In May, CAT+FD hosted a week-long seminar focused on Human Learning in an AI World (generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation).
For those who were unable to attend, we have collected the seminar resources on the CAT Base wiki for your reference. Check them out! By staying informed and embracing innovative approaches, we can continue to provide our students with meaningful learning experiences and serve our shared mission.
Feel free to reach out to CAT+FD (or any of the seminar participants that are listed on the wiki page) if you have any questions.
Instructors who want to build their course before the normal course creation schedule can request a Brightspace Master Course Shell that can be used to develop and maintain their course materials.
A Master Course Shell:
Is a course environment an instructor uses to develop and maintain course materials that are used from semester to semester.
Is not tied to Banner. Therefore, no students or other users are enrolled into this Shell.
Can be used as a "master" where one keeps permanent changes to a course.
Faculty may copy content from a Master Course Shell into a Brightspace Course shell as long as they are enrolled as an instructor in both shells.
Master Course Shells are not deleted except upon the request of the instructor or when the instructor is no longer employed at Xavier.
A Time-Saving Tool for Instructors
Master Course Shells can be a timesaving tool for instructors. Using a Master Course Shell gives instructors time to build their courses the way they want, when they want, and update it as needed. Think of a Master Course Shell as a template course instructors can build once and use repeatedly. Here's how instructors typically use Master Course Shells:
Build Master Course: Develop a course (e.g., lectures, assignments, instructional materials, assessments) in the Master Shell. This becomes your baseline course structure.
Copy to Current Course: When ITC has created your course for the new semester, copy the Master Course Shell contents into your new empty course that ITC created.
Adapt for the Semester (Optional): Instructors can customize the copied course content to fit their needs for the current semester. This might involve adding new material, removing outdated content, or adjusting deadlines.
Keeping the Master Course Shell Up-to-Date: If you make significant changes to the active course during the semester, the Master Course Shell becomes outdated. To update the Master Course Shell with these changes, you can request a Course Reset for your Master Course Shell. A course reset permanently deletes course content, activities, and associated files. After the reset, you would copy the contents from the active course into your Master Course Shell. So, now your Master Course Shell has the latest course materials and information.
NOTE: To request a course reset for a Master Course Shell, send an email to jflorent@xula.edu and include the exact name of the Master Course Shell that you would like reset.
Follow these steps to do it.
If you want to build your course from scratch before your Brightspace course shell for the upcoming semester is made available, you should:
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 has a variety of formative and summative assessment tools available for instructors to use in their courses. You may be wondering which tool you should use. This blog post explains the difference between the Quizzes, Surveys, and Self-Assessments (SA) tools to help you determine which of the tools is the best tool to meet your needs.
A Quiz provides students with a score. Quizzes can be linked to the Grade Book to affect the final grade, but are not required to be linked to the Grade Book. This tool is commonly used for summative assessments (i.e., quizzes, tests, exams).
Surveys are not graded or scored, but do provide results to the instructor. Survey results can be viewed and downloaded as needed. Surveys can be anonymous.
Self-Assessments is a formative assessment tool that enables instructors to provide learners with a series of questions and give immediate feedback to their responses. A Self-Assessment is solely for the purpose of the learner to assess their understanding of the content. Instructors CANNOT view the results of a Self-Assessment, but they are able to see who has taken the Self-Assessment and the time spent on it. The omission of numeric evaluation enables learners to make reflective learning and course material comprehension their main priorities during a Self-Assessment.
The following table compares the feedback and reporting for each tool:
Quizzes
Surveys
Self-Assessments
Feedback for learner
Feedback is released based on the options set by instructor. Feedback can be setup to be instant (upon submission) or delayed.
Feedback is released after completion in the form of a report.
Feedback is provided immediately after answering question.
Reporting for instructor
Reporting for Instructors – yes, instructors can see summative feedback on scores and individual questions.
Reporting for Instructors – yes, reports are generated, and can be done so anonymously.
Reporting for Instructors – yes, but limited to who has taken SA and the time spent; instructors CANNOT view results of the SA.
This table provides some use cases for Quizzes, Surveys, and Self-Assessments:
Tool
Use Case
Quizzes
Measuring knowledge acquisition: Assess factual recall, comprehension, and application of learned concepts. Assess skills for the purpose of determining whether instruction has been effective.
Evaluating critical thinking: Open ended questions requiring analysis, synthesis, or evaluation can assess higher-order thinking skills.
Standardized test: Deliver high-stakes tests with secure features like time limits, question randomization, paging, and integration with lockdown browsers.
Formative assessment: Create low-stakes quizzes for students to practice and receive immediate feedback. Assess skills for the purpose of identifying areas needing improvement.
Surveys
Gauging student understanding: Use anonymous surveys to assess student comprehension of course material before, during, or after a lesson.
Gathering opinions on teaching methods: Evaluate the success of specific teaching approaches or gather suggestions for improvement.
