Detailed view of the beauty and grandeur of one of the clocks of Harkness Tower

Instructional Tools

Canvas @ Yale supports a wide variety of external and internal applications that are integrated into Canvas to support, improve, and enhance the teaching and learning experiences of our faculty and students.

Yale University is required to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA protects the privacy of student educational records, and educational records are, broadly speaking, any information directly related to the student and maintained by Yale, or a party on our behalf, such as a centrally supported application like Canvas.

When using technology not provided by Yale, instructors can better ensure compliance with university standards and regulatory requirements including protecting students’ privacy if they adhere to the following Guidelines.

The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning reviews all third-party tools that faculty or departments indicate they are interested in using for teaching. The review process vets tools for effectiveness, security and accessibility before pursuing an agreement.

Learn more on our Requesting an External Application page.

Educational technology is a complex, integrated process involving people, procedures, ideas, devices and organization for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems involved in all aspects of human learning.

—

Association for Educational Communications and Technology (1977).

Tools by Type

Accessibility

Assessment

Blogging

Collaboration

Communication

Course Facilitation

Discussion

Feedback

Survey

Video

Web Conferencing

Search the Canvas @ Yale Help Guides

How can we help? Visit our Canvas Guides for in depth how-tos and information on Canvas use for courses.

Canvas @ Yale Help

Accessibility Tools

  • Panorama

    Panorama assists instructors in building a more inclusive learning environment, and improve the student experience by helping them take clear control.

  • Yale ITS: Feedback & Accessibility Barriers Tool

    Promotes anonymous feedback reporting for accessibility barriers at any time on course or content during the term by providing an open feedback box.

Assessment Tools

  • Canvas Assignment Tool

    This is one of several native Canvas tools that allows instructors to collect student work for grading.

  • Canvas Quizzes

    A native Canvas feature which is available in all Canvas course sites. Canvas Quizzes allows instructors to create high and/or low stakes assessments.

  • FeedbackFruits

    FeedbackFruits is a robust assessment and feedback tool suite that can facilitate individual or group oriented assessment activities.

  • Gradescope

    Designed to streamline and standardize paper-based, digital, and code assignments. It supports problem sets and projects, worksheets and quizzes.

  • LabArchives

    LabArchives is a cloud-based lab notebook that can be used to organize, create, collaborate, and collect lab / research notes.

  • Respondus LockDown Browser

    A custom browser that locks down the testing environment within a learning management system.

  • Turnitin

    A tool to help faculty and students develop and evaluate written scholarship.

Blogging

  • WordPress

    Wordpress is an online blogging solution creating a site where students and instructors can post and comment on a variety of topics.

Collaboration

  • Canvas Collaborations

    The Collaborations tool in Canvas allows students and instructors to create collaborative documents together.

  • Canvas Groups

    Canvas Group Sets/Groups tool allows instructors to split students up into smaller working groups for collaborative assignment work and discussions.

  • FeedbackFruits

    FeedbackFruits is a robust assessment and feedback tool suite that can facilitate individual or group oriented assessment activities.

Communication

  • Canvas Announcements

    Instructors in a Canvas course have the ability to send Announcements to students in their course.

  • Canvas Inbox

    Inbox is a two-way messaging tool used instead of email to communicate with a course, a group, or an individual user.

Course Facilitation

  • Canvas Modules

    Canvas Modules allow instructors to bring together resources and activities from across their Canvas course site into modules for easier access.

  • Canvas Pages

    Canvas Pages deliver information and content to students, create a front page to welcome students to your course, or provide a way to collaborate.

  • Canvas Syllabus

    An interactive syllabus of the course site using the rich content editor to add links, files, images, media, and more.

  • Yale ITS: Photo Roster

    Available to Instructors and TAs to provide additional information like student photo, major, year, college, course section, and email address.

Discussion

  • Canvas Discussions

    Provides instructors and students the opportunity to contribute and discuss asynchronously.

  • Ed Discussion

    A powerful threaded discussion tool that allows instructors and students to share and interact asynchronously.

  • Perusall

    An annotation tool that helps your students engage collectively with texts.

  • VoiceThread

    An asynchronous discussion tool that centers video and audio responses as the primary form of response option to promote community and engagement.

Feedback

  • FeedbackFruits

    FeedbackFruits is a robust assessment and feedback tool suite that can facilitate individual or group oriented assessment activities.

  • Qualtrics LTI

    Qualtrics allows for faculty to create and share robust, responsive surveys to collect data and feedback.

  • Yale ITS: Feedback & Accessibility Barriers Tool

    Promotes anonymous feedback reporting for accessibility barriers at any time on course or content during the term by providing an open feedback box.

  • Yale ITS: Mid-Semester Feedback

    A Yale-developed survey tool created to support faculty in the collection of anonymous student feedback during a set-time around the semester midterm.

  • Yale ITS: Post'Em

    Provides detailed text feedback to students by uploading a single CSV file. The file can contain multiple columns of feedback or upload multiple files

Surveys

  • Poll Everywhere

    Yale’s supported system for in-class polling. Using a cloud based “bring your own device” model for polling.

  • Qualtrics LTI

    Qualtrics allows for faculty to create and share robust, responsive surveys to collect data and feedback.

Video

  • LinkedIn Learning

    Online, curated video courses designed for in-depth and just-in-time instruction on various tools (e.g. Excel, Tableau) and technical / soft skills.

  • Media Library (Panopto)

    A streaming video service that is integrated into Canvas. Media Library can be used to store, share, and stream uploaded audio and video files.

Web Conferencing

  • Zoom

    A web / video conferencing tool, which allows instructors to meet with their students synchronously online.