Chapter 7. Educational Technology

As the previous chapters make clear, instructors make many decisions that require careful consideration. This is equally important with the use of educational technology. The opportunities to integrate digital tools are quite vast for a college instructor, and can be overwhelming for someone who’s just beginning to explore these choices. Whether and how you choose and combine tools depends on your course goals, your comfort with technology, the digital access available to your students and on your campus, and ethical considerations about the implications of the tools at your disposal. In this section, we’ll discuss how you and your students can use educational technology in ways that will enhance student learning, with particular attention to the ethical and privacy implications of your choices.

Chapter Outline

Selecting Technologies for Teaching

Fostering Digital Literacy

Digital Teaching Platforms at CUNY

Learning Management Systems: D2L Brightspace & Blackboard

Open Platforms at CUNY

Teaching & Generative AI

Accessibility and Educational Technology

Online and Hybrid Courses

Ethics of Educational Technologies

Student Data and Privacy

FERPA & Student Information

Pairing Pedagogical Approaches & Digital Tools

Collaborative Writing

Annotation and Collaborative Reading

Mapping and Timelines

Video Recording

Audio Recording

Polling/Quizzing

Team Chat/ Group work

Whiteboard/Animation

Math Platforms (open source and free to use)

Selecting Technologies for Teaching

As you start planning your course you should think about the ways you’ll share course content and communicate with your students, and how you might like to incorporate digital tools to increase access, foster community, and facilitate assignments.

Ask yourself the following questions to help clarify your comfort level and goals for using educational technology:

How comfortable am I with . . .

• new tools?
• fielding technical questions from my students?
• organizing digital spaces?

Do I want to use technology to . . .

• share course content and information with my students?
• facilitate conversations beyond the classroom?
• create a record of what’s happened in the course?
• integrate open resources into my teaching?
• help students acquire a digital skill?
• create a public-facing project?

There is no correct answer to the question of how much digital technology you should use in your classes. Though it may be best to start with one or two tools you feel comfortable using, and build up from there. Usually courses do not require the use of 4 or more tools. Moreover,  classes with few digital tools can be effective, as can those that integrate several tools, and this holds true across the disciplines. The key is to integrate digital tools into your teaching intentionally and purposefully.

Let’s consider an introductory history or literature course where you may ask your students to…

• do a significant amount of reading and perhaps some limited research;
• write short informal papers and longer, higher-stakes papers;
• participate in class discussions;
• attend lectures; and
• complete assessments such as quizzes or exams.

It’s possible to integrate digital technology in each of these instructional moments in ways that can enhance the experience of your course for both you and your students. Digital tools can help you easily distribute reading materials and other artifacts to your students, while facilitating the storing and organizing of those materials for later revisiting and reuse during or across semesters, or across classes. Delivering materials via digital platforms can also facilitate the easy integration of open-access, openly licensed, and primary source materials into the course.

Additionally, asking students to write in a networked, digital space (such as a blog) encourages them to imagine a range of audiences and gives them practice producing multi- and mixed-media compositions. The resulting archive of your class’s reflections can be useful as students are reviewing for exams, constructing longer pieces of writing, or revisiting the work of the class in subsequent years. Networked digital spaces also provide the instructor with a great opportunity to assess what’s worked and what hasn’t over the course of a semester.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence since 2023 has significantly impacted the ways that many students are engaging with information and course material, and producing their own work. We address generative AI down below, but know that this is a swiftly moving conversation and information environment. The Teaching and Learning Center has multiple initiatives through which faculty and students can engage with the questions raised by  artificial intelligence tools; see our Teach@CUNY AI Toolkit and follow our Critical AI Literacy Institute for more.    

Fostering Digital Literacy

Selecting digital tools to teach with also offers an opportunity to consider how your course might foster students' digital skills and information literacy. For example: What digital skills or tools are common in your discipline? How might your course build students' capacity to use digital tools for research, or analyze information sources online?  Working with students to build their digital and information literacy is a worthwhile use of class time and may be considered a learning goal for the course itself, no matter the discipline.

