TEU Update 18 September 2025

 Featured this week

• Teaching and Learning Week 2025
• Peer Observation of Teaching
• ESD Digital Badge
• Loop Guidance and Advice
• Loop Reflect
• Teaching online with Zoom
• Where to Find Help and Support

The Full Programme for DCU Teaching & Learning Week 2025 is now available. Complementing the in-person event on September 29, we are pleased to share a range of events happening across the week. Highlights include:

Tuesday Sept 30th

• 10.00 - 11.00: Panel discussion: Inclusive Teaching & Learning with Technology (online) Register
• 11.00 - 12.00: Publishing Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (online) Register
• 13.00 - 14.00: VR:HEdSETS (online) Register
• 15.00 - 16.00: Technology & Inclusion: Friend and Foe? (online) Register

Wednesday Oct 1st

• 10.00 - 12.00: Interactive Oral Assessment session (online) Register
• 13:00 - 14:00 Curriculum Design through an EDI lens (online) Register

Thursday Oct 2nd

• 09:45 - 12:00 Education for Sustainable Development: Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Undisciplined Approaches (in-person) All Hallows, Purcell House PG09 Register
• 14:00 - 15:00 Sipping Point: Graduates as Agents of Change (online) Register

Friday Oct 3rd

• 10.00 - 11:00 An Introduction to the Universal Design for Learning Framework 3.0 (online) Register
• 14:00 - 15:00 Inclusive Education in Action (online) Register

With such a wide-ranging programme, we hope you’ll be able to join us at some point during the week. We look forward to seeing you!

Have you used or are you interested in Peer Observation of Teaching and its role in reflecting on your teaching practice? Have you wondered how students might be part of that process? If so, the TEU will soon commence a HEA funded project on a co-designed peer observation of teaching scheme between faculties in DCU. We are seeking a volunteer group of staff who, in partnership with students, will participate in a workshop designed to gather shared insights into the elements and design of a model for Peer Observation of Teaching (PoT). You can find further details in this expression of interest form.  Participants will receive a digital badge and those involved may later also be part of a collaborative publication. Should you have any queries, please contact martina.crehan@dcu.ie

Final places available: beginning October 1st

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 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 competencies, and integrating ESD into modules.

Please register here.

If you’ve any questions please contact barry.peak@dcu.ie.

Supporting students in group work

Group work is an important component of students’ learning, but one that often involves a lot of work for lecturers to set up, facilitate, and ensure fairness among group members. There are several Loop tools that can help you with making group work a success.

Group Review activity

The Group Review activity combines a group assignment with students’ grading of the group members. It aims to recognise student contribution within a group task and reward it accordingly in grades. It also aims to mitigate the ‘freeloader effect’, as students who do not pull their weight won’t get the benefit of the general group grade. Learn more in this resource on the Loop Staff Support Page, or log a request at DCU Help if you want help in setting up this activity. 

Facilitating student group work communication

Did you know that Loop’s messaging system makes it easy for students to contact each other in scenarios like a group project, where they need to collaborate together? To facilitate this, simply activate group messaging on your Loop groups. Then students can access the messaging drawer from the top right corner of Loop, see their fellow group members, and start a group chat with them. An easy way to get going with group work!

To learn how to facilitate group messaging among students, explore this resource.

Creating Loop groups

There are several ways of getting students into groups on Loop.

1. If you do not mind who needs to be in a group, you can use Auto-Create Groups to place students at random or in alphabetical order in groups. Learn more about auto-creation.
2. If you want specific students in specific groups, you can prepare a spreadsheet of this information and upload to Loop to create the groups. Learn more about group upload.
3. If you want students to place themselves in groups, you can add a Group Choice activity to your Loop module page. Learn more.

Leveraging AI content generation in Loop

Interested in being part of a pilot group to explore the affordances of generating text, images, quiz questions and summarising content directly within Loop using genAI? Sign up here and we’ll be in touch!

Drop-in Clinic

The first Loop Reflect online drop-in clinic of the semester will take place as follows:

Monday 22 September 2025, 11am-12pm, Join via Zoom

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 do notify your students that they are welcome to join the clinic with any Loop Reflect questions they may have.

Group Portfolios

A reminder that Loop Reflect offers a collaborative space for students to create a shared portfolio, bringing together individual contributions, reflections, and supporting materials into a single, cohesive submission. Once complete, the portfolio can be submitted directly to Loop for assessment. If you would like to hear more about group portfolios please contact teaching.enhancement@dcu.ie.

Using breakout rooms in Zoom is a great way to facilitate active learning, by providing small groups of students from the larger Zoom class with a task to discuss or work on together. It can enhance student engagement, class participation and cater for both Learner-Content engagement and Learner-Learner engagement in your online session, which are important types of interaction for enabling learning in an online context (Moore, 1989).

There are various ways of creating breakout rooms in a Zoom session, for example:

1. Creating them randomly by number of room or number of participants

2. Creating them manually and manually assigning students

3. Pre-assigning students to a breakout room via a CSV file upload

Learn more in the Zoom Support Center.

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.