We are proud to announce the brand new ETH Moodle App for Android and iOS available today! This app has been developed by the core developers of Moodle and is a specially branded version of the official Moodle App.
Please click on the link below to download the app:
Students and lecturers can access all their courses directly from their smartphone or tablet. This access has several advantages:
You only have to login once for days and weeks at a time.
You can download courses and access them offline.
If you post an answer in a forum or solve a quiz while offline, the course will be synchronised when you are online again.
You can include audio, video and pictures from your phone easily into your forum answers, messages and even assignment responses.
The app uses GDPR-compliant push notifications for important dates (yes the Moodle calendar is placed directly on the start screen), messages and forum posts.
Similar but not equal
Although your course looks similar in the ETH Moodle App, there are some important differences (especially important for lecturers to know):
There is no edit possibility to the course via app. So, if you want to edit your course, please use the web browser.
The app doesn’t display any blocks (which you can add to your course individually).
Some activities are not Moodle App ready yet (or not meant to work with the app). In those cases students (and lecturers) are forwarded to a web browser. At the moment the following activities are not app ready:
Interactive Video Suite
Student Quiz
OU Blog
Fair Allocation
Scheduler
Collaborative Folder
If you have any feedback on the ETH Moodle App, please contact us at moodle@let.ethz.ch.
Die EduApp ist eine der wichtigsten Lehrapplikationen der ETH. Ziel der EduApp ist es einerseits, die Interaktion zwischen Studierenden und Dozierenden im Hörsaal zu verbessern. Anderseits möchte diese Lehre-App Studierenden der ETH Zürich einen Mehrwert im Studienalltag bieten.
Im letzten Frühlingssemester haben 100 Dozierende Clickerfragen in ihrem Unterricht eingesetzt und damit 8’694 Studierende erreicht. Auch aus Sicht der Dozenten ist die EduApp eine wertvolle Ergänzung.
Dr. Ghislain Fourny (D-INFK): «Ich benutze seit 2016 die EduApp in allen meinen Vorlesungen und bin davon sehr begeistert. Es ermöglicht eine reiche Interaktion mit den Studierenden und gibt mir ein konstantes Feedback»
Prof. Dr. Christoph Heinrich (D-ERDW): «Ich habe im HS2017 zum ersten Mal regelmässig Clicker-Fragen in meiner grossen Geologievorlesung für die Erstsemestrigen am D-BAUG eingesetzt. Es war ein grosser Erfolg, nicht zuletzt wegen der Auflockerung, und ich bekam spontan viele positive Feedbacks».
Dr. Markus Kalisch (D-MATH): «Mit der EduApp bekomme ich sofortiges Feedback von den Studenten, selbst wenn die Vorlesung mehrere hundert Teilnehmer hat».
Dr. Meike Akveld (D-MATH): «Die EduApp gibt mir direktes Feedback darüber, ob verstanden wurde, was ich unterrichtet habe. Ich bitte immer einen der Studierenden die richtige Antwort zu erklären, was oft hilfreich ist. Ausserdem ist es für sie eine angenehme Abwechslung».
Neue Funktionen für den Clicker
Pünktlich auf das aktuelle Semester wurden in der der EduApp neue Funktionen im Bereich Clicker hinzugefügt. Mit der Funktion «Clicker» können Dozierende via EduApp Fragen stellen, die meist sofort im Unterricht beantwortet werden.
1. Zwischenresultate: Neu können Dozierende die Abstimmung der Clickerfragen in zwei Runden machen und die Zwischenresultate anzeigen.
2. Erweiterter LaTeX-Editor: Der Funktionsumfang des LaTeX-Editors zur Anzeige von mathematischen Formeln in Clickerfragen wurde erweitert. Nicht nur können Dozierende jetzt Formeln und Gleichungen im Text eingebunden darstellen, es gibt auch mehr Textformatierungsmöglichkeiten.
3. Flashcards: Studierende können neu mit der Funktion «Flashcards» bestehende Clickerfragen durcharbeiten (z.B. zur Prüfungsvorbereitung). Die neue EduApp-Funktion “Flashcards” wurde durch den «the Rectors Impulse Fund» ermöglicht.
Virtual field trips enhance Production Management classes
Using factory-visit apps and affordable cardboard viewers, Professor Torbjørn Netland and his team innovate how production management can be taught. By integrating Virtual Reality (VR) technology in the spring term course Global Operations Strategy at ETH Zurich, the teaching team provided students rare access to multiple factory sites and their inner workings. The students used VR apps in order to help them complete graded course assignments.
What triggered this experiment?
A student using the cardboard viewer
“Production and operations management is an applied field, but it is difficult to teach all the inner workings of a factory in a classroom. Because I cannot always bring students to the field, I wanted to bring the factory to the students. VR now offers unprecedented opportunities for doing so, and ABB had the app I needed. My impression is that students generally enjoyed this teaching innovation” – Prof. Dr. Netland
In optimal class conditions, students may be able to visit one factory in order to see how the concepts they are learning in class relate to the real world. However, field trips are resource intensive to organise and they have limitations. Not all students may be able to attend and they usually rely on their memory (or written notes) to recall relevant information later.
The use of the VR app enables students not only to revisit the factory as often as they would like, it also gives them access to spaces they may not have previously been able to see, such as a close-up view of a milling machine in action, or entry to a dust-free zone. Since the apps enable students to visit multiple company sites with a minuscule time and resource investment, the value of the virtual tours becomes very clear.
What exactly did they do?
With the help of two research associates, Oliver Flaeschner and Omid Maghazei, Prof. Netland compared the learning objectives of his course to the information already contained in the virtual tour apps produced by the ABB group. By adjusting their assignment questions for their teaching case, they created alignment between the content provided in the apps and the students’ assignment questions. With the help of the apps, their own smartphones and cardboard VR viewers, students navigated their way around five different factories in three countries, observed machinery and people in action and gathered information relevant to their assignments.
What were the results?
The teaching team conducted an evaluation survey, two focus groups and collected additional written feedback. The Faculty Development staff from the Educational Development and Technology unit (LET) provided support to ensure that student anonymity was preserved. The results showed that students initially found the opportunity to use VR fun and motivating. While there were some technical difficulties and temporary negative physical side-effects such as dizziness and headaches, in general students stated they enjoyed the opportunity to explore the virtual factory as often as they would like, and at their own pace and availability.
They also reported feeling a high degree of autonomy as they actively engaged with the information. The teaching team did not attempt to measure a learning gain this time, but are encouraged by this pilot project and are planning further development and evaluation of this teaching innovation. In the meantime, the results of the research have been written up and will be presented at the EurOMA Conference in Hungary in June this year.
Should readers wish to find out more, they are welcome to contact Prof. Dr. Netland directly for more information.
Oliver Flaeschner, Torbjorn Netland and Omid Maghazei
