Shaping hybrid education teaching staff | Applications and their capacity and reliability

Which applications are available for online and hybrid forms of education, and which online and hybrid forms need to be further investigated in terms of feasibility and usability?

Guidelines

Applications can be used for various learning activities to facilitate both physical presence on campus and distance learning. There are already many applications used by teachers and students, such as Canvas, BlueJeans, MSTeams, Remindo, PeerGrade (pilot), Buddycheck, etc. The various learning activities are listed below, along with the associated possible facilities/tools. For a number of applications, training courses for instructors will be offered to facilitate the use of the applications.

Online lectures

There are currently several applications for online lectures and recording short lectures. Applications such as MSTeams, Canvas Conferences, BlueJeans, Explain Everything, Camtasia to stream and/or record live lectures are supported by the UT. There are also possibilities to blend courses and make professional microlectures in the studio. Improvement of the quality of streaming and recording and upgrading and upscaling the video-management facilities for sharing and storing is required and will be investigated.

Online tutorials

There are various tools that could improve the learning of students and the organisation of tutorials, for example Horus, TAhelp.me, and Discord. Investigation in these and other relevant tools for teaching and learning will continue.

Innovative small-scale hybrid interactions

In addition to online lectures and tutorials, innovative hybrid small-scale interactions can also be made possible where two groups of students can interact with the lecturer: students on campus and remote students. The hybrid solution means that a sufficient number of lecture halls should be equipped with proper devices so that the interactions can also be followed live via streaming, preferably with the same experience as the students sitting in the hall. This could be made possible by projecting 'remote' students on screens in the lecture hall and by letting these 'remote' students participate actively in interactions. A very important condition here is that operating the equipment and applications does not take extra time for the lecturer. Sufficient support must therefore be available during these hybrid interactions. The recording of these hybrid interactions should be made available without any extra work on the part of the instructor. Further investigation is required and investments for experiments will be made.

Online practicals

Various applications are currently in use for practicals in laboratories. Labster (pilot) and LabBuddy, for example, replace physical labs with online versions.

Hybrid practicals

Students at the UT can collaborate remotely with students outside the UT, for example by having students on campus operate a camera to show an experiment to remote peers and communicate together about a setup and/or assignment and the results of an experiment. Further investigation and investments for experiments will follow.

Project work, Graduation

For project work, graduation consultation or the graduation presentation/defense, tools are available to collaborate and/or to communicate with each other (MSTeams, BlueJeans, Canvas Conference tool). These tools can be used for complete online forms as well as hybrid solutions in situations where the campus is partly available for project work and graduation. Further investigation in relevant tools (e.g. Discord) will follow.

Proctoring during tests

Currently, a pilot project on proctoring is being held. As long as the results of these pilots (as well as other relevant information) are not known, no proctoring tools will be used for online assessment.

Remote assessments and grading tests

Besides tools for summative tests, diagnostic test tools (enabling monitoring ongoing feedback to improve teacher and student learning) are available (partly) for online education.

An overview of currently available tests can be found here.

Further investigation in new software for the administration and grading of both summative and diagnostic tests will be carried out, especially on how testing and grading can be made more efficient and faster (for example through software such as PeerGrade and Gradescope).