Consider students’ limitations too. All students are not “digital natives” who will easily acclimate to using all kinds of technologies in the class. Consider how you can scaffold tools into the course to give students time to learn new processes and troubleshoot issues. Moreover, CUNY students may have irregular access to the web, may be able to access the web only via devices that have data limits, or may be relying entirely on services provided by the school for access to technology. Thinking about how you will teach students digital literacy skills will help you then make more informed choices about the tools you deploy in your classes; doing so will allow you to pass on a critical sensibility about using digital tools to your students.

Digital Teaching Platforms at CUNY

Digital tools influence how you deliver course content and how students engage with your course beyond the classroom walls. They can also inform how students in your course interact with the broader world, and may help foster the development of communities inside and outside the classroom. When choosing a platform to host your course, consider the affordances of the platform, what it allows you to do with content, what the platform can offer students and how these possibilities map onto the learning goals for your course.

Below is an introduction to some of the institutionally-supported educational technology platforms at CUNY.

Learning Management Systems: D2L Brightspace & Blackboard

From Spring 2023 to Fall 2025 CUNY migrated their learning management systems (LMS) from the Blackboard to D2L Brightspace. Similar to Blackboard, starting in the 2025-2026 academic year, Brightspace “course shells” are automatically created for every CUNY course. This means that as the professor assigned to the course, you will be able to see and edit your course when logged in to Brightspace. Similarly, when students log into Brightspace, they will see a list of courses in which they have enrolled for the semester (see note below).

Please note: students will only be able to view your course if you make the course active through the Course Admin settings. Brightspace is centrally supported and managed through CUNY’s Office of Academic Affairs (OAA), though dedicated staff on each campus offer localized support. To learn more about these platforms or for support using them, contact your teaching campus IT department.

Brightspace offers a digital platform to set up and host course content, facilitates discussion boards, assignment submissions, quizzes and tests, and offers a gradebook. Brightspace also offers a video conferencing tool called Virtual Classroom (found in “Existing content”) in order to set up virtual meetings through the platform, though many faculty use Zoom to host online class sessions and/or virtual office hours. Importantly, Brightspace also integrates a tool called Ally, which can help faculty make course materials accessible to all learners.

Using an LMS offers ease of setup for faculty and familiarity for students but Brightspace is a “siloed” environment, meaning course content and student work is only accessible to participants and instructors in the course, for a limited period of time. This siloed environment offers students and the instructors privacy, but it also means that students cannot share their work beyond the course and the class cannot do work with and for a public audience. Learning Management System platforms like Brightspace offer minimal customizability, have a rigid information architecture, and typically restrict students’ access to course materials to the semester in which they are enrolled in the course.

There are, however, options at CUNY for faculty who want to engage with their students in more flexible, adaptive, and open environments (while still having the option to work in private or public, depending on the learning goals).

Open Platforms at CUNY

At CUNY there is a robust network of open source platforms developed by and for CUNY faculty and staff to facilitate teaching with technology. The Graduate Center has developed two of these, which are available to everyone at CUNY: the CUNY Academic Commons and Manifold. These platforms offer similar functionality to the LMS: faculty can post course materials, students can write in a variety of ways, and the sites can act as the digital “headquarters” for the course, directing students to course content, projects, and activities.

But these open platforms also have affordances which are distinct from what’s offered by the LMS, including the ability to write for private, semi-public, and public audiences and developing opportunities for interaction between courses and communities; the ability to revisit or build upon work from previous semesters; and fully functional hypertextuality, allowing faculty and students to harness the networked capacities of the Internet, and integrate a variety of digital tools, within the context of their courses. These platforms are also built on digital systems and frameworks that students will encounter after their time at CUNY, and can help facilitate the development of transferable digital skills and literacies.      

Free and open source platforms are deeply connected to OER initiatives at CUNY, and facilitate open education practices in ways the LMS cannot (for example, by allowing course work and materials to be public). Open platforms like Manifold and the CUNY Academic Commons prioritize user privacy and afford faculty and students greater control over their intellectual contributions. Both also offer documentation to support instructors in the creation of open and accessible course materials. Open platforms seek to protect data produced by faculty and students who use them, and have documentation to support faculty in the creation of accessible course websites. 

