Mathematical Sciences Staff Intranet
Topic outline
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WORKING ON CAMPUS: RISK ASSESSMENT AND SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
The documents in this section contain our University-approved procedures and guidance to ensure the safety of our staff and students. Please note these documents may change according to circumstances, and you will be alerted to any major amendments.
If you have any queries relating to your return, please contact maths-facilities@qmul.ac.uk
MAIN DOCUMENTS
- Maths Building Risk Assessment (10.09.21)
- Institutional Risk Assessment (August 2021)
- Guide for staff and PhD students working on campus (10.09.21)
- Maths Building - room capacities (10.09.21)
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Below you will find resources to help you plan and deliver your blended learning modules for the upcoming academic year (AY2020/21). If you encounter any resources you think might be useful for colleagues to consider, please do contact me (S. Beheshti).
Please use the Staff Forum below to ask questions as well as share what works or does not work in your preparations for blended learning.
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Session 1 - Moving Online
https://media.qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/media/SMS+Workshop+1+-+Moving+Online.mp4/1_cshhjayi
Session 2 - Assessment
https://media.qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/media/SMS+Workshop+2+-+Assessment/1_rb5pqkc2
Session 3 - Teaching Online
https://media.qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/media/SMS+Workshop+3+-+Teaching+Online.mp4/1_nb7qawy6
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This document contains summaries of the talks given at TALMO - Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online on June 02/03 to help you decide which ones to watch.
If you watch any TALMO/TALSO (M=Mathematics, S = Statistics) talks which do not appear on the list and can kindly send me a few lines, I will post it for all to see/use)!465.1 KB -
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Steve Lester will run a WeBWork Q&A Session on Wed 19 Aug 14:00 on MS Teams. Please read the attached guidance in preparation for the session.
Recording:
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Alex Fink will run a QMPlus Quizzes Q&A Session on Thu 20 Aug 14:00 on MS Teams. Please read the attached guidance in preparation for the session.
Bonus Tip (courtesy of R. Harris!):
One thing I've recently discovered which may be useful to others is that there's a nice LaTex package (https://ctan.org/pkg/moodle?lang=en) for generating moodle quiz questions. Unfortunately it doesn't do questions with random numbers but for everything else it seems pretty neat.
I should say that, despite the claims in the documentation for the moodle package, I couldn't get \P to work as a macro for \mathbb{P} but at least with a text editor you can easily do search-and-replace, everything else seemed to work as advertised, and the pdf summary of the whole quiz is pretty convenient.
Comment by SB: For some LaTeX installations, this appears to work immediately, while others might need some debugging. Thank you Rosemary and Alex for investigating this!
Recording:
https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/5e6e001c-e983-412b-b85a-841ee14ab13c116.3 KB -
Thomas Prellberg will run a QMPlus Q&A Session on Fri 21 Aug 14:00 on MS Teams.
If you are still in a planning stage and want to peruse a broader guidance document, the QM Academy Interactive Online Teaching and Learning Guidance (synchronous and asynchronous) is attached and you may use the Q&A to discuss how one might technically execute some of the suggested practices.
Recording:
https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/bc43beff-7bf7-4cc7-8c54-64e5da7047db553.6 KB
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The following is a list of tools available for helping with remote teaching
General (lecture recording, large and small group meetings):- MS Teams (https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads)
- Zoom (https://zoom.us/)
- Webinar (https://elearning.qmul.ac.uk/guide/blackboard-collaborate-activity-in-qmplus-webinars-web-conferencing/)
- Skype (https://www.skype.com/en/features/skype-web/)
- Whereby (https://whereby.com/)
Computer Lab substitute:
- cocalc (https://www.cocalc.com - Python, R, C++, and many more
- https://rdrr.io/snippets/ or http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/Rweb/ - R
This list is not exhaustive, and we have not tested all of them. Please use the Staff Forum to share your own attempts and let others know what works or does not work. We look forward to adding to this list.
Thomas and Tomasz
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Sebastian del Bano Rollin and Justin Ward will each give 15-minute quickstart talks on using Kaltura and Blackboard Collaborate, in a Q&A/Discussion Session on Fri 28 Aug 14:00 on MS Teams.
This overview might save you a bit of time, especially if you are still debating what to use for either pre-recorded or live components of your module and want to see whether either Kaltura or BBC offer what you need.
