Tools for hybrid teaching

Your toolkit for transforming teaching activities from on-campus to a hybrid approach.

Consider the following as the most important tools you have at your disposal:

Virtual Learning Environment (VLE): Blackboard Learn

This is our campus-wide VLE and the heart of teaching your course. Your course already has a place in Learn. It is where to put your content (documents, PowerPoint slides, handouts, homework and practice questions), where your discussions will take place, and potentially where your assessment will be delivered, including assignment submission, marking, and feedback.

Lecture recording and streaming: Media Hopper Replay

If you want to stream and/or record lectures, you can use Media Hopper Replay to do so.  

Virtual Classroom: Blackboard Collaborate & Zoom

A virtual classroom is a live, interactive online classroom space. All staff and students at the University of Edinburgh have access to use either Collaborate or Zoom (two alternative virtual classroom platforms) via Blackboard Learn . Both allow you to host a virtual classroom, present, discuss, debate, and record all that you do there.

Short videos: Media Hopper Create

You can make short videos for yourself to share with You can make short videos for yourself to share with your students using Media Hopper Create . These tools can be useful for introducing topics and steering students through your  resources, letting them know what tasks they need to do. 

Resource Lists

You can load your reading lists and other library resources online to make it easier for your students to access them from wherever they are. You may wish to prioritise digital materials so that students can easily access them online.

Access to online library resources

Find out how to access the Library’s online resources: over 1.4 million ebooks, 185,000 ejournals, 700 licensed databases, 84,000 streaming videos and 6,000 scanned book chapters and journal articles.

Assignment submission and marking: Blackboard Learn and Turnitin

In Learn VLE you can create, run, and grade your assessments. You may wish  to consider a shift to ‘open book’ assessments in these circumstances..

Other tools you can use at the University of Edinburgh to add content to your courses

• Student blogs: For students to write and share ideas. (Blogging tool summary)
• LinkedIn Learning playlists: Create a playlist of videos which teach skills and techniques. (More about LinkedIn Learning)
• BOB Box of Broadcasts: Use recordings of TV programmes to supplement your content. (What is Box of Broadcasts?)
• Library resources subject guides: If you are not sure what online resources are available for your subject. (Subject Guides)
• Computational notebooks: Computational notebooks are interactive documents that can contain both computer code (such as Python) as well as rich text and media content (paragraphs of text, equations, images and links). (About the Noteable Service)
• Open educational resources: Teachers may have already shared online materials under an open licence that you can re-use to supplement your materials. (Open.Ed)