The CUNY Academic Commons

The CUNY Academic Commons, a WordPress teaching and learning platform developed at the Graduate Center, is being used by faculty in a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses across CUNY. Courses can be hosted on the Commons via a course website, a course group, or both. Sites and groups offer varying affordances that will facilitate different pedagogical approaches. Faculty have used WordPress/CUNY Commons in place of and in conjunction with Blackboard. To explore open courses on the CUNY Academic Commons, visit the “Courses” tab on the Commons homepage.

A word about WordPress: Several platforms throughout CUNY run on an open-source web framework called WordPress. WordPress is a web-based publishing platform that, when used in college courses, can facilitate a variety of writing and multi-modal assignments and can help faculty harness the power of networks in and across their teaching. WordPress easily integrates a variety of web applications in ways that empower students and instructors to take full advantage of the open web, while also offering granular privacy and design controls that allow educators to build the kinds of digital teaching and learning spaces they want.

Campus-Specific WordPress Platforms

• Blogs@Baruch

• Description: Blogs@Baruch is an open-source WordPress/BuddyPress platform for students, faculty, and staff at Baruch College. It enables any members of the Baruch community to create individual, group, or course websites and groups.

• CityTech OpenLab

• Description: OpenLab is an open-source WordPress/BuddyPress platform for students, faculty, and staff at  City Tech. The platform supports teaching and learning, and enables connection and collaboration across the college.

• BMCC OpenLab

• Description: BMCC OpenLab is powered by Commons In A Box OpenLab provides a WordPress teaching and learning platform for faculty, students, and staff at BMCC.                        

Manifold

The Graduate Center, in partnership with Cast Iron Coding and the University of Minnesota Press, has developed Manifold, an intuitive, collaborative platform for scholarly publishing and social annotation. Using Manifold, instructors can publish dynamic course editions of public domain texts and OER along with supplementary notes, files, images, videos and interactive content in a single project, and it supports collaborative annotations that allow students to “meet” in the margins of your texts.

Teaching & Generative AI

Generative AI systems like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Claude have emerged as powerful tools that can both support and disrupt teaching and learning across disciplines. A good starting point for instructors is to experiment with these tools and assess their capabilities, limitations, and potential applications within CUNY’s educational context. The TLC’s Teach@CUNY AI Toolkit recommends that instructors consider how these tools impact not only teaching methods but student learning processes, and to pose critical questions about which pedagogical opportunities AI might enable and which learning practices it might shortcut or undermine.

When approaching generative AI in the classroom, instructors should consider policies that find balance between uncritical acceptance and outright prohibition. Course policies traditionally designed to police student behavior can stunt creativity and community and strain teacher-student relationships; instead, instructors might articulate approaches that promote student self-advocacy and a growth mindset. This requires thoughtful reflection about how AI tools might support students at different stages of their learning process, while critically questioning whether and how to revise activities or assignments in response to its disruptions. The most effective policies often emerge from open discussions with students about their actual rather than assumed uses of AI technology, paired with class time devoted to developing students' critical awareness of these tools within a warm and supportive learning environment. Lastly, instructors should recognize that effective AI policies will evolve iteratively as both the technology and our understanding of its educational impacts mature over time.

Accessibility and Educational Technology

All faculty must be mindful of and vigilant about making their courses accessible. This has significant implications for your choice of educational technology. Your teaching campus has an office that provides services for students with disabilities, which may or may not have expertise in educational technology. In your syllabus you should alert students to the services available through the campus accommodations office and also encourage students to discuss their access needs with you if they are comfortable doing so.

Not all disabilities are visible, and necessary accommodations may be different from student to student. With mindfulness and a commitment to inclusivity, faculty members must make sure their courses and assignments are accessible, and that all students with particular needs get the support that they require in order to participate fully in the course.  

