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Category: Brightspace Small Plates

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Published on 1 Comment on Brightspace Tip #36: Completion Tracking

check mark

Brightspace’s Completion Tracking feature allows instructors to monitor whether students have completed or visited/viewed a specific topic in the Content area. This feature can help instructors gauge how effective specific documents, videos, or other learning materials have been, as well as allow instructors to monitor whether students viewed important class materials before completing an assignment.

All content topics are set to automatically track for completion by default. Instructors can change the method of completion for a required activity to be either manual or automatic.

When Completion Tracking is set to automatic, the topic is marked complete when the user clicks on the topic to view it. For some activities, automatic tracking requires users to participate in a discussion, submit a file, or complete an assessment such as a quiz or survey before completion is successful.

When Completion Tracking is set to manual, users select the completion check box beside each content topic to indicate they have completed it. Although users can use manual tracking to indicate that they have accomplished a task before it is completed (for example, selecting the completion check box beside a quiz activity before attempting the quiz at all), this does not affect assessment scores or user attempts counted towards an activity.

Completion Tracking is helpful for students as well. The Completion Tracking progress indicators allow students to monitor their own progress in the course.

Follow these steps to do it.

To view the Completion Summary, you should:

  1. Get into the course where you want to see the Completion Summary.
  2. Click on the Content link in the NavBar.
  3. Click on the topic that you want to review the completion activity for.
  4. Click on the Completion Summary tab. A list of students in the course and information on their activity related to the topic will be displayed.

completion summary

Want more information?

Track content completion (video)
Use completion tracking in content
About tracking content completion and participation
Check completion tracking for a content topic
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Image credit: Image by geralt from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #35: Class Progress

growth arrow up

The Class Progress tool helps track student progress in a course by measuring their completion of 9 different progress indicators. The Class Progress tool tracks students' overall progress as a class and individually. Instructors can use the Class Progress tool to do any of the following:

  • Monitor progress for any or all users in the course
  • View user profiles, email users, or instant message users
  • Track when a user accesses the course and downloads course content
  • Track a user's grades, completion of learning objectives, access of content topics, participation in discussions, assignment submissions, quiz submissions, checklist completion, survey responses, and login history
  • Prepare progress reports
  • Set up Intelligent Agents for users who are falling behind in a course

Instructors can customize the Class Progress page to make it easier to track and compare the performance of class participants.

class progress overview

Students can use Class Progress to keep track of all of their course-specific assignments and feedback.

Follow these steps to do it.

To access the Class Progress page, you should:
  1. On the NavBar, click Course Admin.
  2. Click on Class Progress.
  3. Click on a student’s name or one of the progress indicators to get more information about the student's progress.
To email or instant message a student from the Class Progress page, you should:
  1. On the Class Progress page, roll your mouse over the student’s profile picture (avatar) and click on the Send Email or the Send Instant Message button.
To change the Class Progress settings, you should:
  1. On the NavBar, click Course Admin.
  2. Click on Class Progress.
  3. On the Class Progress page, click Settings.
  4. From the context menu of the indicator you want to replace (i.e., the arrow on the right of the performance indicator name), select Replace.
  5. In the Select Progress Indicator dialog box, click on the progress indicator that you want to use as a replacement.
  6. To replace more progress indicators, repeat the previous steps.
  7. From the context menu of a progress indicator, select Move Up or Move Down to rearrange the order in which it appears in Class Progress.
  8. Click Save and Close.

Want more information?

Class and User Progress Quick Start Guide
Track Class progress
Understand and Modify the Class Progress page (video)
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Image credit: image by ar130405 from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #34: Word Count

Do you require students to a write a minimum or maximum number of words for a discussion post, etc.? Unfortunately, there is no word count feature inside of Brightspace. You will have to go outside of Brightspace to get a word count.

word count example

Word Counter.net can be used to count words and characters right inside your web browser. To get the word count, you would simply copy and paste the text into Word Counter.net’s online editor where the number of words and characters are automatically updated and displayed. You can have Brightspace opened in a web browser tab and Word Counter.net opened in another tab and go between the two tabs to get the word count.

Want more information?

Word Counter.net
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #33: Pin/Unpin Courses

push pin

The My Courses widget (on the My Home page) uses tile-based images to make finding your courses easier. Users can choose which courses they see in their My Courses widget by pinning and unpinning courses.

  • Pinning a course makes it appear in the My Courses widget.
  • Unpinning a course makes it disappear from the My Courses widget.
  • Pinning a course also makes it rise to the top of the Select a Course list and on the My Courses widget.

