On this page you will find information about some of the options available to you when accomodating for cross campus courses at NTNU. You will also find some general recommendations concerning different approaches to cross campus courses. 

Norsk versjon - Flercampusundervisning

This page is currently under construction. Last update 12.02.2020 by Kari Anne Flem Røren

Cross campus courses at NTNU

Cross campus courses and/or study-programs at NTNU encompass courses where enrolled students are located in different campus cities. The sessions in these courses can be:

1. Synchronous when the students participate through some form of videoconferencing solution at the same time
2. Asynchronous when the teacher(s) travel between the campuses and/or the sessions are recorded and distributed to students

General advice

Distributed cross campus courses can be challenging both for the teacher(s) and the student(s). To avoid some of the possible pitfalls, we recommend taking the following steps before implementing cross campus courses/study-programs:

Pre-decision phase 

• Previous research - What can be learnt?
  Hjelsvold, Rune; Bahmani, Abdullah. (2019) Challenges in Repurposing Single-Campus Courses to Multi-Campus Settings. Læring om læring.
• Supported technical solutions at NTNU
  Contact Læringssenteret to get an overview over possible technical solutions.
• Risk assessment
  
  • Sufficient course staff and time resources
    • Teacher collaboration
  • Quality and equality of student's education across campuses
    
    • Communication
    • Student collaboration
    • Teacher/stud.ass availability
• Administrative processes - EpN
  
  • Timetabling and room availability
• Plan B in case of
  
  • lack of room availability on campus
  • unforeseen events (power cut etc.)

Pre-operative phase

• Course design - Contact Section for learning support
  
  • Learning and collaborative activities
  • Production of digital learning resources
• Update EpN
  • Course Description(s)
• Assessment - Summative and Formative
  
  •  Exams in different cities?
• Regulations
  • UDL - Universal Design for Learning (In Norwegian)
  • GDPR - General Data Protection Regulations (In Norwegian)

Operative phase

• Technical support
  • Contact orakel@ntnu.no for technical assistance
• Course Evaluation 
  • Quality Assurance of Education at NTNU
  • Reference groups - cross campus involvement
  • Incremetal changes and research - Pedagogical portfolio(s) for teacher(s)
  • Further development in Course Design?

Supported technical solutions at NTNU

Zoom Rooms - semi-distributed synchronous campus sessions

There are a small number of on-campus rooms set up with technical equipment to support the facilitation of synhronous sessions between campuses. 
Some of the advantages:

• supports on-campus presence between rooms
• high quality audio- and videostreaming (low latency/delay)
• supports easy sharing of content

The following rooms are set up with technical equipment to support synhronous sessions between campuses:

• B11 in Beryll-bygget in Gjøvik (30 students)
• E208 in Helvin-bygget in Gjøvik (58 students)
• S21 in Sentralbygg 2 in Trondheim (30 students)
• F415 in Ankeret in Ålesund (30 students)

Note 1: 
Recording of sessions is not allowed in and between rooms due to GDPR regulations. 

Note 2:
These rooms have been established as part of the ongoing project “Interaktive læringsareal i flercampusløsning” and are equipped with technical infrastructure to reduce latency for audio and video, to enhance the distribution of sessions between the campus cities. Courses participating in this project have priority booking of these rooms. Go to Room Reservation to check availability for there rooms.

Contact orakel@ntnu.no if you have questions or need technical help using the rooms.

Blackboard Collaborate - fully distributed synchronous online sessions

Collaborate is a videoconferencing tool (digital classroom) available in all courses in Blackboard.
Some of the advantages:

• promotes equal student experience across campuses
• online collaboration in groups during an online session
• administration of roles and permissions before and during a session
• allows recording of sessions (break-out sessions excluded)

Note 1:
Please note that the Blackboard Collaborate tool is meant for online synchronous sessions only, hence there is no technical or pedagogical support for the use of Blackboard Collaborate in physical rooms at NTNUs campuses.

Note 2:
Functionality in Collaborate is best supported in Chrome web-browser.

Read more about Blackboard Collaborate.
Read more about Facilitating learning throug Webinars.
Contact orakel@ntnu.no if you need help with Blackboard Collaborate. 
Teacher training can be provided by NTNU Læringssenteret.

Other supported tools for digital collaboration at NTNU

• O365 – services and functionality for digital collaboration - Learn more about O365
  
  • Teams
  • Sharing of files and folders
  • Document collaboration and co-authoring (Word, OneNote etc.)

Teacher and student training in O365 can be provided by NTNU Læringssenteret.

Contact information

Please send an e-mail to orakel@ntnu.no and ask for support by NTNU Læringssenteret if you have any questions or need advice regarding cross campus courses.