The Scholarship Programme
for furtherance of technology uses in education at FoA, MUNI
What should the project submitted for the Scholarship Programme look like?
A brief annotation of the project
Briefly present your project and indicate its main objectives and outputs.
The aim is to create e-learning support in ELF for the course ELF007, which will correspond to the new course syllabus based on experience gained from the last two runs of the course as well as on modern research in this field. The e-learning course will cover not only the various static study materials (in the form of PDF files), but also short learning videos, which will provide introduction to the discussed topics in the framework of the respective module.
Indicating subjects
Indicate courses the project is associated with. Enter both, codes and titles of the courses. Individual entries should be separated by commas.
ELF007 – non-existent course
Impact of the project and sustainability
In this section, enter the number of students the project will concern. Indicate whether the supported course is mandatory, selective or optional and whether it is intended only for students of the parent disciplines or accessible to other MUNI students. Estimate the number of students who will enroll in the course. If the course took place in the past, please, indicate the numbers of registered students. It is also important to mention whether the course will be listed repeatedly (and how often) or whether it is a one-time course only.
The course is selective (B) for bachelor students at Institute X and, at the same time, it is offered as an optional course (C) to other MUNI students. The course is listed every year in the autumn semester and last year, when it was open to students of other disciplines, it was attended by 37 students. This year, we assume the participation of about 45 students; for capacity reasons, the enrollment is limited to 50 students.
Video Studio assistance
Do you expect to create educational videos or audio recordings with native speakers in your project? If so, you can arrange cooperation with the Video Studio. If you need any assistance from the video studio, please contact us in advance before submitting the project proposal to discuss the form of cooperation. Otherwise, we cannot guarantee sufficient capacities to help you.
Characteristics of the project
What is the purpose of the project? What kind of outputs do you expect? How many of them and how extensive?
The goal of the project is to create a new e-learning course as a platform with new study materials based on the latest findings in the field, at the same time corresponding to the new syllabus of the subject, which was created on the basis of the feedback from students from the previous runs of the course. Various study materials will be created for the course, to replace the currently lacking textbook. The course and study materials will be divided into sections according to topics; for each, there will be a main study material in the range of about 10-15 pages and several complementary materials as well as a list of corresponding literature to enable the students to study the topic deeper. Furthermore, an introductory video will be prepared for each section of the course, to make students familiar with the content of the section in an engaging manner.
Duration and periodicity of the project
Is the submitted project one-time only or do you expect to re-submit the project in the following runs of the scholarship programme? If so, will this project take place each semester, once per two semesters or less often?
Our aim is to keep the course active in the following years. Therefore, we plan to update and continually develop and modify the study materials so that the course always reflects the current state of knowledge. Because generally only maintenance of the already existing course is expected in the following years, the scope of work will be smaller.
Pedagogical objectives
What do you expect of the project as a teacher? Do you want to improve the success of students at the final exam? Do you want to help students access study materials? Do you want to provide a platform for students to study the subject matter beyond the work in class?
The subject has not been taught without the e-learning support yet; a textbook was used which is no longer sufficient. The new e-learning course and study materials for students will replace the obsolete textbook. At the same time, the environment will be suitable for discussing the subject matter. The assistants participating in the project will also be able to join the discussions as feedback providers and moderators. In addition to the mandatory materials, the students will be offered the possibility of expanding their knowledge in ways that they consider important, which can help them shape their studies further. Depending on the activity in the discussion forums, in future years it may be possible to finish the course not only by the final exam, but also based on sufficient involvement in discussions within the course.
Form of innovation
In what ways will the teaching in the supported courses be innovated compared to the current situation? How much will change in the innovated subjects? What will be the content and the scope of the newly created materials? Why do you consider the innovation necessary?
There is currently no textbook (Czech or English) for the subject matter of the course ELF007 that reflects the current state of knowledge in the field. Until now, the students had to rely on reading various articles, however, these did not provide a complete picture of the current status of the discipline. That is why it is our goal to create an e-learning course that will offer such a comprehensive overview for the students.
