Week 3 Online Learning Activities: Tools for Interactive Teaching and Learning

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 (including recording video/audio directly into a discussion post), Group Spaces, Collaborations, or Conferences. 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 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.