Some students may be visually impaired or may have auditory impairments that can present barriers to engaging with multimedia content. However, this does not mean that you should strike audio and video content from your course. Instead, make sure that all of your course content is accessible in multiple modalities. Multiple access points and types make it easier for all students to engage with course content.

Making your course accessible will include but is not limited to:

• Readings: Ensure all readings and PDFs are equipped with Optical Character Recognition [OCR] so that the readings can be read by a screen reader device. Campus accessibility offices can provide guidance for OCR-ing readings.
• Multimedia: Offer captioning on all video content and live-captioning functionality on video conferencing platforms. Provide transcripts for audio content (e.g. podcasts).
• Images: Ensure all pertinent digital images are captioned and have “alt text”, which provides a description of the image.
• Keyboard Navigation: Use digital platforms and tools that can be navigated with keyboard navigation and accessed on any kind of device (phone, tablet, etc.).
• Colors: Do not use color coding to convey information and ensure that any webpages or digital platforms meet minimum color contrast requirements.
• Prep: Plan to share slides and resources with students before or after the class session so they can return to the content and work through it at their own pace as needed.

For more details, see our Accessibility Quick Guide.

Faculty should keep in mind that some CUNY students may have limited access to computers and high-speed internet at home. Many students use tablets and smartphones to keep up with work, often completing reading assignments on their commutes. Faculty should ensure that the web platforms and digital tools they decide to use for the course are “responsive,” meaning that they are accessible and legible on various devices.

Some faculty are uncomfortable with students using their laptops or phones in in-person classes. Keep in mind that students may be using assistive technology devices to take notes, or to record the class session for study use. For some students, using a technology with which they are familiar and comfortable may actually make it easier for them to pay attention and follow the conversation. If you are concerned about students being distracted by their laptops or phones, or participating in conversations unrelated to the class, consider integrating active learning opportunities into the session.

Developing an accessible course also requires instructors to consider how we frame dis/ability in our classroom and how we incorporate wellness and mental health as part of our access practices. To work through how you will define equity and accessibility in your course and to take a closer look at artifacts like syllabus statements, assignments, classroom activities that are equity and accessibility-minded, check out the asynchronous workshop: Equity and Access in the (Online) Classroom.

Online and Hybrid Courses

Even before COVID19 forced a shift to emergency remote teaching, an increasing number of college courses were being offered either partially or fully online. Successful online and hybrid courses often require even more intensive planning than face-to-face classes.

One challenge of hybrid or online courses is that there are fewer built-in opportunities to gauge student comprehension in-person. Often students are confused about what faculty expect of them, and this is true of classes in every mode of instruction. In face-to-face classes, this confusion often becomes readily apparent to mindful instructors, but it can be harder to detect online. Careful assignment design clarifies the expectations you have of students in your online or hybrid course. Creating an organized and well-structured course is especially crucial in these contexts and harnessing educational technologies to connect with students outside the classroom is paramount for delivering course content, checking student understanding, and facilitating discussion to develop class community. Once you have a structure in place that connects online deliverables and face-to-face interactions, it becomes easier to carve out time and opportunities for you and your students to improvise.

Here are some guidelines for scaffolding assignments in a partly or fully online course that will offer you multiple opportunities to intervene in your students’ knowledge-making process:

• Consider workflow: Ask yourself what assignments from face-to-face classes might be better accomplished online.
• For hybrid classes, design online assignments that prepare students to take full advantage of the time the class spends meeting in person.
• Articulate for students the reasons for assignments, the method of assessment, and the grading process.
• Tie low-stakes and high-stakes assignments together to build upon each other in a gradual progression.
• Construct tasks that give students practice before assessment.

Ethics of Educational Technologies

There are many ethical questions you should consider before committing to a digital tool:

• Access: Is this platform accessible to users of all abilities? Is the platform/tool cost prohibitive? Does this platform/tool have paywalls? Is this platform available on mobile devices? Is this platform accessible in different languages?

• Control: How is this platform/tool administered? Can I control how users interact with the platform/tool? Are there various levels of user permissions and privacy levels?

• Data: What data is collected by the platform/tool? Who owns the data and content that is entered into the platform/tool? How will the platform/tool use the data they collect? Do I have the option to know what data they collect? Can I delete my data?

