This guide is a supplement to the “The Digital Side of Your Classroom” workshop presented by Cartland Berge, Shannon Hauser and Jerry Slezak of Digital Learning Support on May 12, 2022.

Presentation Description

Any course – whether face-to-face, fully online, or somewhere in between – can leverage digital tools to expand and enhance the classroom experience.  Discover new features and new ways to use common tools (like Canvas, Zoom, and ScreenPal) and potentially unfamiliar ones (like Discord and Hypothesis) to increase student engagement and encourage students to invest in your classroom community. 

Why Digital Tools?

• They can allow a different type of engagement for students beyond strictly face-to-face interactions:
  • Example: Discord or blog comments

• Rather than primarily using class time to present content, digital tools can allow you to shift content delivery so you can use in-person class time in different ways that can allow more active engagement:
  • Example: Flipped classroom & active learning 

• Can help you assess student learning and areas that need reinforcement
  • Example: Mini Quizzes in Canvas 
• Can allow students to demonstrate proficiency in ways that play to their strengths while practicing digital skills.
  • Example: Offering the option to produce a podcast in place of a paper
• Can open spaces for unexpected possibilities

Tools

Canvas

Mini Quizzes

Canvas quizzes are often used for graded assignments, but they can also be a great tool for formative assessment. A one or two question quiz after a lecture or reading can help you assess the effectiveness of that delivery method, and item banks can be used to create a randomized practice quiz for students to self-assess their understanding before a larger exam.

Using Discussion Boards to Get Students to Read Before Class

• Readings assigned before a class meeting
• Each student posts a question in the discussion board based on each reading due a day or two before the class meeting
• Other students can reply to answer questions, or ask more questions based on questions 
• Instructor then reviews the discussions before class and tries to address common questions or themes at the start of the session 

Groups

Canvas Groups provide a private group workspace for students working on longer term or large group projects. They can also be used for study groups. Each Canvas group has space for files, announcements, collaborative documents, and discussion boards.

Integrations

As a platform Canvas makes it possible for outside tools to integrate in to their system. At UMW we already have a variety of integrations already available in all courses (for example Zoom is an integration), but there are others in there that you might not be familiar with and what they can do.

If there are integrations that you are interested in using that require Canvas Admin please contact Digital Learning Support (dls@umw.edu) to discuss.

OneDrive

• Attach Office 365 files including Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel from the Rich Content Editor
• Distribute Office 365 cloud assignments.
• Create collaborations where course members can work together on shared documents in real time.
• Integrate Office 365 files with your course modules.

Updates

• New Quizzes – Eventually will replace Classic Quizzes. Has some new functionality, but some things that were available in Classic Quizzes no longer available. We will send out communication about New Quizzes timeline in the future.
• Item Banks – You can share item banks with another teacher in New Quizzes or to another Canvas course.
• Accessibility Checker – Detects common accessibility errors within the editor.
• Button and Icon Maker – Gives instructors the ability to incorporate simple icons for their courses without using an external tool.

ScreenPal

ScreenPal (formerly Screencast-o-Matic) is a tool that lets you record, edit, and host your videos all in one place. At UMW we make premium licenses of ScreenPal available to all faculty and staff.

Why?

• Delivery of content before or after class can create new possibilities for in classroom experience.
• Create microlectures.
• Allows student to return to content when needed.
• Take your Zoom recordings and host them on ScreenPal.
• ScreenPal integration in Canvas allows you to easily embed videos
• One stop shop: Record, edit, and host your videos.

Updates

• Editing features now available for free accounts. This could be another tool you could recommend to students to use for presentation recording. Check out our DKC tools guide for our ScreenPal for students and general presentation recording tool recommendations.
• Secure backup of files
• Call-to-action and annotation buttons – Add an overlay of a button on the video to bring students to an important resource or a quiz.

How to access?

If you don’t have a licensed premium account you can contact us and we will create an account for you.

New to ScreenPal? Check out our ScreenPal.

Zoom – not just meetings

• All students, staff and faculty have accounts.
  • Accessing your account (helpful for students) https://learn.umw.edu/guides/creating-and-logging-into-your-umw-zoom-account/ 

• The newest features are in the most recent versions. Updating your client is important: https://learn.umw.edu/guides/updating-your-zoom-client/ 

• Accessibility Features like live captioning, audio recordings. and transcripts: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207279736-Closed-captioning-and-live-transcription 

• New whiteboard feature (requires Zoom version 5.10.3 and later) that is persistent and available outside and after meetings. They are saved in your Zoom account. You can also share them with anyone that has a UMW Zoom account. Support: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/5304058491405-Zoom-Whiteboard-User-Guide

• Canvas Integration with Zoom – office hours, recurring class meeting link, guides: https://learn.umw.edu/guides/using-zoom-in-canvas/ 

• Zoom Learning Center – mini courses on how to use Zoom: https://learning.zoom.us/pages/27/home 

Communication Platforms (Discord/Slack/Teams)

What?

