Best Practices | Online Learning Tools

Interacting with students and assessing their knowledge acquisition is critical in all learning environments. There are many tools available to faculty that make interaction and assessment engaging and effective. Below is a graphic that outlines various online learning tools and how they can be used in an online course.

	When you want to…	Interaction	Assessment	Learning Objectives	Examples
Discussion Forums	Post topics or questions for students to respond, share information and resources, and discuss asynchronously	Opportunity for high interaction between all course participants if instructor clearly communicates minimum requirements	Can be used as a form of assessment; Provide rubric or grading criteria to students	Discuss, analyze, compare and contrast	Discussions (Canvas LMS), Facebook, VoiceThread
Virtual Meetings/Web Conferences	Communicate synchronously with one or more students with the benefit of video/audio/whiteboard capabilities; have live presentations/lectures by the instructor or student	Visual and audio interaction possibilities with video/web conferencing	Limited assessment capabilities	Present, listen, watch, discuss, speak, meet	Conferences (Canvas), Google Hangouts, Collaborate (Blackboard), Skype
Chat Rooms	Have synchronous communication between multiple people in a text only format	Less formal interaction in real time	Not for assessment	Discuss, clarify, meet	Chat (Canvas), Google Hangouts
Announcements	Send a reminder or give out new information to all students at once	One way communication from teacher to learner	Not for assessment	Recall, remember	Announcements (Canvas), Facebook Group
Blogs	Have students post a chronological series of entries on a topic, make periodic updates on the same page	Each blog page is usually written by a single user or group but made public to the rest of the class for comment	Can be used for assessment	Update, recall, reflect, review	Wordpress, Blogger
Journals	Have students write or reflect throughout the course, record lab results, document clinical experiences	Usually private between the student and instructor, but can be shared for others to read	May be used for assessment by the instructor	Reflect, record, document, communicate	ePortfolio or Assignments (Canvas)
Wiki	Collaborative space where all students can view, contribute, and edit content, create course glossaries and study guides, post text, images, videos, and links	Open for interaction and collaboration between all students and the instructor	Limited assessment capabilities	Brainstorm, plan, write, define, create, post	Pages or Collaborations (Canvas)
Student Groups	Organize students for things like group projects or papers	High interaction among small groups of students	Assignments created as a group can be turned in and assessed	Create, collaborate, discuss, compare and contrast	People (Canvas), Facebook Group
Quizzes	Assess learning with questions	Limited interaction between instructor and student	Designed as an assessment tool	Respond, recall, identify, label	Quizzes (Canvas)
ePortfolio	Have students collect evidence, artifacts, or document learning for long term storage	Individual work that may be shared with others	May be used for assessment, formative or summative	Document, collect, assemble	ePortfolios (Canvas)