At Charles university we have access to a plethora of different e-learning tools at our disposal. Here you can find a short summary of each tool and the links will lead you to a more in depth description (tools are sorted alphabetically).
A videoconference tool, whose free licence allows 3 person meetings. It also provides a 30-day free trial for new users that enables up to 25 people to connect and is mostly a demo of the offered services. Adobe Connect also offers several different paid options that allow for a bigger amount of participants- at Charles University we have a licence that allows for meetings to be accessed by up to 200 people at once. This tool enables screen sharing, simple questionnaires, recording and sharing of files. It also provides a shared white board that the participants can use to write and draw on.
You can find out more about Adobe connect here
A free version of the corporate tool Microsoft teams (MS Teams) offers functions for text, voice and video communication for up to 300 people at once. The Paid Version (available at FA CU) offers also the options to make recordings of the meetings and videoconferences, gives the users a bigger storage space for files, offers E-mail hosting (email address with its own domain) and connecting other services from the Microsoft 356 Package. If you decide to also use the function of Teams in MS Teams you gain bigger options for collaboration communication and sharing, where you can interconnect other useful apps, for example: shared documents for collaboration, questionnaires, planners, videos and much more. MS Teams can also be used in its full extent in the browsers Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome (other browsers do not allow full functionality). The most reliable way to work with MS teams, however, is to access it through a desktop app.
You can find more about MS Teams here.
Moodle is a so called learning management system, that allows creating partial or full e-learning courses.
Find out more about Moodle at CU here.
Turnitin is a tool for support of academic writing and the revision of originality of students’ works.
More about Turnitin at CU here.
Video conference tool Zoom can be used in free or licensed versions. The free or basic licence allows users to have 40 minute video calls for a maximum of 100 people. The broader licence has no limit on the length of calls and one call can be accessed by 300 people. Just like most other tools, Zoom also offers text based chat. This tool can be used both through web browsers and a desktop app.
More about Zoom at CU can be found here.
Another platform that is available for use is Discord. Created as a gaming platform for the communication between players of pc games, Discord also offers functions suitable for everybody. Discord allows for text based communication, video calls, screen sharing and file sharing. This tool is freely available. the users themselves can create and manage groups and serves, they can invite other users and their number is not in any way restricted.
Google hangouts is a free tool by the google corporations. For its use you need to have a google email account through their Gmail service. There is no need to download any apps, as the tool can be used in browsers. In Hangouts it is possible to have a text communication with up to 150 users at once, video call can be attended by 15 users max.
A new tool that should formally replace the older variant, Google Hangouts (currently both are available). Google meet can be used in a free and a paid licence that offers broader options. The Free licence allows for meetings of 100 people for the duration of one hour. The paid licence offers unlimited meetings for 300 people at once, and as a plus it offers an unlimited storage with Google Disk.
A free, open source video conference tool, that allows registration-free meetings. This tool is supposed to allow for a bigger number of attendees, however it best works for smaller groups. If you try inviting a larger amount of people, the video call quality will probably go down. The reason behind this is that this tool uses mainly web browser interface. As most other tools, Jitsi meet also offers screensharing.
Microsoft Skype is a tool that is meant for smaller meetings of max 50 people. It offers free video calls without registration directly in the web interface. It also offers a downloadable desktop app. Skype also offers text based chat communication and screen sharing.
If you have any questions regarding e-learning, please do not hesitate to contact us at the email address above. You can also reach us at this phone number: 221 619 282
