Additional resources on using Ontario's VLE and teaching in a remote/virtual context including pre-recorded webinars can be found within the Supports for Virtual Learning eCommunity. You can access ECommunity from your school board VLE.
Your school board may have additional resources available for you to consider. Each school board has a Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching (TELT) Contact that can provide additional support and guidance on using Ontario's VLE. You can find the name and contact information for your TELT Contact here.
While using the content provided here, you may want to leverage some of the tools within Ontario's VLE platform. Below are a range of different activities that can be used in your class to engage students and help build community.
Ontario's VLE provides a range of tools which include textual, video and audio options for students throughout these activities. To learn more, click here.
Setting up this activity
On a daily basis, you may want to create an announcement for students. Using either the announcements tool or the Activity Feed Tool, you can inform students of the content being addressed during the day, and link to relevant content or assignments. If you choose to use the Activity Feed tool, your students can respond to your post, creating an opportunity to engage in dialog. You may also wish to consider using the Checklist tool to make it easy for students to keep track of which activities they have completed.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Announcements, Activity Feed or Checklist
The Announcements and Activity Feed tools appear on the homepage of your course. The Checklist tool can be found either on the navigation bar or by accessing Edit Course. To update the announcements for your course, use the Edit Course screen, under Announcements. You can manage the announcements from this screen including the addition of new announcements, removal of old announcements, and revision of existing announcements for clarification.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Announcements - Create an Announcement - Instructor
Setting up this activity
General class discussions can give students opportunities to share their experiences, thinking and strategies. Open-ended prompts and scaffolding for how students should interact may help to create an effective discussion. The discussion tool allows the students to either type a response, upload a video or record themselves using their webcam or tablet camera. Consider providing instructions as to how students should respond to their peers including how many posts to respond to and how they should respond (opinion, evaluation, etc.).
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion Board
To create a class discussion, use the discussion tool. Discussions are organized in forums and then topics. The forum is a broad category in which you find topics. For example a forum might be "Reading Circles" and the topics would be the various reading media that are being discussed. Students create threads (or posts) within the topic.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Discussions - Create a Forum - Instructor
Discussions - Create a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Discussion - Moderate Discussions - Instructor
Using Video Note in a Discussion
Setting up this activity
Group discussions can provide private spaces for small group discussion, collaborative work, or as a private journal that is shared with the educator.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion Tool and Groups Tool
To create group discussion spaces, you will first need to create groups in your class. You can access the Groups tool in the Edit Course tab. Groups can be randomly assigned to students, students can select their group or groups can be intentionally assigned by the educator. Also, educators can create individual groups (each student is their own "group") to allow for personalized scaffolding. This last option would be used if you wanted to create a journal discussion board for each student.
Once you have created your groups, you create discussion forums and topics to which you limit access based on the groups that you have created. These can then be used as your group activity spaces allowing private conversation.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Discussions - Create a Forum - Instructor
Discussions - Create a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Discussion - Moderate Discussions - Instructor
Creating Individual Student Groups
Creating Unique Learner Pathways
Setting up this activity
Peer review can provide students with the opportunity to consolidate their own learning by reflecting and building on the ideas of peers. Consider creating clear and measurable criteria to support students to provide constructive feedback.
You can set up peer assessment in multiple ways within Ontario's VLE. You can create an open opportunity for peer review where students can see all other student's work, select/be selected to one or more other student's work, and review the other student(s) work. Alternatively, you can set up a more private peer review session and limit peer access to student work. To do this, create pairs or groups for review.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion Board
To create peer reviews, you will first need to create groups (i.e., discussion topics) in your class. You can access the Groups tool in the Course Admin tab. Groups can be randomly assigned to students, students can select their group, or groups can be intentionally assigned by the educator.
