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Technology and Teaching Modalities

Teaching tools and practices are in a constant state of change. The information on this site is designed to foster your effective use of technology for any of the UT teaching modalities you have chosen to use. This site provides a curated selection of existing OIT resources with tips for their use, organized to support each teaching modality established by the Registrar’s office. We hope you will find this resource informative and helpful.

Classroom Technology Breaking News!

Introducing UT’s new lecture capture service. How will Panopto benefit your teaching? 

  • If teaching on campus, classroom recordings made in Zoom Cloud are saved to your Panopto Meeting Recordings folder.
  • Create high-resolution, recorded lectures from your desktop for asynchronous delivery to students.
  • Integrated functionality within Canvas and Zoom.
  • Host and manage access to video content. 
  • Edit videos and slides directly within Panopto.
  • Make videos accessible with automatic speech recognition captions. 

Read more about Panopto   |  Sign up for Classroom Training   |   Learn to Use Panopto

Information on Specific Teaching Modalities

Information for All Teaching Modalities

UTK is asking all instructors who are teaching on-campus classes to create a seating chart for all face-to-face components of the class. The seating chart will be used to expedite contact tracing if needed. For more information about class seating charts, see the guidance provided by the Provost office.

You can also quickly prepare a class seating chart and track attendance using the Attendance Tool in Canvas. More information may be found at this Canvas Support Guide.

Check out classrooms.utk.edu for instructions and ideas on using the technology in your campus-hosted classroom.
Note: This site does not cover information about the technology in departmental classrooms.

The Clicker Self-Service Training course will equip you with the tools and knowledge to pose response driven questions in real-time during your course instruction. Whether you teach with PowerPoint or other presentation styles, you can use the TurningPoint software to ask and receive responses. This response system also allows you to sync the responses to Canvas for class participation scores or quizzes. By completing this course, you will have the ability to:

  • Setup your Canvas course to use clickers
  • Create questions in PowerPoint, Anywhere Polling (questions over other software), Self-paced quizzes (participants answer at their own pace), or Scheduled quizzes.
  • Sync grades to Canvas

Enroll in the Canvas course to learn more about Clickers and how to incorporate them in your teaching

Best Practices for Online Assessments

Putting your final exam online? Need ideas for how to assess learner progress in Canvas? This is a one-stop location for asynchronous, self-paced training related to designing and delivering effective tests and assessments online. Topics include pedagogy and design, using Canvas to construct assessments, and facilitating feedback effectively. 

Enroll in the Canvas course to learn How to Create Online Tests and Assessments

Online Proctoring

Campus-supported online proctoring tools include Respondus Lock Down Browser (prevents students from browsing the internet while taking a test) and Respondus Monitor (a system for online proctoring). Respondus 4.0 supports test creation for easy upload into the Canvas Quiz Tool. Watch these short videos if you are interested in employing any of these Respondus products.

Zoom

Check out this page for more information about Zoom and recording your lectures with Zoom and posting into Canvas.

Panopto

Panopto is the new lecture capture service replacing MediaSite. It is very easy to use both in the classroom and in the office, and is a great tool for creating online lectures. Learn more about Panopto.

Improve Recorded Lectures

This page has more information about looking your best while recording your lecture from your home or office.  We also offer Zoom consults to assist you.

Here are some tips for providing for accessibility of your course content:

Remember that regardless of your preferred teaching modality, the best way to be prepared for any teaching/learning scenario is to create a robust Canvas site for your course. Doing so will provide you and your students the flexibility to fully participate regardless of the delivery mode (Face-to-face, Hybrid, Online).

A Robust Canvas site is one that:

  • Includes an inviting course Homepage.
  • Employs a course template designed by OIT to help structure your course site.
  • Uploads course content to include recorded lectures, PowerPoints, links to external web resources and other materials.
  • Creates assignments that are automatically linked to the gradebook and the course calendar and establish a standard method for students to submit assignments.
  • Creates online assessments using the Canvas quiz tool, in which quiz questions and distractors can be randomized to create unique student attempts.
  • Delivers live lectures and conducts office hours online in Zoom.

Available Training

Explore information about Zoom, UTK’s supported synchronous teaching and meeting tool.

There are a variety of collaboration tools that you and your students can use before, during, or after a class session that will facilitate communication and collaboration between students in the classroom and online.

Check out our guide on instructional tools, recommended uses, and available training.

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