Course satisfaction surveys: Collect feedback on student experience with the course content, delivery, and overall effectiveness.
Self-Assessments
Promoting metacognition: Encourage students to reflect on their learning progress, strengths, and weaknesses through self-evaluation activities.
Identifying learning gaps: Allow students to assess their own understanding of key concepts before moving on to new material.
Personalized learning: Use self-assessment results to tailor learning experiences or provide targeted resources based on individual needs.
By understanding the strengths of each tool, instructors can select the most effective tool for the job.
A Note About the Question Library
The Question Library is a central repository that stores and archives questions which you can reuse within a course. You can create multiple sections within the Question Library to organize your questions by type and topic, making it easier for you to find, use, and reuse questions in your quizzes, surveys, and self-assessments.
As a better practice for storage, organization, and easy access, I recommend that you create all your questions using the Question Library. You can also consolidate questions created within the Quizzes, Surveys, and Self-Assessments tools by importing them back into the Question Library.
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 StockSnap from Pixabay (image cropped)
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 some of the updates in the May 2024/20.24.5 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Awards – Certificate ID for an issued award
To improve security when issuing certificates, instructors can now use a new replacement string field when creating their certificate templates to add an automatically-generated numeric ID. This ID uniquely identifies the issued award, which can be verified using the new Brightspace API.
The feature introduces a new replacement string {CertificateID} that instructors can add to their PDF templates. A unique ID is generated and populated into the replacement string {CertificateID} on an ongoing basis when released.
The unique generated ID is 12 numeric characters long and is stored in the Brightspace database as CertificateID, along with other data for the issued award.
Note: The {CertificateID} replacement string follows existing rules of other current replacement strings and is marked read-only.
To support this change, the new Awards Brightspace API has been introduced, which allows the verification of issued certificates:
The feature is only available on certificates issued with this release when the Certificate ID replacement string is added to the certificate template. The Certificate ID does not have to be added to a certificate template to be auto-generated, but the ID has to be added to be visible to the learner.
Previously, the {CertificateID} replacement string was not available.
2) Grades – Feedback files are now available in Grades for Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions
This feature allows instructors to ensure that learners can easily review feedback from the Grades tool.
Instructor feedback added in Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions is now visible to learners under Grades.
Learners can review feedback from the Grades page.
Previously, feedback files were only available to the learner by accessing the activity.
3) Manage Files – Receive notification when zipping and unzipping files
As of this release, whenever users add (zip) or extract (unzip) one or more files to a ZIP archive in Manage Files, a new dialog confirms that files are being zipped or unzipped in the background. Once the process is complete, a notification appears in Update alerts (the bell icon).
Previously, adding files to a ZIP archive was not a background process and thus there was no notification after zipping. In addition, the notification for unzipping files appeared in the Subscription alerts area.
A notification dialog appears when zipping or unzipping files. Click Close to resume work.
Once files are successfully zipped or unzipped, a notification appears under Update alerts.
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 Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) is proud to announce that we have received the 2024 D2L Excellence Award for our work on #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced. The D2L Excellence Award recognizes leaders, educators, and trainers who have used D2L Brightspace to help further the innovation, progress, and betterment of learning experiences in their organizations.
The Challenge: Advancing Faculty Expertise Through Instructional Continuity
We were faced with the challenge of preparing faculty for effective online instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly because D2L Brightspace was new to us.
Our Solution: #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced
To address this challenge, CAT+FD developed two innovative programs:
#LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX): This self-paced online course helps faculty members develop high-quality, well-designed courses in Brightspace. It is based on the eight General Standards for Higher Education set forth by Quality Matters. By completing the course, faculty gain the skills and knowledge they need to create effective online learning experiences for XULA students.
#LEX Advanced: This program goes beyond the basics, helping instructors explore advanced features in Brightspace. These features allow faculty to increase their presence in their courses, streamline workflows, and improve overall efficiency. Ultimately, this leads to more user-friendly, accessible, and effective online courses.
The Results: Increased Proficiency and Improved Courses
Thanks to #LEX and #LEX Advanced, XULA faculty have become more proficient in using Brightspace to deliver high-quality online instruction. This has led to increased use of the platform's tools and better alignment with Quality Matters standards.
A Note of Thanks
The CAT+FD team is grateful to D2L for recognizing our work and awarding us with the 2024 D2L Excellence Award. We would also like to acknowledge Drs. Jason S. Todd and Tiera S. Coston for their contributions and help in developing #LEX and #LEX Advanced.
For More Information
Xavier faculty who are interested can use this enrollment request form to request enrollment in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.
A conversation with Beth Schwartz and Regan Gurung on the scholarship of teaching and learning, facilitated by outgoing (no pun intended) CAT+FD Director Elizabeth Yost Hammer.