Once you have created your groups (i.e., discussion topics), create discussion forums and topics with access limited based on the groups that you have created. Have students post their work in a new thread. Once created, other students can provide feedback by replying to the forum. These can then allow for private peer review sessions.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Discussions - Create a Forum - Instructor
Discussions - Create a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Discussion - Moderate Discussions - Instructor
Creating Individual Student Groups
Creating Unique Learner Pathways
Setting up this activity
Conferences can provide an opportunity to discuss student progress and achievements through conversations about student work in a one-on-one environment. Determining the purpose and expectations of the conference can be helpful. All school boards have identified a tool that educators can use for 1:1 synchronous conversation. Consider using this synchronous tool to facilitate the student conference.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Portfolio
Students can collect evidence of their learning, in a variety of formats, using the portfolio tool. In preparation for the student conference, spotlight a few items that you wish to use as the discussion opportunity with the student. As you engage in the student conference, you can document the conversation in both the "student reflection" section as well as the teacher feedback section. Additionally, you can take anecdotal notes that are private to you for further reflection.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Providing Feedback to Portfolio Artifacts
Setting up this activity
Think-Pair-Share can provide students with an opportunity to individually reflect and generate ideas, deepen their thinking through peer interaction, and develop skills for a sharing ideas with the greater class community.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion Board
To create a Think-Pair-Share activity in Ontario's VLE, use the discussion tool.
For the "pair" step, use the Groups tool to create the "pairs" (note they can be larger than two). When you create the groups, you have an option to create a discussion forum with topics locked to each group. This is an easy way to complete the setup in one step. If you would like to create the discussion forum and topics separately, use the Discussion Tool to create a discussion forum and then create a topic for each pair and use the restriction options for the topic to assign your Ontario's VLE Group (pair) of students.
To create the sharing step, create a discussion topic with no restrictions. Include instructions for students to post a new thread for each pair and their ideas.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Discussions - Create a Forum - Instructor
Discussions - Create a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Discussion - Moderate Discussions - Instructor
Creating Individual Student Groups
Creating Unique Learner Pathways
Setting up this activity
Journaling can provide students with an opportunity to reflect on thinking, demonstrate learning, and show progress. Journals can be created as single events or as a continuously updated journal through the course.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion
To help students create journals, you can use the discussion tool.
Use the Groups tool to create individual groups (each student is their own group) that have a discussion topic locked to each student. Students can post to the discussion topic and you can review and respond to their posts.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Groups & Discussions - Use Private Discussions for Journaling - Instructor
Discussions - Grade a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Creating Individual Student Groups
Creating Unique Learner Pathways
Setting up this activity
Exit tickets can give students an opportunity to reflect on, synthesize, and share their learning. Consider using questions or prompts based on the content to gauge understanding or to measure interest. Exit tickets are a powerful way to support self-assessment and to get feedback on lessons and determine next steps.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Survey Tool and Quiz Tool
Use the survey tool or quiz tool to create the exit ticket. Both the survey tool and quiz tool can ask a variety of question types (e.g. multiple choice, short answer, fill in the blank, long answer, etc.) The quiz tool can automatically assess the responses (and provide feedback) while the survey tool will all you to reflect on the responses without indicating correct/incorrect or providing direct feedback. Create a survey, then add questions based on the kinds of questions you would like to use. There are many different question types to choose from within the survey tool including Likert Scales and open-ended questions.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Surveys - Create a Survey - Instructor
Quizzes - Create a New Quiz - Instructor
Setting up this activity
Both Pre-Assessments and Practice Assessments can be created within Ontario's VLE. Pre-assessments can help you to determine prior knowledge and learning that students have about a topic or skill. Pre-assessments can support targeted instruction.
Practice assessments likewise can be created to help students self-assess, build familiarity, and develop confidence with new learning. By using practice assessments, you can reinforce learning within your class as well as identify concepts that would benefit from further clarification.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Quiz Tool
To set up pre-assessments and practice assessments in Ontario's VLE, you can use the quiz tool. Using the quiz tool you can create a bank of questions that are drawn from. When a student takes the quiz, the quiz tool will select a defined number of questions from the pool. For example, you could set the quiz to show 5 questions out of a pool of 20 questions. The quiz can be configured to allow the student to complete an unlimited number of attempts and each time they are presented with a new set of 5 questions.
To set up a quiz, create a quiz in the quiz tool. Then, populate the quiz with questions. Consider using questions that can be auto-assessed like multiple choice, matching, and true or false.
After creating your quiz, to make your quiz shows feedback and answers to students immediately after submitting, use the 'Submission View' tab, choose the default view and change the settings to show questions and show answers. (Note that open response questions will initially display with a grade of 0 to students when set this way.)
