TEU Update 2 October 2025

This session will be held to celebrate the International Day of Action for Academic Integrity. We will begin by exploring some of the reasons why students engage in academic misconduct. Following that, we will invite several staff to share easy-to-apply actions, mostly using Loop features, to help students uphold academic integrity. Each staff's sharing is designed to address a specific reason for academic misconduct in order to prevent it. Their actions also reflect the pedagogy of care. The aim of the session is to inspire participants to adapt and apply shared actions within their own teaching contexts.

Date & Time: Wednesday 15 October, 10-11 am

Please click here to register for this session.

We invite colleagues across DCU to participate in a seminar jointly hosted by PHELC and the TEU. This event aims to provide an opportunity to share reflections and/or research on pedagogical practice in large class contexts with 100+ students.

Staff wishing to present should submit an extended abstract using this template, as an attachment to this Google Form. A worked example of an extended abstract is provided. All abstracts will be peer reviewed and accepted abstracts will be published in a Book of Abstracts at the PHELC Community on Zenodo and on phelc.ie.

Return abstracts by Friday 24 October
Notice of acceptance and presentation format on Friday 14 November
Event Thursday 4 December @ 10 - 2

Contacts: Ann Marie Farrell (PHELC) / Martina Crehan (TEU)

Share assessment information with students

It is good practice—and in line with DCU’s threshold expectations—to share assessment information with students at semester start, so that they know what to expect. It helps students with planning and time management.

There are two main ways to do this:

1. Use the “Coursework overview” chapter in the template Module Handbook on your Loop page to share assessment information with students. There is a table that you can populate with the necessary detail.

Toggle edit mode on, and then choose the pencil icon next to this chapter in the table of contents in order to edit it.

2. Set up all your assignments/quizzes, etc. on your module page with the deadlines configured. These deadline dates then appear in students’ Loop Calendars and their Loop Timeline, letting them see these dates quickly and easily. If all lecturers on a programme do this, it means students have a complete view of their semester deadlines built into their Loop Calendar. Furthermore, setting up assessment deadlines on Loop in advance enables our advance monitoring reports to cater for demands in site load.

Check out the Loop Staff Support Page for information about and ideas on using Loop to support assessment and feedback. Access the page from the Loop top menu, under ‘Support’.

Loop Planner

Would you like to help your students get organised for their assignments, reduce stress and anxiety caused by procrastination or confusion on where to begin, and ultimately help them to succeed? Why not add a Loop Planner activity to your Loop page?

It benefits students by:

Encouraging them to commence work on an assignment in good time
Scaffolding them through the stages of completing an assignment
Directing them to pre-existing resources to help them

For staff, use of Loop Planner may help reduce student queries around how to approach assignments, reduce the number of requests for extensions, and improve the overall quality of submissions.

The tool is very simple to set up. There are three templates of guided steps available

General Essay
Literature Review
Challenge Based Learning

All templates are fully customisable and can be adjusted to suit the needs of any assignment.

If you would like help in setting up Loop Planner and choosing/customising a template of guided steps for your students, email teaching.enhancement@dcu.ie.

Full instructions for Loop Planner are available on the Loop Staff Support Page.

Video assessment

Asking students to complete assessment via video can be a creative and novel means of assessment, and one which supports their digital literacy development. Students can engage with video by either using either their DCU licensed Zoom account, or creating/editing a video offline (or with Google Vids) and uploading to their DCU account YouTube channel or Google Drive. They’ll either have a Zoom cloud recording link, YouTube link or Google Drive sharing link which they can then submit to a lecturer. More information on our guidance around video assessment can be found on the Loop Staff Support Page. Student guidance for using Zoom for video assessment can be found on the Loop 101 for Students support page.

Loop Quizzes for Formative Assessment

The Loop Quiz activity is a powerful resource for formative assessment, enabling you to provide immediate, targeted feedback to students on their learning. You can easily create a variety of auto-graded questions to quickly check understanding and identify misconceptions. The Loop Quiz activity is suitably flexible to accommodate a wide range of assessment designs.

Read more on the Quiz Activity in our Loop Staff Support Page. Also see these two recent case studies on excellent use of the Quiz tool for formative assessment in large classes:

Paul Van Kampen: Taking the Temperature: Gauging Student Affect in Labs
Pia O’Farrell: Engaging a Large Cohort with Low-Stakes Quizzes

Advice for Students about Using Blocks

Are your students using Loop Reflect in their assessment this semester? Here are some helpful tips you can share with them about how to use blocks effectively to structure their portfolio.

Blocks are the building elements of your Loop Reflect pages - they let you add content like text, images, files, and even embedded media. Here are some tips for your students to make the most of them:

Plan your layout: Think about what information you want to show and group related content together in separate blocks.
Keep it clear: Use headings, bullet points, or spacing within blocks to make your content easy to read.
Use the right type of block: Text blocks for writing, file blocks for documents, image blocks for visuals, and so on. Remember, to save space in your Loop Reflect account you should save large artefacts in your DCU student Google Drive, set the sharing settings so “Anyone with the link” can view, and then either paste a link in your portfolio or use the “Google Apps” block to directly embed the item.
Stay organised: Move, resize, or delete blocks as your portfolio evolves - your page should reflect your learning journey clearly.
Experiment and preview: Try different arrangements to see what looks best before sharing your page.
Blocks are flexible: use them to showcase your work in a way that makes sense for you!

Using Vevox inside Zoom

Want to make your online lectures more interactive? Vevox allows you to easily run engaging live polls, word clouds, and Q&A right inside your Zoom session, providing you with an instance gauge of student comprehension and feedback.

Running a Vevox poll in a Zoom session is straightforward:

Prepare: Create your poll questions in advance on the Vevox site (dcu.vevox.com).
Share: Start your Zoom class, open Vevox to 'Present View' in a browser, and use Zoom’s 'Share Screen' function to display it.
Engage: Students can join from their web browser or secondary device, such as their smartphone. You can manage the polls from your browser, and instantly show results directly from your shared screen.

For a full step-by-step guide, please see the Loop Staff Support Page.

Centering Social Justice in the Teaching of Psychology: Critical, Inclusive, and Open Pedagogies

Dr Rajiv Jhangiani will give a guest lecture on October 14, 11.00-12.00, in GLA.HG20 (DCU Glasnevin Campus).

What explains the ongoing diversity shortfall in a popular subject such as psychology, and why has the field sometimes been shown to be complicit in serving destructive ends? Teachers of psychology bear particular responsibility in their classrooms, one that isn’t well served by the maintenance of a facade of neutrality. Our goals should combine engaging, evidence-based teaching with intentional efforts to make learning environments inclusive, antiracist, and just.

Google Form to register

Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani is the Vice Provost, Teaching and Learning at Brock University, where he directs the Inclusive Education Research Lab and is an affiliated member of the Social Justice Research Institute.

Designing for integrity with integrity

Extending the concept of academic integrity beyond the traditional, narrow focus on student academic misconduct, this session will consider how the fundamental values of academic integrity may be reflected in the design of learning environments as well as broader institutional policies and supports.

This talk by Dr Rajiv Jhangiani on Monday, 13 October 2025, at 11:00 am will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Dr Marie-Clare Kennedy (UL, Associate Professor, Provost & Deputy President, and Director of the National Academic Integrity Network), Ms Jiaxin (Samantha) Xu (Academic Integrity Officer, DCU), Dr James Brunton (DCU School of Psychology), and Dr David Gibson (DCU School of Human Development).

Register to attend on Zoom

OR

Register to attend in person in St Patrick’s Campus, DCU, SPC.F218

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

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