VU Climate Design - A field report
"In Corona times, I had to switch my courses to digital teaching and exams. Here I would like to present my experiences with the lecture part of the VU Climate Design in Architecture with over 300 listeners."
Wolfgang Streicher is Professor of Energy-Efficient Construction with a special focus on the use of renewable energies at the Department of Energy-Efficient Construction. In addition to his role as head of the department, Prof Streicher also has extensive teaching responsibilities in the fields of architecture, civil and environmental engineering, mechatronics and electrical engineering. In a field report, he shares his personal impressions of digital teaching with us.
The lecture was held during the corona epidemic with home learning in HSB1 via OLAT in the livestream and with recording in the lecture theatre. It was difficult to motivate yourself as a lecturer in the large lecture theatre without an audience. The feedback via the livestream was only minimal, in face-to-face lectures you can "provoke" the students' reactions better. It was not possible to tell how many listeners were actually listening. Although the recording is very helpful for the students, as they can listen to the lecture at another time, the direct interaction (which is rather low) with the lecturer is then lost.
In the case of a face-to-face lecture, a recording means that only a few students attend the lecture, as they can listen to the lecture before the exam. Calculated blackboard examples are only possible if the blackboard is also recorded or the whiteboard is used. On the other hand, by repeating or pausing the lecture, students can analyse what has been said in more detail. Of course, students could also sit in the lecture in person and use the recording as a repetition. However, only a few students use this optimal option, probably because of the high teaching and examination load. Whether the advantages of increased attendance and thus direct interaction outweigh the ease of learning through better repetition and free time management probably depends on the nature of the course. I personally prefer direct interaction and therefore no longer record my VU Klimadesign.
The examination of the lecture part with 350 listeners is held via OLAT as a written test. The exams are mostly multiple choice (several types) with exam groups from which questions are randomly selected from a pool, the order of the answers is also randomly issued per student by OLAT. Some questions must be answered on paper with a sketch, photographed using a mobile phone and uploaded to OLAT. The assessment of the exam was explained BEFORE the test. The exam is rather short so as not to allow time for large virtual exchanges in social networks. The advantage of such an exam is that the result is available without a large amount of time and without a large number of raters (usually 1-3 days), even for exams with more than 100 students. This saves the university a lot of costs (hours spent by staff on correction).
In coronavirus times, this was done virtually from home in large examinations. Groups of a maximum of 20 people were formed for checking, which were checked by me and other employees of the work area via virtual meetings (mostly BigBlueButton) during the exam. Once the student IDs had been checked, the two-stage examination (declaration in lieu of an oath and the examination itself in the event of a positive result) was activated. The students' microphones and cameras had to remain switched on during the examination for monitoring purposes. Once a student had finished, they had to log out in the chat or verbally in the meeting so that the submission time in OLAT could be compared with this message and work could not continue after logging out without checking. It was not possible to determine whether WhatsApp (or other social networks) groups were running in the background. If a student was not present in the meeting for more than 5 minutes, the exam was not counted.
After the Corona period, the exam also takes place in OLAT. However, the students sit in presence in the examination room and are supervised by the lecturer and other UIBK staff. This also makes communication via virtual channels during the exam even more difficult.
Overall, the virtual lecture and examination options offered are very helpful and offer good flexibility. The examinations could be conducted properly. However, it is not easy for the lecturer to find the correct assessment file in OLAT, which can then be inserted into their own Excel template for exam assessment. It would be good if each lecturer could save the required file as a kind of favourite in OLAT. The documentation of individual examinations is very useful for viewing examinations.