier for them to prepare and relieves teaching staff from having to record lectures in their entirety (see Recordings) or transport the entire content in video conferences.
Scripts can be supplemented with tasks so that students can actively engage with the content and check for themselves whether the content has been understood. Slides can supplement the script or replace it with sufficient detail. Scripts are usually provided as PDFs, which also has the advantage of Accessibility.
- Enable interaction
Ask and answer questions synchronously
Synchronously held lectures also offer the possibility of spontaneously taking up students' questions under the conditions of distance teaching and learning and thus actively involving students in the event: All livestreaming tools used at Bielefeld University(Panopto, Zoom) offer a function for virtual requests for students to speak. Since a clear structuring of the interaction in advance is very important in online teaching, teaching staff should communicate in advance whether they will react spontaneously or at specific times during the lecture to questions or requests to speak from the students.
Questions can also be asked via the chat function of the livestreaming tools. For larger events, it is helpful to involve tutors or students for support: This way, questions from the chat can be collected and sorted. This allows the teaching staff to focus primarily on the lecture and respond to questions at appropriate times, while similar questions can be answered collectively.
Ask and answer questions asynchronously
Asynchronous interaction can be used to pick up on questions from students that arose during the preparation and follow-up of lecture sessions (livestream or recording). Since asynchronous lecture formats lack the opportunity for spontaneous requests to speak, it should be clearly communicated to students in what ways questions should be asked and in what form they will be answered on a regular basis:
If questions are to be asked individually by e-mail to teaching staff, it is advisable to collect the questions until the next section of the course and to answer them in bundles for all students (e.g. in the next teaching video or at the start of the new week as a collective e-mail). Questions can be posted and answered in writing via the forum in LernraumPlus for all students to see. This has several advantages over asking questions by mail: The mailboxes of teaching staff and students do not get overcrowded and students can help themselves in answering the questions of their fellow students*. A guide from the Fachsprachenzentrum [Language Centre] on the basics and how to use activities in LernraumPlus can be found here.
Promote interaction and exchange between students
In synchronous or asynchronous lecture formats, it is also possible for students to be brought into conversation with each other about the learning content in phases and to be actively involved in what is happening in the event: Not only can questions be asked via the forum in LernraumPlus, but students can discuss the learning content of individual meetings along discussion questions. A guide from the Fachsprachenzentrum [Language Centre] on the basics and use of activities in LernraumPlus can be found here. In or between individual meetings or teaching units, students can interact with each other in writing in an uncomplicated way using writing pads (e.g. Padlet or Etherpad in LernraumPlus). Here, low-threshold writing occasions are offered, which, for example, prompt students to make a short written statement. Likewise, surveys (e.g., in the Padlet) can be used to gather students' moods or spontaneous reactions and make them visible to everyone.
Encourage participant activation and interaction in Zoom meetings
Zoom can be used to simulate presence, but it can by no means replace it. Experience has shown that it is often more difficult to make contact with the participants and to ensure active participation in the Zoom meeting. Although it is possible to establish contact with the participants via the camera, direct reactions to each other or immediate feedback are only possible to a limited extent. For tips and more information on how to encourage participant activation and interaction in Zoom meetings, see this handout.
Ask and answer questions
There is the possibility to answer student questions synchronously or asynchronously.
With synchronous questions, students are actively involved in the discussion. All livestreaming tools used at Bielefeld University offer a function for virtual student requests to speak and chat functions in which questions can also be asked.
Suitable tools: Panopto, Zoom and Adobe Connect
Contact persons: eLearning.Media
Asynchronous interaction / questions are provided as a pre or post meeting follow-up.
Questions can be posted and answered in writing on a learning platform visible to all students. Compared to the traditional sending of questions via a mailing list, the advantages are the better clarity and the now possible direct cooperation among students when answering the questions.
Suitable tools: LernraumPlus
Contact: eLearning.Medien
Lead discussions
It may be useful to offer online discussions with students beyond the face-to-face event. Synchronous interaction can be conducted online using video conferencing tools.
