Skip to McMaster Navigation Skip to Site Navigation Skip to main content
McMaster logo

Faculty of Health Sciences

Learning Technologies Lab

Lecture

There are different technologies and tips to support and develop active and flexible learning experiences in different forms of learning environment.

Having trouble finding the right resource? We can help.

Contact Us

Expandable List

In-Person

  • Consider backup options for any planned in-person activities if increased public health restrictions are imposed. Echo360, Zoom, Audacity, MacVideo and MacDrive are the lecture capture and cloud storage platforms which you could adopt for making the lecture video backup.
  • Recommended to plan lectures virtually or online while offering in-person activities that foster student engagement with tools like Miro, iClicker and Mentimeter.
  • Cohorts: instructors could choose among random assignment of in-class attendance, student sign-up for in-class attendance, or rotating schedules of in-class attendance which can be aligned with mosaic sectioning.
  • Consider the modes of blended learning.

Hybrid Options

Students who are unable to attend in-person lectures/activities must either be supplemented with a synchronous broadcast during the class time or separately recorded instruction.
Synchronous broadcasting technology requirements should be considered:

  • Provided classroom technology directory.
  • Ensure capture of non-lecture components (discussions, activities) and captioning of the recordings by using Zoom. You can also make a reservation in the McPherson Production Studios for video and audio recording.
  • Enable virtual student’s participation with interactive tools like Miro, iClicker and Mentimeter.

Blended learning is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods. It requires the physical presence of both teacher and student, with some elements of student control over time, place, path, or place.

  • Synchronous components: facilitate student-student and student-instructor interaction and build course community
  • Asynchronous components: course activities that benefit from students taking time to carefully consider and analyze content and engage in constructive exchanges like forum discussion on Avenue to Learn or Piazza and email announcements for McMaster Mail.

A learning component that is designed for the online environment. Learning occurs in a completely asynchronous, self-paced manner with instructors guiding students through the learning.

  • Synchronous Learning: Synchronous learning is any activity in a course that happens live in real-time, whether in person or online with Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Use synchronous activities to facilitate student-student and student-instructor interaction and build course community. Tools like iClicker and Mentimeter could be adopted to facilitate the interaction during synchronous learning.
  • Asynchronous Learning: Asynchronous learning is all the other activities in a course that students can complete online, in a self-paced manner, on their own time on LMS (learning manage system) like Avenue to Learn, QUEST, and Piazza. You can design and develop SCORM package with Articulate  and e-book resources with Pressbooks as well which is compatible with many LMS platform. Use asynchronous learning for course activities that benefit from students taking time to carefully consider and analyze content and engage in constructive exchanges.

Resource Listing

POP-UP

Articulate

Articulate 360 is a holistic suite of interconnected apps for all your e-learning needs—from authoring (Storyline, Studio, Rise 360, Replay, and Peek 360) to sourcing assets (Content Library 360) to collaborating (Review 360) to training (Articulate 360 Training).

POP-UP

Audacity

Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

POP-UP

Avenue To Learn

Avenue to Learn is a web-based course management system. It is designed to create a rich online learning environment for learners.

POP-UP

Camtasia

Camtasia is a software package provided by TechSmith that bundles screen, audio and video recording with editing.

POP-UP

Echo360

Echo360 is a lecture capture (with live streaming) and student engagement platform. The system allows instructors to record audio and display.

POP-UP

H5P

H5P helps create and share tich HTML5 content and applications that are mobile-friendly and relatively simple to use.

POP-UP

iClicker

iClicker allows works with your existing content, to encourage an interactive environment during class. This tool prompts students with questions during presentations to test their knowledge while confirming attendance.

POP-UP

MacDrive

MacDrive is a privately hosted, secure, cloud storage solution offering features similar to commercial providers while ensuring that the information and the controls are in the hands of McMaster University.

POP-UP

MacVideo

MacVideo.ca is a service available for hosting and delivery of media files by McMaster faculty and staff for McMaster-related purposes. MacVideo is not intended for media storage or archival purposes.

POP-UP

McMaster Mail

Your McMaster employee email account will be automatically created for you once you become eligible for an account. No action is required to activate it.

POP-UP

McPherson Production Studios

Located on the fifth floor of Mills Library our studios provide a professional media production space for all McMaster faculty and staff. Our studios can provide you with the tools for a DIY approach to developing media content for your online courses, flipped classrooms and other digital learning content.

POP-UP

Mentimeter

Mentimeter is an interactive presentation platform that you can use to engage with and collect feedback from your students both synchronously and asynchronously.

POP-UP

Microsoft Forms

With Microsoft Forms, you can create surveys, quizzes, and polls, invite others to respond to it using almost any web browser or mobile device, see real-time results as they're submitted, use built-in analytics to evaluate responses, and export results to Excel for additional analysis or grading.

POP-UP

Microsoft Powerpoint

Microsoft PowerPoint turns your ideas into compelling presentations using professional-looking templates. With Live presentations in PowerPoint, audience members can see a presentation on their devices and read live subtitles in their preferred language while you speak.

POP-UP

Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream is an Enterprise Video service where people in your organization can upload, view, and share videos securely. You can share recordings of classes, meetings, presentations, training sessions, or other videos.

POP-UP

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a highly collaborative platform and allows students to host and participate in video conferences, share and edit documents together and engage with rich chat functionality.

POP-UP

Miro

Miro is the online collaborative whiteboard platform that enables distributed teams to work effectively together, from brainstorming with digital sticky notes to planning and managing agile workflows.

POP-UP

Piazza

Piazza is a learning management system that allows students to ask questions in a forum-type format. Instructors are able to moderate the discussion, along with endorsing accurate answers.

POP-UP

Pressbooks

Pressbooks’ three products—Directory, Create, and Results for LMS—are designed by and for educators. Together, they form the infrastructure for open publishing.

POP-UP

Zoom

This video conferencing software app allows for easy communication and presentations to others through video, audio, or both.