Want to add more fun to your teaching? Looking for ways to get students more engaged? Searching for ways to support deep learning? Based on our own research and feedback from faculty, CITL has been compiling a variety of digital tools that can effectively support independent and group work in all classroom settings: face-to-face, hybrid, and fully online.
We've loosely organized these tools into four categories but most of them can be used in several different ways. All the tools are free, but some offer paid accounts with enhanced features. Also, some may have a steeper learning curve. Feel free to mix and match different tools to meet your teaching needs, and let us know how things turn out! Contact us for suggestions on how to enhance your course and increase engagement.
FERPA Reminder: It is faculty responsibility to protect student privacy and security online. Have students set up their own accounts. Do not post grades or identifying information. Remind students to use all social media with caution.
Learning Activities Card Set
Before we dive into digital tools, take a few minutes to look through our analog set of 36 learning activities that can be used to enhance lectures and small group learning in class or online. Each idea is briefly described on an index-card. View and print out your own set of cards below.
Padlet
Padlet allows students to post notes, images, or video links to a customizable digital frame. Real-time posts randomly fill the screen and can be organized or rearranged into topics. Students interact by 'liking' or replying to individual posts. Padlet is equally effective when projected on a screen in the classroom, during a synchronous online session, or used asynchronously to collect and organize information over time.
Google Docs
Easy-to-use Google Docs offers many opportunities for students to organize ideas for note-taking, paper-writing, and all kinds of in-class and online collaborations. Try setting up question prompts for different groups. Real-time student inputs are easily saved and shared for a dynamic interactive learning experience.
Google Slides and Pear Deck
Google Slide decks can be used to present content to the class and have students add their own ideas into a single, shared place. Assign each breakout group a slide and have them work directly in the deck. Divide and conquer, and everyone has access to the content created. You can also use the Pear Deck add-on to build interactive questions, formative assessments, and other activities into your slide decks.
Mindmeister
Mindmeister has been around for a number of years and still stands out as one of the better concept mapping tools around. Mindmeister allows you and your students to add text and media while collaborating on sprawling mind maps that help them envision how pieces of content are related to one another.
Timeline JS
Timeline JS allows you or your students to create beautiful timelines with lots of integrations, including video, audio, images, links to other resources, and more. It draws its information from a Google Sheet, so students can collaborate easily while collecting information for the final product. You can then embed your timeline into other sites, like a course blog or LMS.
Trello
A relative newcomer to the the arena of content organization tools, Trello offers a good mix of structure and customization by allowing you to copy and modify a wide array of templates with different purposes. Each board let's you add text, images, links, and videos to 2-sided virtual cards and arrange them as needed. Keep students on task for large projects, play info sorting games, and model effective organization skills while encouraging attention to detail.
Digication/ ePortfolio at Illinois
Make Learning Visible. With Digication, a free ePortfolio tool, students can demonstrate mastery of course concepts by documenting project iterations, reflective writing, and preserving artifacts that tell the visual story of their learning. Easy-to-use creative templates and resources for you and your students. See what it can do for your research and for your teaching.
Jamboard
Google Jamboard is a quick and easy way to encourage interaction and idea sharing. Create one board with a single prompt, or several boards for individual groups to work on simultaneously. Students can quickly post colorful sticky notes with text, images, and web links in real time or asynchronously. Just share the Jamboard link in chat, and voila! Limited additional features allow you to draw, add shapes and comments, and move the notes around. Great fun, and highly effective.
Kialo Edu
Learning to debate effectively is an important skill, but managing debate activities in the classroom (and especially online) can be a challenge. Kialo Edu is a well-designed, and easy to use tool that helps students develop argument trees and engage constructively in online discussions. Set up a prompt and invite students to contribute pros and cons, upvotes, and additional comments that support or challenge other views.
Hypothes.is (Social Annotation)
Ever been frustrated that you couldn't highlight or write notes in the margins of a website like you would a book or handout? Hypothes.is allows users to annotate a body of text directly on the site using a browser plugin. You can set student comments to be publicly visible to other Hypothes.is users, or create private groups for a whole class or specific sections. Students can also comment on annotations, creating opportunities for discussion, debate, and deeper analysis.
Perusall is a new tool that's getting a lot of attention. Similar to Hypothes.is, Persuall allows you to add all course reading materials into a single space where students can comment and annotate in a Facebook like setting. You can upload your own texts (free) or use texts that are available for purchase through Perusall itself.
GroupMe
GroupMe is a simple tool that is most often used for connecting groups of friends, and allowing them to message everyone in the group easily. However, the familiarity and speed of texting makes GroupMe great for connecting groups of students who are studying or working on projects, and may even eliminate the need for breakout groups, as students can quickly text group members without leaving the Zoom room.
Miro
If Jamboard and Padlet don't offer enough features for your needs, you may want to make the jump to Miro. Miro has a larger canvas and a dozen or more possible layouts you can use to jump-start creative collaborations. You can even present a lecture using Miro, moving students from slide to slide and doing group brainstorming activities directly within the presentation. Miro is not entirely free, but instructors can apply for a free educator's account.
