by Adam Craik, Teaching Enhancement Officer, University of Hull
It can be extremely frustrating when you’ve spent a lot of time designing a digital learning resource and it doesn’t work as it was supposed to. Fortunately, most of our digital learning and teaching platforms have features that you can use to double check things before you really need them to. Here’s a quick rundown of our most popular tools:
Canvas
Avoid the inevitable “you said to look at this in Canvas but I can’t see it” emails from your students by using the Student View tool. This lets you see exactly how things look from their perspectives and you can even engage with things like your discussions and quizzes (NB there is also a separate Preview tool you can use to check your quizzes).
Mentimeter
Most people test their Mentimeter questions before using them by grabbing something like their phone and running through it on two devices as both presenter and participant. Now you can do it all on one device by using Mentimeter’s new Preview Presentation tool, so you no longer have to find your phone, or clear the response data after testing.
PowerPoint
An obvious one, but it’s always worth remembering to check through your slides in the Slide Show view when you’ve finished editing them. You’ll often find something is out of place!
Panopto
If you’ve got more than one screen then you might get worried in the moment that Panopto isn’t going to capture the right one. The easy check here is to tick the Enable screen capture preview box to make sure it’s the one you want (you can then uncheck the box again before starting the recording).
PebblePad
Experienced workbook builders will know this one very well, but if you’re just starting out then be sure to switch to the Preview mode to check how your design will behave for students before launching it.