Skempton Teaching Newsletter #3
Issue 3 (September 2019)
Be Inspired – do you have ideas on how to enhance your module?
Our Faculty EdTech team has recently expanded and can now offer support to enhance your module. If you would like to enhance your face to face teaching to be more active and/or discuss ideas on how to enhance your module digitally e.g. record screencasts or videos, use Blackboard in a more enhanced way, provide more practice for students using interactive quizzes, use peer-feedback during self-study, coursework or tutorials, employ digital assessment via Möbius Assessment then the Ed Tech team can help you. The EdTech website showcases various options, also explaining the required effort from your side as lecturers. The team have just started to advertise these new support opportunities, and our Department is relatively under-represented in the pilots so far, it might be a good idea to use the opportunity before everyone else does. If you want to discuss any ideas please, contact Shireen Lock, or, if you want to look at your module content-wise, contact me.
Be Inspired – do you have ideas on how to enhance your module?
Our Faculty EdTech team has recently expanded and can now offer support to enhance your module. If you would like to enhance your face to face teaching to be more active and/or discuss ideas on how to enhance your module digitally e.g. record screencasts or videos, use Blackboard in a more enhanced way, provide more practice for students using interactive quizzes, use peer-feedback during self-study, coursework or tutorials, employ digital assessment via Möbius Assessment then the Ed Tech team can help you. The EdTech website showcases various options, also explaining the required effort from your side as lecturers. The team have just started to advertise these new support opportunities, and our Department is relatively under-represented in the pilots so far, it might be a good idea to use the opportunity before everyone else does. If you want to discuss any ideas please, contact Shireen Lock, or, if you want to look at your module content-wise, contact me.
Away Day teaching session – key takeaways and report
Nine topics were discussed during the teaching session of the Away Day, 1st April 2019. It was good to exchange opinions on teaching among colleagues. We have heard vivid discussions and helpful suggestions on each of the topics, both within the small groups and in the plenary part. All of your notes were collected and elaborated into a summary with suggested actions. This summary was presented to the Undergraduate Teaching Committee in July, allowing them to take forward your valuable input. Please find the full report including the key takeaways here. |
Using online tests and progress tests in your module
Did you know it is possible in Blackboard Learn to implement all kinds of online tests in your module, and that this can be done in a relatively easy way? Blackboard offers you a wide variety of question types (see link), ranging from simple multiple choice to advanced matching or click-the-image questions. You can build your own item bank with questions that can be reused year after year. Using the test tool, you can probe the progress and level of each of your students, and use the grade for a particular test as an indication for you and for the students whether they master your module’s content. |
Using the survey tool, you can have anonymous quizzes to get feedback on parts of your lectures, or to test the students on particular content without giving them the feeling that they will be marked for it. Imperial’s EDU (Educational Development Unit) offers various workshops to help you get started with this.
Through the integration of Maple TA in Blackboard, it is possible to make quite advanced parametrised question types, providing each individual student with a different assignment, and allowing automatic grading by algorithm. Some colleagues at the Department already have vaste experience with this. Both Blackboard and Maple TA allow you to compare results of students from year to year, and to measure the quality of the questions and answers by collecting useful item statistics. Another interesting opportunity is to present automated feedback or refer to particular content in case of wrong answers. Feel free to contact me for further information or a personal introduction.
Through the integration of Maple TA in Blackboard, it is possible to make quite advanced parametrised question types, providing each individual student with a different assignment, and allowing automatic grading by algorithm. Some colleagues at the Department already have vaste experience with this. Both Blackboard and Maple TA allow you to compare results of students from year to year, and to measure the quality of the questions and answers by collecting useful item statistics. Another interesting opportunity is to present automated feedback or refer to particular content in case of wrong answers. Feel free to contact me for further information or a personal introduction.
Short news
- Activating students without ICT – some of us have a healthy reluctance to step into all kinds of gadget-like ICT tools. But: did you know that even in a perfectly traditional classroom setting, activating students is effective and can be done without ICT? An often cited article of Alison King discusses various activating forms that do not require any ICT: King, A., From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side, College Teaching, Volume 41, 1993, Issue 1, page 30-35 (https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.1993.9926781) “Engaging our students in active learning experiences helps them to think for themselves to move away from the reproduction of knowledge toward the production of knowledge, and helps them become critical thinkers and creative problem solvers so that they can deal effectively with the challenges of the twenty-first century.”
- Group Design Project – just before summer many lecture rooms in our Skempton Building were in use by groups of students working on their Third Year Group Design Project. Many of you were involved in organisation or as tutors. With topics spread over the full width of our faculty’s expertise and assisted by lecturers, real stakeholders and consultancy firms, students worked on very open-ended design questions, such as theatres, traffic planning, museums, and the like. Speaking to some of the students, I found out that they were well-motivated to bring these very realistic civil and environmental engineering design challenges to a successful end. A setting, that, in my opinion, shows much resemblance with projects carried out in industry, and adds to many skills that are relevant for our future graduates. A huge effort to organise this project (compliments to all involved!), but also a real asset to our programme.
- Education Day 2019 – For those of you that were not able to attend the annual Education Day: we have heard excitatory keynotes of prof. Colin Bryson and ICU Deputy-president education Alejandro Luy about new forms of student engagement and changing roles of student in collaboration with staff. Some of the ideas presented went quite far, for example in having students co-running or co-designing modules, but a shift in the role of students from ‘consumer’ towards being an active participant in learning and teaching also had attractive sides to it, with evidence of building professional skills - link
Agenda:
- 12 September 2019 – 12:00 – 14:00 pm in SALC 6 - CHERSNet meeting with Irene Kalkanis presenting on, ‘Understanding learner pathways and predicting behaviours at scale’ and Dr Matthew Harris and Mark Skopec presenting on, ‘Addressing Geographic Bias in the Masters in Public Health – challenges and pitfalls’. Please contact Nikki Boyd if you want to attend or subscribe to further meetings of CHERSNet.
- 31 October – 1 November 2019 – Maple TA (now Möbius) User Summit at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands - link
Colofon
The Skempton Teaching Newsletter is an initiative to keep academic staff of Imperial College updated on teaching-related news from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Also I hope to give you a frequent update on teaching developments at IC and worldwide that might be relevant for our Department. If you have any suggestions or news from your own teaching that might be interesting for our Department, please let me know!
Roel Schipper
Strategic Senior Teaching Fellow
Imperial College London
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
South Kensington Campus, Skempton building, room 308A
e-mail: [email protected]
www.tudelft.nl/hrschipper roelschipper.weebly.com/
The Skempton Teaching Newsletter is an initiative to keep academic staff of Imperial College updated on teaching-related news from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Also I hope to give you a frequent update on teaching developments at IC and worldwide that might be relevant for our Department. If you have any suggestions or news from your own teaching that might be interesting for our Department, please let me know!
Roel Schipper
Strategic Senior Teaching Fellow
Imperial College London
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
South Kensington Campus, Skempton building, room 308A
e-mail: [email protected]
www.tudelft.nl/hrschipper roelschipper.weebly.com/