Online Resources Every Professor Needs – Forbes Advisor
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Teaching is a work of heart, or so the saying goes—but it’s also a work of refined skill. Staying up to date on the latest educational technologies, trends and issues is vital for professors seeking to sharpen their skills and make a continuing impact on students.
Plenty of online resources exist to help professors do just that. Best of all, many are free or available at very low costs to educators with valid school email addresses. Keep reading to discover online resources every professor can use throughout the school year.
How To Use Online Resources
Online resources include newsletters, webinars, instructional videos, discussion forums and digital software. No matter the medium, these online resources support the research and practice of professors.
Educational resources like articles and webinars provide professors with expert insights for developing as an instructor. Some resources also offer news and updates for staying current with recent industry happenings. Others provide professors with peer-to-peer networking opportunities.
Digital tools like educational software applications—some examples of which we’ll list below—aim to make life a little easier for professors who must create presentations, lesson plans and other educational content.
Apps For Educators
The prevalence of online learning platforms has pushed many professors to adapt their curricula to digital environments. Online learning requires engaging course material (best supported with interactive graphics or videos) and a robust platform for holding virtual classes. These apps and software help professors create an effective online learning environment.
Canva
Subscriptions and Cost: This platform is free for Canva for Education subscribers. Create a Canva account with your education email address, or upload proof of your teaching certification and employment.
How to use it: Canva provides educators with editable content templates, including lesson plans, infographics, posters and videos. You can invite students to share, review and manage their work together in Canva. Canva for Education also connects with classroom tools including Schoology, D2L, Moodle, Blackboard, Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams. It’s also possible to integrate Canva for Education with a learning management system.
Loom
Subscriptions and Cost: Loom is free for verified instructors in schools, universities and educational institutions using video messaging for classroom work. For teams and businesses, it costs $12.50 per month for advanced recording and analytics functions.
How to use it: Loom is a video tool that allows educators to record lessons and other educational content. It works by recording both the speaker (if you enable this feature) and the screen at the same time, so students can listen and watch as problems are solved in real-time.
Prezi
Subscriptions and Cost: Prezi offers three subscription tiers for students and educators. Get EDU Plus for $3 a month to access unlimited Prezi creations, premium images, PDF export capabilities, offline access and more. EDU Pro offers the same perks but with advanced online training and powerful analytics to track progress. EDU Pro costs $5 per month. Departments and administrations can contact Prezi for enterprise pricing.
How to Use it: Prezi offers three distinct products: Prezi Present, Prezi Design and Prezi Video. They help educators create various types of educational content for students. Prezi Present allows you to create moving, visually engaging presentations for students. Make interactive charts, reports, infographics and maps with Prezi Design. Prezi Video enables you to screen record your lessons and assignments.
Content is easily shared through an LMS, Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Zoom
Subscriptions and Cost: Zoom offers a variety of education subscription services.
- You’ll pay $1,800 for a Meetings account, which offers 20 licenses, transcript recording, school branding and a 300-attendee capacity.
- Zoom Webinar costs $3,400 per year for each user and enables up to 1,000 attendees. It’s ideal for educators putting on registration and polling events, alumni engagement events, orientations and large open online courses.
- For $499 per year per user, you can purchase Rooms, which enables interactive whiteboarding and co-annotation and camera and audio designed to capture multiple speakers in a room.
How to use it: Zoom enables professors to teach virtual classes from anywhere with an internet connection. Zoom’s features designed for educators include a customizable virtual seating chart, class recordings, pinning specific videos and speaker spotlighting.
Discussion Forums
Online discussion forums give professors the opportunity to network, share resources and access educational content to bolster their teaching skills. Professors seeking to further their professional development and heighten their impact in the classroom—be it virtual or in person—might find these resources helpful.
EDUCAUSE
EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association working to advance higher education through the use of information technology. With over 100,000 members worldwide, EDUCAUSE gives educators access to key resources for growing in their careers.
Members can stay up to date with higher education issues, technologies and trends through EDUCAUSE’s library of research, toolkits and publications. EDUCAUSE also offers training and professional development, networking events with special pricing, professional learning offerings, job postings, sponsorships, exhibits and advertising.
POD Network
POD Network—the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education—is the largest and oldest educational development organization in the world. It focuses on outreach and development for national and regional educational development organizations globally.
The POD Network provides its members with personal and academic relationships that are essential for professional growth. Members can access publications, conferences, consulting and networking events for professional growth and development support.
The POD Network has roughly 1,500 members representing hundreds of colleges and universities. It also hosts an annual conference, providing attendees with interactive workshops and networking opportunities.
‘E-Learning’ Assistance
Higher education has undergone significant upheavals since the Covid-19 pandemic’s onset. As schools went remote, professors were forced to migrate curricula online and learn the countless e-learning software in real-time.
Making that transition hasn’t been easy. Fortunately, several resources are available to help professors as they navigate online teaching.
ACUE Online Teaching Toolkit
The Association Of College And University Educators (ACUE) provides an online teaching toolkit to support professors teaching remotely. It covers six key focus areas, all of which are free to access online. Focus areas include:
- Welcoming students to the online environment
- Managing your online presence
- Organizing your online course
- Planning and facilitating quality discussions
- Recording effective micro-lectures
- Engaging students in readings and micro-lectures
MERLOT
The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) may be a mouthful, but it’s a fantastic resource for professors seeking supplemental teaching support. Professors and educators worldwide can join the MERLOT system for free, where they’re provided access to support materials and content creation tools for their remote classrooms.
MERLOT members can add their own educational materials with the site’s content builder tool—also completely free of charge.
Online Learning Consortium
The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is an online collective of higher education leaders. Dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences, the OLC provides professors with access to workshops, webinars, conferences and a certificate program. The OLC also publishes a quarterly online learning journal that addresses an array of peer-reviewed topics in online education.
Community membership is free. Professional memberships cost $195 annually and provide access to the latest industry news and research, networking opportunities and discounts for conferences and other events. You can get in touch with the OLC to discuss institutional membership pricing for your college or university.
Helpful Newsletters
Faculty Focus
Cadence: Three times a week
Cost: Free
What You’ll Read About: Faculty Focus includes insights written by instructors, teachers, instructional designers and others around the world regarding what’s working in the world of online education—and what’s not. Professors are also encouraged to submit their own articles about proven (and unproven) pedagogical techniques.
Teaching by the Chronicle of Higher Education
Cadence: Weekly each Thursday
Cost: Free
What You’ll Read About: Teaching by the Chronicle of Higher Education delivers insights for improving teaching and online education. You’ll read surveys, interviews, reports and short articles compiled and written by the Chronicle’s education writers.
The Teaching Professor
Cadence: Weekly, plus on-demand access to the newsletter archive
Cost: Monthly subscriptions start at $19; a three-year subscription will run you $357
What You’ll Read About: The Teaching Professor newsletter covers topics like active learning, designing effective assignments, mentoring new and adjunct faculty, overcoming student apathy and integrating instructional technology.
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