We’ve all been there.  Selected the wrong answer as the correct one and had to go back and fix the issue.  In recent months the Wentworth community has switched from the Blackboard to Brightspace learning management system.  In Blackboard, changes to quizzes after students already submitted were easy with the “regrade existing attempts” option that would re-grade all of the students quizzes again after changes were made but BrightSpace is a bit different.  Here’s the run down on Re-Grading Quizzes in Brightspace.

As an Instructor, while grading a quiz that students have submitted, you noticed that a multiple choice question has “A” as the correct answer but it should be “B”.  You can use the following workflow and “Give attempts with answer B” 1 point, click update and save.  However you must also ““Give attempts with answer A” 0 points, click update and save.  This will award points to students who chose the correct answer and take away points from the students who chose the incorrect answer.  You can use this same workflow for the True/False questions easily.  Here is the workflow for the two step process to removing the points from one answer and awarding them to another.

For updating the scores of students who have already taken the quiz:

1. Go to Quick Tools on the navigation bar
2. Go to the Quizzes Tool from the drop down menu
3. Click the context menu next to the quiz name (the downward arrow)
4. Click Grade
5. Click the Questions tab
6. Select the ‘Update all Attempts’ button
7. Click on the question name of the question you wish to update the score
8. Under ‘Grading Type’, choose what you would like to do. You can give all attempts a certain number of points, or give attempts with a certain answer a specific number of points, and then press save at the bottom of the screen to update the points for all attempted quizzes.

When re-grading a quiz there are some key factors to keep in mind.

What can you do:

1. You can automatically award points to students who answered multiple choice and true/false questions correctly in a quiz.
2. You can automatically take away points from students who answered multiple choice and true/false questions incorrectly.
3. You can automatically award points to students who answered correctly on matching, ordering, and multi-select questions in a quiz.

What can’t you do:

1. You can’t change the point values of quiz questions after students submit the quiz.
2. You cannot automatically take away points from students who answered incorrectly on matching, ordering, and multi-select questions in a quiz because you would need to input every wrong answer selection to automatically take away points for the various answers.
3. You can’t award or take away points from students easily for fill in the blank, short answer,  multi short answer, arithmetic, or significant figures because you would need to know all of the answers that the students chose to add those in to award points.  We suggest that manually re-grading each of the quizzes for these questions is the BEST solution.

Don’t forget to change the question in the Question Library if the quiz question is housed there, otherwise future quizzes will have the same issue moving forward.

 

Check out this video for a step by step, annotated process on updating the scores of students who have already taken the quiz.

What’s up with the dials?

Instructors: Wondering what that color-coded dial next to your content means?

This dial is part of a tool called Blackboard Ally, which you can use to enhance the accessibility of your course content. Students cannot see the dials – they are for YOU so you can make informed decisions about how to improve the materials you’re providing to students.

Ally integrates with Brightspace and offers three primary benefits:

• Allows students to download content in a variety of alternative formats
• Coaches instructors on how to improve the accessibility of their content
• Collects institutional data to assist with identifying accessibility priorities

Watch this video for an overview of these benefits:

Ally and accessibility

Ally is active in your course as part of campus-wide efforts to enhance accessibility in all Wentworth learning environments. Accessibility “provides students the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as students without disabilities, with substantially equivalent ease of use” (UDL on Campus).  Fully accessible content is content that ALL your students can access, so they can contribute meaningfully to your course and our community regardless of disability status.

Accessible practices closely align with universal design for learning (UDL) practices, particularly when it comes to creating multiple means of representation for students to interact with the content. When a student can choose to read, listen, or annotate text based on their needs and preferences, that satisfies a criterion of UDL, enhances the accessibility of the course experience, and fuels equity in learning by allowing students to access content in ways that are most beneficial to them.

Tips to getting started with Ally

• Inform your students they can now download content in a variety of formats using the alternative formats icon.
• Start reviewing your dials. “Red” scores indicate materials with significant barriers to access, requiring important fixes. “Yellow” or “green” scores indicate materials that could benefit from additional attention, but are somewhat accessible to students as-is.
• Use the Ally Course Report to help you check and adjust content. The course report organizes issues by ease of fix and significance of fix, and it also offers guidance on what to do to improve your scores.

We recommend prioritizing improvements that will have the biggest impact on the course experience. Three common accessibility issues our team has noticed are scanned PDFs that need to be OCR’d, videos in need of captions, and images in need of alt text. Stay tuned for more guidance on how to correct these issues; the fixes are easier than you think, and they will have a huge impact on the success of your students!

On getting to green

While considering how to improve your course, remember that a score of 100% is a bit of a misnomer. There is no such thing as “Perfect!” accessibility, because new needs will emerge and new technologies will appear. Your goal is progress, not perfection, when it comes to accessible content and practices.

