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Author: Janice Florent

Technology Coordinator in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

About Janice Florent

Technology Coordinator in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

Published on Leave a comment on 7 Tips to Motivate Millennials

by Janice Florent

millennials working together on a project

Many educators feel frustrated that millennials are especially difficult to reach and to motivate, yet motivation is one thing that can drive millennials to succeed. Student engagement is the key to academic motivation, persistence, and degree completion. Educators must find ways to get students' attention and get them actively engaged with the course material and with their peers.

In a recent Pulse Learning blog post, Christopher Pappas listed seven tips to get millennials excited and fully engaged in the learning process. Those tips are:

  1. Stress real-world applications – Millennials need to know why they are doing something and how it will serve the greater good.
  2. Empower them - Give millennials a way to share their opinions and insights so that they can feel as though they are making a difference.
  3. Track their progress - Millennial learners like to be able to track their progress as they go along. They must be able to immediately determine where they are at and what they still need to accomplish.
  4. Encourage collaboration - This generation of learners thrives in social environments. They enjoy sharing personal experiences and skills with their peers, as well as learning new things from other members in their group.
  5. Offer immediate feedback - Millennial learners crave feedback and recognition. They like to be congratulated on a job well done and praised for their achievements. You should offer feedback that is specific and that helps them learn.
  6. Focus on flexibility - Create a flexible schedule that allows learners to complete online projects and exercises when it’s most convenient for them.
  7. Offer mentoring or other online support services - The millennial generation likes to have control, but they also like to be able to see the direct path they need to take to achieve success. In other words, they require guidance from time to time. Educators should provide mentoring for student success.

If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in Christopher’s How To Motivate Millennials: 7 Tips For eLearning Professionals blog post.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #154: Bb Grader

Hand holding iPad mini with Bb Grader app screen showing on the screen

The Bb Grader app provides instructors with a mobile solution to grade Blackboard assignments. With Bb Grader, instructors can use their iPads to review, provide feedback, and ultimately grade submitted assignments from within the app. Instructors can view a detailed list of all assignment submissions and can sort submissions based on a category of information.

Key features in the Bb Grader app:

  • Inline viewing of student submissions for PDF, Word, Powerpoint, PNG, and JPEG files
  • Gesture-based interactions for grading and feedback
  • Support for audio and video-based feedback
  • Course and assignment level views
  • Integration with multiple attempts, group assignments, rubrics, and anonymous grading

Note: For unsupported file types, instructors may download the file, view the file on their device (if supported by the device), and still provide grade information via the Bb Grader app.

The Bb Grader app is not intended to replace all grading workflows within Blackboard; rather, it’s meant to complement it with the enhancement of key features that translate best to a mobile device.

Bb Grader requires iOS 7 + and is compatible with iPad Air, iPad mini, and iPad 2, 3, or 4.

Want more information?

Bb Grader App
See Bb Grader in action (video [2:42])
Bb Grader Features Guide (PDF)
Download Bb Grader app
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #153: Simplify Assignment Collection

Use the Assignment Tool to help you set and manage deadlines, unclutter your inbox, and save trees.

email inbox showing there are 99999 unread messages

The Assignment Tool is an efficient way to manage and collect your student's individual and group assignments digitally. Blackboard's Assignment Tool allows instructors to create a secure location for students to submit class assignments.

Instructors use the Grade Center to monitor the submission process, to view and/or download submitted work, to compose and send confidential feedback to students and to grade the assignment. Instructors can download all of a particular assignment’s student submitted files in a single zip file. In the download zip file, each student submitted file will be renamed automatically to include the assignment’s name, the student’s username, as well as the filename the student originally submitted.

A number of options are available when creating an assignment using the Assignment Tool:

  • Assignment Files - allows instructors to attach supplemental information
  • Assignment Availability - allows instructors to create assignments in advance
  • Assignment Submissions (attempts) – allows for multiple or unlimited submissions
  • Date and Time Restrictions - allows instructors to decide when students can access the assignment
  • Individual or Group Assignments – allows instructors to choose who has access to assignment
  • Tracking Statistics - track the number of views and by whom

Want more information?

Getting Started with Assignments (PDF)
Working with Assignments
How to submit assignments (video [2:28])
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Technology to Help Students Find Their Voice

by Janice Florent

birdhouse with you are your voice etched on it

It’s important for students to find their voice in eLearning. Students need the ability to recognize their own beliefs, practice articulating them in a variety of forms, and then find the confidence and the platform to express them.

There is no one-size-fits-all technology solution for students to express themselves and interact with the world. In a Edutopia blog post, Terry Heick writes,

You can indeed insist that all students blog because, from your perspective, it sounds justifiable and beneficial, but if the goal is to help students find their own voice, they will need choices.

Terry goes on to suggest some possible web tools that would allow students to find their voice. Those web tools are:

Word Press or Blogger – These tools can help students establish their own digital space to meet the world.

Storify or Storehouse – These tools allow you to collect media bits and pieces from across the web, and to socialize them (that is, to shape them into a unique form of expression through social media.)

Podcasting or VoiceThread – These tools allow students to express themselves verbally around an idea important to them.

YouTube Channels - Students can create review channels, perform music, humorously remix existing content, act, create documentaries, and an unlimited number of other possibilities.

For more information, you can read Terry’s blog post 4 Technologies to Help Students Find Their Voice in Your Classroom.

Also, check out Bart Everson’s blog post 50 Web Tools for other web tools that may be used to help students find their voice and my Blackboard tip on how to integrate web 2.0 tools in your course.

