Teaching Tools

NYU provides faculty with a variety of tools—from Brightspace and Zoom to emerging technologies—to help you design, teach, and engage students effectively. Explore what’s featured here, and connect with us at wagner.learninginnovation@nyu.edu for tailored support.

Featured Tool of the Month (Updated in Mar 2026)

Each month, we spotlight one tool you may find especially useful in your teaching.
Catch up on past featured resources here.

Peerceptiv Group Formation

Group Formation Tool

Group work can be unpredictable for both students and faculty. Who students are paired with often shapes the quality of their learning experience, yet forming groups that meaningfully support strong collaboration isn’t easy.

Peerceptiv Group Formation feature supports a more intentional approach to forming groups by automatically building balanced teams based on student survey responses.

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Tools for Teaching & Learning

NYU provides a variety of tools to enhance teaching and learning. Explore the highlights on this page, and if you’d like help identifying the right fit for your course, contact us at wagner.learninginnovation@nyu.edu for 1:1 support.

Essentials: Brightspace, Google Workspace, Zoom

Kickstart your teaching with Brightspace, Google Workspace, and Zoom — the core platforms for learning, communication, and collaboration at NYU.

BRIGHTSPACE

Brightspace is NYU’s learning management system. You can use it to share your syllabus, course materials, and assignments. It also lets you post announcements, connect with students, and share grades.

GOOGLE WORKSPACE

NYU-licensed Google Workspace apps include Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, Sites, and Forms. Faculty and students use these tools for communication, collaboration, file sharing, scheduling, and real-time co-editing.

NYU Google Services Overview
Cheat sheets & reference guides for Google Workspace apps & add-ons
Google Workspace Hacks: Unlocking Digital Productivity (requires NYU login)
NYU Google Workspace Templates
NYU Wagner Downloadable Templates (requires NYU login)

ZOOM

Zoom is NYU’s video conferencing platform, widely used for live class discussions, virtual office hours, advising, recordings, and webinars.

Multimedia & Interactive Tools

Looking to make learning more dynamic? Stream video, build interactivity with H5P, spark collaboration in VoiceThread, create with Adobe Express, and extend learning through LinkedIn Learning.

NYU STREAM

NYU Stream is a streaming platform available exclusively to the NYU community. Beyond storing and sharing audio or video, it provides instructional tools to enhance teaching and student engagement.

Features in NYU Stream

POWTOON: Create engaging animated presentations and videos with customizable templates, characters, and media.

- NYU Stream: Creating a Powtoon video

ANNOTO: Add interactive discussion and note-taking to videos, enabling students to comment, reflect, and collaborate at specific moments.

- - NYU Stream: Video Annotation Annoto

H5P

H5P is an interactive content creation tool integrated with NYU Brightspace. It allows faculty to design and embed quizzes, interactive videos, timelines, drag-and-drop activities, and more — enhancing engagement, supporting formative assessment, and providing dynamic learning opportunities with seamless grade passback.

VOICETHREAD

VoiceThread is an asynchronous multimedia discussion tool that lets faculty and students engage around a central piece of content. Participants can contribute using voice, video, text, or annotation, creating interactive conversations that extend beyond the classroom.

ADOBE EXPRESS

Adobe Express provides user-friendly tools for basic design needs, like creating or editing graphics, videos, PDFs, and web pages. It is available at express.adobe.com to all current students, faculty, and staff. Enter nyu.edu in the Email Address field (not your full email) then log in with your NetID and password.

Adobe Express Essential Training (requires NYU login)

LINKEDIN LEARNING

LinkedIn Learning offers thousands of expert-led courses in business, technology, creative skills, and personal development. Integrated with Brightspace, it allows instructors to embed content directly into courses and provide students with high-quality, on-demand resources.

NYU Brightspace: LinkedIn Learning (Main Article)

Assessment & Feedback

Looking to assess learning and give meaningful feedback? Explore options like Brightspace, Gradescope, Turnitin, Respondus, and Peerceptiv to design assessments, streamline grading, facilitate peer learning, and uphold academic integrity.

BRIGHTSPACE

Brightspace offers built-in tools for creating assessments, grading, and providing transparent feedback.

Quizzes: Create and deliver online quizzes and exams with flexible question types, randomization, and automatic grading.

