The path into the semester #4 – Learning effectively regardless of your location
First, the good news: »Almost all teaching content from the Faculty of Civil Engineering can be converted into digital offerings«, reported Prof. Conrad Völker, Dean of Studies. In record time, the teaching staff has begun developing a wide range of e-learning formats in order to make the 2020 summer semester as attractive as possible. These have already been tested within the framework of the advanced degree programmes "elBau" and "nuBau".
The lecture halls, seminar rooms and PC pools in Marienstrasse are deserted. The corridors in Coudraystrasse are empty. This will likely still be the case when the semester begins on 4. May. The coronavirus pandemic has left its mark on the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar campus. Events, excursions and labs have been cancelled or postponed indefinitely. But as Goethe is so often quoted: »You can also build something beautiful from stones that are placed in your path«. Academic Advisor Karin Gorges sees the crisis also as an opportunity: »I hope that lecturers discover new tools that they can also include into future courses«, explains the lecturer from the Professorship of Building Physics.
Moodle as central learning platform
Within this context, Karin Gorges emphasizes the importance using the Moodle learning platform in undergraduate courses more intensively: »Students have often said that it would be nice to have a single point of contact for teaching content. Moodle can provide this«, she says, and bases this on her own experience. Karin Gorges, Academic Advisor for the advanced courses »Building Physics and Energy Building Optimisation« (elBau) and »Methods & Materials for User-oriented Building Renovation« (nuBau), is already familiar with the concept of blended learning: "It combines the advantages of conventional classroom courses with those of e-learning."
Diverse online tools
Digital tools such as video recordings, online scripts, self-testing, online conferences or chats offer a learning process with flexibility of location, independence and effectiveness. However, analogue lecture and seminar content cannot be translated 1:1 to the Internet: »Lectures should not exceed 45 minutes, even shorter is better«, advises Karin Gorges. Because the attention span is shorter than in face-to-face lectures, online lectures should be divided into smaller units. In addition, students should be provided with sets of video projector slides to enable them to take notes. Live lectures or webinars can also be used to perserve personal contact with students. However, live formats require a lot of server capacity, Karin Gorges points out: »The actual surge in access rates can lead to bottlenecks, especially during peak usage times.«
The formats to best meet the needs are currently being tested across the Civil Engineering Faculty. Dean of Studies Prof. Völker knows that »It’s likely that teething troubles will emerge at the beginning of the semester, but lecturers are constantly trying to improve the online offering.«
Digital testing as a challenge
Because it's currently impossible to foresee if and when attendance courses will resume in the summer semester, Civil Engineering Faculty lecturers are already thinking about »digital exam formats«. »The problem is the legal certainty of remote examinations. Aside from the systems in which students have to pass written exams in the computer pool. But that doesn’t help us at the moment,« explains Karin Gorges.
»However, experience shows that verbal exams such as project presentations that are held at weekends or in the evening, work quite well with Adobe Connect, a conferencing service from the German National Research and Education Network (DFNconf),« she adds.
Another option is provided by BigBlueButton (BBB) software in Moodle. »Both systems feature break out rooms where the examination board can withdraw to discuss the marks and then return to the virtual main audience room to announce the examination result«, explains Karin Gorges. Prof. Koch confirms that the BBB system has already been successfully tested at the Chair of Intelligent Technical Design: as the first graduate of the professorship, Mrs Liselot Ramirez defended her Master's thesis on »Mixed Reality Interface Prototype for Smart Home Systems« via Moodle on 1 April 2020. »A video conference room has been set up specifically for this purpose. This is an important step in the digitisation of teaching«, says Prof. Koch.