Once you have created your quiz, you can share it with students, and use this quiz to reinforce basic concepts and skills.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Quizzes - Create a New Quiz - Instructor
Quizzes - Manually Grade a Quiz - Instructor
Setting up this activity
Cumulative practice assessments can be created within Ontario's VLE and can be based on a collection of concepts and key information from prior lessons. In this way, as the course progresses, key concepts can be reinforced.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Quiz Tool
To do this, use quiz tool and write questions for your lessons within the quiz library rather than in the individual quizzes.
When creating quizzes, you can select individual questions from the quiz library to add to your quizzes. In that way, you can reinforce concepts from prior lessons where you may have used a quiz rather than rewrite the question.
Similarly, you can also choose to randomly select questions from a question pool of chosen questions in your quiz library. Thus method can provide a different quiz to every student or randomly select from prior lessons to reinforce from across your course.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Quizzes - Create a New Quiz - Instructor
Quizzes - Create a New Quiz with A Randomized Set of Questions - Instructor
Setting up this activity
Four Corners allows students to self-group into groups based on their opinions, beliefs or positions on a topic. In a classroom, students would go to a corner based on their opinion or position, and then discuss. Similarly, this structure can be reproduced online.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion Board
To create this activity, you will want to create a discussion topic for each of the positions / opinions in the four corners activity. Students can self-select and choose the topic they agree with. Students can participate, then review the discussions in the topics based on your activity instructions.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Discussions - Create a Forum - Instructor
Discussions - Create a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Discussion - Moderate Discussions - Instructor
Setting up this activity
A Stop-Start-Continue or Red, Yellow, Green light activity can be used to encourage student reflection, and to acquire feedback from students in support of next steps. These activities can be used to promote collaboration, to assess student readiness and comfort levels, and to tailor instruction to the needs of students.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Survey
To create these activities, you will want to create a survey for students using the survey tool.
For Stop-Start-Continue, create a written response for each part for students to respond to.
For Red, Yellow, Green light, for each of the learning goals that you want to check student confidence for, create a multiple choice question for students to answer.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Surveys - Create a Survey - Instructor
Setting up this activity
Reflections and surveys can help students to self-assess, demonstrate metacognitive skills, and build understanding of what they know. An opportunity to think about learning, actions and emotions can support students to construct meaning from their work and experiences.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Portfolio
To create a reflection opportunity, you can use either the survey tool or the portfolio tool.
For single use reflection opportunities, you can use the survey tool and create a long answer question to help scaffold student reflection.
For ongoing reflections, students can use the Portfolio tool and record a video/audio response using the webcam or mobile camera.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Ontario's VLE Portfolio - Oversee and View Individual Portfolios - Instructor
Ontario's VLE Portfolio - Review and Approve Portfolio Items - Instructor
Providing Feedback to Portfolio Artifacts
Setting up this activity
Logs can provide students with an opportunity to reflect on thinking, demonstrate learning, and show progress. Logs can be created as single events or as a continuously updated log through the course.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion
To help students create reading logs or other logging activities, you can use the discussion tool.
Use the Groups tool to create individual groups (each student is their own group) that have a discussion topic locked to each student. Students can post to the discussion topic and you can review and respond to their posts.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Groups & Discussions - Use Private Discussions for Journaling - Instructor
Discussions - Grade a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Creating Individual Student Groups
Creating Unique Learner Pathways
Setting up this activity
Presentations can help build students' presentation skills and confidence in sharing work with others. It can also provide opportunities for feedback and help in the revision and improvement of work. As every board has a synchronous learning platform, once the revision/improvement stage has been completed, students can deliver their presentation by sharing their screen and speaking to the class.
Ontario's VLE Tools: Discussion
To help students create presentations, you can use the discussion tool.
Students can post to the discussion topic, their peers can watch the presentation, and you can review and respond to their posts.
For more information on Ontario's VLE tools, please see the links below:
Discussions - Grade a Discussion Topic - Instructor
Creating Individual Student Groups
Creating Unique Learner Pathways
Check your school board for supports and guides on using Ontario's VLE Tools.
For additional ideas and support using Ontario's VLE, you may want to visit Ontario's VLE by D2L’s information for Ontario Educators.
Your board may also leverage other tools and systems that are integrated into Ontario's VLE. For support with these tools, please contact your board’s TELT contact. You can find your contact on the site here.