Educational innovation, development and discussion at ETH
ICED 2020 @ ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich is to host a global conversation about how higher education will look in the future, and how universities should prepare.
In June
2020 the biennial conference of the International Consortium of Educational
Developers (ICED) will take place at ETH Zurich. The theme of the conference,
“The Future-Ready Graduate”, was chosen to inspire higher educational
institutions, their faculty and educational developers to reflect on emerging
global trends and to consider the changes needed to adjust higher education to
new realities as they develop.
What does
the future hold? This question has fascinated humans for eons. Many of our questions
about the future are unanswerable. However, we can make some educated
predictions. Industry leaders are asking themselves how global trends will affect
their domains – and so is the education sector.
We live in
a permanently changing society which requires new didactic approaches and
innovative education concepts. How can teaching staff prepare students for this
uncertain future? How will universities adjust to new realities in higher
education? What do faculty members need if they are to offer suitable learning
experiences that prepare students for changing scenarios?
These topics and more will be addressed at the ICED 2020 conference. The First Call for submissions is now open. It invites potential presenters to share their experiences and to explore the deep and searching questions in the conference sub-themes.
In order to enhance this conversation, students are explicitly invited to participate. ETH is sponsoring 4-6 students from around the world to attend and speak at the conference and student voices will be included in the form of a video at the beginning of the conference. The process for submitting a video or for nominating a student ambassador is described on the ICED 2020 website.
We hope that ICED 2020 conference contributions will provide both inspiration and practical pathways for faculty, administrators and educational developers as they seek to respond to changing future scenarios.
ETH teaching staff can contact LET staff members if they would like to discuss a potential contribution.
Learning from 18 years of fostering Teaching and Learning innovation
For more than 18 years, ETH has consistently been fostering Teaching and Learning (T&L) innovation through funding provided by Innovedum*. The funded projects have helped to transform teaching practices sustainably both in individual courses and curricula. But what else have we learned from it?
To find
answers the Innovation management group at LET has reflected on how this
innovation process has evolved. We evaluated 15 years of data and arrived at
two key findings. The first is that community building activities (such as our
lunchtime seminars and the Learning and Teaching Fair) have become the basis
for fostering T&L innovation at ETH. These activities bring together
project leaders, faculty members, educational developers and policymakers and
provide a platform for teaching staff to share information and insights gleaned
from their projects. These events are driven by the concept of Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning (SoTL) which aims for systematic reflections on how
individual teaching interventions and innovation projects improve student
learning. We will continue on this path.
The second
finding is that involving students in the innovation cycle has remained a major
challenge. Innovedum has experimented with different approaches (e.g. Student
Innovedum), but the adoption of students’ ideas within the university has
proven to be difficult. So we have started a new project with the teaching
commission, an advisory body of the Executive Board, looking at ways that
students can be better integrated in the process. First results are expected to
be implemented in the Innovedum project cycle in Spring 2020.
For a closer look, please check out the paper which was presented at the EdMedia conference in Amsterdam in July 2019.
Also, if you are an ETH faculty member, we invite you to the Refresh Teaching series, one of the community building activities mentioned above.
*Innovedum is a brand established by the Rector including project funding and community building activities open to all stakeholders of T&L. www.innovedum.ethz.ch
(English below) Lehrende können die Dashboard-Bilder ihrer eigenen Kurse selber ändern. Dies lässt sich einfach umsetzen und hilft Studierenden und Lehrenden, ihre Kurse schneller zu finden. Darüber hinaus wird das Dashboard durch individuelle Bilder visuell ansprechender.
Vorgehen
Wählen Sie ein Bild, für welches Sie die Copyright-Rechte besitzen oder eines das frei verfügbar ist. Bitte beachten Sie ausserdem, dass die Bilder auf unterschiedlichen Geräten unterschiedlich dargestellt werden. Wählen Sie also ein passendes Motiv.
Ändern Sie die Dateigrösse des Bildes auf ca. 100 KB. Ideal ist das png-Format.
Stellen Sie sicher, dass die Höhe des Bildes 112 Pixel und die Breite nicht mehr als 350 Pixel betragen.
