The Hybrid Teaching Exchange is where colleagues can share work in progress, learning, insights, ideas, plans and resources to support hybrid teaching. The aim of these digests is to provide an overview of the site and highlight new and existing content that we hope will be useful and of interest to you and colleagues.
Following the Scottish Government’s guidance on the continued public health threat posed by Covid-19, Semester 2 went digital for the majority of students in January and the University community again adjusted its expectations around teaching and assessment. In March, Staff continue to experience the challenge of how to sustain student engagement in a digital environment and how to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on student assessment. This digest tries to address some of these challenges and concerns, providing links to advice and support for both staff and students.
Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 on Student Assessment
Staff across the University have introduced a range of options to mitigate the ongoing impact of the pandemic on students’ performance in assessment. You can learn more about these mitigation efforts on the student and staff experience as well as explore a library of alternative assessment methods on our Alternative Assessment page.
- There’s a new 13 min Podcast episode on how Covid-19 Changed Assessment with Prof. Judy Hardy Dean of Learning and Teaching in the College of Science and Engineering and Neil Lent from the Institute for Academic Development.
- To accompany this episode, we’ve produced a 2 min Explainer Video featuring Prof. Judy Hardy that captures the key changes to assessment.
- The new and existing digital content on our Alternative Assessment page helps staff plan assessments in hybrid and digital that align with learning objectives, increase student engagement, discover digital assessment and feedback tools, and opportunities for deeper learning.
The Importance of Co-Design in Responding to Dynamic Learning Contexts
We have added new content that provides guidance on how to involve students when designing courses and how to help build resilience to disruption and uncertainty.
- There’s a downloadable workbook on ‘Agile Course Design for Professional Education’ produced by Tim Fawns and featuring Derek Jones and Gill Aitken.
- We captured staff insights on the role of co-creation in building community in hybrid in a Podcast episode, featuring the voices of Cathy Bovill, Prof. Tina Harrison, Rayya Ghul and Tim Fawns.
- You can learn about The School of Mathematics highly impactful ASID Project: A Student-Centred Outlook on the Development of Hybrid Teaching and Learning in our video or as a downloadable podcast.
- There’s also a number of perspectives on co-creation and Student-Led, Individually-Created Courses and how they can help students cultivate the soft skills needed to solve the ‘wicked problems’ of the future.
What Does Good Teaching During a Pandemic Look Like to Students?
The Exchange is delighted to host reflections from some of the staff nominated for an Edinburgh University Students’ Association’s 2021 students-led Teaching Award.
- You can read reflections from the nominees and gain insights and lessons on our regularly updated post that contains visualisations and captured quotes from these reflections
- The Exchange’s Hybrid Learning Journey’s section, first created in the Summer of 2020, puts staff in the shoes of students by journey mapping the student experience.
- You can revisit student expectations from Semester 1 of Semester 2 through The University Students’ Association survey.
And finally…
A reminder that our January digest included support for Semester 2 and links to several other resources and approaches that colleagues might find helpful in the coming months.
Please do let us know if there are other themes or topics you’d like to see included on the Exchange site, or if you’d like to contribute. We’d love to hear from you.
All good wishes for semester 2 and beyond.
