Online Faculty Innovation Tools & Techniques

Tools & Techniques for Personalizing a Pre-Designed Online Course

Building Rapport

Video Lectures

Announcements

Discussion Boards

Enhancing Engagement

Meaningful Feedback

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Let's breakdown the online barrier and build a connection with students. Consider trying:

• Setting virtual office hours (Zoom)
• Creating a virtual hangout spot (Kumospace)
• Using a weekly emotion scale and connecting with your students to see why they're feeling the way do (Poll Everywhere)

Effective feedback goes a long way.

• Check out some of National University's (2021) strategies for providing effective feedback or Reynolds' (n.d.) 20 Ways to Provide Effective Feedback for Learning
• Provide audio/video feedback to students in Canvas (CLICK HERE to view the Yale's (n.d.) Canvas user guide)
• Looking for an alternative way to assess student learning and provide constructive feedback? Try Edpuzzle (grading video tutorial HERE)

Wanting to include video lectures in your course? No problem! Here're a few tools and tips to consider.

• Chunk your recordings into brief (no more than 10) minute videos (More info on chunking here)
• If you want to share content on your electronic device during a recording, consider using Loom or Screencast-o-matic
• For faculty looking to create quick (2 minute) recordings using animations, consider using Powtoonor Moovly

Announcements are a great way to communicate course information to students. Faculty may want to:

• Create a welcome,
• Send a weekly agenda,
• Share additional course-related resources,
• And more!

Ready to create an announcement? CLICK HERE to view a user guide on adding an announcement in a Canvas course.

Looking for ways to liven up the discussion? How about trying one (or more) of these resources?

• (Re)introduce students to Socratic seminars and critical thinking
• Have students record their thoughts and respond to other students' recordings using FlipGrid
• Create a place for students to brainstorm ideas and collaborate with one another before discussions using collaboration tools such as Padlet or Jamboard

Asynchronous classes can be engaging. How so? Let's take a look.

• For faculty looking for a quick, easy way to incorporate gamification and assessment, look no further than Kahoot!
• Want to include an interactive component in the course? Explore Genially
• For students looking to spruce up their presentations, consider having them use Prezi or Adobe Spark