Appropriate tools: Zoom and Adobe Connect
Contacts:
- Technical support - eLearning.Medien
- Didactic consulting - university didactics
- Support self-study
Support students in editing literature
Teaching staff can make primary and secondary literature available to their students via the learning space. They can support students in the preparation and follow-up of individual meetings by making it transparent in advance for which topic certain texts are relevant and should be read (e.g., in the form of a detailed schedule of events). Depending on how detailed teaching staff go into the literature in lecture units, it is a good idea to provide students with background and contextual information on your choice of literature and to classify important texts.
Put tasks online
A wide variety of assignments can be set digitally via LernraumPlus, which students work on individually or in groups asynchronously, but with a set deadline. See also "Writing assignments".
Work and writing assignments
Even more than for face-to-face courses, the following applies: Work and writing assignments for students must be formulated in a clearly understandable way and must make requirements explicit so that they can be worked on in self-study without constant queries via e-mail. Guidance in writing is provided by a series of questions:
Who should do what, why, and with what goal? What format should the product (presentation, text, etc.) have? What should happen to it after editing?
Teaching staff can start with small improvements to their existing assignments. The "One Small Thing" presentation demonstrates how small changes can sustain student learning.
The following handouts provide more detailed guidance on the topics:
Promote exchange between students
Didactic Application Scenario:
A teaching staff wants students to engage in written conversation with each other about the literature of the course. She uses the forum in LernraumPlus for this purpose:
She creates a topic for each of the specialist texts to be read and formulates two guiding questions that the students should consider in their reading. The students describe in their forum contributions which answers they have found in the text to both guiding questions and react in a second contribution to at least one contribution of their fellow students. Both posts should be written by a certain deadline so that the discussion has a fixed time frame, but students can work on the assignment at their own reading and learning pace. Meanwhile, the teaching staff gets an overview of the students' understanding of the text and can join the discussion with additional background information about the text if necessary.
Information for the activity Forum: eLearning.media
- Give feedback
Text feedback
With asynchronous teaching strategies, it makes sense to work a lot with assignments in which students write longer and shorter texts. Important: You do not have to comment on every student text and certainly not correct it! The decisive factor is what is to be achieved with the texts. It makes sense for texts that serve the joint development of knowledge:
- Minimal commenting, e.g. underlining interesting sentences and phrases in a PDF.
- Formulate further questions
- Take note of the texts as a whole and formulate notes on them.
For texts that are to be read or graded as study requirements / credits, you will find further information here (in german).
We are still working on viable concepts for the integration of peer feedback in online courses. You can find some initial tips here (in german).
Seminar
- Fachliches Wissen und Methoden vermitteln
Provide texts and give reading instructions
Teaching staff can make primary and secondary literature available to their students via the learning space. As in face-to-face courses, it is helpful for students to have precise information about which texts should be read by when and to what extent (e.g. in the form of a seminar plan or syllabus). It makes didactic sense for teaching staff to make the text selection and the thread between the texts transparent to the students at the start date of the course and then again for each meeting. Here you will find practical tips on how to do this.
Record oral contributions
Recordings are similar to an oral contribution in presence and can be realized in different forms, e.g. as video with or without PowerPoint (Panopto) or as audio recording. Teaching staff can cover individual contents of teaching in separate recordings. But students can also record their presentation in the form of an oral contribution, for example. In general, recordings are about content and not about professional recording quality.
It is advisable to make oral contributions rather short and to concentrate on one content-related point. If several content points are relevant, it is advisable to record several contributions.
Even demanding text passages can be read out and recorded. By listening to the speaker's emphasis, students can access the text in a different way than by reading it themselves.
Helpful tips on how to easily create instructional videos can be found at the following links:
- Enable interaction
Lead discussions
Discussions are always useful when Content of teaching is to be discussed or methods are to be used where a joint processing of teaching content happens simultaneously. Synchronous verbal interaction can also be facilitated without a presence using video conferencing tools such as Adobe Connect or Zoom. It is a good idea to hold discussions in small groups before discussing the results in plenary sessions. Zoom makes this possible via breakout sessions, which allow all participants to split up into separate discussion rooms for a certain period of time. It is important that the rules of group work are clear to the participants (e.g., under what conditions teaching staff enter the separate breakout sessions, how long the project duration of the group work is, or how the results of the group work are to be secured).
Examples of such group work scenarios include text discussions or tutorials that engage students in interaction with each other, such as think-pair-share. It is a good idea to have tutors support the moderation of online seminars with larger groups (see Tutors).
