By Emiel van Puffelen, WUR
Earlier Jan van der Veen presented education highlights of two Swiss technical universities: EPFL at Lausanne and ETH at Zürich that the 4TU.CEE staff visited this spring. There was so much inspiration that we need a second blog to inform you of all that we learned. We hope to inspire you too! Click on the links in the text for more information.
Discovery Learning Laboratories
I particularly want to mention the Discovery Learning Laboratories (DLL) at EPFL. The DLLs are thematic spaces for lab sessions that can be integrated into the curriculum of all studies. These spaces are adapted for teaching large groups, generally at BSc level. The DLLs were started up 4 years ago to bring students from different fields together in cross-disciplinary teaching labs. It was also a way to cope with the growing number of students, since hands-on courses could not be offered to them at the same time. Students can sign in for a lab session on the website which shows availability. All 4TU have similar projects and it is nice to evaluate and make new plans while looking at the EPFL approach!
MOOC research and innovation programme
EPFL also has an extensive MOOC research and innovation programme, which is not being used as a promotion tool, but set up to transform online education. EPFL knows how students watch their video clips and which type of teachers are doing well with MOOCS. Research and innovation includes: Tracking behaviour for plagiarism detection; an environment which enables 4 to 5 individuals to watch MOOCs and solve exercises together; social media and multimedia research to characterize (non)verbal behaviour of social video users, to build tools for interaction with online video.
MOOC production with front and ceiling camera, Wacom and displays for the teacher.
MOOC clips are easily made with a 30 seconds intro with the teacher in frame; after that her/his hands are shown in the interaction with a Wacom tablet. The teachers produce clips without assistants using a front and ceiling camera. The Wacom eliminates the need for animations. This works fine for EPFL!
Speak up logo
SpeakUp
An interesting interaction tool that EPFL developed with the University of Lausanne and that is frequently used in lectures is SpeakUp. This free app increases participation in the classroom by providing an open chatroom for anonymous questions with no need to create an account. Students can vote on the questions they like to see answered and discuss their opinions. After 24 hours the ‘virtual room’ disappears again. Interesting fact is that twice as many questions are asked with SpeakUp than without.
Education at ETH
The compact education vision of ETH has inspiring focuses on interdisciplinary, system-oriented & critical thinking. It also defines quality criteria for teaching for curricula and courses and the university’s expectations of all those engaged in teaching processes, from students to lecturers to administrative and technical staff.
Lunch at ETH Zürich
The ETH department Educational Development and Technology couples teachers with their education developers for a few days. This department promotes innovation in education by the Innovedum fund. They support 20 projects per year of approximately 100.000 francs per project. Projects last 2-3 years and support of education developers is available. Furthermore ETH has an innovative programme for educational staff development including a programme for every level of teaching experience and nice refresh teaching lunchtime events.
EPFL and ETH are both top universities offering exciting innovations in education and they are very willing to share their education vision, programmes and practical approach, which is highly appreciated! Their inspiration is right under your mouse button!