Bonus content (courtesy of Juan Valiente Kroon):People are welcome to look at my recordings. In particular I would suggest to look at parts ofThis is lecture 6 and I have finally got a grip of the technology. The video is long (40 minutes), so I would suggest looking at parts of it: the first minutes and the around minute 36 where I show some simulations. The recording was done with the free software OBS which does more or less the same as Kaltura’s recordings. The nice thing is that it allows to put several video channels at the same time. Around minute 36, I show off and I have three: one with the output of the iPad where I write things, another with my image talking, and a third one with a Mathematica window. Everything was recorded at the same time. The size of the video is not too large and uploaded quickly to QMplus.
Recording:
https://qm-mdl-stg-main.qm.catalyst-eu.net/local/kalturamediagallery/index.php?courseid=4268449 bytes
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Student and staff feedback indicates that the current Week 9/10 University module evaluations arrive too late for us to respond proactively within the term. To address this, we have our own “Early Feedback Questionnaire” for use in Weeks 3 or 4. The intention is to help staff catch and address basic issues (e.g., classroom setup, mechanics of module, etc.) and to alert students to our expectations (e.g., independent study, engagement with module, use of office hours, etc.).Below you will find .tex and .xml files for creating and running your own Week 3/4 Early Feedback Questionnaire, either by paper or on your QMPlus page. A few quick remarks:
- The questionnaire is entirely voluntary. If you do not think that it is likely to be useful (or do not intend to change how the module operates based on potential feedback), there is no requirement to run it.
- The questionnaire is private. Yourself and your students are the only ones involved in the information exchange, unless you choose to share the information/data to get help fixing something, or need advice from someone from the UG Team.
- The first side of the questionnaire is meant to improve your current module. The idea is that you can ask questions which are directly relevant for this year’s course and useful to you.
- The second side of the questionnaire is student responsibility-based, trying to get them thinking about what, and how much, they are doing. You have complete freedom in what you choose to ask your students to accomplish this.
Ideally, students should be flagging issues that are fixable, either by yourself or one of us from the UG Team (Maths Office, SSO, Simon, DUGO, Senior Tutor, DoE) fairly quickly. Also, this allows us to identify “unfixable” problems and at least explain why this is the case to the students, while we try to get it sorted for a subsequent semester.The tex file is below so that you can modify/add/subtract questions on both sides. If you add any additional questions, please do send the Director of Undergraduate Operations your file, as we will incorporate modifications into the master file for others to consider and use.If you are teaching a large module and/or would prefer to use an online version (e.g., on your QMPlus page), please use one of the .xml files below and the following three steps:- On the QMPlus page, click "Add an activity or resource" in the section that you want to add the questionnaire. From the list of activities/resources, choose the "Feedback" activity.
- This opens the page for creating the Feedback activity. In particular, under "Question and Submission Settings", you probably want to make sure that "Record user names" is set "Anonymous" and that "Allow multiple submissions" is set to "No".
- After you have created the activity, open it up and go to the "Templates" tab. At the bottom of that tab, click the link that says "Import Questions". Choose one of the .xml files to import, and you’re done!
The nice thing about putting the form on QMPlus is that students can fill it out (or not) on their own time, and that QMPlus automatically collects and organises the data. In particular, if you have tutorial groups set up for entering grades, you can filter the questionnaire results by group, making it very easy to see which tutorials people think are "useful" and which are condemned as “useless”.Lecturers who used this in the last few years found it to be quite useful, so please consider trying it out!*****Some additional notes on permissions for the QMPlus option. These settings can be changed by going to the page for the feedback activity and choosing the Permissions option in the Settings box.The default setting seems to be that non-editing teachers (e.g. tutorial helpers) can see all the responses, which may be undesirable. Moreover, if you set "Show analysis page" to "Yes" in the "After submission" section of the settings for the feedback activity itself (the default for this seems to be "No") then students can view the analysis page after submitting their feedback, which may also be undesirable. -
In this section, there is a Peer Observation list for AY2020/21 and a Talking Points sheet. The idea here is that this should allow good practice to spread between modules and encourage improvements to our courses overall without the need for additional School-level policies. oversight, etc.