Discord, Slack, and Teams are all communication tools that can be used to facilitate student/student and student/teacher communication. All have similar features, so choosing between them is a matter of preference for you and your students.

Why?

Establishing an official digital communication platform for you class has many benefits:

• Facilitates student collaboration for group work
• Allows students to help each other rather than always coming to you
• Enables community-building inside and outside the classroom
• Offers an alternative way for students to contribute

How?

Setting up a communication platform for your class is free, quick, and easy.

You might be tempted to set up a lot of structure within the platform in advance, but this may be counterproductive. If you give your students the opportunity to weigh in or even set up the structure themselves, you will likely find that an effective structure develops organically based on the needs of the class.

Getting Started with Discord

Getting Started with Slack

Getting Started with MS Teams

Social Annotation Tools (Hypothesis/Perusall)

What?

Social annotation tools allow people to collaboratively highlight and comment on a shared text. This guide provides a nice overview on what, why, and considerations.

Why?

• Fosters class discussions about a selected reading. 
• Populate a reading with “sign-posts” that help guide students through a text.
• Scan an assigned reading to discover “heatmaps” for interaction.

How?

• Hypothesis can be used outside of Canvas or as an integration (features vary slightly).
• Perusall can be used outside of Canvas or as an integration.
  • We recommend setting it up through Canvas and making the link available in the Course Navigation. Some faculty have stated that students accessing it through this link can avoid sign-up for a Persuall account that is sometimes prompted when going through Assignments.

Tips

• Social annotation tips

Web Publishing (Domain of One’s Own/UMW Blogs)

What?

While there are lots of web publishing tools out there, at UMW we have both Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) and UMWBlogs as ways to publish. See this guide for the difference between the two platforms.

Why?

• Course site
• Writing in public
• Portfolio projects
• Public research & scholarship

Check out our post on teaching on the open web with DoOO and UMW Blogs.

How?

Find the platforms here:

• Domain of One’s Own
• UMW Blogs

Staff in Digital Learning Support would be glad to talk about what platform might fit best for your class.

Digital Assignments

What?

A digital assignment is any project that asks students create a digital media product that demonstrates understanding of class concepts. This could be a video, podcast, infographic, website, or other form of digital media.

Why?

Just like print-and-paper assignments, digital assignments provide the opportunity for students to practice critical thinking, research, and communication skills. But while a traditional paper focuses mainly on the written word, digital assignments open the door to additional modes of communication, including images, video, audio, and web design.

A digital project assignment offers a number of benefits:

• Allows students to demonstrate proficiency in alternative ways
• Offers opportunities for students to develop skills in a wider range of communication media
• Helps broaden understanding of class concepts through varied forms of expression

How?

With today’s widespread access to digital media technology, it is easier than ever to transform conventional class assignments into digital projects. Whether you want to turn a journaling assignment into weekly blog posts, a paper into a podcast, or a class presentation into a video project, there are free, beginner-friendly tools available to help make it happen.

Digital Learning Support staff are available to help with designing and implementing your digital projects.

You don’t need to be an expert on the tools your students will use to complete digital assignments! The Digital Knowledge Center can help your students learn the tools necessary to succeed in thise projects.

DKC Getting Started Guides

There are many ways you can use Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) or UMW Blogs to teach on the open web. You can read our guide on the difference between DoOO and UMW Blogs if you are not familiar with these platforms.

Below are examples of ways you can approach using these platform in your class. Many of these options can go a long way towards addressing the Digital Intensive SLOs for classes seeking a DI designation.

Course Site

Canvas works well as an internal, private hub for your course content, and for many courses that is all that’s necessary. But utilizing platforms like DoOO and UMW Blogs alongside Canvas opens up a host of possibilities, such as:

• Offering you more control over the way your course is digitally organized.
• Allowing students access to the work and ideas of previous courses.
• Letting a broader community of people learn from your course.
• Giving prospective students a preview of what your course is about.

