Minerva is the University of Leeds’ official Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Minerva must be used as the main platform to provide learning content to students. You should use Minerva to build digital components for your modules and communicate with your students.
If you are not a confident user of Minerva, these guides are a helpful reference:
Each of your modules will already have a Minerva area set up, accessible via the Modules menu on the Teach tab. Students are automatically enrolled in Minerva module areas and so it’s the most reliable way of communicating with them and providing content.
You may also be using Organisations in Minerva, which are likely to be at programme or School level.
If you do not have access to the module area in Minerva for a module that you are teaching, please contact the IT helpdesk for support.
If you are already familiar with Minerva, the support guide explains how to create a structure for your module, and how to add content.
When adding your content to Minerva, consider the following:
Here is some best practice for ensuring your course is accessible for all your students:
What | Helps those |
Accompany any video-based learning materials with Word documents and PowerPoints | With low internet speeds |
Use simple layouts, language and colours and break up text with bullet points | On the autistic spectrum |
Provide ALT text for images, transcripts for videos, write descriptive links and headings | Using screen readers |
Use colour contrast, 12pt+ font sizes, publish all information instead of providing many download links | With low vision |
Use images and diagrams to support text, avoid underlining, italics and ALL CAPS | With dyslexia |
Give clickable elements space (don’t bunch many links together) | With physical or motor disabilities |
Use subtitles and video transcripts, break up text with sub-headings, images, videos | Who are Deaf or hard of hearing |
Give enough time for tasks, let students check answers before submitting a form | With anxiety |
Find out more about supporting remote learners with disabilities:
Announcements in Minerva are an ideal way to post important updates and information to your students. You can:
Ensure the layout, order and content of your course makes sense to your students. A masterclass of structuring your content on Minerva outlines ten exercises of ten minutes each which you can use to design or rework your module.
Use the Minerva staff guides if you need help creating and uploading specific content (e.g. podcasts).
Including a discussion forum in your course encourages student engagement, quality discussion, reflection, investigation, and debate.
To frame a successful discussion, you need to plan it and set out clearly what you want from students. A good method for doing this is to use a consistent approach, so students encounter the same ‘set up’ each time they are asked to discuss digitally. You can use the following template to plan your session and develop the instructions your students will need.
Consider how the technical set up can also support student engagement. If you want to encourage participation, consider allowing students to post anonymously. Also, allow students to create new threads. This flexibility may encourage members to post their ideas and questions. You can also provide incentives by grading the discussion or adding exam questions based on discussion content.
Example | |
Discussion title | My innovation experience |
Purpose | This is an opportunity for you to think about and explore different experiences of innovation, while you get to know your peers. |
Task | 1. Write a short introductory message about yourself to your peers and tutor. Tell us:
2. Answer these questions:
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Your contribution | Aim to write no more than 100 words. This is not a test, so there is no right or wrong answer. This is an opportunity for you to think about and see the variety of experiences of innovation, while you get to know your peers. |
Student dialogue | Once you have posted your message, read messages from your peers. Aim to reply and say hello to at least two other people. When you respond, you might want to comment on:
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Feedback | This forum is tutor-facilitated. Your tutor will introduce themselves as well and will welcome the rest of the class to the module.
They will also comment on some of your responses to the question. |
Use the Minerva staff guides if you need help creating and adding to a discussion forum.
A good way to help students check their understanding is to use multiple-choice questions (MCQs). If these are new to you, you can refer to a case study using MCQ in Minerva and the MCQ checklist.
Use the Minerva staff guides if you need help with assessments and evaluation.
Learning is most effective when it is an active process. If you have provided lots of reading and videos to watch, think about how you might get students to engage with the materials. Find some techniques for this below:
One of the simplest tools to use for creating a shared digital space for collecting ideas and resources is a pinboard tool called Padlet. Padlet describes itself as “somewhere between a doc and a full-fledged website builder.”
Possible uses of a Padlet that could be adapted to your own educational context are:
Blogs can support students in sharing ideas and processes, disseminating information, or documenting their personal experience or research and development. If the blog platform is public (i.e. seen by readers outside of the educational setting) then the blog can be used to communicate with future employers or professionals.
Bloggers can build professional networks whilst studying and retain their work after successful course completion. This builds basic literacy, and digital literacy and enhances employability. In addition, reflective logs deepen competence by encouraging students to apply their theoretical knowledge to practical situations and develop self-knowledge as well as emotional literacy. They promote critical self-awareness, enabling continual professional and personal development.
PebblePad, the University’s e-portfolio system, can be used for creating reflective logs or for producing blogs which can be shared both privately and publicly. Students can also create a free blog on any of the commercial blogging platforms, for example, wordpress.com, blogger.com or tumblr.com.
MS Word can also be used for students to create reflective logs. For this, you can provide a template. Logs can be emailed to tutors or submitted online (e.g. via services such as Turnitin). An alternative is to use an online document stored in the cloud such as OneDrive, which allows the students to keep their logs private or share it with specific individuals.
This design orchestrates a series of activities that do not involve the tutor. It engages students to think in several different ways about the task: as an individual, as a reviewer, as a recipient of comments, and in responding to feedback.
It is important to encourage students to be constructive in their comments, and willing to share. This is not a summative assessment, so there should be no concerns about being graded by someone who is inexpert.
Here is a potential framework you could use for a peer review: