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Faculty of Health Sciences

Learning Technologies Lab

Interaction

There are different forms of interaction including information searching, discussion through conversation, and immersive exploration with techniques that increase students’ desire and willingness to participate.

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Expandable List

  • Help students identify their learning goals and objectives before they start to explore information online.
  • Provide explicit guidelines and devote class time to discuss the search results and to allow students to get feedback.
  • ePortfolio and Discussions in Avenue to Learn helps facilitate the creation and sharing the information collected in an organized way.
  • Think-Pair-Share is a technique for engaging students in class discussion – even in very large classes. For this technique, the instructor prompts students by providing a question to fuel their thinking and give them some time to indecently think through an appropriate answer before they pair with a classmate to discuss their response. Students are asked to volunteer to share the results of their discussion with larger class, one at a time and receive feedback from the instructor.
  • The ‘10-Second Rule’ is a strategy to encourage student involvement in class discussion. To give students sufficient time to develop an answer to the question they have posed to the class, some instructors silently count to 10 before moving on or providing their own response. It is important to remember that some silence is okay – students need extra time to process and think about the questions before they can formulate a response. Mentimeter is a great tool to engage students in this strategy.
  • Use multiple media for communication to provide alternative media for expression. Such alternatives reduce media-specific barriers to expression among learners with a variety of special needs, but also increases the opportunities for all learners to develop a wider range of expression in a media-rich world. For example, it is important for all learners to learn composition, not just writing, and to learn the optimal medium for any particular content of expression and audience. Compose in multiple media such as text, speech, drawing, illustration, comics, storyboards, design, film, music, dance/movement, visual art, sculpture, or video. Use physical manipulatives (e.g., blocks, 3D models, base-ten blocks). Use social media and interactive web tools (e.g., discussion forums, chats in Zoom, web design, annotation tools like Miro, storyboards, comic strips, animation presentations). Adopted from UDL guidelines UDL: The UDL Guidelines (cast.org)
  • Design social time into your schedule. Plan five minutes before or at the end of a session for “chit chat” to foster connections in the classroom or in ZOOM.
  • Create virtual office hours. Plan for set times when you can be available for interactions with learners as needed by using Avenue to Learn, QUEST or Survey tools like MsForms, and Google Forms. You may also consider broadening this drop-in session to encompass career guidance or other advice.

Resource Listing

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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).

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ePortfolio @ 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.

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Kahoot!

Kahoot! is an interactive presentation platform that delivers engaging learning to learners.

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Linkedin Learning

LinkedIn Learning is an industry leader in online training, with a digital library of over 13,000 courses and videos covering a wide range of technical, business, software and creative topics. Its courses help users to refine professional skills, learn new software, and develop personal skills for success.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Mentimeter

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Zoom

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