In online discussions, expectations should always be clearly communicated first about how to behave in the virtual space ("netiquette", e.g. entering the learning space with the university email address, registering with a clear name, using the hand signal function in the video conferencing tool).
Asynchronous interactions
Asynchronous interaction is a good way to give teaching staff and students maximum flexibility when working on joint tasks and providing feedback. The forum of the Learning Space and Learning SpacePlus is particularly suitable for asynchronous discussion, discussion of texts, sharing of solutions, and exchange between students and teaching staff.
Depending on the learning objective, the forum can be used to prepare content, to work together or to give feedback on work results. For successful forum discussions, clear assignments and discussion impulses prepared by teaching staff or moderators are important. The form of forum contributions is not limited to questions and answers, but can also be used for asking for opinions, tracing and discussing calculation paths or reconstructing argumentations.
It does not make sense for all interactions to be carried out in writing. Thus, through oral tutorials, students' oral skills (such as discussion skills) are enhanced even in non-presentational teaching. Examples of oral asynchronous interactions would be:
- Reading impressions (as feedback) in the form of voice messages recorded while reading texts. Voice messages can be recorded on any smartphone and shared via email or in the learning space.
- The creation of learning videos by teaching staff or students. The Panopto platform lends itself to this, which can then also be used as a further communication and commentary platform.
- An argument (analogous to a writing conversation) between two positions in the form of videos and video responses. This enables a clear conversation between two or more interlocutors and requires little work compared to a written exchange. This can also be well designed with Panopto.
Encourage participant activation and interaction in Zoom meetings
Zoom can be used to simulate presence, but it can by no means replace it. Experience has shown that it is often more difficult to make contact with the participants and to ensure active participation in the Zoom meeting. Although it is possible to establish contact with the participants via the camera, it is only possible to a limited extent to react directly to each other or to provide immediate feedback. For tips and more information on how to encourage participant activation and interaction in Zoom meetings, see this handout.
Promote exchange between students
Didactic Application Scenario:
A teaching staff wants students to engage in written conversation with each other about the literature of the course. She uses the forum in LernraumPlus for this purpose:
She creates a topic for each of the specialist texts to be read and formulates two guiding questions that the students should consider in their reading. The students describe in their forum contributions which answers they have found in the text to both guiding questions and react in a second contribution to at least one contribution of their fellow students. Both posts should be written by a certain deadline so that the discussion has a fixed time frame, but students can work on the assignment at their own reading and learning pace. Meanwhile, the teaching staff gets an overview of the students' understanding of the text and can join the discussion with additional background information on the text if necessary.
Information for the activity Forum: eLearning.media
Ask and answer questions
There is the possibility to answer student questions synchronously or asynchronously.
With synchronous questions, students are actively involved in the discussion. All livestreaming tools used at Bielefeld University offer a function for virtual student requests to speak and chat functions in which questions can also be asked.
Contact persons: eLearning.media
Asynchronous interaction / questions are provided as a pre- or post-meeting follow-up.
Questions can be posted and answered in writing on a learning platform visible to all students. Compared to the classic sending of questions via a mailing list, the advantages are the better clarity and the now possible direct cooperation among students when answering the questions.
Suitable tools: LernraumPlus
Contact: eLearning.Medien
Lead discussions
It may be useful to offer online discussions with students beyond the face-to-face event. Synchronous interaction can be conducted online using video conferencing tools.
Appropriate tools: Zoom and Adobe Connect
Contacts:
- Technical support - eLearning.Medien
- Didactic consulting - university didactics
- Support self-study
Work and writing assignments
Even more than for face-to-face courses, the following applies: Work and writing assignments for students must be formulated in a clearly understandable way and must make requirements explicit so that they can be worked on in self-study without constant queries via e-mail. Guidance in writing is provided by a series of questions:
Who should do what, why, and with what goal? What format should the product (presentation, text, etc.) have? What should happen to it after editing?
Teaching staff can start with small improvements to their existing assignments. The "One Small Thing" presentation demonstrates how small changes can sustain student learning.
The following handouts provide more detailed guidance on the topics:
Writing activities online
Online in particular, students can be encouraged to explore content in greater depth with many informal writing prompts. A list of possible writing activities can be found here.
