Research, presentation and teaching

This website is for inspiration and knowledge sharing among the employees at RU. Here, you will find a selection of tools that can make your job easier. We have much more in stock so if you need solutions that are not mentioned below, please get in touch with Academic IT. You are also welcome to share with us tips and tricks about the tools already on the list or new ones that should be added. Write your suggestions to ait-info(at)ruc.dk.

The daily tasks of research, communication and teaching are closely related. Many IT tools tat support these processes are useful in different situations. The divisions below, therefore are somewhat arbitrary. But hopefully the page helps create an overview.

Evaluation of digital assignments

If you want to read digital assignments on a PC or tablet, the simplest (and freee) way to do so is to use Adobe PDF-reader that works on both PC and tablet and under several operating systems. It is a simple program where you can write comments, search text, an highlight text.

If you want to work with written assignments on an Apple tablet or phone, Academic IT recommends the App Goodreader. If you work on an Android tablet or phone. the app RepliGo pdf reader is recommended. Both apps make it possible to write notes and comments in the file and to have the notes and comments shown in a list so it is easy for you to survey what you have written. Both Apps contain differentfunctions for marking and search, and they have great functions for importing and handling files. Goodreader and RepliGo are both commercial programs, but with regard to price they belong to the lower end.

Academic IT offers guidance in the use of these apps as well as short presentations about the apps for teacher-teams, study boards, and departments.

Data collection and processing

Collaborative writing

Google Drive (requires a Google account) is a complete online office solution, but without the some of the advanced feutures found in a spreadsheet or text processing on the computer (http://drive.google.com).
It is easy to import/export files from your own computer from/to Drive. Note that Drive is a "cloud solution" which means that you may not store private data in Drive.

Notes and mind mapping

Evernote is a powerful and free instrument for making notes in the form of text, audio, and images across different platforms and technologies (pc, tablet, smartphone).

Tools for mind mappinginclude e.g. Bubbl.us (http://bubbl.us) and Freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page).

Reference tools

The university library recommends a range of different reference handling tools, see: http://rub.ruc.dk/for-ansatte/referencehaandtering. Among these and especially suitable for the students group work and the faculty projects across departments are Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) and Zotero (http://www.zotero.com).

Questionnaires

If you need a simple and fast solution, the Forms-programme in Google Drive (drive.google.com) offers an easy configuration and a spreadsheet to collect and further analyze data. A widely used but in the free version also limited questionnaire program is SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/).
For more professional use RU offers SurveyXactl. Contact FIT/Campus-IT (helpdesk@ruc.dk) to register as a user. If you wish to do a questionnaire in connection with your course, use the Questionnaire-activity in Moodle.

Transcription

Voicewalker (only for windows) is a small free programme that helps make the transcription process easier and faster.

Communication and coorporation

Research communication

Research projects are expected to be visible online. This can be achieved with a website e.g. produced in Mahara (mahara.ruc.dk) or it can be made dynamic and maybe dialogical as a weblog or wiki.

Academic IT recommends Wordpress (wordpress.org/)for blogging. Your blog can be hosted at RU´s web hotel service with a proper URL andy without and no adds. Academic IT assist RU staff with installation, configuration and instructions about Wordpress blogs.

Blogger / blogspot.com which are owned by Google (blogger.com) is an alternative for those who want to try for themselves. It is an internet based solution with easy access to create a weblog.

Wiki, ie. web-pages connected with links (as in Wikipedia) are available online in a range of different free versions. Among those Pbworks (http://pbworks.com/) can be recommended. In Moodle, a wiki is included for educational use.

Social networks and coorporation

Mahara (mahara.ruc.dk) is primarily a portfolio and coorporation tool for student, but can also be used as an archive and a discussion forum for research and educational coorporations. Sharepoint, which is available as a standard system at RU, is also a system for coorporation.

Normally, coorporation where partners across different departments share files and resources is only possible if outside participants receive a log-in. An alternative not requiring an administrative effort is Podio (http://podio.com) which is still free to use for smaller groups. Podio is a highly flexible instrument where it is possible to tailor a platform byadding modules or programming new ones. Academic IT wil be happy to assist in preparing Podio solutions.

If you need only a  a network including e.g. a joint forum and the option of a mailing list, then LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/) is the most professional looking service for forming a group. Also Facebook, Google+ and other popular services offers easy options for creating a network.

The Outlook calendar covers most the needs of RU staff and students for planning of meetings. Doodle (http://www.doodle.com) is still useful dur to its universal applicability and easy access to find meeting dates.

