Thanks to those of you who attended our "Online Assessment Strategies in the Age of AI" workshop. The workshop, the 23rd in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and will provide you with strategies to ensure your assessments truly measure student learning in this rapidly changing educational landscape.
In case you missed the training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “Online Assessment Strategies” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
Wednesday, October 15th, is International Pronouns Day. International Pronouns Day is celebrated on the third Wednesday of October and seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace. Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns particularly affects transgender and gender nonconforming people. For more information about International Pronouns Day visit pronounsday.org.
Did you know, users have the option to indicate their pronouns in their Brightspace user profiles? Brightspace user profiles are visible to anyone who shares a course with a particular user, including students, instructors, administrators, etc.
The area in your Account Settings, where you can set your pronounsA user profile card with the pronouns displayedPronouns display in the 'Last Name, First Name' column of Classlist, to the right of the user's name, in parentheses. User name text is blue, pronoun text is grey.
Celebrate International Pronouns Day by entering your pronouns into Brightspace and invite your students to do the same.
If you are looking for a good pronoun primer on inclusive teaching, check out this Gender Diversity and Pronouns resource from the University of Michigan.
Also, check out name.pn if you or your students are looking for an easy way to share how you would like people to use your name. You can create a URL that links to information to help users get your preferred pronouns, title, and the pronunciation of your name correct.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Do you want your students to take a quiz or test online? Do you have a test that you normally administer on paper and you don’t want to retype all the questions into Brightspace? Learning and Teaching Services at Algonquin College developed a Test/Quiz Question Generator that provides an easy way of creating a collection of questions that can be imported into Brightspace.
Quiz questions have to be in a special format in order to be imported into Brightspace. The Test/Quiz Question Generator allows you to reformat your questions and it will create a CSV file that can be imported into Brightspace.
Additionally, the Brightspace Community developed a Quiz Question Converter that you can use to add a bank of questions to the Quiz Question Library. One benefit of using the Quiz Question Converter is that you can add feedback and hints to the quiz questions you are importing into Brightspace. Therefore saving you time in importing quiz questions with feedback and hints into Brightspace.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
The Brightspace Grades Tool is useful for providing students with up-to-date information about their current standing in the course. For instructors, it’s useful for assigning and keeping track of student grades. Students can view grade entries and monitor their progress throughout the course.
As an instructor, you can determine how to set up your Grade Book to best reflect your approach to evaluation, including the grading system and grade scheme that is most appropriate for your course. You can select how grades display to learners, how they update in the Grade Book, and how you want to deal with ungraded items. You can create grade items for projects, assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. to include in your Grade Book, and even associate them with other tools (e.g. Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions).
Follow these steps to do it.
Listed below are links to how-to documents to help you to use the Grades Tool:
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Faculty development legend Derek Bruff says that "higher ed podcasting is having a moment," and we couldn't agree more. Here are a few recent episodes of Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else, just in case you missed 'em. These are all from 2025. Our pace has slowed, but we're still plugging!
Thanks to those of you who attended our "Rubrics Reimagined: Save Time and Boost Feedback" workshop. The workshop, the 22nd in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and will equip you with the tools and insights to make assessment easier, faster, and more effective.
In case you missed the training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “Rubrics Reimagined” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
A conversation between Jon Ippolito and Bart Everson on a handy mnemonic to help you remember all the things that could go wrong with artificial intelligence.
Jon Ippolito is an American artist, an educator, a new media scholar and a former curator at the Guggenheim. He studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s and then pursued internet art in the 1990s. He's a professor of New Media at the University of Maine, where he teaches classes on programming, online culture, variable media, and viral media, and now, of course, artificial intelligence.
Instructors can grant quiz accommodations to learners through the Classlist tool. Instructors can assign accommodations to specific learners that apply across ALL quizzes instead of applying them on a quiz-by-quiz basis. The accommodations option allows the instructor to give the learner more time to complete quizzes at the course level.
The Edit Accommodations option in the Classlist
The Edit Accommodations dialog box
Once granted, the accommodations apply to all quiz activities in a course for that learner. The additional time can be applied in terms of quiz time multipliers (for example, 1.5 x quiz time) or +minutes (for example, an additional 30 minutes) on every quiz in a course.
Accommodations for Instructors:
An icon appears next to the learner’s name in the Classlist to indicate that the learner has an accommodation.
Instructors can filter the Classlist by Accommodations.
Instructors can also Print or Email a list of users with accommodations by adding the filter to those pages.
Accommodations for learners:
An icon appears next to learners’ own names in the Classlist to indicate they have an accommodation. To view accommodation details, learners can click My Accommodations from their learner context menu.
When commencing a quiz, the accommodation icon appears next to a learner’s quiz time to indicate that their accommodation has been applied. If a learner’s time accommodation has been overridden by a quiz-specific special access, this icon does not appear.
Classlist page highlighting the Learner has Accommodations icon
Learners can see accommodations reflected in the time allowed when taking quiz
Quiz-specific special access can overwrite an accommodation for any user on a quiz-by-quiz basis. When you overwrite an accommodation and then click Save, a warning describing the impact of overwriting the accommodation appears. Accommodations set for learners in Classlist are displayed in the Special Access for the quiz.
An example of how Accommodations set for a learner in Classlist will show up in the Special Access for a quiz
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Did you know Special Access is an option available in the Quizzes tool that allows the instructor to grant learners special accommodations?
Special Access allows the instructor to assign specific learners a different set of quiz availability dates, late submission properties, and/or time limits. The instructor can change Start, End, and Due dates; the "Recommended Time Limit" and "Enforced Time Limit" timing settings; and the number of attempts allowed for a quiz to provide allowances for different needs of learners.
Add Special Access in the Quiz Creation Experience
Special Access options in Quizzes
Select Allow selected users special access to this quiz if you want to give certain students different submission options from the rest of the class.
Select Allow only users with special access to see this quiz if only certain students are allowed to see this quiz.
Click Add Users to Special Access to select students who will get the special access.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Did you know Special Access is an option available in the Assignments tool that allows the instructor to grant learners special accommodations?
Special Access permissions allow instructors to set different availability dates and times for specific learners. For example, you could extend the deadline for learners who require remedial help or who are submitting work beyond the original scope of the assignment. You can also add Special Access after an assignment’s end date has passed for learners who have a legitimate excuse for missing the deadline or for learners you want to submit additional material, such as planning notes or a bibliography. The special access icon displays on the Assignment list page beside any assignment that includes special access settings.
Add Special Access in the Assignment Creation Experience
Select Allow users with special access to submit outside the normal availability dates for this folder if you want to give certain students different submission options from the rest of the class.
Select Allow only users with special access to see this folder if only certain students are allowed to see this folder.
Click Add Users to Special Access to select students who will get the special access.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