Promote exchange between students
Didactic Application Scenario:
A teaching staff wants students to engage in written conversation with each other about the literature of the course. She uses the forum in LernraumPlus for this purpose:
She creates a topic for each of the specialist texts to be read and formulates two guiding questions that the students should consider in their reading. The students describe in their forum contributions which answers they have found in the text to both guiding questions and react in a second contribution to at least one contribution of their fellow students. Both posts should be written by a certain deadline so that the discussion has a fixed time frame, but students can work on the assignment at their own reading and learning pace. Meanwhile, the teaching staff gets an overview of the students' understanding of the text and can join the discussion with additional background information about the text if necessary.
Information for the activity Forum: eLearning.media
- Give feedback
Text feedback
With asynchronous teaching strategies, it makes sense to work a lot with assignments in which students write longer and shorter texts. Important: You do not have to comment on every student text and certainly not correct it! The decisive factor is what is to be achieved with the texts. It makes sense for texts that serve the joint development of knowledge:
- Minimal commenting, e.g. underlining interesting sentences and phrases in a PDF.
- Formulate further questions
- Take note of the texts as a whole and formulate notes on them.
For texts that are to be read or graded as study requirements / credits, you will find further information here (in german).
We are still working on viable concepts for the integration of peer feedback in online courses. You can find some initial tips here (in german).
tutorial
- Support by assistants or tutors in the development and implementation of courses
For teaching staff planning to use student assistants or tutors for the development and implementation of distance teaching and learning, we have compiled a guide. The special potential of tutors lies in the learning process support of students, which should be considered from the start date in the development of digital teaching and learning settings [Centre for teaching and learning].
- Possible tasks for tutors
Support teaching and teaching staff
Tutors can also be a valuable resource for teaching staff outside the tutorials, for example by
- supporting the creation of digital teaching/learning materials or researching existing offerings
- Moderating forums/chats and collecting student feedback (e.g. they can clarify where students have the greatest difficulties in understanding or misunderstandings).
- Answer students' questions as far as possible or in consultation with the teaching staff (by e-mail or in the Learning RoomPlus)
- give advice on additional learning materials
- manage student submissions in LernraumPlus
- Correct tutorials or assignments and present possible solutions
- Provide text feedback and revision instructions for texts
Support student learning
Tutors make a valuable contribution in supporting students by
- setting up study spaces in the Learning Space to facilitate work in smaller groups
- Encouraging students to get to know each other (via videos or Zoom) and exchange (in chats or forums in LernraumPlus), creating an open atmosphere for sharing questions and learning difficulties
- encourage collaboration among students
- encourage the use of appropriate learning and writing strategies
- Give advice on particularly suitable learning programmes, apps, tutorials or learning videos and encourage exchange on these.
Student consulting hours and advice
- Basics
- Individual consultation hours
The need to hold individual Student consulting hours at a distance, e.g., for homework or theses, requires that conditions and possibilities for communication be made clear. Inform students on your website when and how you can be reached and within what time frame they can expect responses to mail inquiries.
The Department of Philosophy has designed rules for video conferencing communication that you may be able to use. However, not all students have the technical facilities at home for online videoconferencing. Therefore, it makes sense to offer Student consulting hours by mail or phone as well.
To better schedule Student consulting hours, you can ask students to email their concerns in advance.
- Group office hours in large courses.
In large courses, it is possible to hold regular online Student consulting hours for all participants to discuss questions about readings, writing assignments, uploaded slides, or instructional video inputs:
Students post their questions in the LernraumPlus forum or chat at a set time or by a defined deadline. The teaching staff sifts through and groups the questions (with support if necessary) and comments on or answers them. This can be done synchronously and verbally, e.g. in a video conference meeting where students have the opportunity to ask again 'live', or asynchronously in written form if students do not have the possibility to participate in video conferences. (Example for group consultation sessions: TU Darmstadt "Aus der Lehrpraxis").
- Student consulting hours and advising as a teaching format
Individual subjects, e.g. Philosophy, have made the shift from teaching material to advising the starting point for planning new study and teaching formats, in which individual and group consultation hours play a systematic role: Students are addressed directly on the department website and invited to register for online consulting hours - e.g., with term paper projects - or to participate in a "digital study group."
Digital semester apparatus for learning rooms
Teaching staff can also make term papers available to their students digitally. You can find more information here.