Digital education for student success
Enrichment of face-to-face courses, hybrid teaching methods, new assessment methods... Since 2016, UM has been developing a policy to support digital teaching, which is evident in the organization of training courses for teachers and the rollout of new tools. All with a single goal in mind: to promote the success of its 50,000 students.
On March 22, more than a hundred people—157 to be exact—came together to learn and exchange ideas during the PédagoN’UM day organized by UM. "For the first time, participants from other universities joined us to discuss and make progress on these issues," says Yohann Pottier, head of the Digital Usage Department (SUN/DSIN). The focus of the 2022 edition was the assessment of knowledge and skills, with a presentation of new tools developed for this purpose, in particular theKaruta e-portfolios currently in the pilot phase at UM. "This tool makes it possible to assess not only knowledge but also skills, with a real emphasis on what we call students' practical skills and incorporating a self-assessment approach, "emphasizes David Cassagne, Vice President for Digital Technology in Education.
FlexiEval for better evaluation
This initiative builds on the work begun in 2019 by UM as part of the FlexiEval project, which aims to build a digital ecosystem for assessing knowledge and skills. After three years, the results of this project have been very positive. Among the successes is the partnership between the University of Montpellier and Wooclap, an application designed to address two issues well known to educators: the difficulty of capturing students' attention and measuring their knowledge. In concrete terms, the application functions as an interactive platform that allows teachers to design questionnaires or interactive exercises that students can access during class using their smartphones. It is a direct and rapid way to automate the assessment of students' knowledge while making them active participants in the course.
"This type of practice is part of what we call enriched face-to-face learning," explains David Cassagne. "Digital technology becomes a tool for improving interactions between teachers and students, energizing the content for some and stimulating the attention of others. More recently, the UM was once again selected as the winner of a national call for projects with its Pair'sEval project. Developed in partnership with the Montpellier-based start-up Challenge Me, this project aims to develop collaborative learning and evaluative judgment through a platform dedicated to peer assessment.
Enriched face-to-face learning is intended to be a bonus for both students and teachers, some of whom are already involved in the so-called flipped classroom approach, which favors a more interactive and practical approach to learning. The Moodle platform, which makes courses and/or additional content available, is a prime example of this. "The idea is not at all to switch to 100% distance learning, as some may have feared, but rather to take advantage of face-to-face teaching to promote interaction with students," adds Yohann Pottier.
AgilHybrid, freedom plus
AgilHybrid's challenge is to avoid switching entirely to distance learning, but also not to reject the advantages offered by a hybrid face-to-face/distance learning model. This other flagship digital education project at UM has been supported since 2020 by MESRI as part of France Relance, as well as by Muse and the Occitanie Region, with total funding of €2.3 million. "Seventy-one classrooms are now equipped to deliver co-modal teaching, allowing students to choose between face-to-face or distance learning," explains David Cassagne. "In addition, 125 teaching units are currently being hybridized with asynchronous distance learning."
The "asynchronous" training program includes online teaching modules that learners can follow at their own pace. Audio files, videos, multiple-choice questions, interactive content, and more are all educational resources that students can access freely and at their own pace. "One of the advantages of asynchronous training is that it also allows for greater diversity in the student body, including working students, dual-degree students, continuing education students, and foreign students, since this content can be more easily internationalized. Here again, digital education is a powerful tool for student success," continues the vice president.
29 training courses offered
A message that is increasingly heard among teachers, who are no longer hesitant to embark on this new adventure thanks to the numerous training courses provided by SUN/DSIN and the support offered by educational engineers (video Rouage: Supporting teachers in educational and digital transformation). Course scripting, gamification, interactions with students, and new assessment methods: "29 training courses were offered this year to teachers at UM and the Montpellier National School of Chemistry (ENSCM), and Institut Agro, and CIHEAM IAMM, including 19 open to the whole of France as part of AgilHybrid," says Yohann Pottier. This program has continued to grow in popularity over the last two years. In 2022, more than 300 people at the UM benefited from these training courses.