TEU Update 11 September 2025
Featured this week
- Interactive Oral Assessment Introductory Workshop
- Fellowship of Advance HE
- Loop Guidance and Advice
- Loop Reflect Drop-in Clinics
- Teaching online with Zoom
- Teaching and Learning Week 2025
- ESD Digital Badge
- Students as Partners in Assessment
Monday 15th September 2025 at 14:00 to 15:00, in person in DG10, Bea Orpen, Glasnevin Campus.
Have you heard about Interactive Oral Assessment and wondered if it could be applied in your module? How does it differ from other forms of oral assessment? What are the steps involved in designing an Interactive Oral? The aim of this upcoming workshop is to provide an overview of Interactive Oral Assessment, highlight its value as an authentic assessment format and outline its design and application.
This workshop is in person and will not be recorded. Please direct any queries relating to the workshop to Lily Girme (lily.girme@dcu.ie) and Martina Crehan (martina.crehan@dcu.ie), Teaching Enhancement Unit.
Applying for Fellowship of Advance HE offers you a structured approach to reflecting on your practice, and the opportunity to join over 100 colleagues with Fellowship at DCU. Achieve external recognition of your teaching excellence by joining the 2025-26 Supported Journey to Fellowship. Funded places are limited - click here to apply now!
To learn more, chat to Programme Lead Dr Maeve O’Dwyer at an information session of your choice:
- Thursday 11th September, 10.00-11.00. In person drop-in q&a, DG10, Bea Orpen Building, Glasnevin Campus. No booking required.
- Wednesday 17th September, 10.00-11.00. Online Introduction to Fellowship. Click here to register now.
- Thursday 25th September, 10.00-11.00. In person Introduction to Fellowship. DG10, Bea Orpen Building, Glasnevin Campus. No booking required.
Organising your Loop Dashboard
At this time of year, your Loop Dashboard may become busy as you are enrolled into new pages for Autumn 2025 and Spring 2026. You may want to use some of the features of the ‘Course Overview’ block on the dashboard to organise your pages. You have options to:
- ‘Star’ your favourite pages for quick access
- Remove pages from view
Explore some of these options in this resource from the Loop Staff Support Page, and have a go at tinkering with your ‘Course Overview’ block to get it to display your most important pages.
Make yourself known to students
In line with DCU’s threshold expectations, and universal design for learning guidelines, it’s good practice to place your contact details (and photo) on your Loop module page so students easily know who their module coordinator is, and can access that information in the same place across all module pages. Watch this video to learn how to do this.
Use the announcements forum to communicate with students
The announcements forum comes by default on all Loop pages. It allows editing teachers to send a message to all students enrolled on a Loop page, but students are unable to respond to it. It can be considered good practice to issue regular announcements to students on your module, to signpost them, draw their attention to particular things, provide support and help create teacher presence.
All students enrolled on the page will receive a message to their Loop notifications and to their DCU student email. The benefit of using the announcements forum is that students both get a message to their email account, and announcements are all stored in the forum so they can revisit them later when they need to access previously shared information. This is easier for them than searching through their email accounts!
Learn more about using the announcements forum in this resource on the Loop Staff Support Page.
Interactive learning for students
A dominant way in which students learn is through acquisition (Laurillard, 2002), often via passive learning content such as documents, videos and so on. Learning content which is interactive can be more cognitively engaging for students, as it requires them to pay attention to what they are learning, make choices, manipulate the content or apply their learning through answering questions. As well as being cognitively engaging, interactive learning can also be enjoyable for students.
The H5P tool on Loop is a versatile, easy-to-use tool which allows lecturers to create simple but effective pieces of interactive content quickly and easily. Examples include:
- Interactive videos
- Interactive presentations
- Flashcards
- Timelines
- Branching scenarios
- And more!
Check out this handy one-pager on H5P or visit this resource on the Loop Staff Support Page for more info.
Getting Started with Loop Quizzes (17/09 @ 2 PM)
This 60-minute workshop focuses on creating and managing quizzes in Loop to boost student engagement and formative assessment. You'll learn the basics of quiz setup, explore question types, and configure settings for grading and feedback. By the end, you'll have hands-on experience in building a quiz and analysing results. This session is ideal for both new users and those needing a refresher on Loop quizzes.
