As the summer semester quickly comes into view with the promise of colorful flowers, beach days, glowing sunsets, and the transition back into the classroom, many might feel that it’s time to pack up the online learning system and move back to the trusty paper and pen. Let’s not be too hasty. The new learning management system, Brightspace, can truly enhance the amazing information you’re teaching in your classroom.

Continued use of a Learning Management System (LMS), even when fully face to face, can personalize student learning to help meet their diverse needs and reinforce learning outcomes for them to achieve mastery. Brightspace can provide a clear roadmap of course content for students to understand expectations, requirements, and assignments. An LMS allows you to efficiently distribute class materials from a centralized source and therefore students will have access to the lesson videos, notes, resource guides, instructions, etc to read or watch as many times as they would like.

Benefits for Students

1. Unlimited access to course content 24/7.
2. Diverse formats of course material for students to learn from at their own pace.
3. Easy collaboration with group members for projects via discussion boards, lockers for file uploads, and assignment uploads.
4. Organization of their work through the LMS system, checklists, and calendar tool.
5. Ability to check their grades.
6. Notifications to remind them when assignments are due.
7. Ability to upload work and projects they complete to their individual E-portfolio via Brightspace.

Benefits for Professors

1. Organized course content with access to all deliverables in one singular location.
2. Consistent and scalable content delivery.
3. Easy collaboration between faculty members that teach the same course.
4. Easily embed or upload videos, images, documents, and external websites for diverse resources on a topic or skill to help students understand context in the best way that suits them.
5. Easy distribution of grades and feedback to students using dynamic rubrics created in Brightspace.
6. Track student progress and performance through analytical data via Brightspace.
7. Create Intelligent Agents to automate email communications based on individual student progress.
8. Create and automatically grade quizzes/exams with various question types that can be randomized, shuffled, or taken from a pool of available topic questions.
9. Set up groups for students based on diverse needs of students, for specific project topics, or create groups for collaboration online.
10. Create exit tickets or surveys to gauge student understanding using the likert question type.

Blended learning or a flipped classroom can improve student comprehension and success. This teaching method gives the professor ample time during face to face sessions with students to reinforce concepts and ideas when information is provided before class time. When students have access to course content before the face to face class session, shorter lectures are possible. This results in more time for students to work in groups, problem solve, generate creative ideas, have meaningful discussions, and work on prototypes. Brightspace is a helpful technology tool that, when integrated, can benefit both the professor and the students.

 

By Lindsay Schubert, Instructional Designer