The LT Hub manages the review process that determines what learning technologies are centrally supported at UBC. In coordination with learning technology governance groups, decisions are made about which tools or additional Canvas functionalities to consider and add to—or remove from—the Learning Technology Ecosystem (LTE) each year.
Learning Technology Reviews
Below are the statuses of learning technologies that are currently under consideration or have been adopted or declined. If you have a learning technology that you would like to have reviewed, you can follow our process for requesting new technology.
Tools
Tools refer to learning technologies that may work on their own or work in coordination with Canvas.
These tools are currently under review.
| Name | Details | Next Steps |
|---|---|---|
| (no tools are currently being considered) |
These tools have been reviewed and adopted into the UBC LTE.
| Name | Details | Integrated w/UBC Data | Centrally Supported | Centrally Funded | Canvas Interaction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camtasia | Camtasia is a desktop-capturing software that also supports video editing. This type of software lets you select specific areas of your computer screen for recording and to add audio or other media for creating educational videos, such as lectures and presentations. | N/A (runs offline) | N/A (runs offline) | ||
| Canvas | Canvas is UBC’s primary learning platform for delivering online course content. In Canvas, you can share materials (text or multimedia), enable student collaboration and discussion, manage assignments and quizzes, and assign grades. Canvas can also be used with many other UBC learning technologies. | N/A | |||
| Collaborative Learning Annotation System (CLAS) | CLAS is an annotation tool for reviewing multimedia and written work. CLAS features a specialized media player for recording, sharing, annotating, and commenting on videos, images, and PDFs. Annotations for videos are timeline-based, so you and your students can leave feedback contextually, exactly where it applies. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: cannot be synced |
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| ComPAIR | ComPAIR is UBC’s homegrown peer review tool that adds comparing to the process of students reviewing one another’s work. In ComPAIR, students see pairs of their peers’ assignments presented side-by-side for criteria-guided comparison and feedback. Students learn by comparing and identifying strengths or weaknesses that may not be as evident in an isolated assignment. The process encourages productive peer feedback and critical thinking. | Course registration: can be automatically synced
Grades: participation can be automatically synced |
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| GitHub | GitHub is a Git repository-hosting service available for academic use at UBC. GitHub is commonly used with Git to manage code or other projects where you want a clear history of the development of shared work. UBC GitHub enables this collaboration and coordination for students with a version of GitHub that works with our UBC CWL (Campus-Wide Login). | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: participation can be synced |
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| Gradescope | Gradescope is an application for grading online, designed to ease the challenges of grading collaboratively with a teaching team, particularly for exams. Gradescope helps distribute student work to graders, facilitates adding grades and feedback, returns graded work to students, and provides analytics for teaching teams to review the grading outcomes.
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Course registration: can be synced
Grades: can be synced |
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| Hypothesis | Hypothesis is an annotation tool that allows instructors, teaching assistants, and students to annotate online course content. These annotations can be made as highlights, comments, and tags on PDF files or webpages. Students can annotate privately or publicly, and anyone in the course can read and reply to the annotations that are visible to them. | N/A | Course registration: cannot be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| iClicker Cloud | iClicker Cloud is an online student response system that allows you to collect and grade responses to questions during a class session, which students answer using their own computer or mobile device. You receive the responses instantly and can use them to inform your teaching and/or share the results with the class. iClicker Cloud poll and quiz results can also be set up to send student grades to the Canvas Gradebook. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: can be synced |
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| iPeer | iPeer is a peer assessment tool for students to evaluate their team members' contributions to group assignments. These assessments encourage students to reflect on their teamwork and individual participation, while providing you with insight into each group's dynamics and each student's contribution. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: can be synced |
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| JupyterHub | JupyterHub is an interactive, customizable computing tool that lets you harness the functions of high-performance computers for teaching and learning at UBC. The tool provides a web-based computational workspace (a “notebook”) for students, instructors, and researchers to collaborate with shared data and to develop related resources, visualizations, and real-time high-performance features such as instant computer-generated figures. | (open version is covered; Canvas-integrated version has a cost) | Course registration: can be synced when using the paid Canvas-integrated version; cannot be synced with the open version
