Based on: Bower, M., & Torrington, J. (2020). Typology of free web-based learning technologies (2020). EDUCAUSE digital library. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2020/4/typology-of-free-web-based-learning-technologies
(Return to Introduction to Typology of Free Web-based Technologies)
(Search by Instructional Function – opens GoogleSheet in new tab)
Synchronous text discussion
Synchronous text discussion tools enable users to exchange text-based comments in realtime. These can be used for synchronous interaction between groups of learners to form a backchannel during a live presentation, or for instance to facilitate remote troubleshooting support.
| Twitter (http://twitter.com) | most well known of these tools providing the ability to post short public text comments |
| Plurk (http://plurk.com) | provides an alternative |
| Chatzy (http://chatzy.com) | enable users to create private web-based chat streams that can be shared via URL |
| Backchannel Chat (http://backchannelchat.com) | enable users to create private web-based chat streams that can be shared via URL |
| Slack (https://slack.com) | offers synchronous text-based collaboration tools enable groups of users to synchronously instant message, plan and share artifacts online in order to promote effective team collaboration |
| Fleep (https://fleep.io) | provides an alternative with text chat channels and file sharing |
| Your LMS | most LMSs (Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, Moodle, etc.) now include a chat tool |
Discussion forums
Discussion forums facilitate asynchronous text discussions between groups of users, organising contributions according to discussion threads. This can be useful for more reflective text conversations where real-time interaction is not required.
| ProBoards (http://proboards.com) | most well known of these tools providing the ability to post short public text comments |
| ReadUps (http://readups.com) | social reading platform where people can read a book together by placing text-based comments around the pages within the browser (which can also be used in synchronous mode by virtue of the inbuilt Twitter integration) |
| Your LMS | most LMSs (Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, Moodle, etc.) now include a discussion board |
Note-taking and document creation
Note-taking and document creation tools enables groups of users to collaborative author documents in real-time and see each other’s changes.
| Evernote (http://evernote.com) | provides a sophisticated web interface for note-taking including image insertion and file management but with view-only sharing rather than collaborative writing capabilities |
| Google Keep (www.keep.google.com) | note-taking service, including texts, lists, images and audio, accessed through a Google account |
| Microsoft Word Online (https://www.office.com/launch/word) | allows traditional desktop publishing of creating, editing, sharing and collaboration of Word documents via OneDrive |
| Google Docs (http://docs.google.com) | enables simultaneous contributions to a document by multiple users with many of the features of Microsoft Word (including the ability to embed images) |
| Zoho Writer (http://zoho.com/docs) | alternative to Google Docs |
| Canva (https://www.canva.com) | provides user-friendly, layer-based image manipulation functionality to design and create interesting documents |