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Month: February 2023

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #374: February Continuous Delivery Updates

update

D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.

Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.

Here are a few updates in the February 2023/20.23.2 release that were added to our system this month:

1) Intelligent Agents – Support for copying One-Time Run agents

This feature allows users to copy, export, and import One-Time Run agents and their schedules. This allows users who utilize course shells which are copied to multiple courses to schedule One-Time Run agents to run as needed in all destination courses.

Note: This functionality only applies to agents that have yet to be run. If the agent has been run, no schedule exists to copy.

Previously, agents that were configured with scheduling frequency One-Time Run would copy without a scheduling frequency.

This feature implements the following PIE item:

  • D9467 (Copy One-Time Run agents with their schedules)

2) Media Library – Support added for Bulk Actions

To improve the audio-video content management experience, this release adds the ability to perform bulk actions in Media Library.

Instructors can perform the following bulk actions:

  • Delete files
  • Restore files in Media Library > Recycle Bin
Bulk Delete action in the Media Library
The bulk Delete action in Media Library.

Previously, instructors could only perform these tasks individually.

3) Quizzes – Add quiz availability dates to your Calendar

Instructors can now add quiz availability dates to the Calendar tool in the Availability Dates & Conditions menu in the new quiz creation experience. Instructors can select the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox when creating a quiz to add quiz availability dates to their Calendar. This feature provides instructors with more control over where Start Dates and End Dates appear to learners. Previously, only the Due Date was automatically added in the new quiz creation experience; and control over adding availability dates was limited to the Manage Dates tool. Instructors previously had to revert back to the legacy quiz creation experience to add quiz availability dates to their Calendar.

The following is a reminder of how Calendar events are generated when using either the legacy or new quiz creation experience:

  • If the Start Date and End Date are set, an End Date event is created.
  • If the Start Date is set, a Start Date event is created.
  • If the End Date is set, an End Date event is created.
Availability Dates & Conditions menu displaying the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox.
The Availability Dates & Conditions menu displaying the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox.

4) Quizzes – Additional paging options

Two new paging options are available in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience. Instructors can choose to display 5 questions per page or 10 questions per page. The change optimizes instructors' options when building quizzes with page breaks.

This feature partially implements PIE item D9327: Manually add page breaks in the New Quiz design.

The new paging options in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience.
The new paging options in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience.

5) Rubrics – Keep track of changes to assessed rubrics with enhanced visual cues

To maintain the integrity of assessments, any rubric that has been used to assess a grade item is locked. However, there may be incidences where it is necessary to add or update the text on a rubric without changing any points, or without adding or deleting any criteria or criteria levels. The text on the rubric, including criteria names and descriptions, level names, and default feedback, can continue to be updated after the rubric has been locked. To increase the value of the Rubrics – Clarify grading criteria by editing text fields in assessed rubrics | New feature released in November 2022, you can now use enhanced visual cues to keep track of the changes you have made.

Note: It is not possible to edit the name of the rubric using this feature.

When an instructor makes a change to a previously assessed rubric, it is updated with a blue highlight and the text Edited in the lower right corner. When the user saves and closes the rubric, the edit indications no longer appear.

Note: It is only possible to make changes to assessed rubrics that are created in the current course or are copied from another course. Shared rubrics remain locked.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

  • WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics
  • WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.1 Use of Color
The Edit Rubric window with changes highlighted and indicated with the word Edited.
The Edit Rubric window with changes highlighted and indicated with the word Edited.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the February Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform February 2023/20.23.2 Release Notes.

Additionally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about current, past, and to preview upcoming continuous delivery updates.

Want more information?

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: image by geralt from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on ICYMI: Using VoiceThread to Enhance Lectures and Discussions

Using VoiceThread to Enhance Lectures and Discussions [53:12]

Thanks to those of you who attended last week's Using VoiceThread to Enhance Lectures and Discussions workshop. The workshop, the thirteenth in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course. The focus of this workshop was to show you how you can use VoiceThread to enhance your online lectures and discussions through the addition of voice.

In case you missed last week’s 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 “VoiceThread” 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.

Published on Leave a comment on ICYMI: AI²
AI²: Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity [25:23]

Thanks to those who were able to attend our workshop on "AI²: Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity." In case you missed it, or if you just want a refresher, we recorded a video for you. You can find this and a few other curated resources on the CAT+FD wiki.

Note that AI is developing rapidly, so this video will probably be very dated very soon, but we hope it gives you a quick picture of where things stand at the current moment.

Published on Leave a comment on ChatGPT: It’s Really Just Assistive Technology

This is a guest post from Mary A. Guillory, Remote Assistant Librarian for Xavier University Library.

It is interesting to have lived to see the day that an AI chatbot became an A-list celebrity—paparazzi and all. Its name has been smeared in the tabloids, discussed in the news, and has sparked fear in academics internationally. Students and professionals hoping to do less work rejoiced, while simultaneously coping with the frustration that comes with obtaining an account and getting the short end of the stick on a traffic-spike-plagued database website. All those things aside, the real proof of OpenAI’s ChatGPT success is that it has made it into the headlines of The Onion three times thus far. Like any assistive technology it makes learning more intriguing and allows users to more easily do things they might have struggled to complete without the tool. 

