Introduction
In September and October 2021, Teaching Matters ran a Hot Topic series of ten blog posts that revisited and, in some cases, updated content from the Edinburgh Hybrid Teaching Exchange. The Hybrid Teaching Exchange was developed at the start of the pandemic as a curated digital hub, where staff and students could help co-create an evidence-base of best practice around hybrid/online teaching. In their introductory post, Dr Jenny Scoles and Dr Joe Arton explain how this Hot Topic series marks the fact that Teaching Matters has become the new home for many of the videos, blog posts, infographics, thematic illustrations, and podcasts generated for the Exchange, and they can be found under this searchable link: Hybrid Teaching Exchange content. While the Exchange is still accessible, the site is archived, with no new content being added, or previous content being edited.
In this newsletter, you'll find five things that we realised about hybrid/online teaching from producing this series, followed by our regular features: Collegiate Commentary, In case you missed it (ICYMI), and Coming soon at Teaching Matters! If you'd like to keep up with Teaching Matters, sign up to our Monthly Newsletter Mailing List.
Five things that we realised about hybrid/online teaching from the 'Revisitng the Hybrid Teaching Exchange' series
Realisation One
Community building is at the heart of all good teaching, whether hybrid, online or face-to-face
A sense of community is inextricably linked to a feeling the one belongs to something. For students to feel part of a cohort, a course or a programme- no matter whether it is online or in-person - these values of belonging and community have been shown time and again to be crucial drivers for a successful university experience. As Dr Catherine Bovill impresses in her post, Better outcomes for students = build community, these values are best fostered through the building of student-staff relationships:
Whatever mode of teaching you are planning this year, building student-staff relationships and student-student relationships, communicating that you care about students and providing time for sharing interests (both staff and students), can make the difference to students in feeling that they matter. - Dr Catherine Bovill
Catherine presents a number of very useful resources, including videos with Dr Chis Mowat and Professor Tina Harrison, PDF resources such as a Guide for Schools: Fostering a Sense of Belonging, and a selection of previous Teaching Matters blog posts and podcast episodes on this topic. She finishes by highlighting some key, practical points that we should consider further if we wish to build community in HE.
A thoughtful use of discussion forums can help build a community in an online/hybrid course. In their post, Designing and structuring discussion forums Celeste McLaughlin and Prof Vel McCune provide some advice on how to foster informal conversations using online discussion forums, and how to structure guidance for those engaging with the forums.
Realisation Two
We need to think carefully about what being 'on campus' means for our students
The rapid shift to online and hybrid teaching as the predominant teaching position in recent times has prompted many conversations to (re)emerge about what being 'on campus' means for students' learning journeys, and whether or not the physical campus has become a defunct state for the university experience. In her post, Dr Sarah Ivory invites the reader to reflect on the need for an on-campus education. She argues that a university education is a thinking, intellectual, social and personal transition and that being on-campus is an important vehicle to drive these transitions.
physically being on campus – albeit at the appropriate distance from those around you – will enable you to develop the discussions, debates, personal relationships, intellectual connections, and life experiences that contribute to these transitions. - Sarah
In his post, Dr David A. G. Clarke invites the reader to take their learning and teaching outside of the classroom and provides nine helpful tips for learning in outdoor places and spaces, including taking supervision outside, and how to pre-empt some logistical concerns, like where the nearest public toilet is!
Learning is taking place in campus grounds, in Granton, in Holyrood Park, on the Royal Mile, in St Andrew’s Square, at The Writers’ Museum, in Parliament Square, and many other places around Edinburgh and further afield. - David
Realisation Three
For students and staff to thrive, the university must ensure that online learning spaces are safe, inclusive and positive
The pandemic has re-sharpened the focus on the vital importance of ensuring digital safety and wellbeing in the workplace. In her post, Digital citizenship and the importance of creating safe and inclusive online learning spaces, Dr Vicki Madden highlights a current research project, which explores the importance of supporting the kinds of behaviours that are required to foster positive, safe environments for everyone who engages with technology as digital citizens in the twenty-first century. Their early findings are quite telling:
initial interviews with students at the University have already indicated a problematic lack of emphasis on digital citizenship, safety and wellbeing across a broad range of disciplines and the need for more visible resources to help support students as they engage with digital technologies both within and outside of their studies.
