TEU Update 25 September 2025
Featured this week
- Teaching and Learning Week 2025
- Fellowship of Advance HE
- Return of The Sipping Point
- Loop Guidance and Advice
- Loop Reflect
- Teaching online with Zoom
- Engage Students with Vevox
- ESD Digital Badge
- HEA Gen AI Report
- Where to Find Help and Support
Our final reminder for Teaching and Learning Week (29 September - 3 October) as we prepare for our in-person opening day on September 29 in the Helix - you are welcome to come along to some of these sessions even if you can’t make them all.
Interested in external recognition of your teaching and learning practice or leadership in Higher Education? Applying for Fellowship of Advance HE offers you a structured approach to reflecting on your practice, and the opportunity to join over 200,000 Fellows globally, and 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!
Applications close Monday September 29th.
Email maeve.odwyer@dcu.ie with queries.
We are delighted to announce the return of The Sipping Point - a relaxed, conversational space designed for DCU staff to share insights, experiences, and reflections on teaching practice. This initiative highlights practical, evidence-informed approaches to teaching, and welcomes contributions enriched by feedback from students and colleagues.
The first Sipping Point of the academic year will take place during Teaching & Learning Week (Mon Sept 29 - Fri Oct 3). Find full details here.
Do you have a teaching insight, success story, or innovative approach to share? If you are interested in being a future contributor, please respond to The Sipping Point Call for Contributions by October 31st.
Details of Upcoming and Previous Sipping Point Sessions
Enable collaborative learning with Loop Board
Loop Board is a digital canvas onto which students can post text, links, images or YouTube videos. Students’ posts are anonymous to each other, but not to teachers.
Staff find it easy to set up and use, and that it helps provide a positive learning environment, giving insight into students’ learning and understanding.
It can be used for activities such as:
- Crowdsourcing resources
- Class Q&A
- Exit tickets
- And more!
A new update now allows teachers to easily apply a pre-defined template for a Board, such as a “Challenge Based Learning” template, a “Kanban” template or a “Reflective practice” template.
Learn more about using Board templates or watch this video to see how Board works. Check out the Loop Staff Support Page for fuller information.
Gathering opinions from students
Loop offers a number of tools to collect opinion, input, thoughts, feedback, and so on from students. For example:
- Loop Choice - ask students to select some preferred topics or times or vote on an item
- Loop Feedback - create a survey to collect quantitative and/or qualitative responses from students, which can also be anonymous
- Loop Quiz - useful for gathering student responses to open-ended questions, which can also be graded or not
- Loop Scheduler - useful for students to select a timeslot for an activity (such as an oral exam, a consultation, etc.)
Also check out some other suggestions for creating anonymous surveys for students.
Conditional access and restrictions
Conditional access and restrictions in Loop offer a powerful method for personalising learning paths for students. By setting specific criteria such as completion of a previous activity, achieving a certain grade, or belonging to a particular group, you can control access to content, activities, and resources. This ensures students engage with material in a logical sequence, building upon prior knowledge. It’s a great way to differentiate instruction and create structured learning journeys, preventing students from feeling overwhelmed by too much information at once.
Check out the Loop Staff Support Page for more information on configuring conditional access.
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.
Check out the quick guide here.
Managing Space in Loop Reflect
As students get underway with their portfolios, working towards various assessment submissions, it is important to reiterate to them that they need to manage the limited space they have for files in Loop Reflect. They don’t want to find themselves in a situation of re-working their portfolio close to a deadline!
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Students should save artefacts in their DCU student Google Drive, set the sharing settings so “Anyone with the link” can view, and then either paste a link in their portfolio or use the “Google Apps” block to directly embed the item
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Students should compress images before uploading them to Loop Reflect, instructions for which are available on the Reflect Help page; alternatively students can use the aforementioned Google Drive method to save an image there, share it, and then use the “External media” block to embed it on a portfolio page
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Students should not upload video files to Reflect - the best option is to upload to their DCU student YouTube channel (which all students have) and then embed it from there to a portfolio page (or similarly use the aforementioned Google Drive method)
Please share these useful tips with your students.
Facilitating collaboration with Zoom Whiteboards
Learning through collaboration (Laurillard, 2002) is a great way to engage students through the co-creation of a shared output. When teaching online, providing active opportunities like this is vital to keeping students engaged.
The Whiteboard feature can be a valuable tool during a Zoom class, enhancing communication and collaboration. They provide a visual medium for sharing ideas, diagrams, and notes, making complex concepts easier to understand. Students can contribute to the whiteboard in real-time, fostering a sense of shared ownership and collaboration.
Whiteboards can be created and used before, during and even after a Zoom class, enabling lengthier collaboration. Learn more in this resource from the Loop Staff Support Page.
Beyond its popular classroom polling features, Vevox also provides a great survey tool, giving you a quick and anonymous way to capture student feedback during or after class. Vevox surveys can provide clear insights into student understanding, opinions, and preferences that might otherwise go unregistered. Vevox is easy to set up, accessible by students on any device, and delivers instant results.
For more info on creating anonymous surveys in Vevox, see this resource in the Loop Staff Support Page.
Last Chance to Sign Up
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.
The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education has published a report – Generative AI in Higher Education Teaching and Learning: Sectoral Perspectives – which presents insights from staff, students, and leaders across the Irish higher education system on the opportunities and challenges posed by artificial intelligence. This report will be followed later this year by a HEA national policy framework on generative AI.
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.
