For Faculty: Educational Technology

Columbia College will not be renewing Padlet in 2025, so be aware of this change. Please copy any padlets you might need to save on the Columbia College account and share with free accounts as needed.

Padlet is a tool that allows for thoughtful curation and visible engagement with media.

With Padlet, you can ask questions and poll students in real time, both in the classroom and during an online class. You can host asynchronous discussion and voting. You can create kanban boards and concept maps. There are even map and timeline templates!

Here is an example padlet showing AI resources. Note how resources have been organized into categories.

Padlet allows for the uploading of multiple media types—songs from Spotify, YouTube videos, audio recordings, images, and text.

Right now, we have a private portal for Columbia College that you can embed on Canvas. Want a license to create private padlets for your classes? Reach out to Educational Technology.

WeVideo is a browser-based video-editing tool. There are no downloads, just a website where you and students can upload videos, photos, and audio clips. Using the timeline, you can drag and drop your uploads—as well as media from WeVideo's massive Creative Commons-licensed library—and turn them into engaging videos.

This is an example video project done for the library, using various archival photos and royalty-free music.

WeVideo can be useful for creating short, snappy edits of recorded video content. This could be lesson content or videos for social. On the student side, it is a robust, but user-friendly, way to create experiential videos.

If you would like to use WeVideo in your class, reach out to make sure we have enough licenses. Also get in touch if you'd like to use it to edit content for your classes, particularly your online classes or for virtual conference videos.

Zoom is a videoconferencing tool that allows you to have one-on-one virtual meetings, meet as a committee, and hold online class sessions.

Here are some guides on using some of Zoom's features:

• Create a meeting in Canvas
• Create a poll
• Share screen with audio
• Managing breakout rooms

Zoom has automatic captions that you can enable to make sure your video is accessible. You can also set your pronouns at the start of a session held on the Columbia College server.

The college has a limited number of Zoom licenses. Reach out to the provost's office if you would like to see if a license is available. Once you have a license connected to the Columbia College account, you can then use the Zoom page built into Canvas courses to manage meetings and share recordings.

Here is a guide on using Zoom in Canvas from Yale.

Note that ScreenPal licenses will be expiring in December 2024, so if you are looking for a screencasting tool, please use YuJa instead!

ScreenPal, formerly known as Screencast-O-Matic, is a user-friendly screencasting tool that you can use to record your screen and do basic edits for creating tutorial videos and lecture content.

If you'd like access to this tool, please reach out to Educational Technology to request the link to access. Each download uses one of our licenses, so please only install on one device.

YuJa is a video tool that is embedded into every Canvas course. By default, there will be a link to YuJa on your course navigation menu unless you hide it.

Students can also see this link, so if you don't want them accessing it or need to clear the course menu, you can remove it from a course and still access it from another course page where it hasn't been removed.

This is the main YuJa page, accessed by clicking "YuJa" from the course menu. You will see all your media, which can be organized into folders and edited after uploading.

To access and use YuJa, check out this guest issue of the Tech Tips Tuesdays newsletter, where the campus instructional designer has shared many links and resources.

Additionally, YuJa can be used for accessibility and in making sure that captions are available for videos.

Once you've enabled auto-captions from the Accessibility menu, which you can do with instructions from the above link, you should this edit them to make sure they are accurate. You can do so by going to your video, then clicking "Edit" to go to the video editor. On the editor, turn on your captions with the  (captions button). Your captions will appear on a menu that looks like this:

You can now edit your captions for typos and other inconsistencies!

Respondus is the company that makes LockDown Browser, a proctoring tool available at Columbia College. LockDown Browser has been enabled for Canvas.

The "LockDown Browser" page is not available to students, which you can see using Student View.

The following guides will show you how to enable and use the tool in your classes:

• Instructor Quick Start Guide (PDF)
  This guide walks you through enabling the browser on your Canva quizzes, as well as explaining some of the important settings such as whether students can use iPads, if Monitor (webcam) is enabled, and more.

• Student Quick Start Guide for Classic Quizzes (PDF)
  If you've set up your quizzes with the regular quiz engine, you can share this guide with students to get them started using the browser.

• Student Quick Start Guide for New Quizzes (PDF)
  If you've set up your quizzes with New Quizzes in Canvas, the biggest difference is in how your students must access the browser. While Classic Quizzes allows for students to launch LockDown Browser directly, New Quizzes requires that they start in a regular browser such as Chrome or Firefox, then have that browser launch LockDown Browser.

If students are having trouble installing LockDown Browser, it may be that their device is not supported.

I use the following checklist to assess where the problem might lie:

• Are you downloading from the correct site? Be sure that you’re getting to the download link from the assignment (by clicking “Take The Quiz,” which will open up a download link if you’re in another browser).
• Is there an error opening the download? Be sure that you’re not on a firewall or that you don’t have anything blocking the download.
• Is it saying that you don’t have permission to download? Be sure that you’re on a device that you own or that you have admin control over, as you won’t be able to download the browser otherwise. For example, campus or school computers will not let you download the program, as they require permissions to install the program.
• Are you trying to download on an iPad? Confirm with your professor that the setting to allow iPad use is selected, as you won’t be able to download the app otherwise.
• Are you seeing another error when installing the browser? There are a few errors that can pop up; what I recommend is writing down the error exactly as written, then going to Google and search for the error in quotes: (“like this”). So, you might search for “error” lockdown browser. This might bring up a help guide if you have, say, a screencasting tool on your computer that needs to be shut down before the browser can be used.

Turnitin can be enabled from any course in Canvas by going into the assignment settings for a File Upload assignment, then selecting Turnitin as the plagiarism checker.

Here are several guides on using Turnitin through Canvas that should be helpful for you.

Once Turnitin is enabled, you will be able to see a "Similarity Report" that indicates areas where text has been copied, as well as the source. Be mindful, however, that a high score may not indicate intentional copying, but instead a student who is learning how to cite sources. For that reason, it's important to check the report and not just use the percentage score as a cutoff.

For more information on how the score is determined, please see this guide from Turnitin, which includes scoring scenarios.