Due to the coronavirus situation many teachers now have to adapt their teaching efforts to fully electronic means of communication. This page aims to help you set up a functional, temporary online learning environment for your course.  We will continue to update the information on the page on a regular basis.

Microsoft Teams

UNIS has decided to use Microsoft Teams as the platform for online educational activities and all staff at UNIS now have Teams software installed. All currently active students will soon also have access to Teams. There will be a Team group for each active course, where the you will be able to conduct teaching and interact with students. For those of you who want to use other platforms for teaching, UNIS IT cannot guarantee any support, just as data will not be directly stored in a safe way by UNIS unless using Teams. If you are using any other platform you should consider moving to Teams as soon as all students are included in Teams.

Go to:

– Teaching

– Assessment/examination

– Resources

– Equipment needed

– Support

 

Teaching

It is important that you plan and organize the teaching in a structural way, both for you and the students. There are many ways of structuring online teaching and this is one example of how it can be done:

1. Consider providing the students with teaching materials such as documents, audio recordings and videos. The students should work with the given material before an online meeting. If you want to give the students a lecture, you should consider recording your lectures instead of live streaming it. If students are unwell or are struggling with internet access, they will miss a live streamed lecture. Also using pre-recorded lectures can save time and instead real-time with students can be used for discussions. Remember that it is easier to keep the students engaged with several short 10-minute videos than with a 45-minute long session.

2. Consider having a low-key test. The students could go through a 30-minute multiple choice checkout to get feedback on what they have learned.

3. Attempt to hold an online meeting in Teams with all the students where they can have a dialogue with you, discuss and ask questions. As many students as possible should join these sessions. A good way to further organize the teaching is to create breakout sessions in separate meeting rooms where students can discuss the content in smaller teams.

4. Encourage students to deliver a short essay or participate in a discussion thread. In this way they will get feedback on their learning. By using peer assessment for essay work or discussion threads you can reduce the amount of feedback to the students.

Other supportive structures for your class could be:

5. Consider creating virtual office hours. Set up periodic live sessions throughout the week where students can join you for virtual office hours to ask questions and get further guidance and support.

6. Create a  “Q & A” channel in your team. Here students can ask questions at any time and you or other can help with answers. This is also very useful, as other students with the same question will be able to see all the responses. There is a button at the bottom of the channel to quickly start a video meeting if necessary.

 Regulations to be aware of:

GDPR: Whenever recording your meetings, remember the general data protection regulations (GDPR). Students must be informed beforehand that the lecture is recorded, why it is being recorded and who will have access to it. If students appear (or are identifiable) in the recordings, their consent must be documented.

Course material: Whenever distributing curriculum  to students online (e.g. through Teams, Dropbox, Google Drive), remember that most articles, books etc. are protected by copyright. Before distributing such materials, you should evaluate their copyright status to determine whether or not your use is permissible. Through the UNIS Library there are agreements and subscriptions to a range of journals, books etc. and curriculum material to students should be distributed through a reference list. You will find more information about copyright here: https://www.kopinor.no/articles/higher-education. Please contact the UNIS Library for further questions (library@unis.no).

 

Assessment / examination

Text and figure under this chapter have been copied and modified with permission from Læringslaben UiB: https://mitt.uib.no/courses/25566/pages/assessment-and-exams-in-times-of-korona

Assessment/examination has a central place in research and education. Teaching, learning and assessment of student achievement are always rooted in subject-specific contexts. At UNIS, various forms of assessment are applied. All are legitimate and subject to common requirements for reliability, validity, transparency and fairness.

In practice, this means that regardless of the form of assessment, your students should expect to have their achievements assessed based on the learning outcomes set for the course you are responsible for – in line with predictable criteria and standards.

Please consider which assessment methods that will be possible and feasible to use this semester in consultation with the study administration and your colleagues, who may serve as critical friends also when it comes to rethinking and redesigning forms of assessment.

Video thumbnail for Eksamen i en tid med Corona

If you need to change your assessment form, UNIS has decided that it will have to be done in the following way, once you have developed your suggestion for changing your assessment:

  1. The Head of Department sends an application regarding changing the evaluation form or removal of obligatory activity to study@unis.no, with a copy to the leader of the study adm: aneb@unis.no.
  2. Stud.adm. quality assures the proposal (discusses potential changes with the HoD).
  3. The stud. adm HoD suggests the proposed new evaluation for approval.
  4. The managing director approves the change (he can seek advice before final decision).
  5. Stud adm. follows up the practical work with the course responsible.

 

Resources

Teams resources

Microsoft Teams is now available for all UNIS staff. To log in to Microsoft Teams go to https://teams.microsoft.com and log in with your UNIS username and password.

Several external resources exist that could support building your online teaching in Teams. However, please be aware that Microsoft Teams for UNIS is still under construction. The IT department is currently working on this. Therefore, some functions might not be available at the moment. Following functions are currently unavailable:

  • Calendar
  • Scheduling meetings
  • Assessments
  • Profile Picture

 

 How to conduct meetings in Teams:

 

 How to record your meeting and share it in Teams:

 

How to assess and give feedback to students in Teams:

 

Other resources

UNIT- Directorate for ICT and joint services in higher education and research has a list of available resources: Overview of digital teaching resources

 

How to record, upload and distribute your lectures

 

Sharing and discussing online teaching:

 

Sky solutions:

  • Google Drive offers 15GB free of charge to everybody and you can add people easily by sharing a link or adding them by their email.
    • Google Documents allows for simultaneous editing in the same document
    • Google Forms allows you to easily build multiple choice evaluations
  • Dropbox

 

Platforms for online meetings besides Teams:


Equipment needed

Here is a list of equipment needed for your online teaching:

  • Laptop, desktop or tablet.
  • Headphones or earbuds — the biggest impediment to online communications is poor audio quality, so make sure you have a headset or earbuds; this is important to eliminating audio feedback loops, background noises, and other disruptions.
  • Microphone — may already be built into your device, computer, camera or as part of a separate headset.
  • Webcam — may already be built into your device or computer.
  • Internet — this all does require reliable internet service; a wireless hotspot on a high-speed network may also suffice.

 

Support

If you need advice and direct technical support, for example with filming or uploading, creating users etc. you can contact Timon at timonb@unis.no (for UNIS affiliated persons).

Or you can join our Team called All Staff UNIS – here we can discuss teaching at UNIS and share files, links, advice, ask questions, share experiences, etc.

 

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