Trending Tech includes platforms and software that can be used to enhance your online courses. The Office of Distance Learning provides training on these tools; however, support is provided through the vendor.
Each year, the Instructional Support Team highlights new platforms and technology to explore with faculty.
Past Trending Tech:
Have a tool we should feature? Email us at distancelearning@louisiana.edu so we can learn more.
This year, we're focusing on techniques you can use to humanize your online courses and create a more engaging, supportive, and interactive digital learning environment for students.
By fostering strong relationships, promoting active participation, and providing personalized feedback, you as an instructor can cultivate a sense of community and belonging that mirrors the connections found in traditional classroom settings.
Below are our top 10 techniques for humanizing your courses, with benefits and examples of how you could incorporate them. We’ve included University-supported tools, like Moodle, Microsoft, and our Edutools, that you can use for each technique, along with a few third-party tool options.
The benefits of engaging students with video discussions include enhanced personal communication, the ability to convey non-verbal cues, increased engagement, immediate feedback, community building, and personalized learning.
Examples of ways you can incorporate video discussion into your courses include:
Moodle Forums, Panopto, Microsoft Loop, and Microsoft PowerPoint are all tools students can use to record and/or submit videos.
Student presentations offer several benefits, including increased student engagement, enhanced peer interaction, improved communication skills, a stronger personal connection, the promotion of critical thinking and learning, community building, and greater flexibility and accessibility.
Examples of presentation assignments you can include in your courses include:
Microsoft PowerPoint and Canva are great tools you and your students to create more engaging presentations.
Building opportunities for audience interaction into your courses helps engage students, build community, and allow for personalization.
Examples of ways you can incorporate this interaction include:
Zoom has an interactive survey feature, and Microsoft Forms and Microsoft Loop are two great tools you can use to collect feedback from students and facilitate collaboration, respectively. Moreover, Kahoot is a great game-based learning platform, and Padlet is great for creating virtual boards and sandboxes for collaboration.
Providing your students with videos of yourself speaking enhances their clarity and understanding, shows your flexibility and accessibility, and can help you show your enthusiasm and passion for the course material.
Examples of videos you can incorporate into your courses include:
Panapto, Zoom, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Loop can all be used to create videos of yourself speaking.
Giving your students the opportunity to converse with each other is just as important as giving them the ability to converse with you. Building community helps facilitate collaboration and teamwork, increase engagement, foster a supportive learning environment, give students more flexibility and accessibility, give students an outlet to receive real-time feedback, expose students to diverse perspectives on course material, and allow students to have a record of conversations and information related to the course.
Ways you can create community conversations include:
Microsoft Teams and GroupMe are two great tools your students can use to communicate with each other.
Interactive course content is a great way to enhance engagement, improve retention and understanding, give a personalized learning experience, encourage critical thinking, and increase student motivation and satisfaction.
Examples of interactive content you can incorporate into your courses include:
H5P allows you to create content like this within Moodle.
Providing your students with individualized feedback on assignments helps enhance engagement, improve learning outcomes, boost their confidence and motivation, foster a supportive learning environment, encourage reflective learning, and address individual learning needs.
There are a variety of ways you can provide individualized feedback, including:
Moodle Assessments, including assignments, quizzes, and forums, are great tools for providing feedback. TurnItIn, H5P, and MagicSchool can also help you provide individualized feedback.
Don't just assign group projects; make them work! Group projects can be great for developing collaboration, enhancing critical thinking, introducing students to diverse perspectives, increasing student engagement and accountability, improving students' communication skills, and simulating real-world work environments.
Examples of group project assignments include:
Moodle Groups, Zoom Breakout Rooms, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Loop are all tools you can use to make group projects effective in your classes and help group members collaborate.
Though online classes are generally asynchronous, you can still create opportunities for students to meet with you synchronously! Synchronous meetings can help you build stronger relationships with your students, enhance student understanding and clarity, encourage active participation, facilitate collaboration, and support student emotional well-being.
Examples of synchronous engagement opportunities include:
Zoom and Microsoft Teams are great tools you can use to engage synchronously with your students.
Though you may be a course's instructor, your students can learn a lot from each other, too! Unlocking peer power in your students helps enhance their critical thinking, provides them with diverse perspectives, improves their writing and communication, encourages active engagement in your class, promotes self-reflection, and builds a supportive learning community.
Examples of ways you can unlock peer power include:
Moodle's Workshop tool, Zoom's Whiteboard tool, and Microsoft Loop are great resources you can use to unlock peer power in your students.