Tip of the Week

ODEL shares practical insights on educational technology and online teaching. From navigating Lamakū to leveraging new AI tools, discover actionable strategies to streamline your workflow and enrich your courses.

Illustration of a person sitting at a desk and speaking on a video conference call with four participants on a computer screen.

Develop your online teaching with Zoom Meeting Coach

Week of 09/14/2026

Facilitating a Zoom class requires strong online communication habits—many of which you can now measure and evaluate. Zoom’s Meeting Coach uses AI to analyze recorded sessions and provide personalized feedback on your speech rate, filler words, and talk-to-listen ...

A screenshot of a Zoom Whiteboard titled "Welcome Week" filled with collaborative tools including sticky notes, text blocks, icebreaker ideas outlined in a heart shape, an image card, and callouts highlighting features like AI content generation, timer, comments, and voting.

Zoom adds AI utility to whiteboard

Week of 09/07/2026

Zoom Whiteboard provides a collaborative workspace for group activities, online learning, and project planning. With AI Companion, you can generate content with a few simple prompts. Visual frameworks like mindmaps and Kanban boards help guide group work toward ...

The Hawaiian flag is superimposed over Iolani Palace.

Digital resources for Hawaiian History Month

Week of 08/31/2026

This work is a derivative of Iolani Palace by Arjunkrsen (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iolani_Palace.JPG), used under CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). "Flagged 5-0" by Char Hopela is licensed CC BY 3.0. The Hawaii state flag is ...

Screenshot of an online course dashboard titled "Course Template (Lite) - WOA" featuring a Visual Table of Contents, Announcements, and Calendar widgets.

New campus-specific Lamaku templates

Week of 08/24/2026

Adopting a uniform online layout for your courses minimizes student cognitive load, allowing learners to focus their energy on mastering content rather than figuring out how to navigate your site.Over the summer, UH instructional designers launched Course Template ...

Screenshot of a Google Doc with highlighted text and a side comment card, featuring an annotation arrow reading "Add comments, links, and reactions" pointing to the comment thread.

Boost reading engagement with Google Docs

Week of 08/17/2026

Transforming course readings into active, asynchronous conversations keeps distance learners engaged and helps them conquer complex texts together. While social annotation tools like Perusall, Hypothesis, or Kami shift toward fee-based models, you can easily ...

Four faceless people stand in pairs on either side of four stacked survey form fields. The people are gesturing as if engaged in conversation or providing feedback. The Google Forms boxes (set to paragraph/long answer format) display the following questions: What is working well? What is not working well? What are your hopes for our future? What else do you want us to know?

Uncover survey insights with Gem

Week of 08/10/2026

Standard multiple-choice surveys often measure pre-existing assumptions and fail to deliver genuine insights. They also trigger response biases, such as acquiescence bias (agreeing out of politeness or fatigue) and confirmation bias (validating existing hypotheses ...

Two screenshots show the Creator+ "Insert Element" menu with an arrow pointing from the "Tabs" option to an interactive example showcasing Creative Commons license types.

Discover Creator+ in Lamakū

Week of 08/03/2026

Online learners thrive when Lamakū course material is active, scannable, and visually organized. Repackaging dense text using interactive and organizational page elements reduces cognitive load and encourages active exploration of your course content.How to Access ...

Small Quizzes, Lasting Memory: Retrieval Practice in Lamakū

Week of 07/27/2026

When used as an active learning strategy rather than an assessment, retrieval practice builds durable knowledge without adding to your grading workload. In face-to-face classrooms, clicker questions engage students in retrieving knowledge from memory. In an ...

A chart titled Passive vs. Active Design. The left side lists passive activities in black text: Watch a lecture, Read assigned material, Complete a quiz, and Submit an assignment. Blue arrows point from these items to a corresponding list of active design actions on the right in blue text: Apply a concept to a scenario, Analyze a real-world example, Evaluate a solution or argument, and Revise work based on feedback.

Shift from passive to active learning using Gemini

Week of 07/20/2026

In a recent Florida Instructional Designer Network (FL-IDN) webinar, Dr. Gloria Washington (University of South Carolina) demonstrated how to use AI as a collaborative design partner. Instead of replacing your pedagogy, AI can draft and refine objective-aligned ...

An example Drive Project titled OER forward includes an AI overview of files and a Gemini prompt window.

Work faster together with new Drive Projects

Week of 07/13/2026

Introducing Drive Projects in Google Drive, an AI-driven workspace designed to accelerate document analysis and team decision-making. Click the New button and select New project to begin. This feature allows you to curate source files, folders, and relevant emails ...

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