Skip to content

New year, new tools

With many courses transitioning to online instruction, it’s safe to say that this semester will present unique challenges for faculty, staff, and students alike. That’s why we’ve spent the summer strengthening and expanding the digital part of our Academical Village to accommodate more features and potential applications than ever before.

Thanks to generous support from the Executive Vice President and Provost and the Chief Information Officer, seven tools have been newly added or significantly expanded for use in your course sites and activities. The Learning Tech catalog includes more information about these tools and their potential for teaching and learning, along with resources and contacts to help you get started.

The list includes:

  • Digication: Design and publish simple, elegant ePortfolio websites for academic projects and professional development.
  • Gradescope: Streamline the grading process for exams, problem sets, and other assignments by building intuitive, dynamic rubrics as you work.
  • Hypothesis: Add annotations alongside digital texts to provide context, offer reflections, ask and answer questions, and more.
  • MATLAB Grader: Build autograded programming assignments that provide immediate, contextual feedback, with detailed analytics.
  • Peerceptiv: Encourage student development as teachers and learners through a research-validated cycle of anonymous feedback.
  • Poll Everywhere: Post attendance items, quick quizzes, or polls, display live updates on your screen, and transfer scores to your gradebook.
  • VoiceThread: Create a virtual seminar discussion by recording and embedding video commentary within posted documents or clips.

Stay tuned for tips, tricks, and examples of each tool! Don’t hesitate to send us an email at learningtech@virginia.edu with your questions or ideas, or leave us a note in the comments below.

in:

Tool Announcements

Welcome! We’re glad you’re here.

2 Comments

Learning Tech is live! This site is your connection to learning technologies available across UVA, but it’s also much more. It’s a unique space that spans the intersection between the physical, the digital, and the missional parts of our Academical Village, and helps you harness the power and potential of each of these parts in your teaching and learning. Whether your classroom is on Grounds, online, or a combination of the two, the resources presented here offer opportunities to enhance, refine, or even reimagine your courses.

For now, the core component of Learning Tech is its innovative, searchable catalog of tools, which provides vital information about their pedagogical purposes, functions, availability, and support options. Many tools are accessible directly from the catalog with a single click, while others may be integrated into your course sites in UVACollab, Canvas, or Blackboard. Most importantly, each tool is described in the context of its practical applications for teaching and learning, from fostering a range of learning activities and improving assessment and evaluation processes to encouraging increased student engagement and collaboration.

As exciting as these features are, we think the best is still to come. Together with our partners—the Learning Design & Technology Group, UVACollab Applications Group, and Information Technology Services—and with the support of the Executive Vice President and Provost and the Chief Information Officer, we’re already working on more enhancements. These include a ratings system that will allow you to share detailed feedback on tools you’ve used previously, review similar feedback from your colleagues, and connect with additional use cases.

Follow us on Twitter @learningtechuva for new additions, updates, profiles, and more. You can also contact us at learningtech@virginia.edu with your questions and ideas—we’d love to hear from you.

in:

News/Announcements