Tools for Online Teaching

VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT (VMA)

Vilnius University Virtual Learning Environment (VMA) – course management system (Moodle), where instructors can share study materials and organize online study activities  such as uploading and evaluating assignments, creating tests, providing reading material, providing links to lectures or other resources, communicating with students, giving them feedback on their work, organizing peer-to-peer communication, etc.

You can sign in to VMA with your Single Login account provided by Vilnius University.

Virtual Learning Environment guide will provide you with instructions that will help you to prepare your online courses.

MICROSOFT TEAMS

MS Teams - digital communication platform that helps to effectively organize online learning process as well as, work and collaborate in one place. MS Teams will help you switch from face-to-face to online communication. In this platform you can:

• Give and record lectures and seminars using the video conference function;
• Communicate with your students about your courses and their assignments, as well as provide them with feedback.
• Organize collaboration on group assignments;
• Make the study process more convenient by using the Office365 and other applications (they can be found at the “Apps” section).

Most important Microsoft Teams updates, which were made during the Autumn Semester of Academic Year 2021/2022:

• Presenter Mode. Presenters will be able to customize how content shows up for meeting participants, including overlaying their video on content, and additional options coming in the future (more).

• Presenter View on MS Teams: presenters will be able to view slide notes and upcoming slides helping the presenters keep the meeting on track, discuss meeting notes as needed and navigate to meeting slides quickly (more).

• Meeting organizers will be able to turn off the chat functionality during a meeting, which is turned on by default (more).

• Lower all raised hands. Meeting organizers and presenters will see an option to lower all raised hands from the participant pane (more).

• Teams Meetings Auto Recording. This feature allows users to auto record meetings by choosing auto record option in meetings options (more).

• Meeting Lock. In the Teams meetings desktop app experience, organizers can choose to lock their meetings to prevent subsequent join attempts. Anyone attempting to join a lock meeting from any device will be informed that the meeting is locked (more).

• New Teams meeting controls will let you personalize the meeting view to suit your preferences and needs, such as the ability to show shared content and specific participants side-by-side (more).

• Video Paging on Large Gallery (more).

• Add a custom attendee registration page to any meeting to better manage attendance before and after any engagement. Following registration, attendees receive an email confirmation with calendar invite (more).

• Chat bubbles. Chats sent during a Teams meeting will surface on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the conversation (more).

• Call health. Monitor call and meeting quality in Teams (more).

Upcoming features of MS Teams:

• Paging on Video Gallery. When you are in Gallery view and there are more than 9 videos, navigation controls will appear below the Gallery. You can use these controls to view more video participants (more).

• New file sharing experience. Create a shareable link for any file stored in Teams and directly set the appropriate permissions. Additionally, you can also set permissions for files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive while composing a private chat or starting a channel conversation (more).

• Breakout Room Presenter support. Extend the management of Breakout Rooms to specific presenters (more). 

• Breakout Room pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment (more).

• Video filters. Before joining a meeting, you can use filters to subtly adjust lighting levels and smooth out facial features to customize your appearance (more).

• Mobile app visual update (more). 

• Music Mode for Teams (128 kbps non-verbal sound transfer in a meeting) (more). 

• RTMP Streaming Support (Stream a meeting to Youtube, Facebook, etc.) (more). 

• Join a meeting by digital code (more).

We have prepared some resources for instructors that will help you give and record your classes online using MS Teams. You may access them here (pay attention to the "next" button at the bottom right corner).

If you have any questions regarding “MS Teams”, we created a Team (“Teams pagalba”) in the same platform. You can join it:

• By entering Team code - b0vvru9;
• By pressing this link.

You will see that most of the communication over there is in Lithuanian, but do not hesitate to pose your questions, they will be answered!

OFFICE365

At the office365.vu.lt environment you can:

• Work on text documents (MS Word), presentations (MS Powerpoint), sheets (MS Excel) in collaboration with other colleagues or students online at the same time. This may help students with their group assignments;
• Interact with the University community and get all relevant information by email (MS Outlook);
• Share files related to studies (MS OneDrive and MS Sharepoint);
• Make notes and collect textual and visual information individually or together with students or colleagues (MS OneNote);
• Plan your time effectively (MS Planner and MS ToDo);
• Share videos (lectures, seminars, etc.) with students (MS Stream).

Full list of Office365 applications is available at office365.vu.lt. You can use the applications online or download them for free.

REMOTE ACCESS TO SOFTWARE

During the pandemic, VU students and employees have been provided with an option to use specialized statistical data processing software SPSS from their virtual work spaces.

• You can access your profile via your internet browser at https://darbalaukis.vu.lt.
• Use your eID and password provided by the university and select the work space “Lankytojai (su SPSS paketu)“.

Users that cannot access through the browser (i.e. HTML client) can download VMware Horizon Client from Microsoft Store or by clicking a link that is situated at the bottom of darbalaukis.vu.lt access window. Once VMware Horizon Client has been downloaded and set up, a new server “darbalaukis.vu.lt” has to be added.

University students and employees can also remotely set up and use MATLAB and Simulink software for mathematic calculation and modelling. Address for registration and logging-in can be found here.

Please note that a number of virtual work spaces is limited to 25! If you have access or any other problems, please contact us via email at .

VU students and employees can access and buy software produced by various creators at discount prices at vilniaus.onthehub.com.

More information about software at Vilnius University can be found here.

VU LIBRARY ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

ORDER A COPY OF A PART OF A LIBRARY'S BOOK

During this period, the library offers the VU community even more electronic resources (books, magazines, videos, etc.) that can be accessed from your personal computers.

We invite you to actively follow the information on https://biblioteka.vu.lt/en/ and use the electronic resources in the databases.

Please note: databases can be accessed through the VU network only. It's also possible to connect to the VU network using VU VPN service. More information about the VU VPN is available here.

VILNIUS UNIVERSITY COMPUTER NETWORK (VPN)

To access all available resources, don't forget to connect to the Vilnius University Computer Network (VPN) - for information on how to do it, look here.