The workshop will be held Wednesday, September 17, 2025, at 2:00 PM. You can attend remotely via Zoom or in person at room DG10 in the Bea Orpen Building.
Check your Turnitin Similarity text-matching settings
If you want student submissions to Loop Assignments to be text-matched, you must ensure these settings are applied before students start submitting.
We are pleased to announce that the Loop Reflect drop-in clinics will be resuming shortly for the upcoming semester. The drop-in clinic is an informal, unstructured space where any student or staff member who has a question about Loop Reflect can come and get guidance. Please share these with your students.
Clinic Schedule:
- Monday 22 September 2025, 11am - Join via Zoom
- Wednesday 15 October 2025, 10am - Join via Zoom
- Thursday 13 November 2025, 3pm - Join via Zoom
- Friday 5 December 2025, 12pm - Join via Zoom
Clinic details are also in the TEU Events Calendar.
How Students Can Activate their Loop Reflect Account
Before using Loop Reflect for an assignment, students must activate their account (if they have not already done so). To do this, they should:
- Go to their Loop dashboard.
- Click the DCU Loop Reflect icon in the Quick Links section.
After activation, they can continue accessing Loop Reflect through this link.
Loop Reflect Awards 2026
We are excited to announce that the Loop Reflect Awards will return in Semester 2.
The awards recognise students who have gone above and beyond, using their Loop Reflect portfolios to tell compelling stories, reflect on their learning journeys, and present their skills in unique and impactful ways. Students may submit portfolios developed for a module during Semester 2 of the 24/25 academic year or Semester 1 of the 25/26 academic year, or they may choose to create a portfolio specifically for the showcase.
Key information, including entry dates and submission guidelines, will be shared in due course. In the meantime, please help spread the word and encourage your students to submit.
Those of you who use Zoom to teach online synchronous sessions may wish to share the DCU Zoom Guide for Students with your class. This resource is hosted on the Loop 101 for Students support page, which all students have access to.
A key message to share with students is that they should activate their DCU licensed Zoom accounts via Single Sign-On at https://dcu-ie.zoom.us in order to avail of the full featureset. And of course this applies to staff too!
If you are scheduling Zoom classes for the semester, the best way to do so is to add a Zoom Classroom to your Loop page, and schedule all the sessions in there. This has many benefits, including:
- Being a one-stop-shop for students for all their upcoming Zoom classes
- Zoom Classroom sessions are automatically added to students’ Loop calendars
- Recordings automatically appear in the Zoom Classroom after processing
More information on adding a Zoom Classroom can be found on our Loop Staff Support Page.
DCU Teaching and Learning Week 2025 will begin on Monday, September 29th, with an in-person event at The Gallery in The Helix on the Glasnevin Campus, from 9:00am to 2:00pm.
Theme: Teaching and Learning in Turbulent Times: Recognising Diversity and Promoting Inclusion
Dates: September 29th - October 3rd 2025
Modes: Series of In-Person and Online Events
Reminder to reserve your spot for Opening Day by registering here.
More information on registration for subsequent days coming soon!
Following the success of the digital badge earlier this year, we will be offering it again during Semester One.
This is a six week course, involving 25 hours learning time.
The six sessions will take place over Zoom on Wednesdays at 1pm, beginning on Wednesday 1st October. Participants will also complete pre-session tasks and group reflections.
Sessions will focus on a range of issues including sustainable development; education for sustainable development, sustainability competences, and integrating ESD into modules.
Please register here.
If you’ve any questions please contact barry.peak@dcu.ie.
Student partnership in assessment is a collaborative approach in which students can participate in the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of assessment processes. It offers many benefits: increased student ownership, engagement and inclusivity, strengthened academic integrity, and improved outcomes. DCU students and staff have also reported similar benefits!
There are many examples of student partnership in assessment. If you are interested in exploring some of these practices with your students this semester (or you already are!), the TEU would love to hear from you, and support you in this activity. Please leave your details on this form and we’ll be in touch!
Submit a request at DCU Help for Loop queries
More complex query or prefer to chat? Join a Loop drop in clinic
Find comprehensive resources on our Loop Staff Support Page - enrolment key is 'staff'
For advice on teaching practice, including on the use of technology, email teaching.enhancement@dcu.ie
Request a workshop or extended consultation
Stay in the loop Professional and technical staff - Join Group to stay informed on TEU activities, including Loop communications and professional development opportunities.
