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The purpose of this page is to provide more detailed information regarding tools and the purpose of using them in your teaching.
There are many tools out there that will be beneficial to not only student’s learning, but will also assist with effectively teaching online. The tools are organized by type of tool and its use.
In regard to online discussions or discussion board prompts, students benefit from instructor assistance, or scaffolding in such a way that promotes critical thinking. Some examples of instructor-enhanced scaffolding within the prompts includes modeling a response to the prompt, requesting clarification, reinforcing students' ideas, correcting misunderstandings, and asking for consensus within areas of disagreement.
Another aspect of the discussion board to assist with active learning would be to provide a discussion board that collects the student’s questions and concerns to be addressed within the live session. Canvas discussion boards allow the liking capability, which will allow students to essnetially “vote” or “agree” with questions that have already been asked, which easily identifies the sticking points for the faculty member.
Poll Everywhere is an online solution for classroom engagement by allowing real time, live polling activities. By integrating Poll Everywhere into Canvas, this makes polling easier as you can import your Canvas course roster into Poll Everywhere to capture people’s activities and responses.
Quizlet is integrated within Canvas and provides learning tools for students, including flashcards in both study and game modes. Quizlet allows faculty to create study flashcards for information that students will need to memorize or understand. Faculty can also search and use already-created public quizlets.
If you would like to prevent your students to use any other browser tabs while completing the quiz in Canvas, you can use the Respondus LockDown Browser . Students are unable to copy,print, access other applications, or visit other websites during an online exam.
If you use PollEverywhere or Clickers in your course, you can reformat this experience by using the polling function within Zoom. You can create multiple questions for one class meeting and the results can be set to anonymous or visible to you afterwards. If you have PollEverywhere already embedded within your slides, your students will be able to participate in the polls with their mobile phones or computers.
Groups are a small version of a course and used as a collaborative tool where students can work together on group projects and assignments.
Persuall is an annotation tool integrated in Canvas that allows students to annotate PDFs and share comments to each other within the same document. Perusall has a free online demo course that you can join to explore prior to adding to your own course.
A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).
While in your synchronous class, you can utilize the Zoom breakout room functionality to allow students to share their thoughts and engage with their peers prior to sharing out their ideas to the larger class.
If you are anticipating recording your own lectures of yourself, your slides, or your screen, Panopto (Media Library) is the easiest way to record, live stream, manage, and share videos across your organization. There is also a simple editing function within Panopto, which will allow you to trim the video and remove any information that is unnecessary.
Although Zoom is traditionally used for meetings, you can also use the desktop client to record yourself and share your screen. This will allow you to have another method of lecturing to students, but could also provide you with the opportunity to answer any common questions or provide general feedback.