Using tools that Stanford already has a license for means they've been vetted for student safety and accessibility, and usually have a clear support structure in place.
We recommend choosing just a few tools that meet your needs, rather than trying to integrate too many different methods.
Recommended for All Courses
Canvas: A complete learning management system: a safe home for course files, assignments, and grades. Help at canvashelp@stanford.edu.
Zoom: Live web conferencing and recording. Sessions recorded to the cloud are automatically closed-captioned. For help, contact your educational technologist, or put in a Help ticket with University IT (UIT).
Discussion and Collaboration
While Canvas can do a lot with its native discussion boards and announcements, some instructors might find the following options helpful.
Google Drive for sharing and file storage. Try a collaborative writing or annotation activity in Google Docs. Drive also includes Google Jamboard, useful for digital sticky notes activities.
Harmonize is a Canvas-integrated discussion tool allowing for more media-rich forum postings. Email canvashelp@stanford.edu to get it added to your course.
Hypothes.is is a tool for collaborative annotation of course or web texts. The Canvas integration is in the beta stage; email canvashelp@stanford.edu to have it added to your Canvas courses.
Ed Discussion is a forum for online Q&A. See Getting Started with Ed Discussion or self-enroll in Stanford's Canvas Ed Discussion Demo site for more information. (Ed Discussion replaces Piazza.)
Slack is the university-wide secure, flexible text chat. It can be used for both synchronous and asynchronous class activities. It's a great option if you've found Zoom chat helpful but limited. See the Text chat article for strategies. For help, contact your educational technologist, or put in a Help ticket with UIT.
Lectures
Panopto, another Canvas integration, allows for screencast recording, video editing, and unlimited video uploading on Canvas. Like Zoom, it provides automatic closed-captions, so it's the best way to upload lectures recorded with other programs. For help, contact panoptohelp@stanford.edu.
Poll Everywhere: Live polling, an excellent way to make large and small lectures interactive. Poll Everywhere is more full-featured, reliable, and accessible to students with disabilities than the Zoom polling tool. See Live polling for more information. For help, contact AcademicTechnology@stanford.edu.
Accessibility
SCRIBE: Converts texts to different accessible formats like tagged PDFs, DOCXs, and more! Readings can even be converted into MP3s to provide a break from the screen while learning remotely.
Read&Write: Visual highlighting of spoken text, conversion of scans into text documents, word prediction support, highlighting and highlight extraction, and the conversion of text documents into audio formats.
EquatIO: Turn a screenshot of an inaccessible equation to accessible math that can be read aloud. Or paste it into a Word document, or create LaTeX or MathML of the equation. Dictate equations and formulas to written expressions. Plus, write math freehand on the device and turn into digital form.
Assessment
The Canvas quiz tool is the most commonly-used method to create self-scoring and graded exams and assignments. Canvas SpeedGrader can be used for annotating and grading papers.
Gradescope helps you streamline grading of paper-based exam questions.
Specialty Software
Remote Computer Clusters offer off-campus access to software including MATLAB, SPSS, and Adobe Creative Cloud.
Still looking?
Visit Essential Stanford Software to see more university-licensed software, visit Software at Stanford for discounts on purchases, or see the Tools Status to see which tech is approved and under review.