Search through all of your courses and manually pin and unpin courses to ensure that your most relevant courses are visible on the My Home page.

Follow these steps to do it.

To pin/unpin a course, you should:

  1. From the Minibar, click Select a course (i.e., the waffle icon).

    2. Select a Course

  2. Type the name of the course that you want to pin or find it by searching in the Search for a course field or scroll down to find the course.
  3. Click the Pin icon beside the course. The pinned course will move to the top of the Select a Course list and to the first position in the My Courses widget.

    4. pin/unpin course

Note: To unpin a course click the Pin icon beside the course.

Want more information?

How to Pin Courses (pdf)
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #32: Accessibility Checker

celebrate GAAD

Today 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 HTML 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:

  1. After you add content to the HTML Editor, click the accessibility checker icon.

    2. HTML Editor accessibility checker icon

  2. The checker indicates if the content is free of accessibility issues, or offers suggestions to fix them.

    3. accessibility issues detected

Want more information?

Brightspace Accessibility Checker
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on What I Wish I Had Known as a Brightspace Instructor

whiteboard with light bulb inside a thought bubble

Now that you have one semester of using our Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS) behind you, you may be thinking it would have been helpful if I had known this about Brightspace beforehand.

An article in the Brightspace Community provided insights on what professor Lori McIntosh-Belanger wishes she had known about Brightspace when she got started. In the article she provides insights on using Quizzes and Question Libraries, Discussions, Widgets, Rubrics and Marking Assignments. If this has piqued your interest, you should read the article, “What I Wish I Had Known as a Brightspace Instructor”.

Image credit: Image by TeroVesalainen from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #31: Update a File

crane lifting the letter G into place in the word change

Occasionally, you may want to overwrite a file with a newer/updated version. It is easy to replace or overwrite files in your Brightspace courses.

Follow these steps to do it.

To overwrite an existing file, you should:

  1. From the context menu of the topic, select Change File. This will prompt you to upload a new file.
  2. Drag and drop the new file into the upload space or click Upload to browse for the new file.
  3. If you would like your students to receive a notification of the updated content, check the Notify students that the content has changed button. Students must have notifications turned on in their personal settings to see the notifications.

Change File

Want more information?

Update a File
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Image credit: image by geralt from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #30: Setup Your Summer Course

As you prepare to teach this summer, now is a good time to get started setting up your Brightspace courses. According to our Information Technology Center (ITC), summer courses will be created in Brightspace this week.

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.

checklist

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, Master Course Shells are available for faculty who want to get a head start on building their courses before the actual summer courses are created. You can copy the Master Course Shell contents into your “empty” Brightspace course once the course becomes available. Alternatively, if the summer course you are teaching is the same as your spring course you can copy the entire spring course (or copy components) into your "empty" Brightspace summer course.

Follow these steps to do it.

Listed below are links with instructions to:

Want more information?

View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Image credit: image by TeroVesalainen from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #29: Training Recaps and Help Resources

in case you missed it

In case you missed the Brightspace training sessions or if you attended one of the training sessions and want to recap what was covered, you can review these resources:

Additionally, here's a link to my Brightspace Tip #16: Help Resources blog post.

**NOTE: Brightspace Tip #23 has additional/updated training information on the Grades Tool.

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #28: End of Semester Tasks

classroom with empty chairs

As we approach the end of the semester there are a few things you can do in Brightspace to wrap up for the semester.

Release final course grades

Unlike other grade items and categories in the Grade Book, final grades are not available to students by default. Final grades must be released. If you did not choose to enable the automatic release of final grades when setting up your Grade Book, you will have to manually release final grades in order for students to see their final grade.

Export your Grade Book

Student access to courses is removed two weeks after the end of a semester. During this process all Grade Book records are deleted. You should export (download) your Grade Book to your local computer after you submit your final grades.

NOTE: The export file that is created will NOT contain any student work. The grades in your Grade Book are exported.

Create a master copy of your course

Courses remain on the Brightspace system for three semesters before they are removed. You can request a Master Course Shell that you can use to develop and maintain your course materials. Master Course Shells will not be removed from the Brightspace system.

Follow these steps to do it.

Instructions are available for releasing final course grades, exporting your Grade Book, and requesting Master Course Shells.

Want more information?

Release Final Grades
Export your Grade Book (video [2:03])
Master Copies of Courses
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery Updates
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Photo Credit: Classroom/Learning/Lecture | CC0