Overview of Tools for Learning and Teaching

There are a number of tools and resources available to faculty and students to accomplish their learning and teaching goals. The follow graphic shows the major components of our technology landscape. Below is a more detailed list of software organized by it's most common use. Because of the large number of specialized tools, this page contains only the most widely used and adopted tools across the College. For information about discipline or faculty specific tools please contact your Academic Technology & Consulting Liaison.

The Technology Landscape

The center of our academic tools and resources is Canvas, our learning management system. It provides the core resources which are supplemented with other tools in a hub and spoke model.

  • Canvas provides for material distribution tools (syllabus, modules, reading links), conversation tools (blogs, wikis, journals), assessment tools (assignments, quizzes, exams), and a number of course maintenance tools (gradebook, attendance).
  • Microsoft Teams and Zoom provide for synchronous course meeting as well as recording and closed captioning. These are supplemented with Panopto for video distribution and asynchronous recording of lecture material with Panopto or QuickTime. Teams and Zoom also provide a number of tools for use while in a synchronous session (whiteboards and breakout rooms).
  • For collaborative documents, the Microsoft Office suite and Google Docs are available.
  • For specialized needs Jupyter (Python and R), The Adobe CS Suite, ESRI ArcGIS, and a number of other software titles are provided. More details on these are listed below.

Tools and Resources By Common Use

Note: Additional software products will be added.

Accessible Course Materials  

  • Blackboard Ally 
  • Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint accessibility checker  
  • Acrobat Writer

Assessment  

  • Canvas Assignments Tool
  • Canvas Quizzes and Exam Tool
  •  Canvas Gradebook

Annotation  

  • Adobe Acrobat - PDF markup and annotation
  • Hypothesis - social annotations

Communication  

  • Canvas Announcements Tool
  • Canvas Inbox/Email Tool
  • Class Email Lists  
  • Microsoft Teams 

Course Management  

  • Canvas Learning Management System (LMS)  
  • Microsoft Bookings - for office hours  
  • Panopto - create video playlists and video drop-boxes  
  • LinkedIn Learning  - supplemental materials

Discussion  

  • Canvas Discussion Boards
  • Microsoft Teams Chat  
  • Zoom Breakout Rooms  
  • Zoom Chat  
  • FlipGrid  
  • WordPress    

Document Collaboration  

  • Microsoft OneDrive  - sharing documents and files
  • Microsoft Teams  - general collaboration and communication
  • Office 365 Word, Excel, PowerPoint  - live collaboration on documents

General Software  

  • Microsoft Office Suite – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote  
  • Adobe CS Suite  –  Photoshop , Acrobat, Spark, Premiere, Audition

Mapping / GIS  

  • ESRI ArcGIS (via AWS Workspace if on macOS)  
  • ArcGIS Online  

Peer Review  

  • Canvas Discussion Boards
  • Microsoft Word – using track changes and comments    

Podcasting  

  • Adobe Audition  
  • Audacity - recording and editing sound files  

Polling / Student Response

  • Zoom  Polling
  • Poll Anywhere (limited availability)
  • Microsoft Forms  
  • Qualtrics  

Reference Management  

  • EndNote  
  • Zotero  

Statistics & Mathematics  

  • Jupyter / JupyterHub – interactive Python and R  notebooks
  • RStudio Server - R  
  • SPSS (via AWS Workspace if on macOS)  
  • Mathematica 
  • Matlab  (via AWS Workspace if on macOS)  

Video Creation  / Production

  • Panopto - screen capture, creating asynchronous video , editing, adding quizzes
  • QuickTime - screen capture, creating asynchronous video  
  • Adobe Premiere and Premiere Rush  - video production and editing
  • iMovie   - video production and editing
  • Final Cut - video production and editing (limited off-campus availability)
  • Microsoft Streams  - video storage and distribution

Web Conferencing / Meetings  

  • Zoom  
  • Microsoft Teams    

Websites  

  • WordPress  
  • Adobe Spark  
  • Spark Page (Mobile App)  
  • ArcGIS Story Maps    

Whiteboards  / Brainstorming

  • Zoom Whiteboard  
  • Microsoft Whiteboard    

Wikis, Journals, and Blogs  

  • Canvas Learning Management System
  • WordPress
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Flipgrid is a video conversation app that allows you to pose a questions and gather responses as short video clips
Padlet is an online virtual “bulletin” board, where students and teachers can collaborate, reflect, share links and pictures, in a secure location. Padlet can be integrated within Canvas.