Laden Sie das Bild hoch, indem Sie beim Zahnradsymbol «Einstellungen» wählen, scrollen Sie runter bis zum Feld «Kursbild». Laden Sie die Bilddatei hoch und speichern Sie danach Ihre Änderungen.
Das Bild wird nun im Dashboard und in den Kursinfos angezeigt.
Customise dashboard images in Moodle
Teachers
can change the dashboard pictures of their own Moodle courses. This is quick to
do, helps students as well as teachers find their courses faster and brightens
up the dashboards with individualised images.
Steps
Select a picture for which you own
the copyright, or which is publicly available. (Please keep in mind, pictures
are displayed differently on every screen, therefore consider selecting an
abstract picture).
Resize the image so that it is roughly
100 KB. Ideally use png format.
Ensure the dimensions of your
picture are 112 px tall by no more than 350 pixels wide.
Upload the picture by selecting the
cogwheel in your course, select “edit settings”, then scroll down until you see
the field for “course image”. Upload your file and save.
It will now be displayed on the dashboard of everyone who is enrolled in this course.
It was some years ago, that the Teaching Commission asked LET (the unit for Educational Development and Technology at ETH) to consider ways to involve student in teaching and learning innovation.
In response, the programme “Student Innovedum” was specifically developed. Students were invited to develop prototypes of their own ideas over the duration of a semester. It ran for three years and the results of the student projects were presented each year at the annual Innovedum event and the Learning and Teaching Fair.
2019 Participants. Photo by Heidi Hofstettler
While this did increase awareness of the potential of involving students in educational innovation and sparked valuable discussions at ETH, the actual projects and ideas of students did not come to fruition as had originally been hoped. Supporting the students would have required more resources than were available and placed a high burden of work on the (already very busy) students.
Therefore it was decided not to continue Student Innovedum in 2019. Instead, it is our intention to continue the discussion with students, the Teaching Commission and the Rector of ETH in order to decide how to best honour the original request of integrating students in educational innovation.
A working group will be looking at the latest literature and other inspiring examples from around the world to consider ways of engaging students more deeply and in more meaningful ways in funded educational innovation projects at ETH.
We are still at the beginning of this process but would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who helped make Student Innovedum happen. This includes the wonderful staff at the Student Project House, the Rector Prof. Dr. Sarah Springmann, Vice-rector Prof. Dr. Andreas Vaterlaus, the members of the Teaching Commission, staff at LET and of course all the students who participated and poured so much passion into the process. Thank you to all and watch this space!
Case Study – Peer Review Mastering Digital Business Models
As part of a series of case studies, staff
at LET sat down to have a conversation with Prof. Elgar Fleisch, Johannes
Hübner and Dominik Bilgeri from the Department of Management, Technology, and
Economics (D-MTEC) to discuss their Mastering Digital Business Model (MDBM)
course.
What is the project about?
In this Mastering Digital Business Model
(MDBM) course, Prof. Elgar Fleisch, Dominik Bilgeri, George Boateng and Johannes
Huebner teach Master’s level students a theory- and practice-based
understanding of how today’s information technologies enable new digital
business models and transform existing ones. The course contains a novel examination
mode, a video group project is introduced as a core element contributing to the
overall course grade. In addition, students are asked to participate in a
peer-to-peer review of the videos produced by other student groups, which is
independent of the grading and is geared towards giving students insights in
how other groups solved the challenge. The best-rated videos are then shared
with the entire class in the end of the semester.
As part of this newly created examination element, course participants (in teams of two to three students) explain one of the major lecture topics (theoretical lenses) in the first half of their video.Then they apply the same lens by analysing a company, aiming to better understand its underlying business model. Companies are pre-selected and allocated to students for fairness reasons. Every year, we choose a pool of interesting companies in the context of digital transformation, the Internet of Things, Blockchain, e-health, etc.
What
motivated you to initiate the project?
The core idea was to improve students’
learning success by using an examination format that not only requires learners
to reiterate theoretical contents, but also apply the theory in a practical
context. The students have different backgrounds, and do not necessarily have a
strong business focus, which means that many of the concepts taught in class
may be rather abstract. We used the video format and specific companies as case
studies, because we think this is a good way to trigger curiosity, show
concrete examples of modern companies in a compact form, and force students to
reflect deeply upon theoretical frameworks compared to other examination
formats.
