Blended Learning Tools for Teaching

Brightspace Course Shell

Your course shell (Brightspace by D2L) has supported tools to engage your students in discussion, embed videos and quiz your students.  

To better use these supported tools, please contact Courses@Ryerson  to learn more about engaging students with Brightspace. 

Disclaimer

The following tools can be used in the classroom and you can link to them from your course shell.  However, these are only suggested tools and are not supported by Ryerson University and RULA.  

*Please note that many of these tools require you to give information like your name, University affiliation and email address. Please read their terms and conditions before providing this information. 

Accessibility

Please be aware that the tools listed here are not necessarily accessible for all of your students. For more information please see Accessibility in the Classroom. 

Kahoots

• Faculty can create quizzes and play them in class with students
• Students require electronic device (computer, laptop, phone)
• Free for faculty and students, faculty are required to create an account.

Jeopardy (from Factile)

• Create a Jeopardy-like quiz game to test student comprehension.
• Students play as a team, no computer, laptop or phone required
• Free for faculty and students, faculty are required to create an account. 

H5P Make your own Game

• Create Quiz, Memory, Drag and Drop Games directly on H5P website
• Embed link into course
• Free but faculty sign up required

Twine

• Create interactive choose our own adventure stories
• No coding required, output is in HTML
• Requires download

*Other examples like Twine 

Poll everywhere

• Online service for classroom response systems.
• Students require electronic device (computer, laptop or phone)
• Basic (up to 40 students) is free,  Pricing available for larger classrooms

Tophat

• Online service for student response, quizzes, attendance and more.
• Students require electronic device (computer, laptop or phone)
• Pricing available per term or annual 

Formative

• Free online response system, classwork and homework 
• Students require electronic device (computer, laptop or phone)
• Free for faculty and students, requires registration for faculty and students

Flipgrid

• Video response platform for discussions. Students respond to prompts and each other with short videos
• Can be embedded into Brightspace (D2L)
• One Discussion board is free, pricing available for unlimited discussion boards. Requires registration for faculty and students

Google Docs

• Share a Doc with your class to elicit responses in real time

Google Hangouts

• Create a video discussion for small groups of 25, includes screen sharing
• Free to all Faculty and students at Ryerson

SLACK

• Team communication, including channels, great for project management
• Free version for students, requires registration 

Trello

• Assign tasks, perfect workflow, includes project visualization 
• Free for students, requires registration

Diigo

• Annotate Webpages and online PDF's, Save and tag your online resources, Shareable
• Free, online registration 

Hypothesis

• Annotate webpages - discuss, collaborate, organize your research, or take personal notes.
• Free, online registration 

Make your Own Videos

 Guides to Video Production from Seneca College Libraries.

Creating Educational Videos 

How to Find Free Images 

H5P

• Create interactive videos and presentations
• Use H5P interface to create or embed into Moodle, Drupal etc.,
• Requires sign up.

​Tech Smith Products

• Camtasia (Video Editor)
• Snag It (Screen Capture) 
• Free trials available, Pricing varies by product

Screencast-0-Matic

• Online screen recorder for Windows and Mac 
• Free, but limited functions

• Short powerful talks under 18 minutes

• Build a lesson around a TedX talk 
• Ted Education Short Videos

• Curio
  • Educational content from CBC and CBC radio programs 
• Kanopy 
  • Films range from documentaries, indie and foreign films, must-see classics and blockbuster movies.
• NFB
  • Canadian films, animation and documentaries from the National Film Board
• Plus more

• Lynda
  • Available to all FCAD students, and Ryerson staff and faculty, Lynda.com is a premier online learning company that produces high-quality video tutorials led by industry experts on a range of topics. Use these tutorials to update and expand your technology, creative and business skills.

Pre Learning / Quick Review Tutorials

You can provide the following tools to help your students refresh their prior knowledge or to quickly learn a new subject area.  

• Kahn Academy
  • Math
  • Science & Engineering
  • Computing 
  • Some Arts and Humanities

• Open University:
  • Based in the UK, this organization offers free short courses 
  • All Subject Areas

• Open Learning Initiative:
  • Science
  • Engineering
  • Math
  • English as a Second Language
  • A grant-run group at Carnegie Mellon that offers free online courses to students as well as course materials to instructors at any institution.

• MIT Open Courseware:
  • Web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content free to the public.  OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.  

• Open Yale Courses:
  • Web-based publication of lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses free to the public.
  • History
  • English
  • Philosophy
  • Arts and Humaities
  • Some Science 

• Duolingo
  • Free language learning program, uses tiny micro-lessons to master language proficiency