Stephen Laster (D2L), Janice Florent, and John Baker (D2L)
ICYMI, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) is proud to announce that we 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. Elizabeth Yost Hammer 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.
Every year, CAT+FD welcomes a cohort of new faculty to Xavier's campus. After many years of coordinating New Faculty Orientation, we've come to expect there will always be a few familiar faces in the group. Some faculty attended Xavier in the past. Other were hired mid-year and so already have a semester teaching here under their belt.
That seems appropriate to remember, as we welcome this year's new faculty, because we are also welcoming a new director who is nevertheless a familiar face.
Our new director, Dr. Jason Todd, is no stranger to Xavier's campus or to CAT+FD, for that matter. In fact, Jay served as Associate Director of CAT+FD for seven years. As such, his appointment as director represents a path of continuity. In the midst of hurricanes, pandemics, and disruptive technologies, a little continuity is welcome! At the same time, we know that Jay will take CAT in new directions. Continual innovation is just part of what we do in pursuit of our shared mission.
We look forward to working with Jay to support your development, as Xavier faculty, across all career stages and areas of professional responsibility.
Welcome back, Jay, and congratulations!
PS: It's also worth noting that Jay is the second CAT director named Todd. That puts our cumulative Todd ratio at something like 20%.
Faculty can request to have two or more of their courses combined into a single course. Combining courses can be useful when you are teaching multiple sections of the same course or when you are teaching a course that is cross-listed. Merging courses allows you to have all the students in a single Brightspace course which can be useful for collaborative work. Merging courses reduces the number of courses an instructor has to manage within Brightspace, especially when each section has identical content.
Once your courses are merged, you can upload your course content and assignments into the merged course; communicate with the students in the merged course; setup collaborative course work; and have one Grade Book for the merged course. You can create groups within your merged course that correspond to the original course sections. This way you can target a particular course section (group) of students for specific things (e.g. send email to a specific group, make content available to specific group, enter/view Grade Book entries for a specific group, etc.)
NOTE: Merging of courses is typically done at the start of the semester before content is added and before students submit course work. You should wait to request your courses be merged if there is a possibility that there will be last minute changes to instructor course section assignments. You can request a Master Course Shell to build your course and then transfer the content into your merged course.
You should carefully consider whether merging courses is right for you. Some disadvantages to merging courses are:
Course enrollments for the merged courses will be combined which can make grading student work a challenge. If you create groups for the different sections, you will be able to view your Grade Book by groups to make grading easier.
Only one due date and start/end date can be assigned to an assignment, discussion, quiz, etc. Therefore you will not be able to assign different due dates and start/end dates to the activity (e.g., assignment, quiz, discussion, etc.).
If you decide you want to unmerge courses after students have submitted course work, student work and grades will be lost. Only student enrollments are retained when courses are unmerged.
Follow these steps to do it.
A system administrator will have to merge your courses. Send an email to Karen Nichols (knichola@xula.edu) if you want to merge courses. You should include the course ID (including CRN) for all the courses you want merged together.
NOTE: When courses are merged, one of the existing courses will serve as the "merged" course. If all the course sections are empty, it won't matter which one is used as the "merged" course. If you have already created content in a course, you should request that the course with the content be the "merged" course. This will reduce the need to copy content.
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: "why merge" by jflorent is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 and is a derivative of merging by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
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.
About Inactive Courses:
When ITC creates the Brightspace courses, they are set to inactive by default. Instructors have access to inactive courses but students who are enrolled in an inactive course do not have access to it. Faculty have no control over the active/inactive status of courses. Brightspace will not send alerts or notifications from inactive courses.
ITC will make courses active after the first deregistration (dereg) of students who are not fiscally cleared. At that point students will be able to access to their courses. The dereg process usually occurs after registration. The registrar informs ITC of when the dereg process is complete.
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 some of the updates in the July 2024/20.24.7 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Grades – Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions
The Automatic Zero feature allows a score of zero (0) to be automatically applied to unsubmitted learner activities after the due date passes. Applying the Automatic Zero feature eliminates the need for instructors to manually set missing submissions to zero. Additionally, learners receive a more accurate view of their grade calculations for individual activities and for the overall course.
