(IMAESCII516) Online tools you can use for teaching adults online (with personal annotations)
(Warning...Long Read!)
Are you transitioning
your career to becoming an adult educator? Did you wonder how adult educators
were able to curate engaging, interesting and transformative online learning and
teaching resources?
Here is a compilation of an annotated list of tools you can begin using and exploring to create new materials for your current and future classes. Kindly note that as these technologies will continue to evolve and re-iterate, the functionalities and product versions will also change as well. It would be important to take these reviews with a grain of salt and check the information on their respective websites from time to time.
I will categorise my list based on specific functionalities and tasks. Let me know if you were able to explore some of these tools and how did you find working with them in the comments section below.
For Assessments, Quizzes and Gauging Learning
Developed for use within the National University of Singapore (NUS) community, Archipelago supports real-time collation of feedback and responses, enables team collaboration, peer learning and question raising effectively. It supports 6 question types and generates a PDF report to compile the interaction of each session, assisting teachers to revise their presentation for future classes.
Subscription: Exclusive to NUS
Many universities, including my employer uses ExamSoft platform for assessments in our graduate and post-graduate modules and especially for take-home exams. This is good especially if you are looking for a secured platform for conducting various types of exams, including open-book or closed book examinations (they will block internet for closed-book exams). Both text and non-text type of assessments can be created in this platform.
Subscription: Enterprise-level
Allows you to make surveys via a secured platform and can be stored in your personal Google drive account. The responses could be exported into different formats (e.g. MS Excel, etc.). Text-based responses are also available for essay/text-based responses. This can be utilized effectively with the Google Suite platform. I use this more often for my academic and even corporate-related surveys.
Subscription: Free with Google account.
Learning games are now becoming more and more exciting. Thanks to platforms like Kahoot which introduces multiple choice trivia, quiz, or refresher games. A game PIN is being given to the class to access the platform. Once done, participants answer series of questions (timed or untimed) and results could be ready in a flash. Using the platform for games would be good. However, note that some learners including myself would not appreciate timed questions and would not like the idea that the participant who gets the correct answer the fastest time get a higher point over some who responded correctly at a later time.
Subscription: More features for paid and Enterprise-level subscriptions.
Another convenient real-time feedback app that could make your presentations and events livelier. It provides you a code for different kinds of survey questions you prepare (multiple choice, binary questions, Likert-type scale questions, etc.). Free features are already powerful enough just by using a code educators give to the class during the session. However, you will not be able to download the responses in a free account. Therefore you may need to purchase paid accounts as well. I personally like to use this platform for my presentations and games.
Subscription:
My current employer uses Poll Everywhere as a way to host interactive meetings by soliciting real-time feedback during online classes and learning events. This is a subscription-based platform, which allows one to embed the polling questions and aggregate responses in the powerpoint presentations. Highly recommended for universities and institutions for their large-scale learning activities.
Subscription:
One of the few survey tools which first entered the market, it has established itself to be one of the world’s largest survey platform provider for academic, business and instructional use. Basic plan is free. However, it will only allow one to create specific numbers of surveys and use limited number of questions as well. If you have large number of classes, then you may like to explore purchasing some of their user and corporate packages.
Subscription: Free. More features for paid and Enterprise-level subscription.
For Blogging
My personal learning blog is created using the Blogger platform. I like the new interface and the user friendliness. However, it does not allow me to create or upload huge videos so I have to save my video projects through Youtube and link it there. Nevertheless, I still like this platform and will keep using it.
Subscription: Free
If you are familiar with Wordpress, then this is the version designed for educators with technical support provided. Look for my classmate, Sadia’s blog published in this platform. Just by looking at it, it seems that the functionality is very adaptive to educators’ needs. I will for sure explore this one.
Subscription: Free
For Capturing Screenshots
This for me is the perfect screen capture software. When the version was still free, I was able to capture screenshots instantaneously and use the captured screenshot for presentations. However, the old free version is not able to capture synchronous/live sessions very clearly. I think you need to purchase the new version (for one-time price). I have not tried purchasing the new version but I may consider it in the future.
Subscription: One-time fee required.
For Conducting Synchronous and Live Virtual Sessions
No more explanation provided. Especially at the time of COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has revolutionized the teaching, events, and conferencing platforms available in the market. Basic account gives you up to 40 minutes session. An enterprise account will give you more access to essential conferencing and classroom management features. Also, specific concerns such as maintaining virtual security was put into question several months back. I wonder whether they have resolved those issues already. I am sure they did.
You can also save the link of completed sessions with translations to be used for your asynchronous sessions.
Subscription:
For Classroom and Learning Management
MS Teams allows one to create classes and activities, prepare online class notebooks and assessments. My personal issue with this is that it may not come as user-friendly for many non-technology savvy teachers and learners like me. My suggestion is to take time to learning this platform until you reach a comfortable level of using the platform before creating any classes to it.