Regan A. R. Gurung, PhD, is a social psychologist by training with research encompassing social, health, and pedagogical psychology. Over 100 of his articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals and he has co-authored/co-edited 15 books.
Beth M. Schwartz, PhD, is the Office of Applied Psychology’s associate director. Schwartz received her BA from Colby College (Maine) and her PhD in cognitive psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Thursday, May 16th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD aims to get you talking, thinking, and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different abilities and talents.
Accessibility is about everyone. It is extremely important for students with disabilities to have access to accessible course content.
Video Notes is a built-in media recording tool in Brightspace that allows instructors and learners to record short videos with a webcam. This makes it easy to personalize the learning experience with short, video-based feedback, comments, or instructions. Video Notes can be added where video attachments are supported and when the Brightspace Editor’s Insert Stuff option is available.
People who are deaf or hard of hearing rely on captions and subtitles to understand video content. But there are a lot of other great reasons for using captions. For example, you may have some learners who choose not to use the sound or they cannot use it without disturbing those around them. You may have some learners who are not native in your language or who have trouble understanding you. Closed captions and subtitles will allow these individuals to receive your message and understand it.
Did you know you can generate automatic closed captions for newly created Video Notes AND you have the ability to manually add or edit closed captions for all previously recorded Video Notes?
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.
Thursday, May 16th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD aims to get you talking, thinking, and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different abilities and talents.
Accessibility is about everyone. It is extremely important for students with disabilities to have access to accessible course content.
The Brightspace Editor has a built-in accessibility checker that makes it easy to check for issues or offer suggestions to fix identified accessibility issues.
Follow these steps to do it.
To check for accessibility issues:
After you add content to the Brightspace Editor, click the accessibility checker icon.
The checker indicates if the content is free of accessibility issues, or offers suggestions to fix them.
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.
Thursday, May 16th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) access/inclusion and people with different disabilities.
While people may be interested in the topic of making technology accessible and usable by persons with disabilities, the reality is that they often do not know how or where to start. Awareness comes first.
The key to embracing accessibility – whether online, in the classroom, or on campus is realizing that taking the time to address an issue doesn’t just help a handful of individuals; in the end, everyone benefits.
Participants in global accessibility awareness day are encouraged to attempt to go an hour without using a technology most people take for granted – such as not using a computer mouse, attempting to navigate a website using a screen reader, or enlarging all of the fonts in a web browser to 200 percent, to see how functionality may be lost when accessibility isn’t taken into consideration in the design.
Also, thanks to those of you who attended our "Accessibility Is Not Just for Individuals with Disabilities" workshop. The workshop, the seventeenth in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and gives you the skills and knowledge you need to create accessible course materials that can benefit everyone. 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 “Make It Accessible” 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.
The end of the spring semester, 2024, marks the completion of the first year of CAT+FD's pilot program to support part-time instructors at Xavier. As you know these teachers do excellent work here in teaching, scholarship, and service, and they increasingly make up a significant portion of our teaching rosters.
This semester I had the pleasure of meeting and working with some of the continuing part-time teachers, some of whom have been at Xavier for many years. Though this cohort needs less support, they have valuable experience and insight to offer us all, and I was particularly pleased by some members' decisions to drop in and check out our programming.
This more experienced cohort includes Albertina Walker, who represents the Institute for Black Catholic Studies, Daniel Curley, who brings a wide range of prior work experience to his teaching, including a stint with the federal government, and Kesia Walker, who has worked for 20 years in public health.
We also had a solid roster of new or newer teachers come through this term, including Bonnie Katalenich, formerly in the private sector with LabCorp, LaTeshya Martin, who previously worked in the Attorney General's office of Mississippi, and Emily DeWet, cultural anthropologist with teaching experience at Notre Dame and U.N.O., who is teaching exclusively within the XCOR at Xavier.
A big thanks from CAT+FD to these amazing teachers. It's been my pleasure meeting and working with them. Please join me in thanking them for their work here, and I hope that in the fall we can bring even more returning and new part-time instructors into our support cohort, so that we may all benefit from their skills and expertise.
In the meantime, we had one teacher complete the program and earn the certificate this semester. This teacher went above and beyond in participating in our program, and it was an absolute joy to have her on the sessions, consistently brining insight, curiosity, and positivity to the table. This teacher is Melissa Lea!
Dr. Melissa Lea has been an adjunct professor of psychology and neuroscience at Xavier for three years. She has taught Introduction to Psychology, Physiological Psychology, and Cognitive Neuroscience.
Previously, she was a tenured faculty member of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Assistant Dean of Student Success and Academic Advising at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she has researched person perception, specifically the perceptual influences that affect familiarity and name recall.
Dr. Lea works as an academic advisor for the School of Psychological Sciences at The University of Northern Colorado. She has a passion for working with first generation, transfer, underrepresented minorities, and Pell grant eligible students.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Lea on her certification, and thanking her for her excellent contributions to all that we do here.