How
did you do it?
Aside from the weekly input lectures, we
ask students to form groups in the beginning of the semester. We then provide a
list of theoretical core topics from which each group can choose one. In
addition, we randomly assign each group to a case company. The theoretical
topic then first needs to be explained in the first half of the video, and then
be applied to the case company in the second half. Here we thus used a prosumer
approach, where students become part of the course because they create a small
section of the content. The best videos are shared with the class, and can be
reused as additional learning materials for future cohorts. This set-up generally
resulted in high-quality videos, perhaps also since students knew their videos
will be used again.
Students also had to review the video
projects of five other groups. They had to clearly describe whether and how
their peers used certain perspectives (called “lenses” in the course) which played
a role in the video and in their feedback. In this way they analysed once more how
the newly learned concepts were visible in other companies – a positive side
effect being that they also honed their reflection and feedback skills.
Did
you have the support you needed for the project? Is there additional support
you wish you had had to help you to achieve your goals?
We asked two students from previous cohorts
to join us as tutors, and support this year’s groups primarily with technical
questions about video-making (e.g. tools, quality considerations etc.). In
addition, we designed one of the lecture slots as a coaching session during
which we would further support student groups with their questions. In total,
this approach allowed us to provide the students with high-quality supervision
with reasonable effort.
Please
describe some of the key outcomes of the project
To most students, the task of creating a
video was new. We received feedback that while the initial effort for learning
how to make a video was higher compared to other examination formats, it was also
fun and very helpful to really understand and apply the new concepts. They said
that they learned things more deeply and more sustainably because they had to
consider all details and aspects – compared to the practical exercises they are
familiar with in other courses. By carefully phrasing their arguments in giving
feedback on peer videos, students became more aware of their own thinking and
argumentation.
We observed that the questions asked by
students once they start creating videos were different and went deeper, i.e. their
reflections were based on many concrete examples of companies, and the concepts
were put into perspective. The same sub-concepts have a different meaning in
another context, and students now see the overarching principles better and can
argue more precisely about theoretical aspects. Without these concrete
examples, it would have been harder to concretely grasp the theoretical
aspects.
How
did the project impact learners or the way in which you teach?
We were surprised by the high quality of the
best student videos. The teaching team is now really motivated to continue
innovating on our approaches in other courses. We saw clearly that when
students are very active we get better results, deeper learning and better
reflection.
What
lessons learned do you want to share with your colleagues?
It can really pay off to try things and to
experiment. We think that nowadays the classic format of passive lectures and
final exams may not always be the best choice. We believe the improved outcomes
through students who were actively engaged by the video assignment justified
the investment in developing new approaches and tools.
When considering videos as an examination
format, you should define the entire course/project very clearly. When
describing what production options students have for videos, you should be very
precise. Offering too many options can be counterproductive. It is better to
present 3-4 crystal-clear examples and stick to them.
Also, we would recommend managing students’
expectations clearly in the beginning of the semester, and highlighting both
the benefits and challenges of this examination format. Of course, this becomes
easier after the first year, when you can draw from the experience of the first
cohort, and also provide examples of prior videos to illustrate what is
expected of the groups. Because the students are co-creators you get new and
relevant content which enriches the course and can serve to motivate both
students and teachers.
What
are the future plans for this work? How do you plan to sustain what you have
created through the project?
We plan to optimize some details of this
course, and to go even more in the direction of a flipped classroom to use this
teaching approach in other courses. We will create a library of the student
videos to provide it as additional learning materials in future editions of the
course.
Student feedback
By MDBM Student Cristina Mercandetti (mercandc@student.ethz.ch)
Your opinion about this course and the peer
review & video production process – how has it influenced your learning
process? Cristina Mercandetti: I really enjoyed both the
course and the video production process. I think they complemented each other
very well and we were able to directly apply the theoretical knowledge learned
in the course to work on our project. It helped me to think more critically
about the course content, and really dive into some of the lenses and models
presented. I don’t think this would have been possible without the video
production, so it definitely improved my learning process.