Telegra.ph
Sometimes simpler really is better, and it doesn't get any simpler than Telegra.ph. Just click on the weblink and start writing. When you're done, click Publish and a link to that webpage will live forever! Use it online or in the classroom to give different question prompts to different groups, collect notes from breakout sessions, share study questions, and more. We keep figuring out new things to do with this neat little discussion enhancing tool, and you will too.
Vocaroo
Another in the can't-believe-how-easy-this-is camp, Vocaroo is super simple but surprisingly versatile. The link to the website opens with a no-frills red button which you click to begin recording. Use it to enhance online discussion threads, record your impressions, deliver step by step instructions, or detailed feedback on student papers (just don't record their letter/percentage grade.) Then share the recording in multiple ways, including QR code, email, and popular social media sites.
FlipGrid
Simple, free, and accessible. That's their motto, and it's true. Flipgrid was recently overhauled to give it a fresher look and many more features that will appeal to students who are used to popular social media tools. You set up a discussion prompt and share it with the class. Students then record and share short video responses with you and others. They can also create threaded conversations, and do fun things like add text, images, links (and groovy special effects). Well worth exploring if you're tired of ho-hum discussion boards.
Journify
If you're wondering how to get into podcasting, start here. Journify is an audio-journaling tool where students can speak their mind for several minutes to develop ideas, refine arguments, improve language skills, prepare for an interview, or simply relieve themselves of burdensome thoughts. Journify encourages students to develop their voice and tell their stories whether for personal wellness, or for social media.
Campuswire
New to the UI campus, Campuswire offers an alternative to Piazza with similar features and better FERPA compliance. Instructors set up a course space and 'invite' students to post questions or answers, and participate in discussion forums. Supports mathematical formulas and multiple forms of media. A great way to keep students connected to you and to each other. TAs typically monitor the boards and can quickly provide assistance and feedback.
Timelinely
Sometimes a video on its own just isn't enough. Timelinely allows instructors to add text, links, images, audio, and video interludes to a YouTube video through its super-simple interface. Great for students annotating media content, or instructors who want to add resources or commentary to video content.
PlayPosit
PlayPosit is similar to Timelinely, but works seamlessly with Kaltura videos in Compass or Moodle. Increase engagement and retention by embedding question prompts and supplemental information into instructor-produced or other videos. Additional features like branching, threaded discussion, privacy, and accessibility templates have made PlayPosit a popular choice for online courses (and we love the dog logo).
Slack and Discord
These two platforms, often used for business communication and gaming (respectively), allow for more naturalistic discussions. With the ability to create channels on different topics, access in browser and through apps, and the chat-like interface, it's a space that encourages short interjections rather than crafted paragraphs, and makes a large group discussion easier to organize and follow.
Socrative
Socrative is most useful when used consistently. You have a room that students join, and at any point you can push pre-made quizzes to them (or make them more fun by launching them as a "space race" game). Or, for questions that arise naturally in the course of the hour, the "quick question" functionality allows you to push them a prompt to answer it with a single click. Finally, you can also use it for exit tickets at the end of the hour, asking students to reflect on questions or takeaways.
Jeopardy Labs
Not your mother's Jeopardy! This tool offers a library of previously designed games (2 million and counting!) covering a wide range of popular course topics, or you can easily create your own. Games can be played live in the classroom, or synchronously online. Build fluency, practice recall, review for exams. Jeopardy Labs is fun, challenging, and students love it.
Quizlet
On its face, Quizlet is a tool for making and using digital flashcards to study any topic. Where it really impresses, however, is its robust existing library created by other users, which you can borrow from to construct your own decks, as well as the gamified ways Quizlet provided to interact with the study terms. You might try making a suggested study list for Quizlet, or assign students to make and share their own.
Kahoot
Kahoot is the educational successor of those electronic trivia games that reward fast, correct answers with lots of points. You can make your own questions or borrow from existing ones, then use them in a fast-paced synchronous setting or assign them as a take-home challenge. The result? A little light competition drives up energy and engages the group, you get to dramatically announce the winners podium, and commonly missed questions can be revisited and discussed at the end.
Twine
Twine offers you and your students the power to create stories or experiences through linked texts-- sort of like a high-tech choose your own adventure book. You can make something to take students through a process, or assign students to make their own narratives of choices and consequences based on course content. There's no coding experience necessary-- all you need to do to link one part of your narrative to another is a pair of square brackets [[like these]].
Adobe Spark
Do you like this brochure? Make your own with Adobe Spark, one of several free tools provided by media giant, Adobe. With multiple templates to choose from you and your students can create informational pieces, photo collages, social media posts, videos, and slide show presentations. Search the enormous Adobe library of images or import your own. Work alone or collaborate with others. Easy to learn, impressive results. Try it!
Credits:
Created with images by Engin_Akyurt - "coffee caffeine beverage" • MetsikGarden - "color desktop paper" • motointermedia - "balloon dialogue discussion" • 422737 - "highlighter fluorescent pens color"