Getting started

The most familiar system for many faculty is NTULearn [aka Blackboard]. It has many features that support learning and teaching, such as Blackboard Collaborate Ultra for web conferencing, Forums for group discussions, Turnitin for assignment submissions and plagiarism checking, Course analytics helps to assess students' learning progressions and performance. There is also an additional extension to NTULearn, such as Wooclap, NTULearnVideo (aka Kaltura), LAMS and more.

Besides NTULearn, the G Suite Tools and Office 365 Apps helps to complement the learning and teaching experiences.

Under NTULearn, we have:

• Assignment: It is for managing and grading regular written assignments where your students can submit their written work electronically; you can grade these assignments online or in printed form.

• Turnitin: It is an anti-plagiarism tool. Your students will be able to submit course work and assignments for checking against a global database of internet sources, publication databases, and a global repository of previously submitted assignments by other students.

• Test: It is a good way to monitor your student progress in your course. It allows you to assess students' understanding of the course materials.

• Discussion Board: You can assign discussion grades in a forum or thread. You can assign grades based on student participation, on the quality of their posts, or a combination of the two.

• Wikis: Grade wiki contributions to measure students' understanding of course material and their ability to work collaboratively.

• Blogs: Assign a grade to the blog and the comments after reading students' blogs as a way to evaluate participation.

• Rubrics: A rubric is a tool that lists evaluation criteria for an assignment. Rubrics can help students organize their efforts to meet the requirements of an assignment.

• e-Portfolio: It can use for formative assessment of student assignments and learning objectives, to provide feedback and guidance to students on their attainment of course and program-related skills.

• Turnitin Group PeerMark Assignment: PeerMark is a Turnitin function that can be used for peer-reviewing. Instructors can create and manage PeerMark assignments that allow students to read, review, and evaluate papers submitted by their classmates.

• Kaltura Video Assignment: A tool in Blackboard that students can create video assignments to show the content they needed to know, also simultaneously displaying their mastery of the material and communication techniques.

• G Suite Tools: Collaborate, share feedback, and work together with your students in real time on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and many more.

• Office 365 Apps: Office 365 for the web apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and OneNote so you and your students can work together, communicate seamlessly, and doing collaboration work.

• Kaltura Capture: Creating videos and other rich media, without specialized equipment. After a quick download and installation, it can record anything on your computer screen, along with your voice and webcam.

• Softchalk Lesson Builder: Create engaging lessons and learning activities quickly and easily that promotes active learning and gives your learners rich and interactive learning experiences.

• Respondus: Create and manage tests, surveys and question pools that can be printed to paper or published directly to NTULearn

Under NTULearn, we have:

• Announcements: Announcements can be used to welcome students and notify them about course events, changes, corrections, new course resources, assignment due dates.

• Discussion Board: A discussion board should be used for short-question-and-answer-style collaboration between students.

• Wikis: A collaborative space where students can add and edit content, which is usually used for group projects.

• Blogs: A online journal that can include links to resources, multimedia as well as text in it's entries. Each student's blog can be viewed by other course members and commented on.

• Blackboard Survey: A tool to gain information from your students, and all responses are anonymous.

• Google Form: A tool for creating forms, surveys, and quizzes to assess your students at the beginning of the class and gauge pre-existing knowledge.

• NTULearn Grade Centre: The Grade Centre provides an area within your course to store student marks. Test marks and marks from all assessment marked online are automatically stored in Grade Centre.

Under NTULearn, we have:

• Course Analytics: A reporting tool that provides instructors the ability to view data from their course, analyze the information, and report back on different areas within the course.

• Course Reports: A report tool allow instructors to view details on how many times students have accessed a Blackboard course, and what times they accessed the course.

• Microsoft PowerPoint: It allows you to add and record record the narration from inside your presentation so that it plays while viewers watch.

• Kaltura Capture: It capture multi-stream recordings synchronized with a PowerPoint presentation and screen capture with one click to record, with no extra setup or learning curve

• Kaltura Mashups: The Kaltura Media Mashup tool allows you to add video content anywhere in your NTULearn course, such as assignment, Discussion Board post, blog post, etc.

• Google YouTube: It is a video sharing platform where users can watch, like, share, comment and upload videos. You can even create and upload your own videos to share with others.

These tools are widely used for video conferencing and have many features in common, but also some differences.

• NTULearn Collaborate Ultra: It is a virtual classroom conferencing tool residing in Blackboard. You and your students can interact in these sessions via voice, chat, video, and other features such as screen sharing or interactive whiteboard.

• NTULearn Zoom: It is a NTU wide license. It allows your students to participate in audio and video conferencing, content sharing, and chats. You can also record meetings and share them at a later date.

• Microsoft Teams: It is a communication and collaboration platform to deliver lessons through online meetings, as well as schedule, track, and grade student assignments.

• Google Meet: It is an app that is part of the NIE G suite that connects you with your students virtually to collaborate and communicate.

• Cisco Webex: It is NIE subscribed video conferencing tool. It allows you to join via desktop, mobile, or a browser, and it supports up to 1000 participants.