COVID-19: Increasing Support for Online Teaching

Teach With Technology

From tweeting in the classroom to submitting online grades, technology is becoming a more integrated part of teaching at the University.  Technology can help improve course management, increase classroom engagement, interact with students not on campus, talk with authors and other professionals outside the university, post grades, and identify struggling students.  To lean more, browse through the topics below.

Student Engagement and Collaboration

There are a number of technologies available to increase student engagement in the classroom.  Clickers or audience response devices are a common way to get information from the student about how well they are doing with course material, and give the teacher feedback on how well the students are following along.  Google docs/apps, Box, and the ELMS group space are great ways to allow for groups to collaborate in class and out of class.

Course management, grades and rosters

The University of Maryland using an enterprise learning management system (ELMS) provided by Canvas as the university course management system.  All courses at the university automatically have an ELMS space created for them, but it is up to you as to how you want to use this in your course.  ELMS allows for online submissions, dissemination of grades in a way that is FERPA compliant, group work, peer review, online quizzes, group discussion, and even integration of outside tools such as Piazza, YouTube, and Ted-Ed.  To submit course grades and print out course rosters (with pictures), you will need to log into a separate system, UMEG.

Recording Technology

There are several University-supported technologies to help you and your students record video and audio.  Free technologies for video recording include Jing (5 mins or less of screen capture), Panopto (lecture recording),  and Adobe Premiere Pro (though the creative cloud software package).  Camtasia is available through the university at a reduced rate and allows you to record, edit, insert powerpoint, zoom and more.  Campas Pack Podcasts and VoiceThread are great for audio recording and are free through the university.

Presentation Technology

There are several different types of software that can be used for presentations.  Some of the most popular are Microsoft Powerpoint and Apple's Keynote; however, Microsoft products are free through the University.  Prezi is a popular, free, online tool that allows for students to make collaborative presentations that are non-linear, and Google Slides also allows for free online collaboration.  Also Haiku Deck is a visual way to do a presentation and stay on time for presentation, although it is less popular.