Pi (π) Day is celebrated on March 14th (3.14). Did you know the Brightspace Community has a PIE? Yes, there is a PIE (Product Idea Exchange) in the Brightspace Community. The PIE is a system that allows users of Brightspace to share their suggestions on how to make Brightspace better. I invite you to take a few minutes to explore the Brightspace Product Idea Exchange (PIE).
We’ve put together this collection of PIE ideas you can consider upvoting so that we can add our voice to the community to make the Brightspace experience better. You can also search the PIE for ideas to upvote or submit your own idea to the PIE. Let us know if you submit your own idea to the PIE so that we can upvote it. Here is a resource on navigating the PIE, just in case you need it.
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.
Would you like to congratulate your students for a job well done or give them a nudge when they might need to work harder -- without having to do a lot of extra work to make it happen? The Brightspace Intelligent Agents tool can help automate this process for you.
Intelligent Agents allow instructors to delegate some of the course communication and notification tasks to the system, based on specific triggering activities in the course. Intelligent Agents can be used to both recognize student achievement and warn of potential problems. For example, you can use Intelligent Agents to:
Check for users that have not logged into the course
Check for users that have not logged in within a specific number of days
Notify users with grades below a certain level
Congratulate users with grades above a certain level
Check for users that view a specific content topic
The automatic notifications that are generated when specified course performance criteria are met can be sent to instructors, advisors, and/or students.
NOTE:Last month's Continuous Delivery Update added new functionality to the Intelligent Agent List page, where users manage the Intelligent Agents they have created. The new functionality allows users:
The ability to create, assign, and manage categories; and
A new Bulk Edit for some agent details: title, category, and active/inactive state.
The new Intelligent Agent List page, with the bulk edit and category management functionality.
Repetitive emails may lose their effectiveness, so use Intelligent Agents sparingly. Consider using Intelligent Agents when there isn't a better way of communicating. Ask yourself,
Would an announcement work better?
Would a personally crafted email work better?
Would a discussion board posting work better?
If the answer is no, then consider using an Intelligent Agent!
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.
Imagining Grace is a performance-oriented installation of wellness and contemplation inspired by the work of St. Katharine Drexel and the words of Toni Morrison in recognition of Women’s History Month, presented by Xavier's Women’s Studies Program, Performance Studies Laboratory (PSL), and Department of Art & Performance Studies.
Photo courtesy Robin Vander. All rights reserved.
We've heard a lot about "breakthroughs" over the last year, in contexts that are often alarming. That's why it's so refreshing to get news of a different and thoroughly beneficial kind of breakthrough on our campus.
I'm talking about Imagining Grace, of course. You've heard of it by now, I'm sure.
To call it an art installation might miss the point. It is artful, to be sure, but moreover it's an invitation to participate, to immerse oneself, to chill, to simply be. I call it a breakthrough.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, stop by the Administration Building Art Gallery at your next opportunity and experience it for yourself. Moreover, I urge you to allow yourself a little time for that experience.
Dr. Robin Vander says the space is there for everyone "to make it what they need." So you can sit in silence, you can meet a colleague, you can meet a student, and so forth. There's no right or wrong way, but here are a few pro tips.
Candle remotes are tucked under the rear of the basket in the center room; change the candle colors to fit any mood.
Read the weekly prompt in that room and see if you want or need to respond to it; if you do, place the card in the other basket in the meditation space.
Each Tuesday, there's an African Dance class in the space at 5pm, led by Kai Knight, Founder and Creative Director of Seasons Center. Space is limited, so please register by emailing Dr. Vander.
Please make sure you spread the word. Many students have been discovering the space on their own, but Dr. Vander says the biggest thing she's confronting is "trying to let staff know that the space is there for them as well."
CAT+FD has been advocating for contemplative practices on our campus for over a decade now, and we are proud to support this initiative in our own small way. We're moving our long-running weekly Quarter of Quiet meditation to the space for the duration. Join us there at 12:30pm on Mondays for a silent meditation, about 15 minutes — a great way to start your week.
The Brightspace Grades Tool is useful for providing students with up-to-date information about their current standing in the course. For instructors, it’s useful for assigning and keeping track of student grades. Students can view grade entries and monitor their progress throughout the course.
As an instructor, you can determine how to set up your Grade Book to best reflect your approach to evaluation, including the grading system and grade scheme that is most appropriate for your course. You can select how grades display to learners, how they update in the Grade Book, and how you want to deal with ungraded items. You can create grade items for projects, assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. to include in your Grade Book, and even associate them with other tools (e.g. Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions).
Follow these steps to do it.
Listed below are links to how-to documents to help you to use the Grades Tool:
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 February 2022/20.22.2 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Content – Print and Download in fullscreen
The Print and Download buttons are now available when viewing a topic in fullscreen, using the classic Content experience.
Previously, the options to print and download a topic only appeared on the main Content view, and when users opened a topic in fullscreen by clicking View content in new window, those options were not available.
Top of a fullscreen topic page, with the new Print and Download buttons in the upper right.
