Optimizing Digital Teaching and Communication

This month (September 2021) we organize a hands-on workshop on e-learning techniques and strategies, under the aegis of CECAM, Psi-k and the MaX (Material Design at Exascale) European Center of Excellence, aimed at teachers and researchers in electronic structure and HPC in general.

If you want to join us, this is your (last) chance!

In this new world after the pandemic, experience and needs of those preparing online teaching have evolved. Therefore, we are organizing a hands-on workshop on online and blended teaching, that addresses the needs of the post-Covid era. There are plenty of reasons to keep elements of teaching in an online form permanently. 

Some workshop objectives are :

• How can we learn from the past year?
• How can we offer our online and blended teaching in a way that leads to better learning and increased student satisfaction?
• What are the pitfalls we must avoid? 

We’ve set ourselves the challenge to bring this information to you in an online format that will keep you engaged and motivated.

• You will leave the workshop with a set of online teaching materials you will have prepared, for your own courses, talks or science communication.
• You will not have the chance to hide yourself anonymously behind your laptop, and you will learn how to avoid the same for your students or your audience.

If you participate in this online workshop, you may expect:

• First a short self-paced online preparation course, which you can take at any time between mid-August and mid-September 2021 (duration: 2-4 hours). Here where you will learn the very basics, and you will be guided to set up the soft- and hardware you will need during the workshop (e.g. video editing software, polling tools, …). As this preparation takes some time, you need to register “now” in order to still have a reasonable amount of time for it. Once the preparation will have been done, you receive your entry ticket for the live sessions.
• Four 3-hour live online sessions spread from September 15 to September 22 (a detailed timing will follow). During and after every session (yes, there will be home-work !) you will work on several tasks, in small teams together with other participants.
• After September 22, you will be given a larger task that deals with a topic of your choice (e.g. something you will need to teach about at your institute, or a lecture you will have to give, or simply a science topic you like). You will work on this for one week, in interaction with a small team of other participants.
• On October 1, there is a final 3-hour online session where you will see what (some of) the other participants accomplished, and where you will get collective feedback as well as peer feedback on your work. 

If you are interested to participate, you should register in two different steps (both steps are mandatory):

• Step 1: register at CECAM via this form (attention: if you don't have one yet, create a CECAM account first)
• Step 2: register via this form.

Looking forward to welcome you,

Stefaan Cottenier (Ghent University)
Andrea Cucca (CNRS)
Rex Godby (University of York)
Myrta Grüning (Queen's University Belfast)
Gian-Marco Rignanese (Université Catholique de Louvain)
Francesco Sottile (Ecole Polytechnique)
Matthieu Verstraete (University of Liege)
Zeila Zanolli (Utrecht University)