- I tried to pair natural/prerequisite modules together between Sem A/B (see matching letters)
- Some “unnatural” pairings are there because I believe the lecturers can help us better tie our curriculum together
- “Skip” appears next to a module if the lecturer is already assigned earlier (it’s not perfect and some people are still assigned more than once)
- You are not expected to do multiple observations and are welcome to arrange things in a way that benefits you/your module pairings best
- The Talking Points page is to help you get the most out of the observations; please use/ignore as you see fit
I would like to emphasize that the Peer Observation exchange is amongst colleagues and is entirely private.Many thanks in advance for your participation. --SB -
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This section contains information on assessments and examining in the School's UG and PGT modules.
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Updated 10/11/2022. Updated advice and guidelines for in-term timed assessments (Section 2.4).
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Updated 18/11/2022: Updated information on format of exams, and updated front page material and instructions for exams.
Updated 21/11/2022: Corrected information on exam timing in the QMPlus instructions.
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This style file should be used for typesetting online assessments for the 2022/23 academic year.
Updated 18/11/2022: Updated information and instructions on front page.
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This should be used in conjunction with the LaTeX style file and the user manual.
Updated 18/11/2022: Updated information and instructions on front page.
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How can I add my TAs to QMplus?
You probably want to give your TAs the non-editing teacher role for your course area. This allows them to do everything that you can, such as access information that is hidden from students, but not edit your course area. Two different procedures are required, depending on whether the TA is already enrolled for your course area. Permanent staff should already be enrolled as viewers but temporary staff and PhD students are probably not enrolled.
In the SETTINGS block, click on "Users" and then "Enrolled users". To find a user in a long list, you can use the search facility. When searching for users, it is probably best to search for their surname and then use their other names and/or email address to refine the search.
- For TAs who appear in the list of users, click on the
icon and then click on the role you want to add.
- For TAs who do not appear in the list of users, click on the ENROL USERS button and in the "Assign roles" box at the top of the resulting dialogue select the role you want to add. Use the search box at the bottom of the dialogue to find the TAs, click on the ENROL button for each user you want to enrol and finally click on the FINISH ENROLLING USERS button at the bottom of the dialogue.
- For TAs who do not appear at all you need to ask them to apply for QMplus access. They can do this through the Helpdesk web page or by email to helpdesk@qmul.ac.uk.
- For TAs who appear in the list of users, click on the
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This is not recommended for most modules. To record marks alone it is easiest to use the gradebook directly as explained above.
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Recordings of a workshop on Analytics https://qm-mdl-stg-main.qm.catalyst-eu.net/mod/collaborate/view.php?id=1478783 run by the E-Learning Unit.
For more information, see
- Reports and Logs within a QMplus module
- Quiz Reports
- Activity Overview
- Completion report - make sure you enable this on a course level by going to - Settings Bloc -> Edit Settings -> Enable Completion Tracking
- Adding Completion Progress block
- Insight(use the right-hand side TOC to explore various options)
- QMplus Media video views and engagements - Settings -> Course Media Gallery -> Click on 3 bars on top right (Channel Actions) and select Analytics
- Blackboard Collaborate attendance reports
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See below for forms and policy documents relating to PhD degrees, including interview forms and annual review forms. These are listed in order of the student lifecycle - starting with application and interview documents and concluding with forms relating to the end of the PhD. Please note that files relating to admissions and Annual Reviews can be found in the sub-folders below.
For forms relating to processes managed centrally (PhD submission, examination etc.), please visit the Research Degrees Office website: http://www.arcs.qmul.ac.uk/research-degrees/forms/index.html.
This page is managed by Katie Hale, PGR Programmes Officer. If you can't find what you're looking for here, please email k.hale@qmul.ac.uk -
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The E-Learning Unit offers a one-hour training session on recording yourself which includes
- why you might want to record yourself
- different types of recording you might make
- different tools available to you at QMUL and when you might use each
- tips for recording yourself including how to get good sound
- how to plan to make your recordings re-usable.
Details of the session and the dates appear on the ESD Course page (https://www.esdcourses.org.uk/userlistcourse.php). Three levels of courses (basic to advanced) on teaching in MS Teams also appear on the above page.
Additional support materials (on teaching, QMPlus, Q-Review, etc.) are also available in the links below:
- https://elearning.qmul.ac.uk/enhancing-your-teaching/video-in-teaching/
- https://elearning.qmul.ac.uk/learning-applications/
- https://elearning.qmul.ac.uk/learning-applications/qmplus-media-server/
- https://elearning.qmul.ac.uk/learning-applications/q-review/
- why you might want to record yourself
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