Technology to Enhance Your Online Course

Please see below for information on select technologies and tools to enhance your online course and support student engagement.

Canvas

Every course at LLCC has a Canvas shell with current students enrolled. Within Canvas you can add documents and course materials, develop a discussion board for class discussions, post announcements (and send those announcements as emails), collect assignments and post grades.

Canvas Tier One Support

Faculty & students have access to 24/7 support to dedicated Canvas Support Technicians from within the system. Chat & phone options are available by clicking on the Help button in the navigation.

Qwickly

The Qwickly Course Tool supports your Canvas use by increasing the efficiency of communicating with members of multiple courses and organizations in Canvas as well as simplifying tasks that need to be done repetitively in each Canvas course an instructor teaches.

Ally

Ally helps you make your Canvas content more accessible. Ally automatically checks course materials against WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, Ally provides students with accessible alternative formats such as audio and electronic braille.

Assignments

An easy way to collect assignments, papers, or files from your students is to create an assignment in your Canvas course shell. Assignments can be created in Content Areas, but can also be added to Learning Modules, Lesson Plans, and folders. You can create assignments for an entire class or an individual student.

Canvas tests & quizzes

If you need to give your students a basic test or quiz, you can develop and administer them in Canvas. Check out the Canvas Community for more information on creating Canvas Quizzes.

Canvas Gradebook

The Gradebook in each course shell already has your students set up in the gradebook. You can use the gradebook in your Canvas course shell to provide feedback to your students on all assignments, discussion posts, and quizzes. Grades are immediately available to students. You may also use the gradebook to provide written feedback on individual assignments.

Announcements

Along with LLCC email and the Inbox function in Canvas, you will want to use the Canvas communication tools, especially course announcements to stay in contact with your students and to help keep them on task. You can also send an announcement as an email automatically through Blackboard at the same time you post the announcements. The instructions linked above will walk you through these steps.

Qwickly

You can communicate more efficiently by using the Qwickly course tool.

Remind

Remind is a communication platform build to improve engagement and faculty to student communication. Remind provides two-way communication for notifications, instructions and more. Remind allows for free account activation.

Share content in Canvas

Use your face-to-face course materials and upload them into Canvas in the Content area. If you have word documents, PowerPoints, PDFs, or other materials you would share in class, share them online in this space. Create a module for each week/unit they will be completing through the end of the semester. Keeping your Files folder organized in a manner like the structure of your course will help students understand where to go to find that content.

LLCC Library resources

The Library has an excellent resource on Open Education Resources and streaming video services you can use to enhance your course content.

  • LLCC Open Educational Resources (OER) LibGuide – The “Using Filtering Tools to Identify OER’s” tab is especially helpful!
  • Kanopy LibGuide – Kanopy is a new streaming video service for faculty to use to enrich their course teachings. This link will provide you with more information about the resource and the basics of using the resource. Kanopy Guide for Students – This link can be shared with your students and will explain how to authenticate into Kanopy from an off-campus location.
     

YouTube educational content

You may also search YouTube for content that closely resembles what you would use/teach and embed those videos within Canvas.

OneDrive

The LLCC IT department offers Office365 to all LLCC students and staff, including Microsoft OneDrive for file storage and sharing.

Padlet

Padlet is an online platform where faculty and students can share ideas, images, and videos. Padlet is very easy to use and will add an element of visual learning and engagement to your class. Padlet can also be used to support group or individual work and provides a quick and easy way to give feedback to students. LLCC has a Padlet license and has been integrated with our o365 login, no account set up needed.

Planning for discussions

When you are thinking about how to conduct class discussions, remember to consider using mostly asynchronous communication. Asynchronous lets students come to the course on their own schedule; build in flexibility for when students can access and review materials. Additionally, asynchronous will have fewer technical issues and will be easier for students with technology limitations to access than 50-minute live lectures.

An easy way to promote class discussion in an asynchronous environment is to use the Discussions feature in Canvas. Discussion activities encourage students to think critically about their coursework and interact with their peers and their ideas.

Zoom and Microsoft Teams

Some LLCC faculty have been successfully using the Microsoft Teams and Zoom tools for office hours and small class discussions. See the information below on these tools.

Voice-Over PowerPoint presentation (saved as a movie)

If you have PowerPoint presentations already created, create ‘lectures’ with them by recording voice-overs. Please see the resources below for accomplishing this task:

Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is a free web-based screen recording and editing tool. Screencast-O-Matic allows you to record anything on your computer screen, save the recording, and save the video for sharing. A video can be shared from Screencast-O-Matic (requires a free Screencast-O-Matic account) or saved to your computer. Once saved, a video can be uploaded to YouTube, shared with a link, or embedded into your Canvas course. Screencast-O-Matic has several short tutorials on their website for getting started.

You may want to consider synchronous delivery methods for this interaction. Planning for synchronous office hours or short study sessions provide students with an opportunity to still connect with you in real time.

Microsoft Teams

LLCC provides you with access to Microsoft Teams. Teams allows you to schedule a video conference, chat or audio call with your whole class or just one student. Teams can also be a great way to host office hours. With Teams you can also share your desktop, a specific window or document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) with others.

Zoom

Some LLCC faculty have been successfully using a tool called Zoom for office hours and small class discussions. Zoom is a video-conferencing platform that allows you to engage in live Web conversations with your students using audio, video, and text-based chat features. You can share presentation and other files with zoom. Zoom has a very helpful support center as well as a great Getting started page. You can set up a free account with Zoom and send your students a link to your conference session.

Learn more about getting started with Zoom and adjusting Zoom conference room privacy settings.