Subscription: Free. More features for paid and Enterprise-level subscriptions.
My IMAESC programme modules for this semester has their course learning sites created in the Moodle platform. It is an open source platform designed for synchronous and asynchronous sessions, and is utilised widely by schools, universities and training institutions globally. It has a user-friendly interface in my opinion. However, the potential of the platform for conducting sessions still needs to be explored. I think it needs more time to build familiarity with the platform before a learner is able to adapt to it. Our next assignment in this module will be using Moodle, so I am excited again to explore this further.
Subscription: More features for paid and Enterprise-level subscriptions.
For Content Development, Authoring and Brainstorming
This is a free and relatively user-friendly e-learning authoring tool that creates fully responsive multi-device, HTML-5 e-learning content. It also requires no programming skills for content creators and materials developed can be accessible to any device.
Subscription: Free
Their freeware version
(v 2.4) would be ideal if you are looking for a free version to start crafting
your content using ready-to-use modifiable templates. The interface is
relatively user and can be compared to Powerpoint allowing users to focus on
easily creating content. Existing powerpoint presentations can also be uploaded
in the platform. In terms of assessments however, the testing capabilities involves
only simple selection techniques (e.g. true or false, multiple choice, matching
type questions). Essays and other forms of assessment may not necessarily be
compatible in this platform at the moment.
Subscription: Free. Version 2.7 is a paid subscription.
I used this
platform for creating a mindmap with my classmate, Justyna. It allows multiple users to edit the file. It can also be installed for your Google
Chrome as an extension. I don’t know if it just me, but I felt that there are
some features which could still be improved (being able to edit another’s
collaborators’ content, making the interface buttons more intuitive, etc.). But
this is still a good start for making your mindmapping sessions for your
content.
Subscription: Free. Check the mindmap me and Justyna created here.
Padlet is a
tool for effectively listing down your ideas, workflow, references and content.
It will also help you in crafting an effective storyboard with visuals since each
padlet will allow you to add visuals such as pictures and links to online
references. However, the free version only allows you to have only up to 3 free
padlets and you need to upgrade to Pro Plan (£10 per month; or £96
annually).
Subscription:
Free (up to 3 padlets). More features available if you subscribe. Price was based on 1 November pricing.)
This is an Open
Source authoring application that aims to help educators in publishing their web
content without the need for learning programming languages. Once the content
is available, it can be published into simple self-contained web-pages.
Subscription: Open Source
TedEd is a tool
that allows teachers create video-based lessons around TED talks and other
videos available. Educators can also make their own TED-talk video sessions to
increase engagement of the students.
Subscription: Paid subscription.
The platform
allows user to create storyboard blocks using materials that can be drawn from
various online channels such as YouTube, Google and other multimedia teaching
databases available. The blocks can also be rearranged to customize the content
and order of the materials when presenting to various groups. You can even add
quiz and evaluations and allows to track your students’ responses and comments.
If you are looking to create shorter learning videos this might be the appropriate
place to start crafting content.
Subscription: Free. More features available if you subscribe.
For Creating Learning Videos
Camtasia is an easy-to-use video editor to create professional-looking videos. You can record your screen and edit videos as well. I was able to record around 5 fun videos using their free platform before. I wonder if I could do more with enhanced features from the version which came out lately.
Subscription: Free. More features for paid and Enterprise-level subscriptions.
PowerPoint has an audio recording
option to allow you to record and narrate slide by slide. Good for professors and educators who are beginning their journey in crafting online videos using existing
presentation materials.
Subscription:
Free
Panopto
captures whatever is displayed on your computer screen and educators could add
their narration as they screen navigates to another content. It can be user-friendly for some. However, I did test this first on smaller-scale videos to gain its familiarity.
Subscription:
Enterprise-level
Although I knew
before that Prezi has changed the powerpoint presentations are made, I would
like to underscore how I made a learning video together with my classmate, Justyna.
We were able to record our video and add some related content/script to our
video. After which, we were able to embed this into vimeo. Nevertheless, since
this is a premium feature, we are only able to access this for a few days.
Subscription: Free to a certain period. More features for paid and Enterprise-level subscriptions.
For Note Taking
I personally
find this note-taking app the most useful for me. I can create course notebooks for each of my modules.
Within the notebook, I can create session folders to make my note taking more
systematic and organised. This is highly recommended for graduate students like me. I also appreciate that
the notes can also be sent to one's email if you would like to share this with your
classmates.
Subscription:
Free
Our 'Teaching Adults Online' by Dr. Andreas Kollias (Open University of Cyprus) is managed using a learning management platform. In the past it is usually pencil and paper, and grades were recorded in our class cards. Since then, learning online changed completely. (Screenshot by McRhon)
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