The current hybrid teaching format has 5 sessions (2 face-to-face and 3 distance learning) of 4 hours each, spread over the year. This workshop gives rise to 4 ECTS credits and students are grouped by discipline (e.g., computer science, English/German, biology/physics, mathematics, etc.).
The workshop is organized using Google's educational suite, via the DIP's Online School (EEL) platform (access to these tools is offered to teachers).
The course focuses on two areas: the first allows students to discover a theoretical framework related to the use of digital technology in teaching; the second asks them to create and experiment with their own digital device in their classroom. At the end of the workshop, students are asked to submit a report on the device they created and how it was implemented. Throughout the course, they have activities to complete to refine their device. These activities are orchestrated thanks to the digital device, which allows them, throughout the course, to familiarize themselves with the entire Google suite and some additional tools. To prepare and empower students, the teacher uses the Google Classroom learning platform in the Google Education learning environment. It allows to centralize all the communications and resources related to the course and to organize its progress through :
- the provision of documentation;
- creation of a schedule of work to be rendered ;
- handing over of the work ;
- the creation and provision of evaluation grids, etc.
The Classroom is complete from the 1er course, all the resources are present as well as the dates and deadlines already planned with the help of the assignments as well as the events of meetings planned in the integrated Google Calendar. At the UNIGE, the same system could be implemented on Moodle.
In order to make students active, the Google suite also offers a communication tool (Meet) for half-days of remote meetings, the usual collaborative work tools (Docs, Sheets, Sildes, Forms, etc.) in a shared drive space. UNIGE teachers could use equivalent tools with the Microsoft suite offered within the institution (OneDrive and all its tools from the Office 365 suite) with a complement of communication via Zoom for the meeting moments. In addition to a simple communication tool, the teacher animates her course in such a way as to strongly encourage participation thanks to an interactive whiteboard-type tool called Miro that offers a wide range of possible activities and integrated tools. The teacher can create diagrams, prepare mini-games, integrate a stopwatch, comment, chat, take notes, and all this in a centralized and collaborative way. The activities are designed in a gamification approach to make the course more fun and accessible.
To empower students, the teacher introduced a portfolio approach to her course. In order not to burden her course with additional tools, the teacher chose a simple solution by creating an e-portfolio in Excel format (Google Sheets). This e-portfolio was used for formative purposes; the students had to write short and reflective paragraphs on each of the activities, and for evaluative purposes since the teacher commented and validated this process as a mandatory activity for the validation of the course. This approach allows the learner to see his or her progress in the activities to be handed in, but also to express himself or herself and to have personalized feedback on each activity.
