Teaching evaluations

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

It doesn’t cease to amaze me how different teaching requirements can be at various universities across countries, but also within the same country. Faculty appointments, and evaluations of faculty members for the next career step usually includes some sort of evaluation of their teaching. Often, this is on the basis of written documents, or a […]

Online education and the digital divide

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted education around the world to distance and online modes, with lots of wonderful breakthroughs, disruptions and leaps in technology and pedagogy alike. It was wonderful to try out many of these technologies and reflect about the changes required in pedagogical approaches to make online education more effective. Also on this […]

Poor peer pressure

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

The more we were discussing about collaborative online learning, the more we came back to group formations setting the tone. Obviously, assignment structures and formations set the tone as well – esp. how clear and relevant they are (Brindley et al., 2009), but let’s keep it to the group for now. How people learn in […]

Educational tools, tools, tools on my mind

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

There are so many tools out there that all supposedly support education that it’s mind-blowing. There is seemingly even a mind-map of mind-mapping tools! Fascinating! There are way too many that one could account for, let alone keep up with. Throughout the ONL course we are experimenting with quite a few, and while that’s perhaps […]

The value of meetings

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

By now probably everyone understands what is meant by “zoom fatigue” (and how to combat it), yet taking a course has made me find some re-appreciation for synchronous, even virtual, meetings. It makes such a difference to be able to talk to one’s group and not just work on the same project! Peer pressure, group […]

🙂

Ghost member

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

Now that I am not able to attend any of the synchronous meetings of my group it feels like being a ghost group member. So I started to wonder whether this ghost-like feeling extends to online education overall. From an instructor perspective there is a long-standing discussion on how an online instructor comes across, as […]

Implement, or practice fist?

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

New versions of digital education platforms are coming out all the time, adding on to the features they’ve had, and changing where to find them. These are exciting features for sure but software and app updates have never been more challenging than when you discover them right in the middle of your next session. Now […]

Online guest lectures

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

Online education has its up- and downsides compared to regular face to face classes for sure. The main problem is of course with those courses that have not been designed a priori to be online but then had to move to a different platform, hybrid, or completely digital. So here’s an upside to the still […]

Public vs private modus operandi

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

The first FISh (focus-investigate-share) model being under way in our group it was interesting to see that so many agreed with the problem of public vs private personalities on social media; and even of the question which tool is a public vs a private one in teaching. It was stirred up by the question of […]

Panic buying and the beer game

Posted on by Gyöngyi Kovács

Some countries are now in their second wave of panic buying due to the COVID-19 outbreak. First it was toilet paper (check here how much you own vs would need), then anything from garlic to baking powder to hair dye (really?), now we are back to toilet paper and dry foods. Here’s a rather funny […]