Telephony and video conference

LYNC which is a part of the RU telephony, mail and planning system gives access to video conferencing between two and more participants and it is possible to invite people who are not LYNC-users.

Adobe Connect offers video conference and file sharing. Connect is offered as a joint service to higher Danish educational institutions, and you can sign in with your RU username and password.

Google+ is really a social software like Facebook, but is worth mentioning because Hangouts make it possible to set up video conferences very easily.

Skype (http://www.skype.net) offers free telephony and video telephony between Skype users and for a fee with non-users.

Presentation instruments

Slideshows

PowerPoint (Windows) and Keynote (Apple) are used by most people for creating and showing presentations. An internet based alternative is Prezi (http://prezi.com) with its big canvas and scroll and zoom functions for moving between screen displays. These functions make it possible to move  in a non-linear manner through the material.

If you want to make the presentations available online (and not just in Moodle) then Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ is a great instrument.
If necessary, you can spice up a presentation with a "tag cloud" where you extract keywords and automatically get them presented in a graphic design (http://www.wordle.net/)

Screencasts and sound recordings

A screencast is a recording of what is happening on the screen, possibly accompanied by a voice-over explanation. You can use screencasts to make an instructional video or to reherse a PowerPoint presentation, or to make a recorded version of the presentation.

One of the most simple and also free ways to do a short screencast is to use Screenr which is internet based and where the video can be published via the social media Twitter.

Jing is at least as good and easy a product, but it requires a small, free client to be installed on your computer (http://jingproject.com/).

Camtasia, which is produced by the same company as Jing, is commercial software with advanced features for editing and supplementing the screencast recording. It can be used for simple video editing, if you are not highly discerning http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp.

Fotobabble is a primitive alternative, where it is possible to combine still photographs with audio (http://www.fotobabble.com/).

Audacity is suitable for recording and editing audio files directly on your computer.

Online video

In the autumn 2013 RU launches a video archive that contains own productions.

YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) is the well known video service where everybody can upload recordings for free. YouTube also contains a special section for educational purposes: http://www.youtube.com/education. For a YouTube video textbook please see: Alex Juhasz, "Learning from YouTube": http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/.

Also other international video archives are available, e.g. Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/). Edumedia, a Danish video service for the educational community, can be found at the State Library (http://www.edumedia.dk) where faculty and students are free to upload video by means of their RU login.

Video created by other people can also be used as an inspiration. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) can berecommendedt as a collection of particularly outstanding video lectures (http://www.ted.com).

Teaching

Interaction in the classroom

Clickers is an instrument for voting. It can be distributed to the students during a lesson to make them active participants. Read about clickers: "7 things you should know about clickers". RU has not invested in clickers, as they are deemed to be relatively expensive and demanding when it comes to maintenance and administration. However,a similar or even better form of interaction is easily created with the use of small free or inexpensive online programmes.

Poll Everywhere makes it easy and fast to build various types of questionnaires. The free version works well. The commercial version handles more users and offers more features.

TodaysMeet is a simple tool for chatting. It is easy to install and simple to use.

Backchan.nl is a free feedback instrument that has been used in some courses at RU. See Nina Blom tell about her experiences with the product.

Socrative is an expanded "student response" system with apps for both teacher and students. It takes some time to install and get to know, and is best suited for use over an extended period of time.

TitanPad is a simple collaborative test tool where each participant writes with his/her own color at the same time. Suited for brainstorm and good for a bit of variation, but without the features that are included in the other systems.

Online interaction

Voicethread makes possible a dialogical coorporation over a picture, a powerpoint presentation or a movie . Everybody can comment with text, sound, drawings or video.

Control for plagiarism

RU practices systematic plagiarism control in the process of submission of exam papers. To check a manuscrip for yourself, you can use one of the following tools.Note that the plagiarism checkers are able to find online documents only. Furthermore, they are not able to search for plagiarism of a translated text if this does not exist online. Please see RU´s website "Academic writing and the use of sources".
Paper Rater (also English grammar control)
Plagiarism Checker
Plagiarisma.net

Games for learning

A good resource for games for many educational purposes is the Gamestorming wiki. Please see: http://www.gogamestorm.com/

Other tool boxes

There are many offers when it comes to IT-tools suited for supporting teaching, research and communication. In Denmark, advice can be found at DTU and SDU:
- E-learning toolbox, LearningLab, DTU
- E-learning toolbox, SDU

Among many international directories the following can be recommended:
- Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, DIRECTORY OF LEARNING TOOLS
- Robin Good´s Best Online Collaboration Tools