Grades: N/A |
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| Kaltura | Kaltura is a media platform where you and your students can create and share media content in Canvas. Kaltura lets you record, upload, and embed media directly in Canvas courses. Kaltura also allows you to edit media, create shorter clips from existing media, and add interactive video quizzes that can pass grades to Canvas. | Course registration: tool can work within the course
Grades: can be synced |
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| Library Online Course Reserves (LOCR) | LOCR is a request application for managing your course reserves at UBC. LOCR ensures that required materials for courses are available to you and your students. You can request course reserves by adding the content yourself or by sending a list of materials for librarians to add them for you. In either case, UBC Library staff will ensure that your course reserves are copyright compliant and will handle acquisitions of any required licenses. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| LockDown Browser | LockDown Browser is a web browser that “locks down” what students can do during a quiz or exam in Canvas. When students use LockDown Browser, during the assessment they will be unable to print or copy questions, visit other websites, access other applications, or close the assessment until it is submitted. Quizzes and exams created for use with LockDown Browser cannot be accessed with standard browsers. | Course registration: tool can work within the course
Grades: N/A |
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| Mattermost | Mattermost is a chat tool for real-time and asynchronous communication and collaboration, where instant messages and threaded discussions coexist in one, “anytime” course space. You and your students can chat publicly or privately with each other, share files, and tag messages for easier searching later. | Course registration: cannot be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| Microsoft OneDrive | Microsoft OneDrive is a secure file-hosting service that allows you to store, share, and synchronize files and folders from any connected devices. It offers 1TB of encrypted data storage, keeps track of file versions, and allows you to access and edit files and folders offline. Microsoft OneDrive supports UBC faculty, staff, and students securely sharing and collaborating on files in real time, with granular control over who can see and edit what. | Course registration: cannot be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one collaboration tool, where you can meet and collaborate with fellow UBC faculty, staff, and students through web-conferencing and group chat. The tool also enables file-sharing and real-time document collaboration using Microsoft Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. | Course registration: cannot be synced; however, you can request a course team
Grades: N/A |
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| My Learning Analytics (MyLA) | MyLA is a tool in Canvas that gives you and your students feedback about student engagement with course materials, assignments, and grades. You can enable two visualizations for students. One is a summary of the resources that students and their peers have accessed, and the other helps students set grade-based goals and plan their assignment completion. | Course registration: tool can work within the course
Grades: N/A |
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| OnTask | OnTask is a learning analytics tool for targeting groups of students to receive automated but personalized feedback that can help with their learning. With OnTask, you create custom feedback to send to groups of students meeting—or failing to meet—specific learning criteria. Students will receive these messages as individualized feedback from you. The process makes meaningful communication with students easier to manage, especially with large class sizes. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| peerScholar | peerScholar is a peer review tool that allows a high degree of granularity and customization in how you have students review one another’s work. peerScholar assignments have three phases: students submit work, students evaluate peer work and provide feedback, and students reflect on the outcomes. In reflecting, students can read their peer feedback and optionally evaluate that feedback and/or revise and resubmit their work. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: can be synced |
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| PeerWise | PeerWise is a study tool that invites students to quiz each other by creating and sharing their own multiple-choice questions and answering those written by their peers. Developed by the University of Auckland, PeerWise can help you identify common misunderstandings in a course, while students help each other review course content. | N/A | Course registration: cannot be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| Piazza | Piazza is an online discussion tool that you can use to facilitate written discussions or question-and-answer threads involving students, teaching assistants, and instructors. Piazza also supports other interactive features like anonymous posting, polling, and wiki-like collaboration (allowing multiple people to edit the same posts). | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| Qualtrics | Qualtrics is UBC’s primary tool for running surveys and analyzing survey data. You can build custom surveys that are tailored to your needs, for use in or outside of courses. Your survey can include multiple question types and advanced features such as branching, where answers to earlier questions dynamically change what later questions are asked. | Course registration: cannot be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| Respondus Quiz | Respondus Quiz (also known as Respondus 4.0) is an assessment-building software for helping you create quizzes and exams. You can build these assessments offline, then distribute them online using Canvas or distribute them in person using paper copies. | N/A (runs offline) | N/A (runs offline) | ||