• Inclusion: Does the platform/tool provide varying methods of engagement and/or content production? If content-serving, does the platform/tool allow for or include a diversity of knowledges and histories? What teaching methods and strategies does the platform foster?

• Intellectual Property & Copyright: Do I exclusively own the rights to the work I create on the platform/tool? Can I choose the (open) license for the content I create?

• Privacy: Who has access to my data? Is my data stored and saved by the platform/tool forever? Can I control who sees my data/content? Are there varying levels of privacy on the platform?

• Source: Who owns this platform/tool? What is the platform/tools economic model? Is the source code openly licensed? What is the history of this platform/tool?

You should also be aware of the following terminology and how they are used or might appear across digital tools and platforms:

• GDPR (Data, Privacy): Passed in 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation created strict rules for personal data collection, processing and retention for European Union citizens.The regulations impose obligations for organizations and web services anywhere, so long as they target or collect data related to people in the EU. The GDPR serves as the premiere model for consumer data protection and privacy. Learn more about the GDPR here.

• Cookies (Ethical Issue: Data): Small data files collected in your browser from sites you visit.  Cookies, for the most part, do not contain personal information. These files track the places you visit online in order to personalize your experience on each page. This personalization can include: retaining your login information and other page customizations, serve you customized ads, and track what you have viewed/clicked on other sites. 

• Creative Commons (IP, Copyright): a non-profit organization that provides widely recognized open licenses for digital work. CC licenses are “free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; ensure proper attribution; and allow others to copy, distribute” and use those works.

• Open Source (Control, Inclusion, Source): Platforms and tools that share the source code with the public. Anyone can take that source code to create and modify their own version of the platform or tool. WordPress.org is a well-known example of open source software. Wordpress.com hosts the code/platform for users who do not want to take the code to create their own instance. 

• Open/GNU Public License (Control, Copyright, Inclusion): Widely used free software license that allows individuals to use, download, share, and modify the software. This license is commonly used to license software and code projects, whereas CC is typically used to license digital content (ebooks, publications, etc.).

• Retention (Data): Platform/tool policy on keeping you information. Providing the option to delete your own information is ideal.

• Third Parties (Data, Privacy): Outside entities that the platform/tool will share your information with. Sometimes, the tool needs to share your information so it can work- for example with cloud-based services or API integrations it may have to share your information for the tool to work. In other instances the tool will share you information with advertisers. 

• “You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license…”(Data, IP): A version of this phrase is commonly used by platforms and tools that will retain the information you enter on the platform and use it to their own ends, either for sale, marketing or other analytic purposes. 

Student Data and Privacy

Before requiring students to use a particular tool, instructors should assess how the tool engages with its users’ data. Here are some questions that can guide such an evaluation of a digital tool:

• Assuming it’s web-based, does it require users to display their name or other identifying information such as an email address?
• Does it allow users to do their work with the tool under an alias?
• Does it afford users control over who sees their content and activity, or does it require all work to be done on the open web?
• If you’re planning to have students use a mobile application, does it depend upon location services in order to function?
• Does it require access to other applications to unlock its full functionality, and if so, might a user’s privacy be undermined?

You’ll find that tools you use, from Blackboard to Twitter to WordPress to publishers’ tools, have different approaches to protect user privacy, and some may be more in line with your values than others. Though our preference at the TLC is for tools that give end users total control over their privacy, there may be use cases where this is not possible. In those instances, it is the instructor’s ethical responsibility to make sure that students understand the privacy implications of assigned tools. If students are uncomfortable with what an application asks of them, you should be prepared to offer them an alternative method to complete the assignment.  

When assessing a tool’s functionality, consider how it approaches the question of user-produced content and data.

• Who owns content produced through a tool?
• What rights to user-created content does the company that supports or hosts the tool claim?
• If a student wants to remove, revise, remix, or otherwise make changes to the content after they’ve produced it, are they able to do so?
• Can students easily take their work with them after the semester has completed?

