TEU Update 23 October 2025

Due to a larger than usual security patch which needs to be applied to Loop, our standard Friday morning maintenance window will be extended on 24 October.

Loop will be offline from 4am to 9am.

Interested in conducting research into your teaching practice to enhance student learning and potentially develop it into a conference and/or journal publication? A new series of three interconnected workshops to help support educational research is being launched by the TEU.

Workshop 1: Introducing Educational Research/SoTL
Date/Time: Thurs Nov 6, 11-12 (online). Please register for Workshop 1

Workshop 2: Locating a suitable research project from your teaching practice
Dates/Times:

St Pats - Tues Dec 2, 2-4 pm (in-person)
Glasnevin - Weds Dec 3, 10-12 pm (in-person)

Please register for whichever Workshop 2 session suits you best

Workshop 3: Writing educational research for publication
Date/Time: Wed Dec 10, 2-3 pm (online) Please register for Workshop 3

Please contact clare.gormley@dcu.ie if you have any questions.

Focus on assessment and feedback

Many colleagues will be busy grading student work at present. Although most of you would be familiar with the Loop Assignment tool to collect submissions from students, did you know it also has a host of features for managing, grading and giving feedback on submissions?

Grading online with Loop offers many benefits:

Provides a single place for students to retrieve their coursework grades
Offers consistency in how students access and interpret their coursework grades and feedback
Grading data is contained securely in Loop only, and backed up
External examiners can be given access to review assignments and grades online
Reports and analytics allow for lecturers to get insight into assessment trends
Feedback can take the form of text, video or audio (or all three!)

There are several grading methods available to you within the Loop assignment. Here are two popular ones:

‘Standard’ Rubrics: Pre-defined rubrics can contain rich feedback for students and make it quick and easy to grade students’ work. A student’s final grade for their submission is automatically calculated by the rubric. Learn more about Loop ‘Standard’ Rubrics.
Ranged Rubrics: This grading method gives more flexibility to an assessor, allowing you to select a specific mark to give a student within a criterion, and to differentiate between students in the same band. Learn more about Ranged Rubrics.

Assignment submission annotation

For staff who use the “Annotate PDF” feature of the Loop Assignment activity, which allows you to add comments, stamps, highlights, draw shapes etc. on a student’s file submission, it is best to ask students to upload their file as PDF document in order to allow the annotation feature to work as best it can.

Quiz Tip: Use Question Banks to Save Time and Ensure Variety

Did you know you can organise your questions into categories within the Loop question bank? This not only saves time in creating future quizzes, but also allows you to randomise questions, ensuring that no two students get the exact same quiz. This is particularly useful for formative assessments, where you want to encourage students to practice rather than simply memorise answers. See the Loop Support Page: Understanding the Question Bank for more info.

Turnitin Similarity Training Session

Date & Time: Wed, Oct 29, 2-3pm

As we reach the mid-point of the semester, staff will be turning their attention to assessments and grading. We will hold another Turnitin Similarity Training Session in Week 8 to support staff in the migration to Turnitin Similarity.

Please click here to register for this session.

Facilitating breakout room shared outputs

When teaching online via Zoom, breakout rooms are a key way to enable students to collaborate in small groups and apply what they are learning. They are great for assigning formative or low-stakes tasks which students can work on together, live.

An efficient way for a teacher to facilitate formative tasks is by asking each breakout room group to apply their learning or complete their task on a shared Google Slides presentation, with each breakout room discussing and working on one particular slide.

The teacher can keep an eye on the entire Google Slides presentation to see the collaboration unfolding in real-time, and both the teacher and the class group have an output of their collaborative effort. The teacher has a record of the output and can provide feedback on it if desired.

Check out this template Google Slides Breakout Room doc and follow the instructions therein to get started.

In large classrooms, managing student questions can be challenging, but Vevox’s Q&A moderation feature offers an effective solution. With Vevox, students can submit questions anonymously during the lecture using their devices, allowing even quieter or hesitant students to participate. As the instructor, you can moderate incoming questions in real-time, choosing which ones to highlight and address to the class. This allows you to filter out repetitive or off-topic questions, ensuring a more focused and relevant discussion. Additionally, other students can upvote questions, helping you prioritize the most pressing or popular topics. This streamlined approach fosters a more inclusive and organized Q&A session, even in large groups.

See our Loop Staff Support Page for more on using Vevox.

The Digital Badge on GenAI for Teaching and Learning will commence November 10 (Week 10). The Course is divided into two parts:

Part 1 from Nov 10 to Dec 5 (Week 10 to Week 13 in Semester 1)
Part 2 from Jan 12 to Jan 30 (Week 1 to Week 3 in Semester 2).

The total time commitment is approximately 25 hours. Please click here to read more details about the Course Schedule.

If you are interested in participating in this digital badge course, please click here to fill out a 'Confirmation of Intent to Participate' form.

Please contact samantha.xu@dcu.ie if you have any questions.

In the second installment of our new webinar series on immersive learning, our colleague Dr Emma Coyle from the School of Chemical Sciences will be joined by a Chemistry with AI student to share their experiences of 3D molecular modelling in chemistry education. We will also have a guest contributor from the University of the West of England, telling their story of using immersive simulations with groups of students. Further information available on our webpage, including the link to register for this webinar.

The ECIU CBL Community of Practice will recommence on Thursday October 30 at 12 noon. This is a great opportunity to engage with colleagues from ECIU partner universities and discuss the planning and implementation of CBL. The meetings follow a set pattern whereby an individual presents a question from their own context and the group, via a reflective team approach, discusses potential solutions or ways forward.

In this session, Dr Elaine McDonald & Dr Sabrina Fitzsimons from the School of Policy and Practice, Institute of Education, DCU will pose the problem of "Planning for Assessment - adapting CBL for Initial Teacher Education".

To attend, please click here to register and receive the Teams link.

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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