It can be overwhelming to start thinking about accessibility, but like any journey, it begins with a single step. What is one improvement you can make to your course content today for the sake of your students?

Remember: you are not alone as you move forward. Contact us at teach@wit.edu for support on your accessibility journey!

A mid-semester survey is an opportunity to implement student feedback to improve course design and delivery. It is a series of survey questions given halfway through the semester. The timing of a mid-semester survey makes it possible to implement the feedback to improve the students learning experience in real-time. Moreover, it allows the instructor to ask questions that are important and relevant to each unique class.

Instead of waiting until the end of the course to hear how to improve, surveying the students in the middle of the semester allows time to make small, real-time changes to improve the current experience.

Student benefits

• A chance to influence some of the decisions made in the course
• A place for their voice to be heard

Instructor benefits

• Insights into student’s perceptions
• Actionable items for remediation

Survey tools

Consider adding a mid-semester survey to your course today.

• Brightspace survey
  • Pro: Built-in tool; carries over to the next time the course is taught
  • Con: Clunky question types
• Qualtrics
  • Pro: Anonymity guaranteed; rich analytics
  • Con: Account needed, a small learning curve
• Google Forms
  • Pros: Anonymity possible; easy to use
  • Con: Not as much analytics

Questions to ask

If you are wondering what kinds of questions to ask, a check-in with an Instructional Designer is a good idea! They can help you craft questions that will have the most meaning to you. Here are a few examples to get you started.

1. Please rate your agreement with the following technical aspects of the course
   (Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
   a. Course navigation is logical and easy to follow.b. Instructions for completing assignments are clear.
   c. Assessments are a fair representation of what we are learning.
   d. Course content is presented in a manner that helps me learn.
2. Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the course at this time?
   (Extremely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, neutral, somewhat dissatisfied, extremely dissatisfied)
3. How challenging has the course material been thus far?
   (Not at all challenging, slightly challenging, moderately challenging, very challenging, extremely challenging)
4. How reasonable or unreasonable has the course workload been thus far?
   (Extremely reasonable, somewhat reasonable, neutral, somewhat unreasonable, extremely unreasonable)
5. What has been most helpful for your learning in this class so far (e.g., Describe the instructional tools or class topics with which you were most engaged)?
6. What has caused you the most difficulty in terms of learning in this class so far (e.g. Describe the instructional tools or class topics with which you struggled or were least engaged)?
7. Do you have any specific, actionable suggestions that you believe your professor could reasonably implement in this course in the next few weeks?

Deploying the mid-semester survey

An announcement is a good way to introduce the mid-semester survey. Many instructors use strategies that do not affect performance grades.

1. Make explicit the benefit of the survey
2. Introduce the survey in-class
3. Set aside 5-10 minutes of class time for the students to complete
4. Offer a few points of extra credit if X% of the class completes the survey
5. Restrict access to course content until the student has submitted the survey
6. Set a due date for the survey
7. Use intelligent agents to prompt students who haven’t completed the survey to submit

What to do with the results

Once your students have completed the survey, you can pull the reports. From there, read through the data and look for trends. Is there anything that stood out that you can take action on? Not all of it will be helpful, or even possible in a 7-week time frame. The best-case scenario is that you are able to identify two key takeaways and use them to improve your teaching.

Sometimes it is hard to get feedback. It is normal to feel defensive when we get criticism, especially if we don’t feel recognized for our good contributions. Take time to process the feedback, find the nuggets that are useful, and realize that personal growth is often uncomfortable. You have taken a step at becoming a better instructor, and you should feel really proud of that!

The next step could be to acknowledge student feedback and tell students what you plan to do. Seeing you take action could encourage students to reflect on and adjust their own learning strategies. Admit when something did not work as a way to model lifelong learning and resiliency. A growth mindset is the best lens to view challenges and setbacks along the way!

Like Blackboard, Brightspace has a mechanism for regrading quiz questions where you accidentally set the wrong answer as correct. Moreover, some question types can only be regraded manually, so it pays to be extra careful checking the question scoring.

The question types that can not be regraded or are difficult to regrade using the automated function and therefore require manual regrading are:

• Arithmetic
• Short Answer
• Fill-in-the-Blank

Fill-in-the-Blank questions can sometimes be regraded using Regular Expressions but this is often difficult and the time spent trying to get the regrade to work is better spent manually grading the question.

The question types that can auto-regrade are:

• Multiple Choice
• True/False
• Multi-Select
• Matching
• Ordering

The trick to remember, unlike Blackboard where you if you changed an answer after the students completed a test, you’d be prompted to update all grades, Brightspace does not update existing attempts, only future attempts. Instead you enter the quiz grading workflow and update the scoring for the questions that are incorrect. The general workflow is contained in this documentation from Brightspace.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be adding videos detailing how to regrade each type of quiz question.

by Megan Hamilton Giebert and Lucy Wolski

Whose Modality is it Anyway?