In support of this, Digital Skills team have produced a toolkit centred on Creating Safe and Inclusive Online Learning Spaces (staff log-in required). Launching in Winter 2021, the new Digital Safety and Citizenship for Staff course will be available as a self-paced self-enrol course through Learn for both academic and professional services colleagues seeking to learn more about digital safety, citizenship and wellbeing. The University’s Digital Footprint MOOC will soon be updated with a unit on digital citizenship created in collaboration with the Digital Skills team.
Creating safe spaces for critical feedback on new ways of working is key to continuous improvement. In the second half of her post, Reflections on supporting colleagues as they adapt to digital and hybrid teaching, Celeste McLaughlin reflects on the various iterations of the course during its first few months, and noted that, "an important aspect of the course was giving participants the opportunity to share their concerns as well as ideas, and to create an environment where they felt comfortable doing this."
And, in her video post, Dr Sarah Ivory provides some advice about how to maintain positive focus in online teaching environments, for example, while watching pre-recorded lectures.
Realisation Four
context matters
In her post, Reflections on supporting colleagues as they adapt to digital and hybrid teaching, Celeste McLaughlin impresses the importance of maintaining a dialogue about what works (and doesn’t), and to explore why this might be the case for different contexts. She points to helpful IAD learning and teaching workshops, such as the Introduction to Online Teaching course, which offer opportunities for colleagues to come together to share ideas and practices around digital teaching approaches.
In another post, Dr Tracey Madden explores the use of personae in learning design in the University's course and programme design ELDeR (Edinburgh Learning Design Roadmap) workshops, which help colleagues design learning activities that are appropriate for, and sensitive to, different contexts and needs.
In three short videos, Professor Vel McCune and Dr Tim Fawns discuss the importance of getting to know your students and having them get to you know you in the wider context of assessments in a hybrid learning environment. They also chat about the pros and cons of online assessments, and how different contexts warrant different assessment methods.
We need to get comfortable with the idea of subjectivity in our assessments - Tim Fawns
Realisation Five
One, short 'hot topic' series will barely scratch the surface in documenting this monumental shift in teaching practice
This recent Hot Topic series provided the Teaching Matters team with an opportunity to revisit a rare moment in the University’s recent institutional memory, which we were able to document on a digital platform: how staff and students responded to teaching and learning - highly admirably and not without significant personal investment and stress - during an 'unprecedented' world event. Yet this documentation is not a fait accompli; each day our practices will shift, adapt and respond to the changing needs of the University community. Our position at Teaching Matters is to provide a safe, steadfast and respected platform to timely reflect these on-going developments as they happen, and debate what works and what does not, so we can be in this constant learning, together.
Other Teaching Matters posts that highlighted work from the Edinburgh Hybrid Teaching Exchange include:
- Four EUSA podcast episodes hosting discussions with nominees for the Edinburgh University Student’s Association Teaching Award about their experiences of the move to online teaching.
- A podcast episode by Dr Catherine Bovill exploring how co-creation helped academic staff navigate the move to hybrid teaching and learning.
- A podcast episode on the ASID project discussing how the School of Mathematics prepared for a successful transition to hybrid teaching.
- A post by Brendan Owers describing how to translate a physical escape room into a digital learning experience using Microsoft OneNote.
Teaching Matters also ran two reactive 'Spotlight on...' series as the pandemic broke to respond and support the move to online/hybrid: Spotlight on Remote Teaching and Spotlight on Alternative Assessment Methods (probably not so 'alternative' these days!).
Collegiate Commentary
with Mary Jacob, Lecturer of Learning and Teaching, Aberystwyth University, Wales.
While Teaching Matters primarily showcases University of Edinburgh teaching and learning practice, our core values of collegiality and support extend beyond our institution, inviting a wider, international community to engage in Teaching Matters. In this feature, we ask colleagues from other Universities to provide a short commentary on ‘Five things...’, and share their own learning and teaching resource or output, which we can learn from.
Mary JAcob's thoughts on 'Five things that we realised about hybrid/online teaching from the Teaching Matters' 'Revisiting the Hybrid Teaching Exchange' series
The five motivations in this issue of the Teaching Matters newsletter struck a chord with me as I’m sure they will with others. Community building is well placed as the first insight. The demands of learning and teaching during the pandemic have brought this theme forward across the sector, and I would hope that community, belonging, and care remain as our long-term values and principles. This can mean a range of intentional actions, from creating new opportunities to interact online to explicitly expressing an inclusive ethos that we may have held as a tacit assumption previously. It seems to me that community is the foundation for the other motivations in this collection.