NYU Brightspace: Create and configure a Quiz (Main article)

Assignments: Collect, review, and grade student submissions securely in Brightspace.

NYU Brightspace: Assignments tool (Main article)

Rubrics: Build clear criteria for consistent grading and transparent feedback.

NYU Brightspace: Rubrics (Article)

Grades: Manage and share student grades with options for weighting, calculation, and release.

NYU Brightspace: Grades (Main article)

Quick Eval: View and complete all outstanding grading tasks in one place.

NYU Brightspace: Quick Eval (Main Article)

GRADESCOPE

Gradescope streamlines grading for paper-based, digital, and coding assignments. It supports rubric-based grading, batch feedback, and quick re-grading, making assessment more efficient and consistent.

TURNITIN

Turnitin checks student work for originality and proper citation. It also provides feedback tools to help faculty uphold academic integrity and guide students in responsible writing.

NYU Brightspace: TurnItIn Integration (Main Article)

RESPONDUS LOCKDOWN BROWSWER & MONITOR

LockDown Browser secures the online testing environment by preventing browsing, printing, or screen-sharing during exams. Monitor provides access to automated proctoring or live Zoom proctoring for additional exam integrity.

NYU Brightspace: Respondus Integration (Main Article)

PEERCEPTIV

Peerceptiv enables peer review and peer evaluation, giving students opportunities to provide constructive feedback and learn from each other while helping faculty foster engagement and collaboration.

Polls & Surveys

Polls and surveys are valuable tools for gathering student feedback, checking understanding, and increasing participation in real time. These platforms make it easy to collect insights that can shape your teaching and improve learning outcomes.

POLL EVERYWHERE

Engage students in real time with polls, quizzes, and interactive questions across web browsers, Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Keynote. Use it for attendance, quick checks, or gauging understanding.

NYU Brightspace: Poll Everywhere

BRIGHTSPACE SURVEY

Build surveys directly in Brightspace to gather feedback, assess satisfaction, and monitor course trends with built-in reporting tools.

NYU Brightspace: Survey

GOOGLE FORMS

Create flexible surveys and forms for course feedback, sign-ups, or quick data collection.

Google Forms training and help

QUALTRICS

Qualtrics enables you to create and administer web surveys for research, teaching, and administrative purposes.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a vital part of effective teaching and learning. With tools like Ally and NYU Stream’s captioning feature, you can create more inclusive course content that supports all learners.

ALLY

Ally is an integration in NYU Brightspace used by instructors to improve the accessibility of course content. Ally provides instructors with guidance for improving content accessibility and provides students with alternative content formats.

NYU STREAM: Ordering Captions

NYU Stream allows you to order machine-based captions for media in 17 source languages. These captions can be viewed on the video player as a viewer watches the video, and a searchable, clickable transcript is simultaneously created for the media.

NYU Stream: Ordering captions

AI & Emerging Tools

NYU provides access to several generative AI (GenAI) tools that can enhance teaching, research, and creative work. From chatbots that streamline tasks to research assistants and image-generation tools, these services help faculty and students explore new possibilities for learning and innovation.

GEMINI

Google Gemini is a GenAI chatbot that can be used to create new content, streamline repetitive tasks, assist with communications, and more. Gemini is automatically available to all eligible NYU community members by logging in with their NYU NetID and password.

Google Gemini: Get Started with Google’s AI Assistant (requires NYU login)
Sign in to Gemini: gemini.google.com

NOTEBOOK LM

NotebookLM is a personalized research assistant. You can upload various file types to the tool, ask questions about those files, receive answers with cited sources, and produce outputs such as summaries, briefing docs, timelines, FAQs, study guides, and audio & video overviews.

NotebookLM for Research (requires NYU login)
Sign in to NotebookLM: notebooklm.google.com

ADOBE FIREFLY

Adobe Firefly creates images from text prompts and is trained on Adobe Stock (with creator permission) and public domain images. Each generated image includes content credentials, ensuring transparency of its source metadata. Firefly is free for all NYU affiliates.

Adobe Firefly Essential Training (requires NYU login)
Sign in to Adobe Firefly: firefly.adobe.com

Have questions or want to try new tools in your teaching? The Online Education and Learning Innovation team is here to partner with you. Reach out anytime at wagner.learninginnovation@nyu.edu —we’d love to support your work with students.