Courses come in a variety of modalities, and the pandemic has complicated the definitions. Here are three common course modalities at Wentworth (as defined by the Online Learning Consortium), plus a fourth modality that emerged in March 2020.

Online. All course activity is done online; there are no required face-to-face sessions within the course and no requirements for on-campus activity. Synchronous meetings are not included, or if they are offered they are not required.

Hybrid. Online activity is mixed with classroom meetings, replacing a significant percentage, but not all required face-to-face instructional activities.

In-Person. Course activity is organized around scheduled class meetings.

Emergency Remote. During the pandemic, many instructors were asked to teach their in-person course remotely with little preparation. These contained a mix of the listed modalities but lacked intentional design.

From “Emergency Remote” to “Remote-Enhanced”

One misconception instructors have is that an “in-person” class must avoid using certain technology tools and that remote techniques should be “for emergencies only.” However, any course, regardless of its modality, can benefit from using a Learning Management System (LMS) to create an intentional remote option for student direction, participation, and engagement.

Here at Wentworth, the LMS Brightspace is available to all instructors regardless of course modality. In-person courses can benefit from the power of this technology tool to create an effective and engaging remote environment that supports student success. This approach is called a “remote-enhanced” or “web-enhanced” approach.

How to Use Brightspace to Enhance Your In-Person Course

• Post a copy of your syllabus so it is easy for students to reach and easy for you to edit if needed
• Put due dates on Brightspace’s calendar to help students track their progress
• Create assessment submission links on Brightspace
• Provide copies of your lecture slides on Brightspace
  • Not a substitute for attending class but offers a helpful review and reference
  • Great for those who miss class due to excused absences, COVID, etc.
• Add asynchronous discussions
  • Not a substitute for attending class but creates another way to participate
  • Great for those unable to participate in class due to excused absences, COVID, etc.
  • Also allows shy students or those who need more time to respond to thoughtfully participate
• Post announcements about important class changes
  • • Recommend students enable notifications for email and SMS alerts
    • Weekly announcements offer information about upcoming tasks
    • On-demand announcements notify students of important changes
    • Current events announcements share news related to the discipline
    • Recap announcements summarize the week and preview the next

See it in Action

Here is how Wentworth instructors enhance their in-person classes.

In Contemporary Art & Theory, Elaine Slater, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, encourages the continuation of in-class discussions on Brightspace so that students who were not able to participate can still share their ideas. “Student Speaks” is well received by students who need more time to formulate their thoughts. This inclusive practice could potentially benefit a myriad of students, including but not limited to introverts, those with autism spectrum disorder, and English as second language learners. What began as an “emergency remote” practice is now part of a “remote-enhanced” design, to the benefit of all students within the course.

In this Introduction to Engineering course, students can use a “Course Community Chat Forum” for questions about the class. Uri Feldman, Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering, encourages students to make effective use of their peers by helping each other in the forum.  At the same time, the number of individual emails the professor has to answer is decreased, because common questions are answered publicly.

This version of Calculus 1 taught by Adjunct Professor Larry Adler, provides student resources in a module with a charming name. “The Potpourri of Useful Things” module contains the course syllabus, along with learning tools and resources students can use throughout the semester. Students can check in here on a regular basis to see what new goodies the professor has added.

Examples used with professor permission. How do you use Brightspace to enhance your course? Let us know!

Student Benefits Include:

• Quick access to essential information
• Alternative ways to access course materials
• Opportunities to review materials before class or before an exam
• Opportunities to participate outside the classroom in extenuating circumstances
• Clear expectations about due dates
• Consistency in source of information about the course
• Transparency in progress and performance, so students know exactly where they stand

Instructor Benefits Include:

• An organized course structure that assists with planning your grading schedule
• Eliminates the hassles of distributing lecture notes or collecting paper copies of student work
• Simplified final grade submission process
• New opportunities to support and measure student participation, learning, and growth
• Frontloaded design assists with future course setup
• Web-enhanced design aligns with equitable, accessible, and inclusive teaching practices (under the umbrella of Universal Design for Learning [UDL])

Experience Design

Regardless of modality, any course using remote techniques requires establishing how those remote elements will be used and incorporated. As you enhance your course,  think about how you intend to interact in Brightspace, how often you will post announcements, how much time you will need to provide feedback in Brightspace, and your intentions for asynchronous discussions.

Just like planning your in-person activities, planning your remote options will have an enormous positive difference on each student’s experience.

Resources

• OLC Insights. (2015). Updated elearning definitions. Accessed September 20, 2021.
• CAST. (2018). The UDL guidelines version 2.2. Accessed September 20, 2021.
• Learning Technologies. (2017). Web enhancing your course: The what, why, and how of embracing Blackboard. Accessed September 20, 2021.
• Saint Anselm College IT&D. (2021). Best practices across modalities. (2021). Accessed September 20, 2021.