Practical examples

On-campus lecture with peer instruction and booklet exam

On-campus lectures are supplemented by various elements to foster student activation and sustainable learning:

• each session begins with a brief review of the previous session's content. Afterwards, pairs of students sitting next to each other briefly discuss what they have not yet understood. Then the students ask their questions, and the teacher ensures that students and their questions are taken seriously
• the lecture is regularly livened up through digital polls and peer instruction in the style of Eric Mazur
• "Booklet exam": every other week, students can upload a handwritten summary for their individual exam booklet in ILIAS. They can then use a print version of this booklet as a permitted aid in the exam.

Tools

Polls: ILIAS LiveVoting (better functionality: trypingo.com)

Booklet exam: ILIAS exercise + script for file sorting to print the booklet

Benefits

Repetition, Q&A sessions, polls and peer instruction lead to a high level of student motivation and participation.

The booklet exam promotes learning throughout the entire semester and helps students to overcome exam anxiety.

For peer instruction, it is essential that the questions have a suitable level. Doctoral students or an AI tool, for example, can help design the questions and answer options.

For the submission of the exam booklet, very precise specifications regarding size, format (paper size, colour/bw, cutting, ...), submission date etc. are important. Guidance on this topic is available from the Academic Staff Development team.

Seminar with blended learning units

Course on media education in schools

This seminar combined face-to-face classes and asynchronous blended learning units.

• Face-to-face classes on campus
• Individual seminar lessons were replaced by asynchronous online self-study units
• Each asynchronous seminar week was followed by a face-to-face class with in-depth discussion of the content from the self-study units

Tools

• online self-study units: self-study modules from Goethe University Frankfurt, available at https://lernbar.uni-frankfurt.de/courses
• Mahara to create a portfolio and reflect on the topic
• face-to-face units: digital pinboards (TaskCards) and online quizzes (Minnit)
• ILIAS: exercises and polls

Benefits

By outsourcing the knowledge transfer to asynchronous units, face-to-face sessions can be made more interactive and communicative, and can be used for in-depth discussions. Only a few frontal teaching units are needed as the students acquire the basic knowledge mostly through guided self-study.

The seminar was evaluated very positively. Students appreciated the open exchange and communicative character of the seminar. Thanks to the online self-study units, the students felt well prepared for the face-to-face seminar and participated very actively in the discussions.  

Takeaways

Clear instructions and guidelines are essential for a successful blended learning format. Students need all the important instructions so they can complete the asynchronous online self-study units effectively:

• What content exactly should they work on and how can they access it?
• Do they have to complete certain assignments? Which ones and what scope is expected? How, where and by when should they submit assignments? Will the assignment be assessed?
• How should they prepare for the subsequent face-to-face session so that the class can get straight into an in-depth discussion?

It is a good idea to create a way for students to share any questions that arise while they work on the self-study units (e.g. in a cloud document or an ILIAS forum). This allows teachers to prepare for face-to-face sessions or use the questions to start a discussion.

Flipped classroom

The students worked through the theoretical part of the lecture on research methods themselves, watching short explanatory videos and jointly reading and commenting on texts in Perusall. During face-to-face classes, we used the time to put into practice what the students had learned and address questions in five smaller tutorial groups.

For performance assessments, the students compiled written assignments in small groups.

Tools

• ILIAS
• Perusall

Benefits

Due to the design of lectures and the use of Perusall, students come to the lessons well prepared and can ask informed questions and directly apply what they have learned.

Challenges

• main person responsible for teaching no longer sees all students in person
• tutors bear a large responsibility

Online lecture with activation elements, social reading and three-part online exam

The topics were introduced in lectures that took place online via videoconference, while the corresponding tutorials were held in person. The online lectures had a clear, recurring structure:

• start with quiz questions for repetition
• learning objectives
• teacher presentation alternating with student activities
• activities included:
  • group work on online whiteboards in breakout rooms
  • answering questions via word cloud or chat waterfall
• conclusion with one-minute papers: students wrote down 3 key points and a question that was discussed in the tutorial

The reading assignments were combined with social reading, i.e. students could add comments to the text in their tutorial groups using a social reading tool and thus help each other to understand the text.

Each tutorial group had its own Miro board, on which they collaboratively recorded summaries and discussion results.

The exam was conducted online in three parts over the course of the semester.

Tools

Lecture via Zoom

For class activation:

• polls and chat in Zoom
• Miro board for group work
• Menti for word clouds

Perusall for social reading

Online exam in ILIAS

_{Originally we had intended to use GDPR-compliant tools such as Conceptboard, answergarden.ch and mindwendel. However, some of these were not suited for such a large number of participants.}

Benefits

The special feature of this course is its basic structure:

1. students read a text using the social reading tool and help each other to understand it
2. the tutorial prepares them for the lecture, i.e. they discuss the text to ensure basic understanding
3. in the lecture, the text content is then dealt with in depth through transfer or application

The high level of interactivity in the lecture promotes students' intensive engagement with the content.

Through the comments in the social reading tool, tutors and teachers can see what is difficult for the students to understand.

Challenges

The social reading tool does not suit the reading habits of all students; if necessary, create alternative analogue options for collaboration.

Originally we had intended to use GDPR-compliant tools such as Conceptboard, answergarden.ch and mindwendel (https://idea.kits.blog/). However, some of these were not suited for such a large number of participants.

Online self-study course via ILIAS

In an international self-study course, students worked at their own pace on a weekly topic using videos, slides, texts and case studies.

The performance assessments structured this work, as each student completed:

• a short quiz at the end of each week
• a group video presentation on a case study at the end of the course
• a written assignment on a case study

Tools

• ILIAS (course materials and quiz)
• university cloud (for sharing presentation videos)

Benefits

• some very good results
• high level of self-motivation
• international project at three universities
• flexibility of the students

Takeaways

• lack of group spirit, which is typical of self-study courses. Short joint question and answer sessions now and then might help
• participant dropout, possibly due to the lack of group spirit and the resulting lower level of commitment
• the time required for the course differed at the participating universities due to different course organization

Linguistic primer – instructional videos

Background: In advanced seminars, for example in master's programmes, you have students with different backgrounds and levels of knowledge. To help ensure everyone is at the same level, we created videos and exercises on the basics of various areas of linguistics that all students can access online.

Instructional videos and exercises are now available on the following topics:

• Phonetics & phonology
• Morphology
• Semantics
• Pragmatics

The videos promote students' self-study skills and can also be included as additional elements in seminars.

The project was funded as part of the "Freiräume" programme for the further development of digital teacher training.

Tools

No specific digital tools are required for the instructional videos and exercises. The students can access the videos via the browser, the exercises via ILIAS.

Benefits

• Instead of repeating basic knowledge during advanced seminars, students can use the videos to catch up on any missing knowledge at their own pace
• Students enhance their self-study skills
• Material can be included in seminars