| Snagit | Snagit is a screen-capturing software for creating and editing screenshots and video recordings of your desktop screen. You can save finished projects as images or videos and use them to create visual instructions or how-to guides for students. | N/A (runs offline) | N/A (runs offline) | ||
| Threadz | Threadz is a learning analytics tool that allows you to visualize and better quantify the student discussions happening in Canvas discussion boards. Developed by Eastern Washington University with academic use in mind, Threadz lets you map a discussion by person or by discussion thread. | Course registration: tool can work within the course
Grades: N/A |
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| Turnitin | Turnitin is a plagiarism-prevention tool that helps you check the academic integrity of student writing. You can use Turnitin by setting up an assignment in Canvas with plagiarism review enabled. The review works by checking each student's submission for possible matches with the papers in Turnitin's databases and flagging any matching content for you to review. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: cannot be synced |
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| UBC Blogs | UBC Blogs is an interactive website-building platform where you and your students can create websites for sharing content individually or collaboratively. These websites can become course websites, group blogs, peer review spaces, or personal portfolios—all built on a flexible WordPress foundation, which helps you implement different themes and add-on tools without having to learn code. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| UBC Wiki | UBC Wiki is an online platform for collaborative writing, where content can be created and edited by any person who logs in with a UBC CWL (Campus-Wide Login). Content created in the UBC Wiki is viewable by everyone online and can be embedded in other tools like UBC Blogs. UBC Wiki uses the same MediaWiki platform that powers Wikipedia, which includes detailed revision tracking of content and the option to use wiki markup language for formatting. | Course registration: cannot be synced
Grades: N/A |
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| VideoScribe | VideoScribe is an animation software that allows you to animate on a digital whiteboard using text and an extensive library of shapes and images. You can customize the animations in multiple ways, as well as add voice-overs and a soundtrack to the final video. | N/A (runs offline) | N/A (runs offline) | ||
| Webwork | Webwork is an online assignment and quiz tool for numeric problems and equations. In Webwork, you can create custom problems or choose from a library and assign these problems on an individual student basis as part of homework sets or quizzes. Students can receive instant feedback after answering each problem and have multiple attempts, to better understand their learning. | Course registration: can be synced
Grades: can be synced |
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| Zoom | Zoom is a video/audio web-conferencing and collaboration tool that lets you meet with students in real time online. Through Zoom you can do many classroom activities: present using whiteboards, share screens and resources, interact via chats or Q&A, enable small group discussions, and administer polls. | Course registration: tool can work within the course
Grades: N/A |
These tools have been reviewed and declined for inclusion in the UBC LTE.
| Name | Details | Declined Date |
|---|---|---|
| CATME | CATME is a tool for asking students to review the contributions of their peers to group work. UBC decided not to centrally support or fund CATME, following the recommendations from the 2020 UBC Student Peer Assessment Tools Working Group. | August 2020 |
| Course Spaces | Course Spaces is a WordPress-based interactive website platform developed at UBC for sharing open course content. UBC decided not to centrally support or fund Course Spaces, as instructors interested in sharing open course content can instead use UBC Blogs or UBC Wiki. | December 2019 |
| Team Formation | Team Formation is a tool developed at UBC that enables instructors to create teams based on student traits, skills, and preferences. UBC decided not to centrally support or fund Team Formation at this time; however, limited support is available from UBCO as development of the tool continues. | May 2022 |
These tools were adopted but since removed from inclusion in the UBC LTE.
| Name | Details | Discontinued Date |
|---|---|---|
| Crowdmark | Crowdmark is an application for grading online, designed for easing the challenges of grading collaboratively with a teaching team. Central support for Crowdmark ended at UBC in April 2024, as instructors interested in collaborative grading can use Gradescope instead. | April 2024 |
| edX Edge | edX Edge is an online course delivery alternative to UBC's primary learning platform, Canvas (which was previously Connect, when edX Edge was first adopted). Central support for edX Edge ended at UBC in May 2023, as instructors can now use Canvas to meet course delivery needs instead. | May 2023 |
| Proctorio | Proctorio is an online remote proctoring tool that allows instructors to give an invigilated quiz or exam in Canvas. The decision to support Proctorio at UBC was changed in March 2021 in response to concerns raised around its use during the pandemic. | March 2021 |
Additional Canvas Functionality
Additional Canvas functionality refers to learning technologies that only work work within Canvas.
