Many instructors are using reflective journaling as a teaching strategy. Reflective journaling is used as a means of aiding reflection, deepening students' understanding and stimulating critical thinking.
Brightspace does not have a journal tool. However, you can setup private discussion forums for journaling using the Groups and Discussions tools. A private discussion forum is the same as any other discussion forum, except that only the instructor and an individually assigned student have access to the posted threads and replies. A private discussion forum ensures that students cannot see each other’s posts, but instructors can still respond and assign grades to the discussion threads.
IMPORTANT: Each group in Brightspace has a maximum capacity of 200 participants and is restricted to 200 groups per category. You WILL NOT be able to set up private discussions for journaling if your enrollment is more than 200.
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.
#LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) is our Brightspace course that is organized around the eight General Standards for Higher Education set forth in the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric Sixth Edition. The information, activities, and assignments in the #LEX course aids faculty in developing high quality, well-designed, objective-driven courses on Brightspace for Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) students.
When faculty complete the #LEX course, they have the opportunity to expand their horizons even more through #LEX Advanced certification. With the certification, faculty learn about using design and automation features available in Brightspace to apply better pedagogical practices within their courses by making them more user-friendly, accessible, and efficient.
#LEX Advanced takes a deeper dive into tools like Rubrics, Release Conditions, Intelligent Agents, HTML Templates, Awards & Badges, and more. #LEX Advanced certification also includes topics such as alternative assessments, academic integrity, online discussions, group work, and video lectures.
A #LEX Advanced badge can be earned for participation in a #LEX Advanced workshop OR for completing its corresponding module in the #LEX course.
Our #LEX Advanced certification has four levels. Faculty can move up a certification level with every fourth #LEX Advanced badge they earn. Complete four modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 1 certification. Complete eight modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 2 certification. Complete twelve modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 3 certification. Complete sixteen modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 4 certification.
Faculty can view the badges they've earned by clicking on Activities in the NavBar and then click on Awards within the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.
Are you interested in becoming #LEX Advanced certified? Attend one of our upcoming #LEX Advanced workshops to start earning your badges. Alternatively, you can earn badges by completing modules in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.
NOTE: Faculty who are not enrolled in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course can request enrollment using this enrollment request form.
#LEX Advanced Certifications
Congratulations to those faculty who have earned #LEX Advanced Certification!
Announcements are one of the first things your learners see when they enter your course. Announcements can provide timely information for your learners about class activities and time-sensitive material. Announcements can be used to remind learners of assignment and/or test dates, post changes to the course, announce upcoming events (such as a guest speaker), etc.
You can post multiple announcements when setting up your course and select a specific day for the announcement to be displayed by choosing staggered future start dates. For example, you know now that you want to post an announcement about the midterm exam and another about the final. Write both announcements now, but set the midterm announcement to display the week before the midterm and the final exam announcement to display a week before the final. Students will not be able to view either announcement until its assigned start date.
When creating an announcement, you should set an end date for it so that when the information in the announcement is outdated the system will retire the announcement. Setting an end-of-semester date for announcements is good practice if you are planning to copy your course into another course in an upcoming semester. This will force you to update the announcement start and end dates in the course you are copying to. Thus reducing the possibility the system will display an announcement before you want it to.
You can use Quicklinks within the announcement to direct students to a particular section of your course. You can display (release) announcements based on conditions you choose by using Release Conditions.
Consider using Video Notes (built-in media recording tool in Brightspace) or your favorite video sharing service to create video announcements for your learners.
In the Faculty Focus article, Building Community and Creating Relevance in the Online Classroom, Amy Erickson and Catz Neset suggested creating video announcements as a way to build community in your online courses. Their formula for successful announcements are:
Provide an introduction each week and share your availability
Give feedback and answer questions from the previous week
Showcase exceptional student work from the previous week
Highlight the objectives of the coming week and any special preparation or required resources
Connect your coursework to relevant current events
In another Faculty Focus article, Using Announcements to Give Narrative Shape to your Online Course, Dr. Nathan Pritts suggests using announcements to create a narrative that increases student engagement. He starts the semester by letting his students know that he will post around three announcements per week—on the first day of the week (to kick things off), then about three days later (positioned to help motivate and encourage forward progress), and finally, at the end of the week (to provide some closure and open a channel for any last questions). He labels the subject lines of his announcements so students can process and sort them at a glance. For example, some labels that he uses in the subject line are Course Policy, Instructional Content, and Dig Deeper. He uses the announcements as a roadmap to help his learners navigate the course.
Dr. Mark Gstohl uses video announcements in his courses. In the video announcement, he gives his students a tip that will help them with an upcoming assignment. He also uses humor in his announcement which goes a long way to building a rapport with his students.
