9 November 2026
Exploring Teaching Tools Together: Practical Training for Faculty
Hands-on one-to-one and group sessions helping faculty use Blackboard, Evolve, Engageli, Padlet and Camtasia more confidently and effectively in their teaching.
Teaching platforms offer plenty of possibilities, but finding time to explore them alongside teaching, marking and everything else is another matter. That’s where our one-to-one and group training sessions come in. Its a chance to ask questions, try things out and find what works for our faculty's courses.
The sessions cover Blackboard, Evolve, Engageli and Padlet, with Camtasia training coming in November. One-to-one meetings give us time to focus on their particular needs, while group sessions make room for shared questions and ideas.
Getting more comfortable with Blackboard
Blackboard is our learning management platform for course materials, assessments, feedback and student communication. In training, we work through everyday tasks: adding content, creating assignments and tests, organising materials within a single Document, and using bulk editing to save time.
For colleagues ready to explore further, the Blackboard top-up sessions introduce a few more possibilities:
- Video Studio: A tool we particularly recommend exploring. Asking students to submit a short video explaining their written assignment can offer additional insight into their understanding and authorship, supporting academic integrity.
- Quizzes: Trying different question types, including Hotspot questions.
- Forms: Gathering student feedback and opinions.
- Badges (Achievements): Recognising progress and milestones.
- Journals: Giving students a private space for reflection and instructor feedback.
Exploring Evolve together
Evolve brings AI tools, file management and communication into one workspace. There’s plenty to explore, so we take it step by step.
In AI Studio, we look at choosing models, chatting with AI, uploading files, generating images, creating PowerPoint slides, exporting conversations and developing personas. We also cover threads, personal usage and profiles.
From there, we move to Drive for organising files and using them with AI Studio, and Spaces for departmental messages, file sharing, calls and direct communication with UNIC colleagues.
Making online sessions more interactive
With Engageli, an interactive virtual classroom, we explore ways to give students more opportunities to participate. Virtual tables, polls, quizzes, whiteboards and shared documents give us different ways to organise discussion and collaboration.
We also have training support directly from the Engageli team, helping us explore these tools through practical teaching activities.
Making space for ideas with Padlet
Padlet is a visual collaboration platform for sharing ideas, multimedia and resources. Sessions explore boards, posts, comments, reactions and Sandbox’s drawing tools through activities such as brainstorming, feedback and group work. We also look at AI-supported features, including image generation and transcription.
Coming up: Camtasia
In November 2026, we will be organising training on Camtasia, a screen-recording and video-editing tool. We’ll explore the latest features available in version 2026, alongside recording, editing and captioning.
Whether you’re just getting started or building on existing skills, these sessions offer practical support, space to try things out and ideas you can use in your teaching.
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