Do
you think this approach could be used in other courses?
Cristina Mercandetti: Yes, I think this approach could easily be used in other
classes. However, I think part of the fun in this class was that the video
production was something very new and refreshing (a side effect was that I
learned how to cut a short movie). I imagine that if several classes introduced
this it would lose some of its novelty and could be stressful, as it took a lot
of time.
Final remarks about the course Cristina Mercandetti: I really enjoyed the whole
class, and heard a lot of good things from other students too.
As part of a series of case studies, staff
at LET sat down to have a conversation with Prof. Volker Hoffmann (SusTec, the Group for
Sustainability and Technology) and Erik Jentges (Educational
Developer) from the Department of Management, Technology and Economics (D-MTEC)
to discuss their corporate sustainability project.
What
is the project about?
The course “Corporate Sustainability” aims to enable students to become advocates of sustainable business practices in their later careers. Each year it attracts 150-200 students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and different educational levels (BSc, MSc, and MAS). We adapted the Six Sentence Argument (6SA) method for this course. The method focuses on enhancing critical thinking skills through structured writing and guided, double-blind peer-review.
What
motivated you to initiate the project?
We wanted students to get a clearer picture
of what sustainability really is. In the course, they develop not only a deeper
understanding of corporate sustainability but also the skills to give and
receive feedback.
How
did you do it?
At the core are four topics that relate to
the sustainability of corporations. These are assessment, strategy, technology,
and finance. We developed digital learning modules (videos, some with
interactive elements) that explain key concepts to support the most relevant and difficult
parts of the lecture. Also, we want to develop students’
critical thinking skills. In e-modules, students learn to formulate concise and
short arguments with the 6SA method. The core idea builds on the
assumption that writing is thinking.
In the e-modules, students face a decision
(a micro case based on the lecture content) and argue for their preferred
course of action using a logical structure of exactly six sentences. Each
sentence fulfils a specific function in the overall argument and has a 20-word
limit. A clear grading rubric enables students to assess 6SAs in double-blind
peer reviews. These have been continuously adapted and improved since 2015. The
specialized online tool “peergrade” also helped us to conduct a smooth process
– for both students and teachers.
Through the peer assessment, students engage
critically with their peers’ arguments and receive constructive feedback on
their own arguments. With the 6SA exercise, students learn to argue with
clarity, and it helps them to reflect on the way they and others think.
During the second half of the semester,
students work in diverse teams to prepare mock debates, consulting strategies,
economic models and campaign videos. In this phase, they are coached by several
postdoctoral and doctoral researchers from SusTec, the Group for Sustainability and Technology. The students then present their projects and display their skills in
a group puzzle session and are debriefed in the following final lecture
session. Students receive grades for both individual and group performance and
can earn a bonus on their exam grade when completing the critical thinking
exercises.
Did
you have the support you needed for the project? Is there additional support
you wish you had had to help you to achieve your goals?
The project received funding from different
sources. This helped us to hire academic staff to assist the development of new
teaching approaches and the production of high-quality videos. In addition, we
received specialist guidance in the instructional design and production of
videos.
Please
describe some of the key outcomes of the project
With regard to our feedback modules, we think
that the quality of the argumentation and peer reviews has increased over the
years. For example, we learned that the effective design of such peer
assessment exercises for students requires training on how to give constructive
feedback and that it should involve several feedback loops to support the
development and refinement of critical thinking skills. Overall, the course now
integrates many innovative teaching elements and was a finalist in the 2018 ETH
KITE award.
How
did the project impact learners or the way in which you teach?
When students are able to write better and concise
arguments that convince critical readers, and if they can give constructive
feedback to arguments that are being made to justify strategic decisions, then
they are able to actively shape good decisions in a company setting – they can
be change-makers for corporate sustainability. The students were motivated by
the new teaching approaches such as the supporting videos, interactive
questions inside the videos, and the critical thinking exercises. Peer
assessment is “homework” for the students, but they know that they can earn a
bonus on their exam grade – and they are already rehearsing for some parts of
the final exam.
