Discussions
Quizzes
Wikis

This space where you can write the discussion prompt. It has the same Content Editor as Content Pages. This means that anything you can put in a Content Page you can put here. So here you could have a video of you talking, a thought provoking image, an informative graph, interactive media, a podcast or any number of things depending on where you would like to go with the discussion.

Note that when students reply to the discussion prompt or to each other they have access to the same Content Editor, which means they can share videos, links, documents, videos of themselves talking or presentations they have made. That makes discussions a great platform for allowing students to participate and contribute.

You can also allow liking, which we have done so you can test that out if you are interested.

View Example Discussion

This is an example of a quiz used to teach database searching. It was created by Rebecca Bliquez at our library. Notice that by using the question type, Text (No Question) Rebecca was able to include all kinds of information because the Quiz tool has the same text editor as Content Pages.

Students are a great - but often overlooked - source of course content. As you are designing course content consider if it would be valuable for students to contribute. One easy way is to make students responsible for supplying contextual or supporting course materials.

An example is to have students research and present what was going on historically for a literature course. Another idea is to have students report on the global perspectives for a topic or to do some local field research.

Allowing students to contribute course content is one of the areas where online spaces are really superior to classroom settings because students can post their presentations - and respond to questions - without wasting class time. There are no large cardboard posters to accommodate, no delays while students fumble with thumb drives to load presentations and no going past the allotted time. (Hint: put time limits on students' online contributions.)

View example wiki page