Check out this handout for more questions to consider when thinking through digital tools to incorporate into your course.

Selecting tools that empower users to own what they’ve created can signal to your students that faculty see the knowledge and work that they are producing during the course of their studies as valuable and connected to work that moves beyond the boundaries of a single assignment or class. The Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) project takes this idea a step further by giving students their own web domains, and then offering curricula that empower students to build their digital and scholarly identities completely within spaces that they own and control. In a similar vein to UMW’s Domains project, at CUNY the CUNY Academic Commons offers students and faculty the opportunity to build their own websites to develop their courses, projects, and digital identities online using free, open source software.

FERPA & Student Information

The 1974 FERPA Act or Buckley Amendment is designed to give students some control over how their information is shared and amended. Universities have slightly varying policies about how to disseminate student information such as grades in compliance with FERPA. Though the act has not been updated to account for web-connected communication, FERPA impacts how campuses and instructors approach the use of educational technology. If you try a new tool, you may have a colleague or an administrator ask you if it is “FERPA-compliant.” To answer this question, you will have to consider the privacy implications of the tool you’ve selected and have a strong pedagogical argument for its deployment.

A good rule of thumb is to select tools that require little to no personally identifying information to use beyond supplying an email address. Even if a tool does require additional information, that doesn’t necessarily mean it violates FERPA. As long as students are made aware of what a tool captures and displays about them and they have the ability to opt out, your use will comply with FERPA. If you’re unsure of the policy on your campus, ask your department or the campus registrar, but a guiding principle is to try to avoid exposing student data, and to allow students who are concerned about doing work on the open web to opt out or complete required assignments via other avenues. Finally, never post student grades to a public or non-secured environment, which is a clear violation of FERPA. Many faculty members maintain grades in the gradebook on Blackboard, even if they use other tools for more dynamic activities in their classes.  

Some schools interpret the Act to mean that no grade information may be shared over email, while others allow grade information sharing through the internal school email system, and others still allow comments and scores on individual assignments but not midterm or final grades.

Pairing Pedagogical Approaches & Digital Tools

There are a wide range of digital teaching tools that can be integrated into your in-person classroom or your digital teaching platform. Below, we offer a selection of tools you might consider, organized by the type of learning activity they support. When weighing what tools to use, you should consider several factors: does it require students to register and establish a new account? Does it cost anything for you or your students? What types of data does the tool collect and will this raise issues for any students? What are the tool’s data policy and privacy standards?

It’s best to start with one tool and one assignment in order to grow accustomed to integrating digital assignments into your course and to troubleshooting any tech issues. Whether and how you choose and combine tools depends entirely on the intersection between your course goals, your comfort with technology, and the level of uncertainty you’re willing to tolerate in an assignment or a class.

Collaborative Writing

• Google Docs - A widely-used, cloud-based word processor that allows real-time editing, commenting, and version history tracking. Ideal for student collaboration, peer reviews, and integrating with Google Classroom or other LMS platforms. Strong compatibility with various file formats.

• Padlet - A visually engaging, digital bulletin board that supports text, images, links, videos, and file uploads. Best for brainstorming, collaborative mind mapping, and multimedia-rich discussions. Works well for asynchronous collaboration.

• Open Source Writing options

• Etherpad - A lightweight, real-time collaborative writing tool with a simple interface and customizable features. Open-source and allows users to set up their own private instances. Best for minimalistic, distraction-free text collaboration.

• CryptPad - A privacy-focused, end-to-end encrypted collaborative writing tool that supports rich text documents, spreadsheets, and code editing. Suitable for institutions concerned about data security and student privacy.

Annotation and Collaborative Reading

• Hypothesis - A powerful tool that enables students and instructors to annotate PDFs and web pages collaboratively. Works well for critical reading exercises, textual analysis, and research discussions. Can integrate into Canvas and other LMS platforms.

• Manifold - A scholarly publishing and reading platform that allows users to create, share, and annotate digital texts. Supports multimedia integration and is great for digital humanities projects.