With regard to students’ learning, the peer
review process itself is convincing. What is unique to our teaching situation is
the incredible diversity in the classroom. A 19-year-old Swiss environmental
science student may be sitting next to a 25-year-old Chinese student who is pursuing
a master’s degree in management, who in turn sits next to a 35-year-old
American part-time student with a PhD in chemistry and a management position
with responsibilities for 20 employees in a multinational company. Peer
feedback is a powerful solution to bridge these gaps of different levels of
experience and cultural backgrounds. It allows younger students to write a
creative and brilliant argument without being intimidated by more senior
students. It allows a shy and quiet student to gain confidence by formulating a
convincing argument whose strengths are recognized in their peers’ feedback. It
creates a space for older students to learn how to coach younger classmates with
constructive feedback to improve their reasoning.
That is why at D-MTEC, we use peer feedback
in other courses as well. Students learn more when actually giving feedback
compared to when only submitting an assignment.
What
lessons learned do you want to share with your colleagues?
At the beginning, it was a lot of work and many
people were involved, but it was worth it. Today, with regard to the critical
thinking exercises, we have continuously refined our processes. Every student writes
three reviews, thereby ensuring that everyone also receives much more feedback
than a single lecturer could provide. The main work for lecturers is providing
an overview of the themes in the arguments and summarizing the activity for all
students. This lets them know that their individual contribution becomes part
of a collective intelligence. There are always truly smart and innovative
solutions that need to be shared with the whole class. Also, there is little
effort involved in re-grading/moderating student questions about feedback,
because we train students to write helpful and considerate feedback and make them
aware of that they also have to learn how to receive feedback, especially if it
is feedback that they don’t want to, but need to hear.
For the production of videos, we recommend planning enough time and engaging with video experts and instructional designers early on. Especially writing a concise script for a short video requires a surprising amount of time until it effectively conveys your key points.
If you are interested in applying these concepts in your own courses please contact LET.
Note: The project received funding from different sources (Innovedum, Emil Halter Foundation, ETH Critical Thinking Initiative).
Additional
resources and comments
Article: Kölbel, J., & Jentges, E. (2018). The Six-Sentence Argument: Training Critical Thinking Skills Using Peer Review. Management Teaching Review, 3(2), 118–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/2379298117739856
Flash in all its forms will no longer be supported by Adobe or any internet browsers by the end of 2020. This has prompted a clean-up of any Flash files on our own Moodle system. For years Adobe Flash was considered state-of-the-art for interactive web content. As time goes by new standards like html5 and webGL have been established and the Flash technology was shown to be vulnerable to attacks. Therefore it was not surprising that about two years ago Adobe announced the end of Flash by 2020.
Since this announcement, all the big and important webservices like YouTube and Facebook have updated their websites using html5 and other technologies. Therefore, it is likely that in the coming months the newest browser versions will prohibit using Flash by default and some of them will kick this functionality out completely. (Microsoft announcement, Google announcement,Mozilla announcement)
Apocalypse?
Just as most other universities did, we at ETH have seen a lot of project developed in recent years. Flash has been used to display movies, present animations or create interactive objects and simulations. Latest by the end of 2020, (but probably earlier) these will no longer work.
In the spring of 2019 we had a look at all ETH Moodle courses and contacted teachers who were still using Flash in its various forms. We have found individual solutions for each case and Flash will vanish on our Moodle server in the next weeks. ETH lecturers who use Moodle who have not been contacted by us, should not have any problem with the end of Flash in your Moodle courses. When in doubt please contact us.
100 Days at ETH. An interview with Dr. Gerd Kortemeyer
The new Director of LET, the unit for Educational Development and Technology at ETH, has been at his post for 100 days. We sat down with Dr. Gerd Kortemeyer to find out more about him as a person and his first impressions of Switzerland, ETH and his new role.
We have read your official profile of course, but what would you like to tell us about yourself that might not have been in the profile? How do you spend your time outside of work?
At the moment: watching too
much TV and communicating with my family back in the States and in Munich. As I
am still starting out here, I am usually exhausted at the end of a work day.
