Resources

University faculty and students have access to many tools that may be useful in the event we must teach our classes remotely. We encourage faculty to plan more than one approach in case not all students have good internet connectivity.

The Instructional Technology Group recommends the tools on this page for your consideration as you plan for emergency continuation of your courses. We are happy to assist all College Faculty as they prepare.

Quick Overview

Live Video Conferencing – Meet with your class face to face, share your screen

  • Zoom
  • Google Hangouts/Meet

Distributing Course Materials

  • Canvas – Full featured Learning Management System for managing your course
  • Google Drive – Good for sharing images and videos as well as documents

Pre-Recording lectures

  • Narrated PowerPoint is the easiest solution, with no additional software to install or learn. Window’s Camera app and Mac’s PhotoBooth also provide easy recording with tools already on your WFU laptop.
  • Camtasia is a fantastic tool for creating and editing videos. Camtasia has more of a learning curve than narrated PowerPoints, but it is much more flexible. See below.
  • VoiceThread allows audio and video feedback from students. See below.
  • Kaltura WFU has licensed the Kaltura video platform. It allows you to create, edit, store, and stream videos.

Canvas

For most faculty, Canvas will be the centerpiece of their course continuation strategy. 

This is the place where you can organize your assignments, accept student homework, grade homework right within Canvas, and integrate many other tools from WebEx to Google Docs to WebAssign.

  • Canvas.wfu.edu is the starting place for all things Canvas at Wake Forest.
  • Tips and tutorials for many of the most frequently asked questions can be found on this site under the ITG Tips and Tutorials category on this site.
  • Lots of offerings of the Canvas Training Workshop can be found at the Professional Development Center site.

Below we have identified several handy Canvas resources from around the Web.

Handy Canvas Tools for Academic Continuity

Zoom

Visit WFU Information Systems’ Zoom page for the latest instructions.

Faculty

  • Beginning in the Summer of 2023, all faculty members will be provided with a Zoom Pro license within one week of their new WFU account creation.
  • To use Zoom after you have your license, go to zoom.us and click “Sign in.”
    • Choose “Sign in with Google.”
      • If you have more than one Google account, select your wfu.edu account and sign in.
    • You should see a screen that says “Welcome to Zoom.” Choose “Create account.” Then you should be logged in to wakeforest-university.zoom.us/meeting
    • Click on “Profile” and confirm your “Account” is “Licensed.

We recommend LinkedIn Learning tutorials to get started.

Google Tools

Class section Google Group

The university automatically creates a group email address for every class. It is updated as students add and drop. You can use this to email the entire class or to share Google Drive files or even entire folders with your class. For more on class Google Groups see Google Groups for classes (Faculty FAQ).

Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides

Class sharing of files (google and non-google formatted files) and collaborations – +both synchronously and asynchronously.

Don’t forget the collaborative abilities of the Drive tools that also integrate with Canvas:

When sharing video files, remember that  viewing online is not immediate; it takes time for Google Drive to prepare the video for viewing. This could take up to hours depending on length and resolution.

  • Be aware that on a few occasions the conversion does not work, and you will need to re-upload to try again.  
  • Also, files need to be in MP4 format. Google Drive will not process a video file for viewing if it has a .TS extension; just rename the file with an .MP4 extension.

If closed captions are needed, use YouTube to generate captions automatically, then manually correct. See  Accessibility: Editing your YouTube video’s captions.

Google Hangouts Meet

Finally, Google Hangouts Meet is a video conferencing / online class alternative to WebEx and Zoom.

Narrated PowerPoint

Did you know you can record an audio narration right within PowerPoint? While Camtasia allows the creation of much richer lecture video lectures, a narrated PowerPoint has the advantage of comparably small file size. This may be important for students who have poor internet connectivity.

Video tutorial

Camtasia

Camtasia is a relatively easy-to-use video editor, especially useful for capturing your screen as you lecture. Faculty and Staff can download Camtasia (choose Mac or Windows version) at software.wfu.edu.

Record yourself with your laptop microphone and/or camera while simultaneously and capturing computer screen activity. You can cut any mistakes, add text boxes, arrows, etc. and then export as an MP4 file, suitable for sharing via Youtube or Google Drive.

Video tutorials for Camtasia:

Camtasia Tip:

Videos you upload to YouTube are automatically captioned for you after a few minutes, and your audience can choose to turn the closed captions on. Here are instructions if you’d like to edit / correct any errors. Tutorial: Accessibility: Editing your YouTube video’s captions,
https://itg.wfu.edu/blog/captions-in-youtube/

VoiceThread

Would you like students to be able to respond to online lectures? Voicethread provides an online discussion centered around digital files – PowerPoints, Word documents, pdf files, image files, audio and/or video clips. 

Access your WFU account here: wfu.voicethread.com/

Tutorials:

VoiceThread is also integrated with Canvas. You can create VoiceThread graded assignments within your Canvas course. Here’s how: https://itg.wfu.edu/blog/canvas-voicethread/