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Study Aids

What are they?

The study aides described here are interactive tools that can be provided for students to help them study and test their knowledge, generally better suited for materials that need to be memorized or repeated practice. 

Use Cases

A student working on her computer and writing on her notebook..
Study-aid tools allows one to easily create interactive activities to allow students to reinforce their learning. These tools allow students to instantly gauge their level of understanding and to practice repeatedly until they have mastered the material. Some tools take the form of games, and all are more engaging and interactive than traditional study methods.

Popular Tools

D2L Quizzes and Self-Assessments

The question-building tools in D2L can be used to create study aids. You can create multiple-choice, matching, ordering, or arithmetic questions. You can set up large question sets and have students receive a random subset of questions on each attempt.

Quizzes and Self-Assessments both use the same question creator in D2L, and it is possible to set up either as a practice activity rather than an assessment tool. For a quiz, you simply don’t link it to a grade item and allow unlimited attempts.

 

  Pros Cons
Quizzes Student activity is recorded, so instructors can see individual student activity and question statistics. Students only see whether their answers are right or wrong after they submit the quiz.
Self-Assessments Students see instant feedback while they are taking the quiz as soon as they select an answer. No information is recorded whereby the instructor can check participation or which topics students need extra help on.

More on Self-Assessments

More on Quizzes​

Quizlet

Quizlet is a flashcard tool that allows for words, images, audio, and descriptions. It has built-in activities and games that are created automatically around each flashcard set and has mobile apps for iOS and Android. Question sets can be found with a search function or created by the instructor and shared with the class.

Quizlet is supported by ads, which can be removed by the instructor or students for a small fee.

Pros

  • Easy to search for existing flashcard sets and copy them. You may not need to create your own
  • Built-in games and activities from the flashcard sets
  • Mobile friendly--students can study anywhere with their smartphones

Cons

  • No way to track individual student activity
  • Ads (which can be removed for a fee)

Example

DePaul instructor Mika Obana-Changet uses Quizlet to help her students learn Japanese. Students can use her study set as a series of flashcards and other study aids.

More on Quizlet​

Discipline-Specific Tools

Sometimes textbook publishers and others provide study-aid tools specific to your discipline, like Pearson's MyMathLab or McGraw Hill Connect. ​

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