What I would like to do is spend more time in nature and taking photos –
photography has been my hobby ever since the days of darkrooms. I have nice
photo gear (Nikon if anybody cares) which currently just sits around collecting
dust. In the States, I used to volunteer for homeless charities by documenting
fundraising events and doing keepsake portraiture for homeless families. I was also
active in our church, taking care of the audiovisual equipment. Lastly, I
started a collaboration with a Tanzanian university of science and technology,
and I would like to pick that up again when I have more time and energy.
What
small things make your day better?
Coffee. Good food. Walking. I
am not an athlete, but I like walking long distances in nature or around a
beautiful city like Zurich. I like living within walking distance of my
workplace and enjoy the time walking to and from work for processing my day.
What do
you wish your brain was better at doing?
Sitting in one place and
thinking. I am more of a “migrant worker with a laptop.” When I have a big
project, I often have to walk around while thinking. I camp out at random desks
or coffee shops – I work well on the road traveling, but cannot think well
sitting at my desk.
What
has been both positive and challenging about your move to Switzerland?
Where do I start with
positive impressions; there have been so many. I love how friendly people are. Zurich
is both very Swiss and internationally colorful, a large city that feels like a
village – just an amazing mixture. And nature is incredible. Even after 100
days in Zurich, every time when I come off Seilbahn Rigiblick and see the
panorama, I still go “wow!”.
My greatest challenge is clearly the language! I am not very good with languages, as failed attempts learning French, Russian, and Hebrew prove. Even in English, after 25 years in the USA, I have such a strong German accent that people recognise where I am from after hearing three words. I hope to be able to understand Swiss German more in the foreseeable future.
Tell us
about your first impressions of ETH and LET?
Immediate impressions: It’s large
and confusing but my colleagues are very welcoming (thank you!) and are clearly
educators at heart. They immediately took it upon themselves to spend a lot of
time and effort educating me through a whole curriculum of introductions to the
wide spectrum of LET’s activities.
How has
your understanding of LET deepened over the last few months?
My impressions after 100
days: it’s still large and confusing. No, seriously, the thing I most had to
wrap my mind around is the unique “matrix structure” at LET which enables collaboration
across the various teams. Many of my colleagues have told me that they enjoy
the variety of their tasks and the collaborative spirit that exists here to
solve problems. I came to appreciate how people just work together across the
different groups. I also appreciate the level of professionalism and expertise;
it’s humbling, and I can only hope to be a good enabler.
What is
LET good at and you hope will never change?
The work of LET is not easy.
Due to the wide spectrum of activities, it is hard to communicate to the
outside what we do and what expertise we have. Outside stresses could easily
lead to internal problems, but I have the impression that that’s not the case.
I am so glad that we seem to have a genuine collaborative spirit, which I hope never
changes.
What do
you see as areas of great potential?
We need to be out there at
ETH and find more ways of working alongside all groups of stakeholders. LET can
walk with different groups of stakeholders and facilitate connections between
them.
I make the assumption that
across the institution all of us deeply care about student learning, or we
would work elsewhere. We might disagree how to best accomplish that, but this is
where systematic research and gathering of evidence come into play. How? We
also deeply care about facts and data, or, again, we would work elsewhere.
Fostering the scholarship of teaching and learning is very high on my agenda as
is working with faculty and other stakeholders across the institution. LET is a
service unit, and this service should include guidance, assistance, and
facilitation of educational research within the departments, including the dissemination
of those results.
In addition to the strong expertise we have in the science of learning, we have a strong IT group with creative people, and we are dedicated to fostering innovation. The synergy among them enables practical and applied initiatives as well as the implementation of evidence-based solutions and products. We have the right people and are at the right institution to be a global leader in the systemic approach to the development of next generation tools for teaching and learning. These initiatives can include collaborators all across ETH, and in its unique position, LET can facilitate collaboration.
What
observations have you been able to make about the field of educational development
and technology in Switzerland as compared to the USA?
As you know, I come from a
background of physics education research. In the States, Discipline-Based
Educational Research (“DBER”) has turned into a “thing.” This “thing” does not
really exist in Europe, partly due to a fundamentally different understanding
of what university education is about, as well as different understandings of
the roles of students and instructors. A lot of what we teach in our workshops
in terms of teaching strategies thus far has been imported from the States, and
I believe it’s time to develop our own European variety of DBER.