• Vocat - Designed for assessment and feedback on student presentations and spoken assignments. Allows video uploads with detailed, timestamped comments, making it ideal for public speaking, performance-based classes, and language learning.

• VideoANT - A free, web-based tool for adding timestamped annotations to videos. Best for student reflections on recorded lectures, peer review of video projects, and analyzing video-based content.

Mapping and Timelines

• StoryMaps JS - A storytelling tool that integrates text, images, and interactive maps. Excellent for history, geography, and digital storytelling projects where location plays a crucial role.

• Timeline JS - A simple but powerful tool for creating interactive, media-rich timelines using Google Sheets. Best for historical timelines, literature analysis, and tracking events over time.

• Omeka -  A digital collections platform designed for building online exhibits with strong metadata support. Best for archivists, museums, and humanities projects requiring detailed cataloging of historical artifacts.

Video Recording

• Loom (free with educator account) - A quick, browser-based screen recording tool that allows users to capture video messages, lectures, and tutorials with ease. Comes with instant sharing and basic editing features. Great for flipped classrooms and student feedback.

• Zoom - Primarily a video conferencing tool, but also supports cloud/local recording, breakout rooms, and screen sharing. Works well for online or hybrid classes, guest lectures, and remote discussions. Great for sharing screen and audio in real time.

• Screenpal - A user-friendly screen recorder with built-in video editing, captions, and green screen effects. Best for recording narrated presentations, software tutorials, and instructional videos.

• Runners up

• Camtasia (campus may have a license) - A more advanced video recording and editing suite that supports professional-quality video production. May require a campus-wide license. Best for creating polished instructional videos and lectures.

• iMovie (available on Mac computers only) - A Mac-exclusive video editing tool with an intuitive interface. Good for basic to intermediate video production, student video projects, and lecture editing.

Audio Recording

• Voicethread - A multimedia discussion tool where students and instructors can leave voice, video, or text comments on slides. Excellent for asynchronous discussions, language learning, and student presentations.

• Audacity (free and open source audio recording tool for podcasting) - A powerful, open-source audio editing software ideal for podcasting, interviews, and lecture recordings. Supports multi-track editing and a variety of effects. Great for media production courses.

• Voicenotes - A lightweight, speech-to-text tool for quick voice recordings and transcription. Useful for note-taking, accessibility, and spoken feedback.

Polling/Quizzing

• Poll Everywhere -  A live polling tool that allows students to respond to questions via text messages, web browsers, or apps. Supports multiple question types, including word clouds and clickable images. Best for real-time engagement in lectures.

• Kahoot - A game-based learning platform with interactive quizzes that foster competition and engagement. Best for review sessions, formative assessments, and in-class participation. As of 2024, it is no longer free but your campus or department may have an account.

• Mentimeter - A dynamic presentation tool that integrates live polling, word clouds, and Q&A sessions. Great for interactive lectures, feedback collection, and audience engagement.

Team Chat/Group work

• Slack - A professional team communication tool with organized channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and integrations with productivity apps. Best for structured discussions and long-term group projects.

• Discord -  voice, video, and text communication platform with server-based organization. More informal than Slack, making it great for student study groups, gaming communities, and casual collaboration. See TLC Fellow Zach Muhlbauer’s Discord Educational Toolkit to learn how to get started.

• Google Workspace (Slides, Sheets, Docs, Drive, Calendar, etc..) - Well-known collaboration tools that allow students to work on documents and presentations simultaneously. Ideal for co-authored research papers, group projects, and shared class notes.

Whiteboard/Animation

• Excalidraw - A robust, multimodal, collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily work with others on brainstorming, diagramming, collaging and other creative projects.

• Miro - A digital whiteboard that supports brainstorming, diagramming, and real-time collaboration. Great for design thinking exercises, project planning, and mind mapping.

Math Platforms (open source and free to use)

• MyOpenMath -  A platform for online math assignments and assessments, offering algorithmically generated problems with automated grading. Best for college algebra, calculus, and statistics courses.

• WeBWork - An online homework system for STEM subjects, used widely in higher education. Supports randomized problems to prevent cheating and integrates with many LMS platforms.