Workshop to showcase Echo360 student engagement tools

As faculty prepare to head back to the classroom this fall, many are seeking new ways to engage their students in active learning, but are not sure what tools are available to help them facilitate that process.

A lunch-and-learn workshop on August 18 will introduce faculty to the Echo360 Active Learning Platform, which can help instructors engage their students in active learning in the classroom and beyond.

Echo360 helps students engage and interact with course content, instructors, and peers — before, during, and after class. Students are able to take notes, ask questions, review lectures, highlight concepts they are confused about, and even discuss with peers right in the system, which is integrated to Blackboard Learn.

While some people may be familiar with basic “clickers” or web-based audience response systems such as Kahoot, Socrative, or TopHat, Echo360 is a powerful suite of web-based tools that includes student response and polling features, lecture capturing, screencasting and personal video capture, and analytics features.

“Beyond the clicker-type questions you can embed in your lectures to engage students, one of the features that is really powerful for supporting learning is the ability for students to take notes in the system and have them attached to the lecture recording or lecture slides,” says Nick Baker, director of the Office of Open Learning, a co-sponsor of the workshop with Echo360. “When they go to review their notes later, they can see them in the context of what was said in class.”

He notes that another feature allows students to flag content they are confused about without having to put up their hands and feel singled out, and they can also bookmark slides they should come back to, or which are noted as particularly important.

Echo360 has invested in making the tool accessible to students and faculty with disabilities, and also uses Canadian servers to store data.

The workshop, which runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in room 1114, Erie Hall, will be facilitated by Chelsea Jenkins from Echo360, and Mark Lubrick from the Office of Open Learning. It will cover the basics of Echo360’s capabilities, as well as hands-on demonstration of how it can be accessed and used. Participants are encouraged to bring laptops and other mobile devices.

Lunch will be provided, so advance registration is required at: https://ctl2.uwindsor.ca/openlearning/workshops/16/. For more information, contact Baker at 519-253-3000, ext. 4925, or by e-mail at nbaker@uwindsor.ca.