Using Emacs and org mode for online teaching

Keywords: org mode Subject structure PDF tools Xournal Online teaching Teams

I use Emacs and org mode for online teaching. For each subject I have an org file with the following sections: general data of the course, the material (basically presentations, exercises, laboratory, etc.), the track of the classes, and the assessment.

This is the org file of the subject Programación:

From this file I can expand for instance Material, then expand Teoría and go to a particular topic. For instance Tema 2:

For each topic I use two links: one to the source code of the presentation (of course in org mode) and the other one is a link to the PDF.

I use PDF tools in Emacs, so I that the PDF with the presentation is opened in Emacs:

During the classes I solve some exercises. Before the arrival of the Covid-19 I opened the PDF in Emacs with the exercise and solved it in the whiteboard. But now, with part of the students at their homes this is not possible. So I decided to open the PDF with Xournal to write using a Wacom tablet. I clone my screen in the projector so the students in the class and the students at home see the same content using Teams.

So, for each exercise bulletin I use two links: one to the source file (in org mode) and the other is used to open the file in Xournal:

To simplify this process (inside Emacs) I defined a new type of link called xournal so that the linked PDF file is opened directly in xournal. This is the configuration that I added to my Emacs configuration:

(require 'ol)

(org-link-set-parameters "xournal"
                         :follow #'org-xournal-open)

(defcustom org-xournal-command 'xournal
  "The Emacs command to be used to open xournal with a PDF file."
  :group 'org-link
  :type '(choice (const man)))

(defun org-xournal-open (path _)
  "Open PDF file on Xournal"
  (start-process "xournal" nil "xournal" path))

With this configuration, I can put this kind of links in my org file:

When I follow the link, Xournal starts with the PDF file specified in the link, so I can write using my Wacom tablet.

Finally, a short demo in an actual class (I intentionally removed the audio of this clip):

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