2) Intelligent Agents – Agent List page changes
This feature adds the following new functionality to the Agent List page, where users manage the Intelligent Agents they have created:
The ability to create, assign, and manage categories; and
A new Bulk Edit for some agent details: title, category, and active/inactive state.
This feature also updates the icons denoting the active/inactive state of each agent.
The new Intelligent Agent List page, with the bulk edit and category management functionality.
This feature implements PIE Item D7196.
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.
Thanks to those of you who attended this week's Allow Learners to Reflect on Their Learning in Brightspace workshop. The workshop, the tenth 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 provide training on why self-assessments are effective and to show you how you can use the Self-Assessments tool in Brightspace to provide feedback that motivates students to self-reflect in a formative format.
In case you missed this 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.
OK, so maybe you're not studying grammar right now, but the point is the technique. This movie was produced by Dr. Jason Todd (English) in our Camtasia studio using our brand-new Lightboard.
How does it work? According to Dr. Todd (and I quote):
Writing big letters and wearing dark clothes is key to getting this look.
He also asserts that our Røde microphone is "awesome."
Please don't be mystified by all this technical jargon. The Lightboard is just a way of doing old-fashioned chalkboard-lectures. Except without the chalk. If you want to make a video like this, don't be shy. Get in touch. We'll help you. We're learning along with you.
Learn more at lightboard.info, and be sure to check out the section on "best practices."
Many thanks to Dean Kathleen Kennedy for making this available to Xavier faculty through the College of Pharmacy's Center of Excellence grant.
Are there times when you would like your students to sign-up for an activity where there are a limited number of places (e.g., student presentations on a specific class day, study groups, service learning project, office hours, etc.)? The Groups Tool in Brightspace can help you organize sign-ups for one-off events. With the self-enrollment option in the Groups tool, students can add themselves to a group using a sign-up sheet.
The sign-up sheet functions like an electronic version of a paper sign-up sheet. You can make sign-up sheets available to students on the Groups listing page or by inserting a Quicklink in the Brightspace Editor.
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: "sign-up sheet" by jflorent is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 and is a derivative of image by alphanumericlogic from Pixabay
D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) recognized that video is a core part of the learning experience clients create in Brightspace. In an effort to do more to help clients have better audio/video experiences, D2L announced some amazing new Media features to the Core product suite that were not previously available in our Brightspace system.
Example of the Advanced Editing link in the Audio-Video Editor
When uploading video topics, your videos will now store and play similarly to Video Notes. Videos will be converted to playable formats automatically and streamed, viewers can downscale files if they are on slower connections, and they can search inside videos for keywords. They have also worked to bring some of their video editing capabilities into Core for media creators including: auto-captioning, clipping, chapters, and caption editing.
What’s New?
Media Editing:
Video files uploaded as topics in Classic Content (through the Upload/Create > Video or Audio workflow) can be edited from course content. Video Notes can be edited with the new Audio-Video Editor as well.
An example of Advanced Editing options in the Audio-Video Editor
Editing timelines allows users to skip unwanted sections of a video recording.
Chapter titles can be used to create a Table of Contents for videos to allow quick navigation to specific sections.
Captions can be uploaded from a .vtt or .srt file or automatically generated to make videos accessible to all users.
Versions and Drafts allows users to roll back to earlier versions and revisit previous edits. The latest Saved version appears wherever the file is used within Brightspace.
An example of captions in an audio file
NOTE:
The editor features are available for all Video Notes AND for newly uploaded audio-video files. The editor features DO NOT apply to files that were uploaded prior to the January 2022 Continuous Delivery Updates. Audio/Video files that were uploaded prior to the January 2022 Continuous Delivery Updates and are located in Manage Files, will not see the Advanced Edit workflow. Migrating these videos is currently a manual process involving downloading and re-uploading your media files through the Upload/Create > Video or Audio workflow in Content.
Videos uploaded as Assignment submissions or uploaded to a course’s Manage Files area continue to use the legacy method for handling files.
D2L recommends using the desktop experience when editing audio-video files.
Player Improvements:
To improve the functionality of the Audio-Video player in Brightspace Learning Environment, multi-bitrate streaming, and search functionality are now available.
Multi-bitrate streaming allows high-definition videos to be played at standard definition to reduce the bandwidth necessary for users to watch videos.
The new search functionality allows users to locate key words in video captions and quickly navigate to those sections.
An example showing the search for a keyword in the video caption track
For additional information, including screenshots, of the updated Audio-Video player and editor refer to the Evolving the Audio-Video Experience article in the Brightspace Community.
Follow these steps to do it.
To upload an audio/video using the Audio-Video Editor:
Go to the content module where you want to insert an audio or video.
Click Upload / Create and select Video or Audio.
In the Add Video or Audio window, select the Upload tab.
Browse for your file, or drag your video file into the upload space.
The upload process begins Note: The transcoding process starts when the file reaches 70% upload and may result in a momentary pause.
When the upload is complete enter a title and select Advanced Editing.
To edit an audio/video using the Audio-Video Editor:
Go to the content module where you uploaded the audio or video.
Locate the audio or video you want to edit.
Click on the context menu and then select Edit Video or Edit Audio.
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.
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.
