I have always had an interest in using technology to foster engagement with course material. Over the past year, while teaching both the online and on-campus versions of the same courses, I decided to test out several different online tools to assess whether they increased student engagement with the course content. This was not a rigorous scientific study of “student engagement” but an informal assessment of whether students found the tool useful.
The following are the tools I used, some of the pros and cons I experienced in using them, and some feedback from students.
I learned about Piazza from a colleague who was using it as a platform in his large classes at UC-Irvine for the students to ask questions about the course material. Piazza is excellent as a discussion board. It can be a very useful tool for allowing students to ask questions of their fellow classmates and the instructors, for other students to practice answering those questions, and for follow up discussions about the questions and answers. It has several other features, like the ability for the instructor to endorse an answer, a Wiki-style format where students and/or instructors can work together on constructing one single answer, and easy searching and sorting features.
I used Piazza as an alternative to the Blackboard Discussion Boards for several classes over multiple semesters.
Pros: Piazza is a powerful discussion board. It’s a great tool for students to ask questions. If another student answered the question, I could choose to endorse that answer, or I could write in my own answer in the Instructor space. I was able to link to Piazza via Blackboard to avoid students needing multiple log-ins, but it is still a separate entity.
Cons: Students did not use Piazza as I had hoped without me requiring its use. Posts to Piazza are not gradable like the Blackboard Discussion Board posts can be.
Student Feedback: Students seemed to think Piazza was a useful tool, but they did not like adding any additional thing to check (on top of email, Blackboard, etc.).
Verdict: Although I think Piazza is a really great tool, I am likely to try and make the Blackboard Discussion Board fit my needs instead of an outside tool.
I used Actively Learn as a platform for students to read science-related articles. Actively Learn strips away all of the distractions common to articles found on the internet. Actively Learn then lets you embed questions or comments into the article. With a paid account, you also can utilize some analytics about how the students are reading the content.
Pros: You can embed links, questions, comments, highlights to guide the students’ reading of articles.
Cons: Free version is limited to uploading three articles per month.
Student feedback: Students complained about having another place to have to go to (even though it was single sign-on with Google Account.
Verdict: There are other ways to have students read articles and make sure they are engaging with the content that do not require them to use an online tool (which was a complaint for every tool). I do really like Actively Learn, but the article limit was a problem for me.
EDpuzzle is a tool for sharing video content with your students. EDpuzzle allows you to add information, such as text comments, questions, or even your own audio commentary, to videos. You also have the ability to monitor whether students are viewing the videos (or how much of the videos they are viewing). Additionally, you can activate a feature that prevents skipping (fast-forwarding) of videos, and if students click to another tab in their browser, or leave the browser, the video stops playing. 
Pros: The ability to annotate the videos and add gradable questions are nice features. There is also a mobile app for this tool, but I have not investigated that yet. You can link YouTube content into EDpuzzle and then use features mentioned above with that content. This tool does work with Google sign-in, so students can use their LCMail accounts and do not need a separate account. You can import a class list from Google Classroom as well.
Cons: If you import a YouTube video, that video can be taken down and you lose the content. I mostly uploaded my own video content, so did not have to worry about this as much.
Student Feedback: This was a newer tool, so I do not have as much feedback on this yet. Part of the response depends on the usefulness of the video content. Although there is still the issue with yet another platform for students to visit, I always linked to the content from Blackboard, and they did not need a separate account.
Verdict: I am planning on still utilizing EDpuzzle when I have video content. I like being able to add questions to the videos. This would also be really useful for uploading lecture material and making it more “interactive.”
Google Docs (https://docs.google.com) and Google Classroom (https://classroom.google.com)
LCSC students and faculty have a Google for Education account, so they have access to the Google suite of products, including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. I have been using these products for students to write essays, work on group assignments, keep digital lab notebooks, complete quizzes or other auto-graded assignments. The best way to facilitate these things is to have students register for a Google Classroom environment, and then you can easily assign things to them.
Pros: When students use the Google products, you can monitor their progress in real-time; you can edit or comment at any time on things they are writing or producing, you can view past versions of the student’s work, and everything is online so there is no emailing versions back and forth. Google Classroom makes individual assignments very easy. You can post the assignment to Google Classroom and choose to have each student receive his or her own copy of a document. They can then “turn in” the assignment when they are done. For group assignments, you can monitor who has made what contributions to the document. There are add-ons for Google Docs or Sheets to assist with grading (using rubrics, for example - OrangeSlice), or for assigning groups (Group Maker). Google Forms now has an option for turning a survey into a quiz, and then having it auto-graded.
Cons: Google Classroom does not yet have a good system for making something a group assignment. Although it is easy to link to documents from Blackboard, this is not a Blackboard-integrated tool.
Student Feedback: There were some growing pains in figuring out the Google Classroom assignment flow, particularly when trying to make something a group assignment. Part of the problem is an inability to view things as a student. Once problems like that were worked out, the Google products were a great tool for collaboration between students or between students and instructor.
Verdict: I will definitely continue to use Google Classroom and assignments in Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms. I like being able to monitor progress, and I like the collaborative space for group assignments in Docs. I like using Google Forms for certain types of quizzes or assignments that do not work as well in Blackboard.
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