Tools & didactics

Before creating a course in Canvas, or choosing tools to facilitate activities in your education, you will probably think about what you want your students to achieve. In other words, what are the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) of the course? Based on these ILOs, you will choose which teaching and learning activities (TLAs) suit your course best.

Subsequently, you will decide how to organise these activities, taking into account conditions such as your students’ study location (online/offline), your role as lecturer or monitor, and how the assessment will take place. It is during this stage that you typically choose didactic tools to use in your course.

For projects or support on course (re)design you can turn to EDLAB, Maastricht University’s institute for educational innovation.

Videos on didactics and organisation of online education

For those interested in didactics and organisation of online collaboration & group dynamics (e.g. with Canvas), find here several videos the EDLAB created together with the Canvas team.

Providing online lectures or tutorials

Online and face-to-face education can be quite different. You need to rethink your lectures and tutorials. Some tips we think are useful:

  • When using a video conferencing tool, try to shorten your lectures and tutorials to an hour or less, and replace parts of live interaction with short videos and online written discussion.
  • On the video support page you can find more on video recording tools, UM support per faculty and studios at UM, as well as a step-by-step instruction for making a video.
  • For organizing asynchronous education in Canvas, go to the UM Canvas training modules, or watch  UM Canvas theme webinars.

When all education went online due to the COVID pandemic, a team of educational technologists created tips and tricks to help teachers and students prepare for effective interaction during live tutorials and lectures with any video conferencing tool, and for effective asynchronous online learning. Feel free to download and share.

 

Apps & tools

The library hosts several tools for education which are summed up in the Apps&Tools overview. Use this list as an entrance to information about a specific app or tool, sometimes embedded in a specific context or connected to a service or support offer.

Tool wheel

Use the Tool wheel to help you find out what online tools are available in the context of several educational scenarios.

Depending on the goal, e.g. more interaction with or between your students, integrating skills like peer review or peer assessment, or co-creation and collaborative knowledge building, the wheel offers information on the tool as well as on instructional design within the context of your program.

Toolbox for students

The toolbox offers an overview of tools available to students. The information is a combination of a short summary of a tool and an explanation of an “I want to…”.