If you make your videos generic (i.e., don't reference the semester, time of year, seasons, day of the week, etc.), you can re-use the announcements from semester-to-semester. That way you don't have to worry about recording when you are having a bad hair day. 😀
Follow these steps to do it.
Watch this short video for instructions on creating announcements:
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.
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 August 2023/20.23.8 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Announcements – Pin announcements to top of Announcement widget
With this release, instructors can now pin announcements and global announcements to the top of the Announcement Widget, allowing important information to remain visible to learners. Announcements so pinned are indicated to learners as such with the use of a new pinned icon that appears on the announcement. Global announcements appear at the top of the Announcements widget before any announcements pinned within a course offering.
Select Pin to top to pin an announcement to the top of the Announcement Widget.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D7111 (Ability to Pin Announcement to the Top)
2) Rubrics – Improve your evaluation experience with the new collapsible panel for Assignments and Discussions in mobile view
When evaluating assignments or discussions in a mobile browser, instructors can now collapse the containers for Rubrics, Grades & Feedback, Outcomes, and Competencies. The new collapsible container appears in the right-hand panel and reduces unnecessary scrolling, giving instructors more control over which fields are displayed to them. Each component is open by default when the instructor accesses the item. Instructors can open and close each collapsible component by selecting the triangle beside the name of the container.
Note: This change applies to the mobile view only.
The Rubrics tool was updated in the July 2023/20.23.7 release to include collapsible panels as part of interface improvements.
The previous mobile view for evaluation components.The new mobile view that includes the collapsible evaluation components. Instructors can open and close each collapsible component by selecting the triangle beside the name of the container.
3) Rubrics – Pop-out details provide increased evaluator awareness
To provide a more complete context for learner evaluation, rubric pop-outs now provide activity details including activity title, course name, learner name, and evaluator name. The evaluator name only appears if it is explicitly assigned; implicit evaluators' names do not appear with the additional details. These additional details are critical for new multi-evaluation workflows, where evaluators can have access to view and edit multiple rubrics concurrently. However, having the additional activity details in the single-evaluation experience also provides consistency across all evaluator experiences.
Note: Multi-evaluation workflows are currently only available as part of a development pilot program.
An example rubric pop-out showing the activity title, course name, learner name, and graded by.
Previously, the activity title, course name, learner name, and evaluator name were not visible in the rubric pop-outs.
Note: Learner name information respects user information privacy policies and displays Anonymous if evaluating with the Anonymous role or marking in Anonymous Mode.
4) User Progress – Class Progress displays absent periods more clearly
This feature updates Class Progress to better align the login date and the absent period. When viewing data for Course Access, Login History, and System Access History, the absent period now correlates to the login date on the same line.
Previously, the login date and absent period were misaligned, which caused confusion to users viewing the data.
The absent period now correlates to the login date on the same line.
This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:
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 My Courses widget enables users to access their favorite courses by pinning them to the top of their course list. The updated sort logic in the My Courses widget is intended to better organize the courses in the widget. The updated sort logic presents both pinned and unpinned courses in the My Courses Widget, promoting the pinned courses to be displayed first in the widget.
The updated sorting logic in the My Courses Widget does not auto-pin courses, and allows the end-user to pin and rearrange courses in an order that makes sense to them. The updated sort logic tries to populate the widget with up-to 12 courses, starting with the user’s pinned courses, then pulling in unpinned courses by enrollment date until the widget contains 12 courses. The result is that most users get a sensible My Courses Widget with no intervention on their part, while pinning and customization is still available for the users who need it.
The Pinned tab appears in the My Courses widget when users pin courses
A Pinned tab now appears in the My Courses widget. The “Pinned” tab displays only the courses that a user has pinned, similar to the old sort logic. The Pinned tab allows learners and instructors to create a curated view of their pinned courses. Clicking on the push pin to the right of the course name in the Course Selector will pin/unpin the course.
Pin/unpin courses from the course selector
The Pinned tab appears in the widget only after a user pins a course in the Course Selector. The tab remains in view until all courses are unpinned. The My Courses widget remembers the last viewed tab and shows that same tab the next time the homepage is viewed. This makes it easy for instructors and learners who only wish to view pinned courses to see those courses upon login.
NOTE: The Pinned tab only appears when a user has one or more course pinned – tabs are not displayed to the user that contain 0 courses.
The View All Courses navigation drills down into the courses by showing manually pinned courses, followed by current enrollments, then future enrollments (if available and visible to the user), then past enrollments (if available or visible to the user) as the default sort. If the user changes the sort order, the filter does not separate pinned courses from other courses based on sort order, filters, and search terms.
