What becomes special when you don’t meet the student on campus, but online? A campus course where you use digital tools (such as Canvas and others), or a distance course where students never meet at campus, or mixtures of campus and online, with student students sometimes on campus and sometimes remotely? It’s partly about technology, of course, but most of it is about well-planned didactics.
"Black Wall" in Zoom: Students not using the video
It is common for students to turn off their cameras during remote lectures. The teacher conducts the lesson in front of a screen filled with small black “stamps” with (at best) names underneath: a Black Wall. But why don’t students want to keep their cameras on? How can this be changed? Students primarily turn off […]
Are you blended or just flipped? Synchronous or asynchronous?
Blended learning, flipped classroom, synchronous or asynchronous teaching communication. What do the terms mean?
Canvas template course
In this short video, we will show you around in a template course homepage for Canvas that is designed based on good pedagogical principles. You can “download” the template from Canvas Commons directly from your course shell. (Video, 9 mins. Only Swedish)
Canvas: Extra examination time for students
Students with dyslexia are often granted additional time for written examinations. Here are the instructions for how to set up a Canvas Assignment so that some students are alloted some extra time. (Swedish language only.)
Canvas: Pick up exams online
Set up a specific Canvas course page to be used for all pick up exams in a course or in a program. It helps you to keep track of all the students that show up to complete their missing exam assignments long after the regular exam opportunity or resits. Here is how to do it.
Canvas: Reexams/Resits online
Reexamination in Canvas is easy to organize. No pre-registration required, no reservation of seats in the examination hall, everything you need in one place.
Cheating: Identify student online
The requirement for identification is that students must prove their identity and have elements of oral presentation. But not for every examination task in a course and not in all courses. How do you do it?
Cheating: Monitoring via Zoom?
It is almost never a good solution to simulate the controlled situation that the exam on campus offers by video-monitoring students when they conduct take-home exams. It is about integrity, effectivenes and efficiency.
Cheating: Plagiarism control in Canvas
When students submit written assignments in Canvas, they should be checked for plagiarism. The Canvas tutorial includes instructions on how to activate plagiarism control and how you as a teacher can monitor and use the results of the automatic control.
Checklist for a good course website in Canvas
This is a checklist for you who are a course leader/teacher in a university course with a website in Canvas. It is based on robust principles for what a good study environment for students should look like and it also makes life easier for you, the teacher. Use it to check that you do not […]
Designing Distance Courses: What are the Differences?
Distance teaching requires a different way of designing courses than on-campus teaching. In this short video, we explain the fundamental differences and how it affects you as teacher.
Effective study environment online
How to design an online course in practice? In this short video, we’ll outline four principles that guide you in setting up a working study environment that let students focus on the important stuff: Their learning.
GDPR
As teachers, we need to have access to and handle peoples’ personal information, especially related to our students. We do this in direct form with regard to students’ personal data and we are also responsible for how the students handle personal data when doing course assignments, e. g. when writing essays and doing surveys or […]
ICT: Canvas learning platform
The learning platform Canvas is used as the hub in (almost) all courses and educational programs.
ICT: Lessons online
The most important tools for meeting students face to face online are Zoom, Padlet and Mentimeter.
ICT: Record video
Kau has access to several alternative tools for video recording. All works when you record directly at your computer.
ICT: Store files
KAU has two tools for storing files: Box for general file storage and KauPlay for storing videos.
ICT: Subtitling of video
The law on the Accessibility of Digital Public Services (DOS law) stipulates that all films and videos used in the university’s education must be subtitled. You can get support to fulfill this requirement.
ICT: Surveys
The Survey&Report tool can be used to create, collect and process survey data. Both researchers, teachers and students can use it.
ICT: Tools for examination
KAU has two tools for handling specific examination-related matters. On the one hand Ouriginal for text comparison (to detect plagiarism) and on the other hand Inspera for digital exam. In addition, of course, we have Canvas and the functionality with assignments and Quiz. NOTE that the university has replaced Wiseflow to Inspera for digital examinations […]
ICT: Web in teaching with Sola@Kau
On the Sola@Kau website (sola.kau.se) you or your students can easily create and shape your very own website, e. g. a reflection page, blog, portfolio or similar that fits in your course context.
Lessons in hybrid form: Students both in the room and online
Campus teaching with some of the students present online – hybrid teaching – is very demanding for the teacher. But if you are up to the challenge, here are some advice on what to consider.