Some examples of course sites:

• Mara Scanlon’s Literature of the Great War course
• Chris Foss’ Dis/Lit course
• Cartland Berge’s DGST 101 course

Writing in Public

Most writing that happens in class is done for the professor or perhaps for peers. Writing in a more public forum like DoOO or UMW Blogs can:

• Give students a different audience to think about.
• Give students practice in writing in scholarly ways on the web.
• Give students more ownership of their writing.
• Get students thinking about contributing to knowledge and conversations on the open web.

Some examples of course that have used writing in public:

• Jason Davidson’s Security and Conflict class
• Jackie Gallagher’s Hazards class
• Leanna Giancarlo’s Physical Chemistry class

Portfolio Projects

Portfolios can be an excellent way to assess what students have learned over the semester (or over their time in a program). Creating portfolio projects on DoOO or UMW Blogs can:

• Help students think about and frame their learning in a different way.
• Be a final product for students to point to for internships and jobs.
• Allow for more creative expression and allow for easier inclusion of varied media.

Some examples of portfolio projects:

• Theatre Department senior capstone
• History & American Studies Department, History Methods course
• Communications & Digital Studies, Applied Digital Studies course

Public Research and Scholarship

These kinds of projects are often the central focus of a course. They attempt to think about what it means to contribute scholarly work on the open web. These kinds of projects can:

• Lead to the creation of scholarly resources that are accessible on the open web.
• Be a form of meaningful community engagement.
• Connect students to the work of public scholarship within the discipline.

Some example of public research and scholarship:

• Kashef Majid’s Zero Food Waste
• Melina Patterson’s Geographies of Children
• Jeff McClurken’s Adventures in Digital History

Interested in Using DoOO or UMW Blogs in your class?

If you are interested in using Domain of One’s Own or UMW Blogs in your class, Digital Learning Support would love to partner with you to plan your site and get you up and running. You can book an appointment or sending us a message on the contact us page.

You do not need to be tech support for your students using these platforms in your course. The Digital Knowledge Center provides peer support to students using digital tools in their class projects, and this includes Domain of One’s Own and UMW Blogs. You can direct students to the DKC for help troubleshooting issues and learning these tools.

A change from a physically active and widely used space to one that is more contained may be jarring initially to students. There are also logistical issues in taking attendance, especially in larger classes. Some ideas to help smooth this transition: 

Take attendance at the END of class and not the beginning.

For any variety of reasons, students may be late to class and miss an early attendance check. Taking attendance at the end of class accounts for late arriving students and can be incorporated into wrap-up activities. Worried about how much time attendance roll call can take with a large class? Consider the next idea…

Streamline attendance roll call using teams. 

Assign students to 4-5 member teams based on seating proximity. Each team creates a group name (this is a great place to insert some playfulness into a class!). During attendance roll call, a team’s task is to determine if all team members are or were present. The instructor calls roll by team names, not individual students (e.g. calling out “Frolicking Flamingos” versus “Mary Washington”). Teams either share ‘all here’ or notify the instructor who is missing. These teams can also serve as small group learning teams for class activities, note sharing, and out-of-class study groups. 

Smaller class? Use name tents to take attendance.

Have students create name tents by folding thick paper or cardstock in half and writing their names clearly. Students turn in their name tents at the end of class to indicate their presence. For the next class session, place the name tents out for students to pick up on their way to their seats. Be sure to scoop up any unclaimed name tents before present students turn theirs in at the end of class! 

Use collaborative tools to promote student interactions. 

Where you relied on large sticky paper or long whiteboards for groups to congregate around, set up collaborative documents or slide decks for cross-room sharing. Live polling is another way to engage students across a room without requiring them to be in close proximity to one another. 

If you are looking for ideas about how UMW faculty used collaborative technology last year, check out these ReFocus Online sessions about Google Hangouts, Flipgrid, Padlet, and Google Docs. Each of these tools can be utilized in face-to-face as well as online learning spaces. Bonus: some of these tools can be integrated with Canvas or shared with students as links so that anyone unable to attend class can still participate.

Design class sessions in 10-20-minute chunks to promote engagement. 

If you used physical movement around the larger classroom to break up class sessions, a change to limiting movement might complicate a student’s ability to manage attention. Review your class plans to ensure that you are using a variety of activities to productively shift focus and process experiences. 

If you are looking for activities that can be incorporated into your sessions, check out this guide on in-class activities (via the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence). Each activity can be tweaked to include collaborative tech tools if you want to limit physical proximity and can be designed for face-to-face and online environments. Activities are categorized for individuals, large classes, and smaller groups.

Unsure of how to translate these ideas to your classroom? Book a consultation with the Center for Teaching and we’ll help you find a solution!