Supported submissions include file and text-based assignments, quizzes, and LTI tools. All activities must have grade associations.
Instructors can select between system-added and manually-entered zero scores. Automatic Zero applies to both individual and group assignments and respects any exemptions and release conditions set for an activity. Automatic Zero is triggered within one minute of the due date and is based on local time zones for both instructors and learners. The feature follows the same rules as existing due dates.
NOTE: There are no changes to Grades data sets, as methods for identifying system-entered grades already exist.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D3202 (Automatically assign zero after a due date has passed).
For instructors, the Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions check box appears in the Grade Calculations area of Grade Settings when the Automatic Zero function is turned on.
NOTE: The automatic zero for missing submissions is unchecked by default. Changes to the setting only take effect on assessments with future due dates.
Instructors see an automatic zero applied to a missing submission with an explanatory tooltip.
2) SMS Notifications – End of Life
As of this release, SMS Notifications are permanently removed from Brightspace. Short Message Service (SMS) Notifications allowed users to subscribe to select notifications to be forwarded to their mobile phone number. Stored phone numbers are deleted following this release and are no longer needed to send notifications. The Mobile Carrier Management page is removed from Admin Tools; and the Notification Number seen when viewing a user in the Users tool is also removed.
Email-based notifications remain, and users can still receive email notifications if they subscribe. Alternatively, users can use the Brightspace Pulse app to receive the same mobile push notifications that were available with SMS Notifications.
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 move forward with using Brightspace in your teaching and learning, you may have some Brightspace questions. Here is a list of Brightspace help resources you can use to get answers to your questions:
Also, did you know there is a virtual assistant that is integrated directly into Brightspace? If this is news to you, refer to Brightspace Tip #413: Brightspace Virtual Assistant to find out more about it.
Additionally, if you are having difficulties using any of the course tools, you can get help from D2L. This help is available 24/7 via Email and Live Chat. You will find options to request Email Support and Live Chat Support in the Brightspace Virtual Assistant. You must be logged into Brightspace to access the Brightspace Virtual Assistant.
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 PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
I'm marking 25 years at Xavier this month. I planned to formulate some sort of reflection, which undoubtedly would have been insightful and profound if only I'd ever got around to actually writing it.
Instead, I'd like to focus on a different milestone which seems much more significant.
As most everyone knows, Elizabeth Yost Hammer is stepping away from the directorship of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development to return to full-time teaching. After 17 years, this truly marks the end of an era. Future historians might call it the EYH Era, or perhaps just EYHra for short.
For fun, here's a brief retrospective video that captures some scenes of EYH's tenure at CAT+FD. (Please note this video has no audio; it's just a montage of stills.)
The EYH Era at CAT+FD
On a personal note, I have to say it's been a pleasure and an honor to serve under Dr. Hammer's guidance. Rarely have I encountered such resolute positivity in another human being. For the better part of two decades, she's kept us focused on our part of Xavier's mission: supporting our faculty in the endless quest to deliver the best for our students. I look forward to our future collaborations as she moves into the next phase of her career.
But I can't look back at the past too long. We're also excited about CAT+FD's next chapter. Stay tuned!
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 June 2024/20.24.6 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Assignments – Annotations update from Version 2023.4.0 to 2024.3.0
This release updates the Assignment Annotations tool from PSPDFKit Version 2023.4.0 to Version 2024.3.0 This update fixes several defects; in addition, the icons used in the following areas have received minor updates:
Main toolbar
Line tools
Ink tools
Page Layout tools
Sidebar tools
Drawing sub-toolbar
Highlighter sub-toolbar
Text Highlighter sub-toolbar
Eraser sub-toolbar
Note sub-toolbar
Textbox sub-toolbar
Line and Arrow sub-toolbar
Rectangle sub-toolbar
This feature updates the appearance of the icons in the main toolbar (above) to the new style (below).
This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the line tools (left) to the new style (right).
This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the ink tools (left) to the new style (right).
This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the page layout tools (left) to the new style (right).
This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the sidebar tools (left) to the new style (right).
