Category: Interesting Technologies

Introducing Perusall

The perennial quest for engagement may have a boost with Perusall, a social annotation platform that can be incorporated into your Canvas course sites as an external tool. Built by a team of academics from Harvard and the University of Texas, Perusall aims to increase pre-class reading. Students can login to Perusall through Canvas (more…Continue Reading Introducing Perusall

ECE Professor Boosts Engagement with Creative Videos

Maqsood Mughal’s expertise with Open Broadcaster Suite (OBS), an open source software for creating and streaming videos, has been well-earned. After first hearing about the software during a KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network) workshop in 2019, it again flew across his radar in 2020, during the Online Pedagogy Workshop. “Last summer, I took this online…Continue Reading ECE Professor Boosts Engagement with Creative Videos

How Transcripts and Captions Work in Echo360

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination in the places of public accommodation – such as schools – and failing to transcribe or provide closed captions for your educational videos can be seen as a violation of the ADA. So transcripts and captions have legal significance. But beyond that, they help your students access your…Continue Reading How Transcripts and Captions Work in Echo360

Flipping Video with OBS

OBS – short for Open Broadcaster System – is an open source software for video streaming and recording. Downloads for OBS are available at obsproject.com.   OBS is free and works well on Windows, macOS and Linux systems. That being said, as an open source tool, there isn’t a customer support hotline you can call…Continue Reading Flipping Video with OBS

Submitting an Assignment with Canvas Studio

Greetings WPI Students, Your Professor may assign a video project as an assignment. Here are the steps that you take to submit it using Canvas Studio, a content management and creation tool embedded in Canvas. First, you click on the assignment and click submit. Once you click submit, you see some choices. Choose Studio.  …Continue Reading Submitting an Assignment with Canvas Studio

Production Tools: Recording Your Lectures

Did you know that WPI has three tools that can be utilized for recording videos? Those tools are Echo360, Zoom, and Studio.     Like a choose-your-own-adventure, you may be wondering where to start. Asking yourselves these questions may help you decide. Q. Where are you producing these videos? A1. In the classroom? Use Echo360…Continue Reading Production Tools: Recording Your Lectures

Recording Videos in a Pandemic

Hello WPI Community! This post will cover options for creating educational videos during situations – such as the current COVID 19 pandemic – where it’s not possible to come to campus. WPI has two primary tools which allow for communication with students via video. One is Echo360 and the other is Zoom. Both of these tools…Continue Reading Recording Videos in a Pandemic

Creating Office Hour Time Blocks in Canvas

Teaching remotely can pose challenges for how to schedule traditional office hours with your students. Canvas’ Calendar tool has a feature called “Appointment Groups” where you can create a sign-up sheet for blocks of time so you can avoid Zoom “traffic jams” where many students show up at the same time for office hours. Here’s…Continue Reading Creating Office Hour Time Blocks in Canvas

Introducing SimCheck: New Plagiarism Detection Software

New for E-Term! SimCheck is a new plagiarism detection software integrated into Canvas that checks your students written work against our institutional repository, the web, library databases and journals, textbook publishers, homework help sites, and books. SimCheck has been integrated into Canvas Assignments as an optional tool for instructors. It serves as a replacement for…Continue Reading Introducing SimCheck: New Plagiarism Detection Software