Facilitating Student Learning Through Multisensory Tools That Engage and Foster Collaboration

Abstract

This chapter describes how university professors in a principal preparation program applied technology resources to face-to-face and online instruction to intensify student interactions and engagement with the professors and each other. As a result, the learning opportunities were transformed to increase effective student and professor interaction and student learning. Professors found that utilizing multisensory technology provided platforms in which robust learning exchanges occurred that deepened learning while students and professors worked collaboratively. The chapter describes how several studies show how the use of interactive multisensory tools such as Flipgrid, VoiceThread, and GoReact provided effective pedagogical strategies that enhanced communications. The studies took place at a university that serves students from rural communities and therefore provides research about utilizing multisensory tools to improve learning for students in locations where access to higher education is challenged by geographical distances.