Every Tuesday I recommend a fun tech tool, usually in the vein of educational technology (but not always!)
This week I’d like to talk about Sutori, an online educational technology tool that I’ve made extensive use of over this past year of teaching online during the pandemic. I’ve really enjoyed it and so have my students, judging by both the formal and informal feedback I’ve received.
In March of 2020, when the University of Calgary stopped in-person classes and we made the mad dash to remote learning, I actually found the transition okay – relatively speaking. I was already taking advantage of a lot of digital tools and resources for my large, first-year ancient Greek and Roman history course (of 300 students.) They completed weekly quizzes online in our LMS (D2L Brightspace), they were preparing to submit their writing assignment digitally in the same way, and they had already completed their paper midterm exam. It was only the final I needed to transition to online (not without its challenges.)
So, the main issue I was confronted with immediately was the actual classes. Being a large class, my usual MO is what I call dynamic lecturing – basically, lectures with strategic, embedded times for student engagement and feedback (check out my blog post on this concept here.) I would present a certain amount of material using PowerPoint (yes, that old chestnut) and intersperse this with TopHat quizzes or Mentimeter surveys (TopHat will likely feature in a future Tech Tool Tuesday; you can learn more about Mentimeter here.) Depending on the topic, we might also take a portion of the class to do a more hands-on activity (for example, a think-pair-share.)
Now I was left wondering how to proceed with classes, given the circumstances. I decided against simply substituting my classes with synchronous Zoom classes. Everyone around me seemed to be going this route and I suspected my students might be a bit burnt out after a while and might appreciate a more asynchronous approach. And so I recorded my lectures. This was fine, but honestly boring. Like everyone else, I was just trying to get through the rest of the semester in the most straight-forward and least stressful way possible. I felt bad about losing all the interaction and feedback of the classroom, but it was what it was. We survived.
Once the semester ended and the spring semester loomed, I knew that I didn’t want to keep with this method. I wanted to replicate my classroom a bit more, but still keep things mostly asynchronous. This is where Sutori came in.
Sutori is a collaborative instructional and presentation tool. The user creates “stories” which can be viewed one panel at a time, like a slideshow, or scrolled through, like a timeline. You can integrate text, videos, images, quizzes, and other interactive elements to keep learners engaged as they make their way through the story. It’s web-based (no download required) with a point and click interface. A Sutori story can be shared in a varied of ways, such as using an embed code to share it within an LMS in such a way that a learner can scroll through the story without leaving the LMS environment.
What I enjoyed about it was that I could create lessons based on my lectures, and add some of the things I used to in the classroom – relevant videos, quizzes for students to test their understanding and retention, and images, links, and resources for further learning. The feedback that I’ve received from students is that they really enjoyed the Sutori lessons because they helped them better understand the textbook readings, gave them extra materials to read/watch if they wanted it, and let them check their knowledge and prepare for graded quizzes. I’ve now used Sutori for two different, large online courses over three semesters with similar feedback for all.
What I’d really love to do in the future is take advantage of the program’s collaborative nature. Sutori can be a space for students to work together, letting them demonstrate their knowledge of a particular topic in a more interactive and robust way. This would make it a capable tool for alternative assessments, interactive study guides, and group projects. Unfortunately, in order to do this, you need to add students to your account and this runs up against IT restrictions at my University. I completely understand the issue here, but I really wish I could try this feature out!
Sutori is subscription based and relatively reasonably priced (depending on your budget of course.) I would highly recommend checking it out if you’re interested. You can get a free account which has limitations but would give you a good sense of what it can do.
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