The adventure continues! Back in August, I wrote a post comparing course design to Dungeons & Dragons and promised to share some tools and ideas for gamified activities you can try yourself. This is the first: an escape-the-room/choose-your-own-adventure-style puzzle you can create using Google Forms. […]
Author: Adam Engel
How to Run Your Course Like a Game of Dungeons & Dragons
What does Dungeons & Dragons have in common with course design? More than you’d think. Role-playing games like D&D involve a group of distractible adventurers telling a story together with the help of a “game moderator” (GM) who establishes the world, gives the party their […]
Three Strategies for Building Online Community
Welcome to the new home of ITG’s Instructional Technology Blog! We’ll be posting advice, tips, and strategies for making the most of your digital tools. Check back often for ways to breathe new life into your Canvas courses, spice up your Zoom sessions, craft engaging Panopto videos, and more!
How to Help Students Become Digital Storytellers
We Emersonians know that you don’t need to be a grizzled rogue with a lute to be a storyteller. Nor do you need to read or listen passively as stories are told. It is now possible for anyone—including students—to engage in creative, academic, and journalistic […]
In a Nutshell: Canvas Announcements
“In a Nutshell” condenses frequently requested instructions into practical, bite-sized chunks. Learn a new tool in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee! What’s the quickest way to send a message to your entire class (and be reasonably sure they see it)? […]
Emerson.build: Rule Your Domain!
Emerson.build has been building a larger following! If you haven’t heard of it, Emerson.build is a pilot of Reclaim Hosting’s “Domain of One’s Own” program. It allows any Emersonian to register a free web domain, install content management systems (CMS) in it like WordPress or […]
In a Nutshell: How to Use the New Canvas Scheduler
Official guides for tools like Canvas and Panopto are dense out of necessity—the authors need to cover EVERYTHING about each topic. In this series, “In a Nutshell,” I’ll condense frequently requested instructions into practical, bite-sized chunks. Learn a new tool in the time it takes […]
Introducing Deep Embeds: An Easier Way to Show Videos in Canvas
You’ve probably heard that Panopto, Emerson’s video-hosting platform, underwent a major update this summer. Now you can simply embed Panopto videos in Canvas, and students will automatically be able to view them! Here’s more about what this change means for your teaching. What you don’t […]
How to Embed Videos in Omeka Items
Are you a librarian, archivist, or scholar interested in creating your own digital collection? Omeka, one of the tools you can install on your Emerson.build domain, might be for you! Omeka is a content management system similar in some ways to WordPress or Drupal, but […]
Reading and Remixing: Teaching the Self-Generating Poem
One memorable afternoon in my Digital Literature class from a couple of years ago, I introduced my students to Nick Montfort’s digital poem “Taroko Gorge.” The students watched, enchanted, as the poem’s text cascaded down the forest green page. The gentle pacing created by the […]