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.
Brightspace Pulse is a mobile app that can help learners stay connected and on track with their Brightspace courses. It provides one easy view of course calendars, readings, assignments, evaluations, grades, and announcement items. The app can help learners make better decisions about how to handle their workload, when to submit assignments, and when to prepare for tests. Real-time alerts can let learners know when classes are canceled, class is meeting in an alternate location, or new grades are available. The schedule view and weekly visualization enables learners to quickly at a glance view what is due today, this week, and upcoming across all their courses.
While the Brightspace Pulse app is designed for the learner, instructors can benefit too.
While the Brightspace Pulse app is designed for the learner, instructors can benefit too. When instructors enter due dates or end dates for assignments and activities the information is populated in the Pulse app enabling learners to stay connected and on track. Thus, instructors can spend less time reminding and more time teaching.
Instructors can make their courses Pulse friendly by including due dates or end dates for assignments and activities. When instructors do not enter due dates or end dates, no associated information is available in the Pulse app.
The Pulse app is great for helping students stay on track in face-to-face classes as well. Instructors can set up their face-to-face assignments and activities as events in the Brightspace course calendar. Students will get those date feeds in the Brightspace Pulse app.
Help keep students on track for success in all their courses by including a due date or end date for assignments and activities.
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.
I usually get a lot of questions from faculty related to setting up their Brightspace courses. In the spirit of starting the academic year with less stress, I offer the following infographic with course design suggestions to reduce your course setup and management stress:
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.
As you prepare to teach this fall, now is a good time to get started setting up your Brightspace courses. Our Information Technology Center (ITC) has created the fall courses in Brightspace.
NOTE: You should see your fall courses in the My Courses widget. If you do not see your fall courses in your My Courses widget, you should click on the link to "View All Courses" (located at the bottom of the My Courses widget). Verify that you are listed as the instructor for the course in Banner. You can find more information about the updated My Courses Widget sort logic at this link.
To get started, you can post your syllabus, course documents, announcements, and setup your Grade Book in your Brightspace courses. You can also customize your course homepage and/or course image/banner.
If you teach a course that is cross listed you will have a Brightspace course for each cross listing. You can combine the cross listed courses into one Brightspace course so that you can post course materials and grades to one combined Brightspace course. Combining courses may also work for you if you are teaching different sections of the same course and would like to have the different sections combined into one Brightspace course so that you can post course documents and grades in the one combined course. The beginning of the semester is the best time to submit a request to merge your Brightspace courses before you add course materials or grades to the courses.
Additionally, if the fall course you are teaching is the same as one of your previous courses you can copy the entire course (or copy components) into your "empty" Brightspace fall course.
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.
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 July 2023/20.23.7 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Brightspace Editor – Edited images are saved with their original names to improve ease of location
With this release, images edited within Brightspace Editor are saved with their original names followed by a date-time string, which helps instructors find changed images easily in Manage Files. Changes to an image using Edit image in the floating toolbar are saved as a copy of the image with the name format "OriginalFileName_yyyyMMddHHmmss.jpg."
Click the Edit image option in HTML Editor to make changes to the image.
Previously images that were edited were given a different, random filename on saving.
2) Discussions – Consistent settings and interface of availability dates across Brightspace
This feature updates the settings and format of availability dates and states in Discussions, to align with other activity tools and create a unified content experience for both instructors and learners. This update is a continuation of the changes introduced to the Assignment list tab in June 2023 Continuous Delivery Updates.
Availability dates in the Discussions list are now displayed as a simple date range below the titles of discussion topics. Hovering over the date range text displays a tooltip that includes the information about start and end dates. Tooltips also include applied settings to explain how the discussion topic appears to learners before and after these dates.
The previous format of the availability dates in a discussion topic. The availability information appears beneath the topic title.
Previously, the availability dates in the Discussions topics did not include a hover tooltip.
The updated format of the availability dates in a discussion topic. Availability details now appear in a hover tooltip.
The corresponding update for Quizzes is planned for a future release.
This release updates the Quiz Creation experience for instructors by simplifying the quiz timing setup workflow, adding useful new features, including the ability to auto-submit, and removing obsolete quiz timing options.
With this release, learners can show or hide the timer, receive time warning messages, and access more information about their quizzes.
Note: All Quiz Timer settings behavior and User Interface changes will immediately be applied to existing and in-progress quizzes with the Continuous Delivery Update.
Instructors Workflow Changes
The following workflow changes and advanced Quiz Timing options are now available for instructors.
