Introduction and story behind the emergence of this learning activity. What was the need, what issue/problem was the teacher facing and wanted to resolve? 

To bring my computer practicals online, I looked into various options. I wanted to mimic an offline mode as far possible, i.e. the interactions and activities that were taken place on campus in the online practicals. On campus, teaching assistants and me would walk through the practical room, look over their shoulders to see what they are doing and help where needed.

The main requirements therefore were that I had to be able to meet with at least 80 students in a single timeslot and to add students to specific rooms; both in groups with teaching assistants and in one-on-one private conversations. Another feature I needed was to be able to let students share their screens. Moreover, I  needed to be able to request  control and take over their computer.

• MS Teams

What has been learned after this lesson/activity has been executed ?

From the computer practical, students learn to model problems, implement these models in state of the art modelling software, and practice with theoretical topics provided in Lectures and tutorials. Computer practicals are a very effective addition to the overall learning curve. They have a significant added value in acquiring insight and understanding. Modelling needs a certain degree of ingenuity and creativity. We believe that these aspects are available in our target audience. However, they must be mined and exploited by offering structured exercises, giving (individual) feedback including the demonstration of reasoning by experienced modellers. The audience experiences both their progress in modelling skills and the victory of finding “optimal” solutions given the problem descriptions.

This year we worked with one of the three available cases, i.e.  the Broccoli case. Yearly we switch to another case study.  The case integrates all parts of the course: food process engineering (Part-A), marketing and consumer behaviour (Part-B), food quality and design (Part-C), and Operations Research and Logistics (Part-D). The computer practicals for this showcase in MS Teams refer to Part-D.

Specific description and demonstration of the lesson idea/learning activity.

The class of 160 students was divided into two groups of 80 students. Each group had several practical sessions of (commonly) 3x40 minutes.  During the period, for each group, eight sessions were scheduled.

Besides the default public General channel in any MS Team, we created 6 private channels to divide the number of students in every private channel. On average 6 to 7 student groups (each student group consisted of two students) are assigned to each private channel.

The real modelling work and its professional support were done in these private channels. Student assistants, postdocs and responsible teacher (I.e. the moderator) were assigned to specific (private) channels. On top of the private channel, we added another private channel solely for teaching assistants, postdocs and the main responsible teacher.

Mentions tips lecturer has for colleagues based on their experience.

• Think well about the MS Teams structure in advance, and set it up clearly before you start, as it is more cumbersome to change later.
• If available, work with sufficient TAs, so you have enough hands to assist your students while they work online. In this way students don’t feel lost, since the waiting time can be kept to a minimum.
• Set-up a private channel for the teachers and teaching assistants, so they can easily have a consultation on the side.
• Note that the progress per session in an online mode is less than offline.

Teaching assistants: Kimberley Tiemersma, Uyen May, Eline Koetsier, Lisanne van Hasselt

Postdocs: Viet Nguyen, Heleen Stellingwerf

• Manuals for adding MS Teams within Brightspace:  Brightspace Help for Lecturers
• Microsoft tutorials on how to set-up your MS Teams page: Microsoft Support
• Demo of MS Teams for computer practicals: (video below)