Educational Technology plays in a central role in teaching and learning in the States, as flipped, blended, hybrid, and online teaching venues have become mainstream. Thus, technology platforms have become mission-critical. We are not yet at that point in Europe (online exams being a big exception where we are at the cutting edge), but I would like to work on next-generation platforms to scale our efforts and keep up with the inevitable digitalisation of teaching and learning.
Auf den Beitrag zum neuen Moodle-Design in diesem Blog im Januar diesen Jahres haben wir viel Feedback erhalten. Dafür möchten wir uns herzlich bedanken. Gerne möchten wir Ihnen im Nachgang mit diesem Blogbeitrag aufzeichnen, was eigentlich hinter Moodle steckt und weshalb sich die ETH Zürich für Moodle als strategische Lernplattform entschieden hat.
Seit rund 10 Jahren betreibt die ETH Zürich die zentrale Lernplattform Moodle. Anders als andere Plattformen (bspw. Blackboard) ist die Software Moodle ein Open-Source-Projekt. Vor über 20 Jahren hat ein Universitätsstudent aus Perth mit den Arbeiten an einer Software begonnen, um die Lehre über Distanz zu verbessern bzw. überhaupt erst zu ermöglichen. Martin Dougiamas hat dabei die Software von Beginn an offen gestaltet. So ist der komplette Source Code frei verfügbar, mehr noch: als Open-Source-Projekt fliessen immer wieder Ideen und Softwarecode in das Werkzeug ein.
Moodle bietet viele Schnittstellen, um individuelle Erweiterungen zu programmieren und andere Systeme anzubinden. Die Software ist modular aufgebaut, was es ermöglicht, neue Funktionen hinzuzufügen, ohne den Core-Code zu verändern.
Wer programmiert Moodle
Die Entwicklung des Core-Codes wird vom Headquarter vorantgetrieben, das Niederlassungen in Perth und Barcelona hat. Zur Zeit umfasst das Headquarter rund 75 Personen. Es gibt zusätzlich einige über die Welt verteilte Entwickler, die sich ebenfalls beteiligen. Meistens sind diese bei grossen Universitäten angestellt (auch an der ETH Zürich arbeiten zwei Entwickler für Moodle, dies vor allem im Bereich Onlineprüfungen). Zur Zeit hält Moodle weltweit einen Marktanteil von über 50% für Higher Education. Dies ist umso erstaunlicher, da es mit Blackboard, Brightspace und Instructure grosse Firmen gibt, die mit ihren Produkten an diesem Markt auftreten. Einige spannende Zahlen zu Moodle (Stand Mai 2019):
Registrierte Moodle-Installationen: über 100’000
Nutzerkonten: über 150 Millionen
Quizfragen: über 1.5 Milliarden
Entwicklungen in und für Moodle
Die ETH Zürich hat sich wie oben erwähnt, vor einigen Jahre für Moodle entschieden. Dies hatte verschiedene Gründe, dazu gehören: Die hohe Anpassbarkeit auf individuelle Bedürfnisse, eine sehr aktive und grosse Community, der Open-Source-Gedanke und einiges mehr.
Die ETH Zürich beteiligt sich in diversen Bereichen in der Moodle-Community. Speziell im Bereich Onlineprüfungen entwickeln wir didaktisch verbesserte Fragetypen (kPrime, Single Choice,…) und andere Erweiterungen (Ressilienz-Plugin bei Netzwerkstörungen) und stellen diese den anderen Nutzern – ganz im Open Source Gedanken – zur Verfügung (https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=contributor&id=91386 and https://github.com/ethz-let)
Das Moodle HQ hat einen klar definierten Entwicklungsplan und eine entsprechende Roadmap. Dies erlaubt es, frühzeitig eine stabile Serviceplanung zu machen. Die Roadmap ist öffentlich: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Roadmap
Die zwei funktionellen Updates des Moodle-Cores pro Jahr werden an der ETH Zürich nach einigen Wochen installiert und damit auch die neuen und verbesserten Funktionen unseren Studierenden und Dozierenden zur Verfügung gestellt. Dieses Vorgehen ist auch aus Sicherheitsperspektive sinnvoll, da damit auch allfällige Bugs und security issues beseitigt werden.