So, what does this librarian consider the best use for ChatGPT? Its ability to provide critical thinking practice, enhance coding education motivation, and act as a study buddy. Since artificial intelligence is able to infer so much from big data, it excels at helping people to think and grow intellectually. The following are my elaborations on these three ideas: 

1. Critical Thinking Practice 

Blind trust is never higher than with a computer. We enforce our own perception that the algorithm behind {insert whatever web tool name you use here} is always right on a daily basis because it is able to prove a high confidence rate to us by balancing crowd sourced human behavior data with our personal patterns and preferences. The most surprising thing about ChatGPT is that it is an AI still in training, so it gets things wrong. It operates from a dataset that hasn’t been updated since 2021 and is not connected to the internet in a way that allows it to take advantage of Google’s strides in the search engine arena. Though technology advanced in increments over the years, Google search AI has been collecting live human data to deliver better results and present them in answer form for over a decade.  

What might come of having students think critically about the answers offered by ChatGPT? The AI chatbot does not cite its sources of information, which means that to some degree it is speaking as an authority. There is power in the cognitive dissonance created when a human fact checks a podcast like “Exploring Afrofuturism with AI: A Librarian Interviews ChatGPT” and finds issues with ChatGPT’s infered answers—factual issues. The best part is that these types of exercises can be customized to student interests and created by students for students.  

2. Coding Education Motivation Enhancer 

Coding in any language whether it be for the web, mobile applications, or computer software is a valuable skill. It can even come in handy for using low-code or no-code platforms when customizations are desired. The issue usually reveals itself in the time and discipline required to develop coding skills to a useful level when students might be starting at zero and have little interest in code beyond what it can do for them today. Need some HTML or CSS to spruce up a blog post or website? ChatGPT can help. Need a basic Python program? ChatGPT can do that too. Need to work with the PowerApps language Microsoft Power Fx you’ve never heard of before? No problem, ChatGPT even speaks Klingon. The best part is that it can take students straight into the editing and trouble-shooting process of coding, which many may find more intriguing than writing the same little boring calculator or joke generator over and over again. Having to learn the hard way why the basics are important upfront to make the code work for a real-world need is way more fun than memorizing them with vague hopes of creating something someday. 

3. Study Buddy 

People get tired of answering questions and sometimes don’t feel like discussing certain topics. Throw scheduling or COVID-19 into the mix and ChatGPT might make its way to the top of the study buddy list. Students can practice discussing any topic, answering interview questions, or get instructions and tips on how to complete a desired task. It is also quite good at suggesting study resources and plans. 

Want to Learn More About Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT? 

  • Register for CAT+FD’s hybrid “AI2: Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity” workshop on February 9th. 
  • Email me for a link to the AWS Machine Learning University’s monthly Friday webinar on February 3rd or sign up to receive emails about future sessions from Amazon. Taught by one of Amazon’s data scientists, this month’s topic (the first in the series) will focus on “Responsible AI”. Students and faculty are welcome to join these sessions.  

I know everyone reading this post is waiting on the answer to the big question so here it is—no, this CAT FooD was not prechewed by ChatGPT. 

Published on Leave a comment on ICYMI: Find Free Images to Use in Your Courses

Often instructors are looking for images to use in their courses because images can liven up the course and help students understand the course material.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but it might also be worth a thousand dollars if your school gets hit with a copyright violation claim. —Eric Curts

There are many high quality pictures that can be used without any licensing concerns. These can include images that are released under creative commons, or are in the public domain, or simply are copyright-free.

Eric Curts compiled a list of free image sites and tools for schools that you may find helpful in your search for free images.

free image sites for schools

Two sites I use often that didn't make Curt's list are Creative Commons (CC) Search and the Noun Project.

Are you looking for images of diverse people? This curated list of image collections featuring diverse people by Online Network of Educators may be of interest to you.

black students working on laptop computer

Images have the power to enhance your message or story, they can also become a big distraction when used improperly. Check out this Mistakes to Avoid When Using Photos in eLearning blog post for some common mistakes.

Additionally, you may find an image you want to use, but you would like to make changes to it. You can find free photo and image editing tools in this eLearning Industry blog post by Christopher Pappas. Just make sure the image copyright gives you permission to modify the image.

If you are looking for information on copyright and Creative Commons, our Creative Commons (CC) Wiki Resource has information about CC licenses and CC licensed works that may help.

Image credits:
Image by Eric Curts is licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0
Photo by Nappy Studio from nappy.co

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #373: Notifications

person of color holding a mobile phone

Students can control how they receive information about course activity through their notification preferences. They can customize which actions in Brightspace will trigger a notification.

The Notification tool allows users to:

  • Subscribe to a summary of activity for each course and receive a daily email.
  • Specify your preferred email address and mobile number for instant notifications and announcements.
  • Receive instant notifications about course activity, such as edited content, new discussion posts, assignments, grades, course announcements and upcoming quizzes.

Instructors can help their students to keep up with their coursework by encouraging them to setup their notification preferences. Additionally, there is a Getting Started for Learners Video Playlist that students should watch to get familiar with Brightspace.

Follow these steps to do it.

To customize notification preferences, users should:

  1. From your Personal Menu (located in the Minibar), select Notifications.

    2. select notifications from personal menu

  2. Select the email address and/or register the mobile phone number to which notifications will be sent.
  3. Select the course activities for which you would like to receive notifications.
  4. Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.

Want more information?

Navigate Brightspace - Notifications - Learner (video)
Getting Started for Learners Video Playlist

View all the Brightspace training recaps
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Continuous Delivery release notes
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: Photo by Alyssa Sieb from Nappy.co