It is tempting to fall into the habit of thinking that you have to use a lot of complicated technological tools to provide opportunities for meaningful active learning. You can provide meaningful interaction with quite basic tools as long as they are well-structured and clearly support students in reaching learning outcomes.
Consider the Experience
While there are obviously arguments to be made in favor of some tools over others, it is more effective to first consider the experience you are trying to create for the student.
- What do you want the student to know and be able to do at the end of this activity?
- What is an appropriate and logical way to provide the student with an opportunity to practice this?
- In what ways can you add dynamic elements to the experience?
- Did you build in tools and activities that will allow all learners to participate and access the instructional material?
In addition to in-person learning activities, consider leveraging the tools built into Canvas such as Discussions (including recording video/audio directly into a discussion post) and Group Spaces. A great student learning experience can be designed within a simple environment and there is something to be said for not over-thinking or over-developing. See What external tools are available in Canvas?
The ABLConnect website from Harvard University is also an excellent resource for active learning ideas for classroom and/or online activities. You can search by learning objective, length, subject, etc…
If you find that in-person or Canvas-native tools are not sufficient to create a robust active learning experience for your students, you can explore third-party tools. When considering adding tools, please remember that while bells and whistles can deliver a better learning experience, they don’t automatically deliver a better learning experience. Always ask yourself, how is this tool supporting the student’s learning experience?
You’ll see mention of lack of LTI support as a drawback on several tools listed. Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) is a standard that allows a sort of “plug-and-play” integration of learning tools with learning management systems. It provides standard ways of launching a 3rd-party learning tool from inside Canvas, providing information to the learning tool about which student from which course is accessing it, and, where appropriate, allowing the learning tool to send a grade back to the Canvas Gradebook. The main thing to remember is that tools without LTI support can’t pass grades back to Canvas so if you want to count work your students did in that tool as part of their grade you’ll need to add the grades to the Gradebook. If you have a larger class, these tools may be better suited to practice activities and other ungraded exploration.
Tips for Trying an Unsupported Tool in Your Class
“There are a lot of reasons not to use unsupported educational technology (edtech) tools, but there are also situations that warrant them.” Use this guide to help you make decisions on what “unsupported technology” you may or may not use.
Creating Digital Presentations
Available to students and faculty within Canvas. Lets you record videos from your webcam and via screen-casted videos, have students create and submit video assignments, and lets students comment on videos in real-time, as they are watching.
Create graphics for all kinds of media, including social media, blogs, and other visual aids. Canva/Canvas Guide
Create infographics to make data more visual.
With PowerPoint on your PC, Mac, or mobile device, you can: create presentations from scratch or a template; add text, images, art, and videos; select a professional design with PowerPoint Designer; add transitions, animations, and cinematic motion; save to OneDrive, to get to your presentations from your computer, tablet, or phone; and share your work and work with others, wherever they are.
Online Collaboration/Meetings
Videoconferencing, video capture, and screen capture – requires that your department’s budget is able to support paying the fee for you to have an account. See IFD Page for info on cost and how to set up). Free accounts can be secured on your own, but it is recommended that you go through the IT department to get one that is attached to VU specific settings and policies.
Create and share interactive reports, presentations, stories, and more. “Sway does the design work for you.” You can then embed a Sway within a Canvas page, assignment, quiz, etc.
Whether your students are in person, distributed, or fully remote, Miro provides an engaging, intuitive, in-person collaboration experience with multiple options for real-time or asynchronous teamwork on an online whiteboard.
“Make beautiful boards, documents, and webpages that are easy to read and fun to contribute to…” The free account limits how many boards you can have at one time.
Microsoft Teams can be used for chat and video collaboration. Use instant messages, audio calls, or video conferences with instructors, classmates, clubs, or other organization members. Use Teams to coordinate messages, files, calendars, meetings, and so much more within your department, team, or group. Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365 Pro Plus and is free for VU students, faculty, and staff.
Course Management
Canvas is Vanguard University’s Learning Management System connecting students, faculty, and staff both inside and outside of the classroom. There are Canvas guides available for your use.
Course Materials Adoption
Open textbooks are licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted. Download, edit and distribute them at no cost. Now offering 1036 open textbooks, the Open Textbook Library is supported by the Open Education Network.
Follett Discover is a powerful online tool that transforms the course materials discovery and adoption process for faculty and helps students obtain, organize, and instantly access their required and recommended course materials from within Canvas.
Interacting Online
Canvas’ discussion board feature allows participants to carry on discussions online, at any time of the day or night, with no need for the participants to be logged into the site at the same time. The discussion is recorded on the course site for all to review and respond at their convenience. The discussions may be graded as well. You may have multiple discussion board forums in your course – for example, you might choose to have a different forum for each topic. A course discussion board can contain multiple forums; each forum may contain multiple threads; and each thread may contain multiple postings.
Some ways that discussion boards are used include:
- Instructors post questions on a course discussion board, which students respond to before a class session
- Instructors have students post their work to a discussion board so other students can see it
- Students post reading responses to a discussion board
Loom is a video messaging tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable videos. With Loom, you can record your camera, microphone, and desktop simultaneously. Your video is then instantly available to share through Loom’s patented technology.
Evaluating Student Learning
The LTI integration is not as robust as other tools. It mostly allows you to embed your flashcard sets within Canvas.
Create polls to be used during a synchronous class, or at a student’s own pace/schedule. There are limitations on the free plan, specifically the maximum number of students who can be taking a poll at any one time and whether the students info is integrated with the learning management system. Canvas Integration
Mentimeter is an interactive polling service you can use to interact with your students using their cell phones.
Library Resources
Cope Budge Library Website
All Vanguard Library Guides; the following library guides may be of particular interest to faculty:
- Course Reserves for Faculty: a guide that reviews course reserve policies and provides a form to request course reserves.
- Copyright & Fair Use: a brief guide with links to information on copyright and fair use as it relates to course reserves and other classroom use.
- Open Access Resources: a preliminary list of portals to open access journals, books, dissertations and educational resources.
- Article Linking: a guide to finding persistent links to resources found in the library’s electronic collection.
- Zotero: a guide to installing and using Zotero as a citation management system.
*A portion of the content found here was designed by Indiana University and adapted for use by the Institute for Faculty Development at Vanguard University. This content is offered under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license and should be considered under this license unless otherwise noted. The original content was imported from “Designing and Teaching for Impact in Online Courses” from within Canvas Commons.