«Lieber Support, ich habe einen Fehler entdeckt!» «Lieber Support, ich habe eine tolle Idee!»
Vorteil einer Open-Source Software ist ihre Anpassbarkeit. Man kann grundsätzlich alles verändern. Da wir immer wieder die neueste Version des Core-Codes einspielen, verzichten wir darauf, diesen lokal bei uns zu verändern. In einer Community unterwegs zu sein, heisst aber eben auch, nicht direkten Einfluss auf die Entwicklung des Core-Codes zu haben. Wir sind sehr dankbar, von unseren Studierenden und Dozierenden immer wieder wertvolle Vorschläge zu erhalten. Sofern wir diese nicht direkt auf unserem System – ohne Veränderung des Core-Codes- umsetzen können, geben wir diese gerne in die Community weiter. Leider ist dieser Prozess allerdings nicht immer von Erfolg gekrönt.
Es gibt im Moodle Universum natürlich auch viele andere Entwicklerinnen, die Plugins ebenfalls Open-Source zur Verfügung stellen. Grundsätzlich lassen sich diese auf alle kompatiblen Moodle-Installationen installieren. Allerdings empfiehlt es sich hier, zurückhaltend zu sein. Einerseits weil jedes zusätzliche Modul die Software komplexer (und langsamer) macht. Andererseits muss sehr genau geklärt werden, wie häufig ein Plugin aktualisiert wird. Denn falls ein Plugin nicht mehr gewartet wird, was durchaus passieren kann, ist es irgendwann nicht mehr kompatibel. Dann muss man sich als Moodle-Anbieter entscheiden zwischen Plugin behalten und Moodle veralten lassen oder Plugin löschen und Moodle aktualisieren – beides eher suboptimal. Wir an der ETH haben einige Plugins im Einsatz, so beispielsweise Gruppenauswahl (Universität Lausanne), Scheduler (Universität of York), Open Cast (Universität Münster), evaluieren aber sehr genau, ob wir das Risiko des oben genannten Problems möglich klein halten können.
Fragen oder Kommentare? Wir freuen uns, mit Ihnen hier über darüber zu diskutieren!
Using Polybook to create interactive lecture notes together
As a depository of digital
lecture notes the Polybook has been popular among ETH teaching staff for some
time. In Polybook instructors can enrich conventional lecture material with
interactive elements such as quizzes and videos, and question students on
particularly important material. This increases student engagement with the
material and improves knowledge uptake.
From Data Collection to finished Excursion Report
The very name “Polybook” is an
indication of this tool’s many functions and the large number of books and
lecture notes which are stored there.
Using Polybook it is possible to work together on lecture notes or documents and to give them an ordered structure and presentation. Access to individual books is steered via a Moodle link, ensuring that all students in a course have access to its books.
The Polybook is part of LET’s eCollab Service, and can be used in a number of collaborative scenarios. These include:
Author and publish texts collaboratively: In Polybook students can author texts from group or project work either alone or collaboratively, and then make them accessible to others. These texts can be augmented with images or interactive elements such as quizzes and videos. Polybook can also be deployed for preparation or wrap-up of lectures and seminars.
Peer review / peer assessment: Student or working group texts or projects can be exchanged with other student groups and assessed. The results can be used for revision purposes.
Learning journal: Learning processes can be published by students or student groups for purposes of self-reflection or the evaluation of a group process.
Interactive lecture notes: Polybook can be deployed in place of conventional lecture notes, with additional possibilities: students can use interactive elements, or create them themselves; and they can discuss the material via the comments function.
Collaborativley Designing Approptiate Health Systems
Interactive Geogebra Applet, Voting, Creating a Drag & Drop Module
Task for a Learning Journal
Do you teach at ETH? Have we sparked your interest? How to Polybook contains comprehensive instructions on how you, as teaching faculty, can set up Polybook in Moodle and take the first steps towards collaborative or interactive lecture notes. We would also be happy to provide personal guidance on implementing a collaborative scenario or using Polybook: please contact Melanie Walter, the person responsible for the eCollaboration service. We look forward to working with you.