If the status quo of the course is maintained, where the students’ tasks are evaluated only by the teachers, the course would have to be limited in some way. While maintaining the type of homework and feedback from teachers, the number of enrolled students would have to be limited. This would ultimately lead to offering the course only to the students of the parent disciplines. Another possibility would be eliminating homework in the current form. However, as the homework and related feedback were among the reasons for a positive score in the course opinion poll, this step appears counterproductive. Therefore, engaging student evaluators is a step that will make it possible to maintain the popular elements of the course and, at the same time, it will not be necessary to restrict the number of participants in the course.
Technological solution
Describe your expectation of the technological implementation of the project. The previous section concerned what you want to achieve in terms of teaching; now indicate how you want to achieve it. If you want to offer new study materials to your students, will these be static PDF or text files, do you want to create interactive lectures in ELF/Moodle, or perhaps use an external tool such as Quizlet, Kahoot or Socrative?
The e-learning course will run in ELF. The primary study materials will have the form of PDF files. The aim is to create material that will be as user friendly as possible. PDF files can be read on a variety of computers and mobile devices as well as e-book readers. At the same time, the files are easy to print. There will be various additional study materials - from simple texts, through databases containing videos and articles, to various materials using e.g. Quizlet. The videos will be stored in the Medial faculty media library and then embedded in the headers of individual sections of the course. At the same time, we expect using discussion forums in the course, in which students will be able to discuss the subject matter both with the teaching staff and assistants and among themselves. At lectures, we plan to engage students using Socrative, which will be used throughout the class to verify whether students understand the topic. It also allows the collection of ideas and feedback. At the same time, we plan to let students get bonus points via the Kahoot application, which will be used at the beginning of each class to test the students in the subject matter discussed in the previous week.
Human resources and distribution of scholarships
In this item, explain how the required amount will be divided among students and what specifically individual assistants enrolled in the project have to do.
In terms of financial rewards for assistants, we recommend the range of CZK 80-150 per hour, depending on the complexity of the work.
XXX YYY: The assistant will be primarily in charge of the production of study materials, which will consist in searching for appropriate supporting documents, processing them and then creating the study materials. The assistant will also provide feedback to students and moderate discussion forums. The expected amount of work is 70 hours at the rate of CZK 150 per hour. The assistant will also help with checking selected homework. The expected range of work is 10 hours at the rate of CZK 120 per hour.
Total scholarship for the assistant: CZK 11,700.
GGG HHH: In collaboration with the video studio and XXX YYY, the assistant will prepare educational videos for both courses. There will be 6 videos in total, each video around 5 minutes. Further, she will also participate in the production of the study materials and she will also provide feedback and moderate the forums. The expected range of work is 75 hours at the rate of CZK 150 per hour.
Total scholarship for the assistant: CZK 11,250.
Timetable
What is the scheduled course of the project? Based on the plan, when should individual outputs of the project be available?
During the first month of the semester, intense consultations with assistants responsible for creating the study materials will be conducted. At the end of the first month, all topics and main sources will be fixed. All principal study materials will be developed by the end of the teaching period and their proofreading, unifying and assembling the e-learning course will take place at the beginning of the exam period. Uploading videos will take place according to the capacities of the video studio in the last month of the semester. The e-learning course will start running in the following semester.
Feedback
How will you find out whether your project is successful?
In addition to the course opinion poll, we expect to use a questionnaire for both courses through which we want to see how the students are satisfied with the various study materials. Based on log files from ELF, we will also look at how much individual materials are used. In both courses, we will use the anonymous questionnaire module in ELF for students to submit their suggestions and feedback throughout the course as well as request topics they would like to focus on during classes.
Previous experience with the use of technology
What is your experience with e-learning, use of technology in education or creating multimedia study materials? Has any of the members of your project already participated in the Scholarship Programme?
I use e-learning courses in ELF for most of the courses I teach. In this project, I will also make use of my knowledge of typesetting in LaTeX, as the study materials will be prepared in LaTeX.
GGG HHH has been assisting me with setting up and managing e-learning courses. Several years ago, we took part in the older scholarship programme. XXX YYY has experience with typesetting in LaTeX, she will help me with the final editing of the study materials.
Other assistants have not had any experience with creating and administering e-learning courses in ELF so far, therefore, we would welcome the possibility of training by someone from the E-learning Office.