Initial experiences with online education

Herco Fonteijn, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, course Man and Machine

"In the bachelor’s programme in Psychology, 36 tutorial groups continued their second-year block Man and Machine last Monday. With minimal instruction on learning with PBL online using Collaborate Ultra, students found it easy to adapt. Attendance was low (about 60%) due to dropping the compulsory attendance requirement and the fact that many students were still travelling on Monday. During a virtual visit by a planning group member, students indicated that they would rather continue working with a small group than join together with another group.

The groups were used to working without a tutor and gave an autonomous impression. Students were able to give presentations online and, in most cases, mind maps were produced simultaneously. So for an initial hurried test, it went great. Reactions from 100+ students during a short online introduction on Monday morning were also positive. On Friday, we will see if more students have arrived at their destination and will participate online."
Contact Herco per mail.

Arie van der Lugt, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience

“Students used software to turn their discussion into a mind-map which visualises the connections between different concepts—and did so already during the first online tutorial group. My colleagues are experimenting with lecturing using Collaborate Ultra, and we held an online meeting of the Education Committee—that also ran like clockwork. “
Contact Arie per mail.

Teun Dekker, University College Maastricht, course History of Western Political Thought

“Great education is providing students with ideas and knowledge, giving them context and opportunities to use them, and then to offer them feedback on how well they do that. PBL isn’t about 7 steps, or even about face-to-face tutorials, but rather about getting students to engage with problems and challenging them to put their minds to work. If the past few days have taught me anything, it’s that you can do that online, too. In the UCM course History of Western Political Thought, I have experimented with video-lecture, discussion board-based tutorials and video tutorials, and these forms all create different dynamics, that engage students in different ways. Discussion boards can draw out students who like to think a bit more and are often silent in face-to-face situations, while being able to record video tutorials allows students to focus less on making notes, and more on actually thinking. In the end, students always respond to the same things: showing that you are excited about what you teach, feeling that you are interested in what they have to say and, above all, discovering that that they understand things they didn’t before.”
Contact Teun per mail.

Sonja Zaar, School of Business and Economics, course Strategic HRM

“For the Strategic HRM course at SBE, we are using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra to host our online tutorial sessions. This is working very well and allows for a set-up that is quite similar to our usual classroom tutorial session. In the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra virtual classroom, we can share presentation material and have group discussions, communicating real-time using synchronous audio, video and chat tools. The system is intuitive and easy to use. Students mentioned that they found their first online learning sessions a positive experience and are very pleased with the smooth transition of the course to a distance learning environment.”
Contact Sonja per mail.

Roy Erkens, Maastricht Science Programme

"At MSP, everyone is working really hard to get everything online. All teachers have submitted an adapted assessment plan for P4 and the first one has already been approved. I did an online assessment for General Botany myself (students download the questions, put their answers in the document and upload them before the deadline). This occurred without any significant problems. The other courses will be tested next week (almost all of the skills have been completed without any problems because they run until week 5 and assignments can be submitted online). My colleagues have worked, for example, through Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and that went reasonably well. However, we have noticed that students have left Maastricht and are now asking if the exam can be held at another time because of the time differences (e.g. for USA it’s in the middle of the night). I think it is worth emphasising that no physical contact does not mean that UM will do everything in its power to continue education wherever you are. As a colleague said, ‘We can’t work across 15 time zones’. That is of course the responsibility of the students themselves. If there is more time to prepare for P5, other forms of assessment can of course follow.

Furthermore, for all MSP thesis students who were doing lab work and are not able to do it now, we are looking at what work they can do so that they still meet the graduation requirements. This varies from case to case."
Contact Roy per mail.

Rixt Zijlstra, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, course Health, Nutrition and Exercise

“General impression—it went well to very well, high turnout, the majority not really having problems with connections or microphones, a number of students had problems with the connection which led to frustration (leaving the digital learning environment), students positive (and positively surprised), students thought it went well, active participation in general (comparable to face-to-face sessions), tutorial groups last as long or longer than face-to-face sessions, non-verbal communication is missed (few cameras on due to limitations of the program and internet connections), using the device’s microphone instead of a headset often works better, multi-tasking is easy for everyone to get used to, test session clear and very valuable, applause and appreciation for the people who arranged this in a short time.

Follow-up assignment: good, sufficient depth, sufficient participation, sticking to raising hands works well to create calm, screen sharing worked well

Pre-conversation: more difficult than post-conversation (may also have been due to the task), brainstorming via chat and taking notes via whiteboard or Word file goes well, button that erases the whiteboard is placed awkwardly (is done too easily by accident and 'undo' option is missing).

Tutors: in general (very) satisfied, online is working well, test session helps tutors a lot, new form is more intense, nice to see that (the/all) students are together online, it’s an advantage that one knows the students already in week 6, takes getting used to but positive outlook for the coming times, discussion leaders in the beginning should get a little more support with tips on how to lead within the program and what to pay attention to.”
Contact Rixt per mail.