This feature updates the appearance of the icons in the highlighter and drawing sub-toolbars (above) to the new style (below).
NOTE: Safari browsers using versions older than version 15.4 are legacy browsers and are no longer supported for the Annotations software. For more information, refer to Browser support.
2) Assignments – Google and Microsoft 365 options available in File Upload
The option to directly upload a file from Google Drive™ and Microsoft OneDrive® is now available when editing and evaluating an assignment. Users can upload a file by clicking File Upload, and then clicking Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive in the Add a File window.
Previously, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive files could only be added as link attachments. These links connected users to the file within its location, but the file was not uploaded to the assignment. Now, files stored in Google and Microsoft storage accounts are directly added to the assignment, eliminating the need for instructors to provide sharing permissions to users.
Select Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive in Add a File to upload files when editing an assignment.
3) Brightspace – In-Product Feedback
This release introduces in-product feedback into Brightspace as a new way to allow users to provide their feedback. Administrators, instructors, and learners in higher education or corporate organizations may receive a small survey prompt in Brightspace. The in-product feedback asks users for ratings on one to two questions; these questions ask about users’ experience with Brightspace as a whole, their experience meeting goals in Brightspace, or their experience in a particular workflow.
Users can provide feedback by rating your experience with tools and processes in Brightspace.
4) Brightspace Editor – Updated storage location for feedback attachments in Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes
With this release, when instructors access Assignments, Discussions, or Quizzes, and use the Insert Stuff file picker to attach feedback, those files are now stored in the Feedback Files location. This location is designated for the learner feedback area.
Learners can review their feedback files from the Grades page, just like files attached from Feedback Files.
Note: Only feedback added from the Overall Feedback field and the Completion Summary page in Quizzes appears in Grades for learners.
Similar to the feedback files, once feedback is deleted, it cannot be restored.
Previously, when an instructor attached feedback files through the Insert Stuff file picker, the files were stored in Manage Files.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D2629 (Student view of Grades tool - easy access to ALL Grades and feedback regardless of assessment tool)
5) Manage Dates – Bulk edit and offset dates for recurring Intelligent Agents
With this release, users can edit and offset multiple intelligent agents that have already been set up with a recurring schedule (for example, daily or weekly). In addition to editing an intelligent agent in the Intelligent Agents tool, users can now use Bulk Edit Dates to add or remove a new start date or end date, or use Bulk Offset Dates to offset the start date or end date from the Manage Dates tool.
Click Bulk Offset Dates to adjust the start or end date of multiple agents.
Users can offset the Due Date, Start Date, and End Date either forward or backward.
Previously, intelligent agents had to be manually edited or offset in the Intelligent Agents tool.
As of this release, intelligent agents with a one-time run schedule do not appear in Manage Dates and must be updated in the Intelligent Agents tool. Editing intelligent agents with a one-time run schedule in Manage Dates is under consideration for a future enhancement.
This feature implements the following PIE items:
D3475 (Intelligent Agents start dates and end dates visible on the list page)
D4843 (Edit dates on multiple Intelligent Agents at once)
D6643 and D7321 (Include Intelligent Agents in Manage Dates)
D9154 and D9899 (Bulk Offset Intelligent Agent run dates with Manage Dates)
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.
This just in: Camtasia 2024 has now been released. What's more, Xavier's faculty site license for Camtasia still covers the new version!
For those just tuning in, Camtasia is a tool for making videos by recording from your screen and camera. A common use for teachers is to record short lectures.
In addition to the software, we have access to TechSmith's tech support as well as extensive training materials, which are excellent.
So what are you waiting for? Yes, you can download and install Camtasia now. Here's the link.
Oh, perhaps you're already using Camtasia and everything's working just fine, and you're wondering why bother? Well, there are some new features, but you should probably check the system requirements before you consider upgrading.
Please note: You will need a Camtasia License key to unlock the software beyond the free trial period. To get the key, please contact me, Bart Everson. You can send me an email: bpeverso at you-know-where.
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.
![[Camtasia Logo]](https://i0.wp.com/cat.xula.edu/food/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Camtasia-logo-1201x1201-1.png?resize=625%2C625){kind=logo}