Simplified and redesigned Quiz Timing & Display settings
The updated settings allow instructors to choose if they want to set a time limit by selecting the Set time limit checkbox, which is cleared by default. If Set time limit is selected, instructors can add a Time Limit and edit the Timer Settings.
The previous Prevent the student from making further changes option has been changed to Automatically submit the quiz attempt. Quiz auto-submission automatically hands in quizzes on enforced time limit quizzes at the end of the set time, improving quiz integrity. This behavior is changed on all existing and in-progress quizzes with the update. Note: The Automatically submit the quiz attempt option is now the default setting for all newly created quizzes with a time limit and is used automatically if the instructor does not edit the quiz timing settings. The previous default setting was Allow the student to continue working.
The previous Allow the student to continue working option has been changed to Flag the attempt as exceeded time limit and allow the learner to continue working. This behavior is changed on all existing and in-progress quizzes with the update.
The Grace Period and Allow student to continue working but automatically score zero options are removed to further streamline the process of quiz creation. With this update, any existing and in-progress quizzes that include these settings are changed to the following new behavior:
A quiz that previously had a grace period now uses the time limit set on the quiz.
A quiz previously set to Allow student to continue working but automatically score zero now sets the quiz to Automatically submit the quiz attempt.
The Timing menu before this update.The Timing menu after this update.
The Timing & Display section displays comprehensive summary information in either collapsed or expanded view, helping instructors to find errors and to understand which settings they could change.
The collapsed view of a quiz with an enforced time limit in the Timing & Display section shows instructors a summary of their settings.
The Special Access settings are updated to simplify setup and incorporate the updated settings.
The Timing settings in the Edit Special Access menu before this update.The Timing settings in the Edit Special Access menu after this update.
Improvements for Learners
The following improved Quiz Timing options are now available for learners:
Option to show or hide the timer to reduce anxiety during quiz taking. Note: Once a learner sets their preference, the setting preserves across all quizzes.
Click the Hide Timer button beside the quiz timer to hide the timer from the view.
Warnings displayed at certain times to support awareness of time left. The following warnings are applied:
1 minute remaining on the quiz
5 minutes remaining (only on quizzes with 10 minutes or longer quiz time limit)
Half of the elapsed time (only on quizzes with 20 minutes or longer quiz time limit)
The Timer Warning dialog indicates how much longer a learner has in a quiz.
The simplified Quiz Results page appears when a learner completes a quiz attempt or returns later to view their quiz results (previously known as Submission View). The page now displays the text ‘Your work has been saved and submitted’ to all learners. This text is no longer editable by instructors. The existing text field allows adding a custom message to be displayed within the Quiz Results page under the new default message.
The Quiz Results page shows learners the status of their quiz and their score.
Option to review quiz instructions and details without leaving the quiz.
Click the Quiz Information option on the quiz page to view instructions and other information. This does not leave the quiz.
If a learner is taking a quiz at the time of the update, they will notice the user interface changes and new quiz timer setting behaviors immediately following the Continuous Delivery update. For more information about the impact to existing and in-progress quizzes, refer to the Quiz Timing Improvements – Pilot Summary blog post.
4) Quizzes – The New Quiz Creation Experience is now universally enabled
In this release, the New Quiz Creation Experience reaches the end of the adoption phase of feature development and becomes the only editing experience for all customers. The New Quiz Creation Experience is now set to on as the default with no option to opt out.
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.
Are you still using the old quiz creation experience? Did you know the old quiz creation experience will be retired soon and will no longer be available for use.
The new Quiz creation experience was one of the changes implemented with our June 2022 Continuous Delivery update. You can switch to the new quiz creation experience. Switching is simple. You can switch between the old quiz creation experience and the new experience by clicking on the arrow in the upper right corner of the create/edit quiz page.
Use the down arrow to switch from the old quiz creation experience to the new quiz creation experience.
The create and edit consistency changes that you see in Assignments and Discussions are available in the New Quiz Creation Experience. D2L’s goal with the create/edit quiz redesign is to simplify common tasks for first-time or infrequent users, while giving easy access to the advanced features that experienced power-users love.
The new quiz creation experience.
In the redesign, the primary panel on the left contains common, frequently used fields that are always displayed. These fields are most relevant to learners and are core to quiz creation. The add/edit question workflow has been brought into the primary panel, giving users the ability to easily modify quiz questions without the need to navigate to a separate interface.
The right-hand panel organizes additional, more advanced options such as start and end dates, release conditions, and special access. These options follow the same logical groupings as found in Assignments and Discussions. Other quiz-specific settings can be found in the right-hand panel including creating a password protected quiz, applying IP restrictions, adjusting quiz timing, setting display options, managing attempts, and altering evaluation and feedback settings.
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.