Both on-campus and off-campus learning offer new opportunities and potential risks. The discussion around these two sides of hybrid teaching bring forward tips for staying safe as well as making the most of what we have. Digital skills for both staff and students are an area of focus across the sector in the rapidly-changing learning and teaching landscape. We need to rethink the reasons behind our learning activities and assessments to ensure that they align with what students actually need – not an easy task! As noted in the final motivation, the higher education sector has been in the midst of a significant period of change and it may take some time before we can get a full perspective on this.
Aberystwyth University is a smaller institution than Edinburgh, but we face similar challenges. Our Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (LTEU) devised a range of new training provision for teaching staff, building on the ethos of active learning and students-as-partners stated in our university’s learning and teaching strategy. The team has run many iterations of the core sessions since the pandemic began. We helped hundreds of staff revamp their modules for online and hybrid teaching in 2020 and 2021. Three online learning specialists supplemented our core team for a year. With their help, the LTEU blog became a major communication channel for building community and supporting staff.
As scheme leader for the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in HE (PGCTHE) at Aberystwyth University, I put many new provisions in place to support our participants and build community in this challenging time. One element is the Weekly Resource Roundup, my regular LTEU blog post that collects links to external events about learning and teaching such as webinars and online conferences, and also resources such as articles, blog posts, toolkits, videos, and more (including many Teaching Matters blog posts). This gives our participants a connection to others outside our university who have shared interests. I am active on Twitter, interacting with communities such as #LTHEchat and sharing useful information with my participants. There is a cyclical connection, as I draw on the community to curate resources and then share the resources via the Roundup posts and Twitter.
Within our PGCTHE, I created new opportunities for participants to meet virtually and thus avoid the risk of becoming isolated. This includes in-formal meet-ups where they can exchange experiences, ask questions about assessment, or just share their day-to-day lives with peers and myself. We also have a monthly seminar that brings participants in both of our modules together to discuss a pedagogical article each month and explore how they might apply the principles to their own teaching. I also schedule clinics to support them in developing their Action Research Projects. The feedback from all of these activities indicates that the value is not only in the content about learning and teaching, but in the opportunity to belong as an active member of our PGCTHE community.
Finally, I’d like to talk about the ethos of empathy and care. This theme came through clearly from the five motivations, and our team strives to implement it in our own programmes. I’ve always offered support whenever a participant asks for it, but during the pandemic I began reaching out in a more pro-active way. I send everyone a message roughly once a week to share resources, offer help, and remind them about upcoming deadlines and events. I encourage them to contact me with any questions or if they just want to have a chat. These emails have an inclusive message, often in the form of a motto such as ‘Remember, we are all in this together’. Any sessions I run online start with a check-in to see how everyone is doing and end with an invitation to stay online if they would like to chat with me one-to-one. Empathy and care have always been part of my ethos, but now I bring it into play in a more intentional and deliberate manner. I am encouraged by the fact that many in the HE sector are talking about these things now and hope this continues as a permanent part of our normal practice.
About: Mary Jacob is passionate about the pedagogy! She is Lecturer of Learning and Teaching, and a member of the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit at Aberystwyth University, Wales. In addition to coordinating the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education programme, she supports teaching staff by designing and delivering training sessions about effective learning design and offering consultations for individuals and departments. She posts on Twitter as Mary Jacob L&T and compiles the Weekly Resource Roundup, a compendium of online events, publications, and toolkits to help staff teach effectively.
In case you missed it (ICYMI)
Call for Proposals are now open! Please go to the website for more information on the conference and how to submit a proposal.
Student Partnership Agreement and Funding Scheme: Dr Catherine Bovill introduces the new 2021-22 Student Partnership Agreement and Funding Scheme and its three key areas of focus: Community, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and Transforming learning and teaching. Funding of up to £500 is offered for student-staff collaborative projects. The application deadline is Thursday 13th January 2022 at 5pm.
Coming soon at Teaching Matters
Upcoming blog themes
We continue with November and December's Hot Topic theme: COP26 and embedding the climate emergency in our teaching, and Learning and Teaching Enhancement theme: Books that inspire our teaching.
Teaching Matters will be taking a break over Christmas, from 17th December until we return on 5th January. January and February will feature one theme: Online and hybrid teaching enhancement, which will highlight examples of work that have been identified as good practice in the School Annual Quality Reports.
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