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First Online CEEMAN EdTech passed with flying colors

Responding to the most pressing needs of our community, CEEMAN fully dedicated and successfully concluded this year's EdTech Seminar on improving online teaching. Bringing together 22 committed and enthusiastic individuals from seven countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Poland, Russia, Slovenia and Sweden) in an online arena, the seminar aimed to set an example for engagement with a focus on interactivity and co-creation.

 

In CEEMAN, we always strive to come up with new ways to help CEEMAN community, responding to most pressing needs and challenges in a very disruptive 2020. The “big one” was certainly the rapid transition to online, where COVID-19 played a pivotal role in accelerating digital transformation. To many, sudden shift to online teaching caused mixed emotions and frustration. While all institutions transitioned to online teaching as an emergency measure, often there is room for improvement in the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning in an online environment. To address this, we brainstormed with an amazing group of experts (EdTech Faculty) and came up with EdTech 2020 - Beyond the Pandemic Emergency.

The seminar was dedicated to offering the shortest path to successful synchronous online teaching and aimed to help individual faculty members raise the quality of their online performance while also improving the student experience and learning outcomes by making the most of the capabilities offered by common online tools.

The seminar took place over three sessions spanning three weeks (14, 21 and 28 October), covering many aspects of online teaching through lectures, lots of group work and assignments.

Session 1, led by Nikos Mylonopoulos, was focusing on tips and tricks for orchestrating a synchronous session with the following goals in mind: elicit, maintain, and direct the attention of students; motivate student presence and engagement and de-robotize (project the human relation between professor and students and among students).

In Session 2 with Kaja Prystupa-Rządca leading the way, the learning objectives were to explore and experience innovative online teaching methods, adapt and adopt new ones, and revisit own teaching methods.

In Session 3 with Omar Luethi, we discussed in-depth the three topics based on participant preferences, trying to address what troubles faculty members the most. The topics were Assessment and Exams, Asynchronous Teaching and Creative&Performative Classes.

At the end of the third day, we also announced the winners of the video competition, where the participants had to prepare a 2-min pitch on their “out of the box” teaching innovation. The videos were assessed both by participants’ voting and faculty selection, resulting in winners in three categories: broader value, most engaging video, and most out-of-the-box approach.

 

Omar Luethi: “The pandemic forces us to teach over distance and our learning curves as educators have been extremely steep lately. Some are holding on to their routines, some are starting to question the way forward. More than ever before, it becomes obvious that we need to rethink no less than who we are as educators: What is our role? How do we teach? How can we engage students online? And why should we do that? Is now also the time to redefine learning objectives and bring in more interaction, more room for creativity, explorative and experiential formats? Technological advancements allow for more diverse learning approaches, we can invite the world to our online classroom, collaborate with businesses, tackle real-world issues and increase peer learning. We have it in our own hands to make learning more individual and relevant, we have the opportunity to shape the future of business education. All we have to do is let go of old habits, embrace the challenge and step out of our comfort zones. Now.”

Here are some of the participants' reactions to the program:

“The seminar was a shot of inspiration. It triggered creativity and motivated me to implement some great ideas into didactic practice. It was also an amazing opportunity to network with colleagues from international universities, which may result in fruitful cooperation in the future. Really great experience.”

“The seminar was simply on point. We focused on the future of the University and delved into the myriad problems of online teaching. Nice atmosphere, interesting people, and lots of discussion.”

The group brain can turn the mountains.”

“It was a time for ‘charging batteries’ and finding some new ideas for teaching.”

 

 
 
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