4.3 Online Learning Activities: Tools for Interactive Teaching and Learning

It is tempting to fall into the habit of thinking that you have to use a lot of complicated online 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?

Consider leveraging the tools built into Canvas such as Discussions Links to an external site. (including recording video/audio directly into a discussion post), Group Spaces Links to an external site., Collaborations Links to an external site., or Conferences Links to an external site.. 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.  

Other Interactive Tools

If you find that Canvas-native tools are insufficient 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 explorations. 

Supported by Ball State

These university-supported tools are software products that are owned or licensed by Ball State University.  The BSU Technology Helpdesk supports these products and they are available to all faculty.  Instructional Consultants with the Division of Online and Strategic Learning have an in-depth knowledge of the software and its associated best practices and can provide training and support on request.

Resources
Canvas Use Canvas to build and distribute your course to students.
Mediasite Use Mediasite to record lectures and presentations.
Zoom Use Zoom to hold synchronous classes and virtual meetings.
Webex Use WebEx to hold synchronous classes and virtual meetings.
Explain Everything Use Explain Everything as a virtual whiteboard and to provide rich feedback.
Lockdown Browser & Respondus Monitor Use Lockdown Browser to secure your online tests and Respondus Monitor as a deterrent to prevent plagiarism.
Storage & File Sharing Use Microsoft OneDrive to share content and files with students.
Poll Everywhere Use Poll Everywhere for an interactive student response system.
Reading Lists The Reading Lists app gives students simple access to course reserve materials—full-text database articles, e-books, digitized chapters, streaming music and video, and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 What about social media services?

Social media services such as Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter provide a wide array of tools that faculty can leverage for student activities and interactions. However, before you incorporate social media into your course, there are some things you need to consider. 

  1. Are you prepared to support students if they have technology issues?  
  2. If you want students to post publicly as part of an assignment, do you have a way for them to post under an alias or anonymously if they prefer?  FERPA rules govern the release of student information to third parties, which include social media sites. For more information, see Is Your Use of Social Media FERPA Compliant? Links to an external site.
  3. Copyright and intellectual property policies may also need to be considered depending on the content of the assignment.