Flexible Teaching

Thinking about how to best combine on-line and on campus teaching.

When reopening the campus for teaching in September 2020, we are developing a teaching model that meets the following priorities:

  • Reducing the risk of infection and transmission (fewer people on campus and public transport, smaller groups, adhering to the best practice guidelines for reducing infection etc.)
  • Enabling as many students as possible access to campus for interaction with teachers, assistants, labs, equipment and other resources
  • Maximising the quality of the ‘at distance’ learning experience of any student who is not on campus
  • Ensuring that teachers and students who are at-risk can continue to teach and study
  • Enabling flexibility so that teaching can be adapted if necessitated by either a reintroduction or a reduction of restrictions.
How to transform your on-campus teaching to an online or blended format.

Moving your exercise sessions from on-campus to partly online involves planning, reviewing instructions & feedback, and creating opportunities for interaction.

Projects are the hands-on ingredient of many courses and it’s often students’ favorite activity. In addition, group projects may mix students from different sections and with diverse skills.

The transition to teaching students the skills of experimental work and hands-on labs while respecting physical distancing.

In a flexible teaching format, midterm assessments can help students learn and stay motivated as well evaluate student learning.

Get answers to the most frequently asked questions about teaching policies during the fall 2020–2021 semester.

Support and Workshops

Sign up to one of the upcoming workshops to help you plan and implement your assessment and exam strategy for the end of the semester.

Write us to get additional support: [email protected].

Documentation

Live broadcasting from an auditorium to an overflow room.

— Learn how to setup automatic recording in the main auditorium so that students can follow in an overflow room. There is a 2-3 minute delay between the live and the retransmission. We recommend some tools to handle Q&A.

Using Kaltura Capture to record lessons from your laptop.

— Learn how to Record lectures is quickly and easily with Kaltura Capture. This guide explains how to install and setup Kaltura Capture on your laptop and how to upload recordings directly to your Kaltura mediaspace.

Using Ed Discussion to run exercise sessions and live lectures at EPFL

— Learn how to setup and use the Ed Discussion forums for your exercise sessions and to run live Q&A and polls during lectures.

Effective streaming on campus

— Listen to the conversation between Etienne Duval and Patrick Jermann about lessons learned during a workshop we organised about how to stream effectively from campus to a remote audience.

Moodle Quizzes for continuous assessment

— Learn how to test student knowledge using quizzes. These may contain multiple-choices and short text answers. You can use Quizzes for continuous assessments but these can account for no more than around 15% of a student’s grade.

Moodle Assignments with Jupyter Notebooks

— Learn how to distribute Jupyter Notebook assignments from Moodle. If you would like your students to do assignments in Python, R, C or Octave, you can assign them files from your Noto workspace through Moodle, which they can copy to their Noto workspace, write and execute their code online and submit via Moodle.

Open Book Take Home exams

— Learn how to setup your open book / take-home exams for the end of the semester.

Oral Online Exams

— Learn how to adapt the oral exams to conduct them via ZOOM.

Student’s handwritten file submissions.

— In the context of an open book take home exam, or in the context of an oral online exam, you might want your students to submit handritten developments. This guide presents solutions to scan paper and turn it into PDFs for Android and iOS phones.

ZOOM Essentials

Updated. Discover how to setup your ZOOM account, application and schedule meetings.

Add the EPFLGraph Video Player to your course

— Add the EPFLGraph Video Player to your Moodle course and support your student’s revisions.

Hardware considerations when streaming from campus or home

— Which microphones to use from where ? How to connect the wireless receiver ? Find out what you need to teach on campus to 1/3 while streaming to 2/3 of remote students.

Live streaming a classroom with ZOOM

— Learn about how to best setup your session with 1/3 of the students in class and 2/3 of the students remote. Make sure to include all students to ask & answer questions.

Using a tablet to handwrite and annotate

— Find out the different options to connect your tablet in parallel with your laptop to handwrite or annotate slides in your ZOOM session.

Teaching with an iPad

— Discover a colleague’s experience when teaching with an iPad and Goodnotes as a blackboard replacement.

Setting up breakout rooms in ZOOM

— Breakout rooms allow you to create separate groups in a meeting, e.g. for discussions or problem-solving. Get step-by-step instructions about how to setup breakout rooms in ZOOM.

Setting up student group work

— Discover how a colleague used ZOOM breakout rooms to set up student group work. Use it for example during your lecture for remote students.

Lecture preparation and (pre-)recording

— Prepare your lecture material for recording and discover the steps involved in pre-recording your lectures.

Home studio

— Choose your technical setup and get step by step instructions to configure the tools needed for high quality recordings at home.

Video editing

— Get started with simple video editing to get the best our of your lecture recordings.

Combining pre-recording with a live Q&A session

— Learn from colleagues’ experience about how to combine pre-recorded lectures with fruitful live Q&A sessions.

Moodle activities and settings

— This Moodle page explains the purpose of different activities and tools in Moodle (Setting up communication, office hours, collecting feedback, etc.).

How does a well designed Moodle page look like for students ?

— This Moodle course is an example of how to set up forums and communication essential information with students.

How to use Moodle to schedule office hours

— With this simple Moodle activity, you can quickly setup time slots for students to take an appointment for office hours.

How to use Moodle to get feedback

— With this Moodle activity students can give you short feedback about how to improve your course.