This additional Canvas functionality is currently under review.
| Name | Details | Next Steps |
|---|---|---|
| Cambridge CogBooks (publisher content) | CogBooks content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| Cengage MindTap (publisher content) | MindTap content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| Macmillan Achieve (publisher content) | Achieve content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| McGraw-Hill Connect (publisher content) | Connect content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| Pearson MasteringPhysics (publisher content) | MasteringPhysics content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| Rover (publisher content) | Rover content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| Wiley Plus (publisher content) | Wiley Plus content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
| WW Norton InQuisitive (publisher content) | InQuisitive content can be made available in Canvas when this functionality is enabled. | Previously this content was available through Willo, which let UBC put publisher content in Canvas while protecting student data. Willo is no longer active, and we are investigating how best to make the content available going forward. Please contact us at the LT Hub if you are using one of these textbook products. |
This additional Canvas functionality has been reviewed and adopted into the UBC LTE.
| Name | Details | Integrated w/UBC Data | Centrally Supported | Centrally Funded | Canvas Gradebook Interaction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abacus | Abacus is a research library database application available in Canvas. | N/A | |||
| Badgr | Badgr is a tool for recognizing and tracking course achievements in Canvas. | N/A | |||
| CLASS | CLASS is a scheduling system for chemistry labs available in Canvas. | N/A | |||
| H5P | H5P is an open-source tool that allows you to create interactive content for students to learn from. H5P is an abbreviation for HTML5 Package and there are 45 interactive content types available, including multiple choice questions, video with an interactive quiz, memory games, image hotspots, and more. H5P content can be embedded in a Canvas page. | No grade syncing available | |||
| SCORM | You can import SCORM-compatible content from other learning tools and platforms and use them as assignments or content pages in Canvas. SCORM is a set of technical standards that guide how learning tools should communicate and share data with each other. These standards allow content from other compatible tools to be exported as SCORM packages and then imported, launched, and tracked correctly in Canvas. | Automated grade syncing available | |||
| Student Time Zones | Student Time Zones is a tool for visualizing your students' availability based on their time zone in Canvas. | N/A |
This additional Canvas functionality has been reviewed and declined for inclusion in the UBC LTE.
| Name | Details | Declined Date |
|---|---|---|
| Roll Call Attendance | Roll Call Attendance is an attendance-taking tool in Canvas. Roll Call Attendance was not enabled at UBC, based on concerns around its functionality and a desire to discourage attendance impacting student grades. The LT Hub recommends that attendance continue to be taken via traditional means. | July 2019 |
| UBC Wiki Embed | UBC Wiki Embed is a way of embedding content from UBC Wiki directly in Canvas. Support for this mode of embedding not been enabled; however, you can use HTML iframe code to display UBC Wiki content in Canvas instead. | December 2019 |
This additional Canvas functionality was adopted but since removed from inclusion in the UBC LTE.
| Name | Details | Discontinued Date |
|---|---|---|
| Ally | Ally is a content-checking tool in Canvas for guiding improvements to the accessibility of course content. Ally was put on pause at UBC in November 2023. However, you can use Canvas's built-in "Accessibility Checker" tool to fix some common accessibility issues.
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November 2023 |
| Willo Reader | Willo Reader was an interactive eBook reader that could be accessed via Canvas to read publisher content. Due to changes with Willo, Willo Reader will soon no longer be available in Canvas. However, students who set up a Willo Portal account before the end of their Canvas course will continue to have access to content there. | October 2024 |