Presentation and Integrative Learning Tools

During the second of our two learner-centered activity workshops we will focus on strategies
and tools that allow students to present what they have learned. In many ways these activities
can take the place of essays, journals, research papers, face-to-face presentations and portfolios.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t assign essays and research papers in document format but
rather to present you with some options to think about. While there are benefits to alternative
formats, there are always concerns. Here is a list of some concerns and some potential benefits.

Concerns Benefits

Is an alternate format academically rigorous? Fosters thematic or integrative learning.

Do I have a sound pedagogical rationale for
using something different?
How can it be integrated with my teaching
practices?
Integrates academic and non-academic work.
Supports student self-assessment.
Fosters student reflection and metacognition.

Will the technology remain stable? Encourages student responsibility for their
own learning.
Will the technology integrate with the
Learning Management System? Develops students’ media skills and digital
literacy.
Will students be able to get up to speed
quickly? Supports peer assessment.

What happens when it fails? Will they blame Promotes peer interactions.
the instructor?
Supports student collaboration.
Where will I/students be able to go for
technical support? Facilitates student work with multiple
stakeholders.
How will I evaluate work in alternate formats?
Provides models for future students.
What kinds of guidelines do I need to provide
for students? Facilitates career development through
showcasing work for future employers.
How will I provide feedback to large numbers
of students?

University of Idaho Distance & Extended Education (208) 885-4024, dee@uidaho.edu  

 
Weighing your options

Each of you will need to weigh the pros and cons 0f alternative versus traditional formats for
your individual situations. Not surprisingly, a good place to start is with your learning
objectives. It may be that learning the mechanics of a traditional research paper is one of your
objectives so an alternative format would be inappropriate. On the other hand, an alternative
format may be just the thing for supporting your learning objective(s) and provide some of the
benefits listed above. There are a number of suggestions on the DEE Course Design Toolkit
pages but below are some basic ideas for rethinking traditional papers, tests, and face-to-face
presentations.

Some alternatives ways for your students to present what they

have learned in your course:

Blogs: As a group we have been using WordPress to blog. The DEE

Course Design pages are built in Wordpress. But WordPress can be
confusing to learn. So if you are interested in having your students
blog but don’t want to do all of the handholding, consider Blogger.
Blogger is super easy to start up, to choose the look and feel, to keep
track of posts and—unlike WordPress—accepts almost any kind of
embed code. So your students can easily have a happy blog experience with virtually no help
from you. Blogger will allow them to create as many blogs as they want. They can make their
blogs public or private. Blogger also allows multiple authors on the same blog. You can keep
track of your students’ blogs in a blogroll or by using something like Feevy, which will let you
know as soon as anyone has posted. BbLearn also has a blog tool if you would prefer to keep the
students’ blogs within the learning management system.

Linear Narrative Presentation Tools: We have covered a number

of these options during our content delivery workshop. But many of
the tools we covered, such as Articulate, require special software.
However, one tool that deserves to be mentioned again as an option for
student presentations is VoiceThread. It is free, hosted online, and
allows students to build presentations with voiceovers. Media can be
embedded in these presentations and other people can comment—using text, audio, video, or
even highlighting tools—and those comments remain as part of the presentation. The resulting
presentation can easily be embedded in something like Blogger. If you decide to have your
students do PowerPoint presentations, those can be uploaded into Slideshare, which works well
with BbLearn. Another alternative is video, which can be uploaded into sites like YouTube and
Vimeo but it requires that your students have access to at least some rudimentary equipment in
order to produce the video.

University of Idaho Distance & Extended Education (208) 885-4024, dee@uidaho.edu  

 
 Non-Linear Presentation Tools: When you are looking for a
way for your students to demonstrate their knowledge in a way
that isn’t a linear narrative, there are a number of tools that will
do just that. Some of you are already using—or planning to use—
some form of timeline such as TimeRime, Dipity, or Preceden.
Prezi is another alternative format tool that allows users to place
information on a large whiteboard area but with the ability to zoom in and out of details. This is
useful when it is important to show the relationship between multiple interrelated details and
the big picture. Prezi’s interface is easy to use but conceptualizing a layout can be daunting.
However, one of its strengths is that it forces the user to think about how all of the smaller
pieces are related to the whole. Similarly, concept-mapping tools like Spicy Nodes will allow
students to demonstrate their knowledge of the relationship between things. Unlike Prezi, a
Spicy Nodes presentation is built from the user entering information and links into text boxes so
it does not require quite so much to conceptualize. One other alternative is to use the tools in
Google’s charting and mapping tools like Gapminder to explore the power of visual statistics. All
of these alternative format presentation tools are embeddable.

Websites Builders: For a while it was a fad for instructors to require

students to build websites. This was usually frustrating and time
consuming for the students; frequently the instructors themselves had no
understanding of what was involved in building a website. However, there
are now any number of easy-to-use free website builders such as Weebly,
Wix, Google Sites, Webs, and Web Node, to name a few. So if you have a
learning objective that would be supported by the students communicating their knowledge and
understanding through the construction of a website, go for it. It is a skill that comes in handy
and learning how to structure information and navigation can be just as valuable as learning
how to write a 5-paragraph essay.

ePortfolios: How are ePortfolios different from websites? Well,

technically they are not different. Students can build ePortfolios in
website builders such as Wix or Google Sites, or with blogging tools such
as WordPress or Blogger. Or they can build them in commercially
available ePortfolio platforms such as Chalk&Wire, Epsilen or
DIGI[cation]. But an ePortfolio is really more of an approach. Ideally students build ePortfolios
to integrate and contextualize their learning. The classic mantra of ePortfolios is that students
“collect, select, reflect, and project.” This means that the ePortfolio functions as a repository for
all of the student’s work. When students are ready to share the ePortfolio with a given audience,
they go through the selection process. It is during this sifting of the “evidence” that they start to
notice patterns and connections and begin to reflect on just what it is that they have learned and

University of Idaho Distance & Extended Education (208) 885-4024, dee@uidaho.edu  

 
how it is applicable to their lives and plans. Usually they write an overarching narrative to
contextualize what they have learned and then hyperlink the text to a variety of work that serves
as evidence.

In many ways ePortfolios work best at the program level, where students pull together evidence
from across courses to demonstrate how they have met program goals. But classroom
ePortfolios work as well, especially if the instructor is looking for some sort of synthesis of the
material and wants the students to relate their learning back to their own lives.

At DEE, we have been exploring how the tagging and category functions of WordPress could be
used as a filtering engine, routing evidence to related outcomes-based pages. One benefit of this
system is that when students are freed from the mechanics of sorting and filtering, they have
more time to focus on selecting relevant evidence. The reflection process then becomes the
natural result of students noticing patterns and linkages in their learning inside and outside the
classroom. If you are interested in piloting an ePortfolio project in WordPress, we can help with
that but many platforms will work to create a simple, course-level ePortfolio.

Links for sites mentioned above

Blogger http://www.blogger.com
WordPress http://wordpress.com/
Feevy http://www.feevy.com/

VoiceThread http://voicethread.com/
SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/

Prezi http://prezi.com/
TimeRime http://timerime.com/
Dipity http://www.dipity.com/
Preceden http://preceden.com/
Spicy Nodes http://www.spicynodes.org
Google Maps http://maps.google.com/
Gapminder http://www.gapminder.org/
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/
Vimeo http://vimeo.com/

Weebly http://www.weebly.com/
Wix http://www.wix.com/
Google Sites https://sites.google.com/
Webs http://www.webs.com/
WebNode http://www.webnode.com/

University of Idaho Distance & Extended Education (208) 885-4024, dee@uidaho.edu