You are here: Campus > ITS > Education > Curricular Technology Resources > Information Tools

Curricular Technology Resources

Information Tools: Choosing the right tool to communicate with your students

Adobe Acrobat: Portable documents for printing and sharing

Caucus: An online discussion space

Multimedia Tools: Audio and video in the classroom

Classroom Equipment: Using and troubleshooting

Course Web Sites: Issues to consider

Creating Course Web Sites

Information Tools

Many students prefer to use online tools to receive and exchange information about coursework, but there are a number of different tools available, and they all have advantages and disadvantages. How do you know which tool to use for which purpose? This document will give you some pointers and examples to help you decide.

Personal email

This is email sent from your computer, typically to one person or to a small group, with no involvement of any other tools.

Email mailing lists (Sympa)

The Sympa system allows you to use your personal email to send messages to a large, pre-defined group of people (like an entire class). Sympa lists can be automatically set up based on class lists.

Web pages

Ordinary web pages are available for students to come and look at at any time, but they don't allow for any interaction.

Online discussions (Caucus)

Caucus is a tool, based on the web, that allows a group of people (like a class) to share information and hold discussions in a private environment.

Shared Folders

A shared folder is a space on the network that you can use to distribute files or applications to a given group, or set up as a secure drop box for turning in assignments. It doesn't offer much personal interaction, but it is an easy way to exchange materials or elements of projects.

What to consider when choosing a tool

The chart below lists five communication tools and explains how they rate in four different areas. These are different aspects of communication that you should consider when choosing one or more of these tools for use with a class. These are the areas to think about:

Timeliness/Persistence

These are two different but related characteristics. Timeliness relates to the question: How important is it for the information to be read as soon as it's available? Some tools, like email, are very good at putting information "in the face" of the recipient; others wait for someone to come and look at them. Both approaches have their place-consider which is most appropriate for your needs.

Persistence has to do with how long the information remains available and how easy it is to access. Do students need to be able to go back and look at all of the information they've received over the term? If so, personal email might not be a good choice for distributing that email. Each of the tools described offers different levels of persistence and ease of access.

Access

Access relates to the question: Who should be able to see this information? With some tools it's very easy to restrict access to a small group; with others, it's hard. If there there privacy or copyright issues surrounding the material you have to share, you'll want to consider the more secure tools.

Interaction

Interaction addresses the question of how your students need to work with the material you're presenting. Do they just need to have it available for reference? Or do they need to be able to respond to it and to each other?

Formats/Uses

Our last category also combines two related topics: What kinds of materials does this tool handle, and what are some common uses for the tool? Are you exchanging text messages with your students? Images? Word processing files? Applications? Each of our different tools supports these formats to a lesser or greater extent. Choosing the right tool for the materials you want to work with will make the process easier for you and your students.

Once you've select a tool or tools that you want to use, contact your computing coordinator about getting started.

	Timeliness/ Persistence	Access	Interaction	Formats/Uses
Personal Email	Email is received as soon as you send it, and usually read soon thereafter. It's not possible to know if someone has read a message, though. Many people don't keep email messages around, or have trouble finding them if they do.	Email is very secure; only the person to whom the message is addressed can read it. It can be used to communicate with people both on and off campus.	Personal email is very much one-to-one. Most people regard it as a private conversation, and it's not designed for involving groups in discussion.	Email is best limited to exchanging plain text. It can support limited text formatting and attached files, but these may not work consistently for everyone. Use for announcements or interactions with individuals or small groups.
Mailman email lists	Email lists have the same characteristics as personal email, but it's possible to configure Sympa to keep an archive of all messages sent, allowing easy access to past material.	Sympa lists are generally as secure as personal email, though you have the option of making the archive of messages open to the public if you wish.	Sympa makes it easier to use email to conduct discussions, but it's not an ideal medium, given the imperfect persistence of messages. Mailing lists are very good for announcements or small scale discussions.	Sympa should only be used with plain text material, particularly if archives are being kept. Use for announcements or interactions with larger groups of people on and off campus.
Web Pages	A web page is only read if someone is told to look at it or has developed a habit of checking for regular changes. However, the content is very persistent, and can be accessible for a long time.	Web pages, by default, are not a secure medium. If no special steps are taken, anyone in the world can see your pages. With extra effort, pages can be restricted to on-campus use or to particular people.	Web pages have no interactive component, except for a limited capability to include response forms on a page. Web pages are best used for material that you want to present and perhaps discuss elsewhere.	Web pages can support text, images, multimedia, and limited downloading of other types of files. Use to publish materials that should be easily available and mostly static.
Caucus Discussions	Caucus has a timeliness somewhere between email and a web page. It alerts you to new material, but you have to log in to see the notice. You can track who has read a particular message. Like a web page, however, the content is very persistent and available for future reference.	Caucus discussions can be very secure or open to the Carleton community, depending on how you choose to set up your conference. Caucus is only available to students, faculty, staff, and alumni.	Caucus is designed to facilitate discussions, and it does this best. It's not as good as email for making announcements, or as a web page for presenting a lot of static information, but it can do those as well.	Caucus supports the formats of web pages, and has some additional built-in support for downloadable files. Use for group discussions, collaborative work, comments on projects, and other interactive experiences.
Shared Folders	Shared folders are like web pages in that one has to look for changes. The material can be persistent, though not as easily browsable as Caucus or the web.	Shared folders are generally restricted to a small group of people, though they can be left open to larger groups (on campus) if needed.	Shared folders can be used for limited collaboration, but they're mainly used as pick-up and drop-off boxes for materials and tools that you want to exchange.	Shared folders can be used to exchange any kind of material, including applications needed for class. Use for distributing and turning in assignments, providing resources for projects, sharing documents, etc.