PCK and TPACK: What is it?
PCK and TPACK are two concepts to describe teachers’ professional competence. First PCK on the combination of subject competence and didactic competence. And then TPACK for PCK supplemented with ICT skills.
Plan an intro session online
How do you set up a really good online course introduction ? What elements should it contain? In which order? How do we keep the students interested? How do you design a good session schedule, one that also function well when leading the session together with colleagues? Here is a commented example that can also […]
Story: Convert hall exams to online with Quiz
With the Canvas Quiz-function, the previous hall exam form has been replaced by multiple-choice and essay questions. It is about examination in large student groups. Experiences, challenges and lessons learned from a project in the subject Business Administration. (Video, 26 min., only in Swedish)
Story: Follow a distance student
The project Follow a distance student followed students who took distance education during the pandemic in the spring semester 2020 and mapped their experiences and needs. The goal was to be able to develop pedagogy and technical pedagogical aids in distance education during the autumn term 2020. The students’ experiences were about loneliness, swaying technology […]
Story: From exam in exam hall to digital "open book" examination
The story of an urgent relocation of hall exams to home exams in Chemistry during the pandemic in the spring of 2020. Video, 22 min. Swedish language.
Story: Multimodal logbook at VFU for better teacher-student contact
In the vocational teacher education, students at their VFU (Placement) have kept a multimodal digital logbook about some pre-determined assignments that are related to the course objectives. The assignments were about mind maps, assessment matrix and tripartite conversations, i. e. three different forms of reflection. (Video, 24 min., only in Swedish)
Story: Planned on-campus courses off-campus
The story of challenges and solutions during an urgent reorganization of an on-campus course in Informatics to off-campus during the pandemic in the spring of 2020. (Video, 28 mins., Swedish language.)
Tips: Fixed Ask-the-teacher time slots
Many students are reluctant to adderss direct questions to the teacher, especially in large student groups or when the teacher is avaliable only online and not least when the question must be asked in writing. The teacher, on the other hand, may feel that there are too many questions about the same thing, even though […]
Tips: How to record in Zoom
In less than 5 minutes, Åsa Kronkvist at Kristianstad University teach you the basics of recording in Zoom.
Tips: Length of the text in the take-home exam
The assessment of whether a student has reached the examination requirements in an exam of the essay type normally refers to the qualitative value of the solution, not the quantity. For reasons of assessment, we still often set an upper limit (and sometimes a lower limit) in the number of words/number of pages for the […]
Tips: Oral exams online
Overview of advantages and disadvantages of oral exams online. And some strategies for good questions.
Tips: Organizing documents in Canvas
Here are some concrete, practical tips on how to use the features of Canvas to disseminate instructions and other material in a structured way. You save time, make it easier to reuse course material, make it easier to collaborate with colleagues. And above all: You make life easier for the students!
Tips: Playing Doctor's office - Identity check in Zoom
How do we check the identity of students when the examination is online? And how do you do it in an efficient manner?
Tips: Record yourself
Recording a lecture film is not the same as lecturing in a physical classroom on campus. And now we are not talking about the technical aspects, with camera, microphone, handling video files, etc., but about how you need act in the lecture. Here are seven solid tips.
Tips: Structure in the course with Canvas 'Study Planner'
With the canvas tool Study Planner, you can help students create structure in their study work and in their planning. In addition, the tool helps you assess how your course structure will affect the students’ workload. Have you created a reasonable structure?
Tips: Students create their own quiz questions
Examination arrangement where the students in a course create quiz questions for a question bank that is used in the examination.
Tips: Support matrices to identify where students need help
Support matrices is a digital tool that helps students to keep track of their progress in sections of a course that include exercise or training tasks and which also helps the teacher to identify tasks that cause difficulties in the student group. In this way, the teacher can adapt the teaching so that the focus […]
Tips: Testing skills online in novel ways
Three suggestions for alternative ways to examine course objectives of the skill type.
Tips: Three strategies for good take-home exam questions
Several strategies for making take-home exam questions: Putting questions in context, making them individual-related, or more complex.
Tips: Two-part exam for students with extended writing time
Prevent cheating at take-home exams, where fast students help students with extended writing time.
Tips: When students don't study until the take-home exam
In take-home exams, students are sometimes given a relatively long time to complete it, e. g. several days. Some students take the chance of being able to pass the exam assignments by searching the literature and reading just the minimum needed to pass the direct exam questions.