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Published on 2 Comments on Twitter Cheat Sheet for Educators

by Janice Florent

Twitter is an excellent tool for consuming and for learning. Twitter has proven itself to be an indispensable tool for many educators venturing into the world of education technology. Some educators are harnessing Twitter as a part of their PLN (personal learning network) to connect, share, and network. If you are interested in using Twitter, here is a Twitter Cheat Sheet for educators to get you up to speed.

Also, follow us (CAT+FD) on Twitter @xulacat.

twitter cheat sheet for educators

Published on Leave a comment on Plan for Potential Classroom Disruptions Redux

by Janice Florent

Snowmageddon 2016 should be a reminder that course delivery is vulnerable to unplanned events. Potential interruptions to class activities include but are not limited to natural disasters, widespread illness, acts of violence, planned or unexpected construction-related closures, severe weather conditions, and medical emergencies. Whatever the event, an instructional continuity plan will help you to be ready to continue teaching with minimal interruption.

It's not too late to consider developing an instructional continuity plan for your current courses.

For those who missed our workshop and for those who want to learn more about instructional continuity you will find a link to the PowerPoint presentation above. Also, please visit our Instructional Continuity web page, where you will find planning guides, resources, and a recording of the workshop presentation.

image with the wording

Do you have a plan? If so, we would like to hear about it. If you had a classroom disruption and found a way for students to continue to make progress in your course, we encourage you to share it with your colleagues. Please email a brief description of what you did along with your reflections on how it worked for you, and we will post it to our Instructional Continuity web page.

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Published on 1 Comment on Give Students Feedback That Helps Them Learn

African American female looking at laptop computer screen

In a recent Teach Thought blog post, Justin Chando writes,

To tell a student “great job” or “this needs work” is a missed opportunity.

Hearing that you did a great job is wonderful. However, the problem with “great job” or “this needs work” is that it is not specific. There is no indication of what was done that was successful, and no information about how to replicate this success in future assignments.

In the blog post, Justin goes on to explain Grant Wiggins’ key characteristics of better feedback. Helpful feedback is:

Goal oriented: Goal referenced feedback creates a roadmap for students; it shows them how far they can go in the mastery of a subject or skill by outlining specific places for improvement or highlighting successful behaviors/techniques.

Transparent: A useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but transparent and tangible results related to the goal. The feedback needs to be concrete and obvious.

Actionable: Great feedback begs an obvious action/response from a student. It provides a clear course of action for the next time around or outlines a new plan for moving forward.

User-friendly: Feedback is not of much value if the student cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Quality feedback should be accessible to the student, clear and concise, using familiar language from the lesson/course.

Timely: Vital feedback often comes days, weeks, or even months after. Give students timely feedback and opportunities to use it in the course while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds.

Ongoing: One of the best ways to give great feedback is to give it often. Ongoing formative feedback helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work.

Consistent: Keeping guidance as consistent as possible allows students to hone in what needs to improve in their work and focus on making it better.

For more information on these key characteristics of better feedback including strategies to give better feedback, read Justin's Teach Thought blog post, How To Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn.

Photo credit: photo by #WOCinTech Chat is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #152: Quick Links

The Quick Links tool allows users to quickly locate any heading or section within any page in Blackboard and jump directly to the link.

Blackboard Quick Links pop-up window

Quick Links work by pulling all headers and important web page landmarks into an easily accessible screen. This accessibility feature improves Blackboard's navigation experience for all users, but especially sighted keyboard only users.

Follow these steps to do it.

To access Quick Links:

  1. Click on the Quick Links icon located on the top left near the Home tab (or press the SHIFT + ALT + L keys on the keyboard).
  2. A pop-up window that displays the landmark and navigation links on the page will open. Any available keyboard shortcuts for the page are also displayed.
  3. Press the TAB key to move between the links.
  4. Press the Enter key to go to the highlighted link.

Want more information?

About Quick Links
Quick Links video [01:24]
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #151: Grade Center – External Grade

An external grade is the grade a student would see in the Blackboard Report Card module, which is a tool we do not currently use.

One column in the Grade Center must be set as the external grade column. The Total column is the external grade by default. If you set another column as the external grade and change your mind, you can simply reset the Total column as the external grade by choosing “Set as External Grade” in the dropdown menu within the column header. Alternatively, you can set any other column to be the external grade.

set as External Grade example

When you view the dropdown menu within the column header for a column that is set to be the external grade, you will not see the "Show/Hide to Users" option. To hide an External Grade column from the students' view, you should edit the column information and choose "No" for the "Show this Column to Students" option.

Note: Any column that is set as the External Grade cannot be deleted. If you want to delete the column that is set as the External Grade column, you will have to set another column to be the external grade first. Once you do this you will be able to delete the column.

Want more information?

About External Grades
Working with the Grade Center
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #150: Turnitin – Voice Comments

white noise

Research shows students want specific and detailed feedback from their instructors (Balaji & Chakrabarti, 2010). Sometimes text-based feedback can become white noise to students who often admit they don't read it. This is not to say that text-based feedback is not valued, however voice is particularly impactful in our text-based world. Audio feedback is an option that saves time, cuts through the noise, and is preferred by students (Ice, Swan, Kupczynski, & Richardson, 2008).

The ability for an instructor to leave a personal voice comment is a powerful tool for providing feedback to students. Turnitin's GradeMark (online grading) has a feature that lets instructors add a voice comment to a student’s paper. With voice comments students can hear the reasons for a grade or the tone of voice or inflection behind the written feedback.

Turnitin voice comments bar

With just a few clicks, instructors can quickly record a detailed message of up to 3 minutes in length and attach it to the student’s paper. Instructors can use the orally recorded feedback as a supplement to written comments.

Want more information?

Instructions for adding voice comments (video) are available.
How to use Turnitin GradeMark (PDF) (GradeMark Interactive Tutorial)
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.