August Brightspace updates

Posted on August 6, 2021 by cookel

This month in addition to regularly scheduled updates occurring on August 18th, we’ll also be tweaking the environment to address some concerns identified over the past few months. Changes to the Brightspace Navbar and default Course homepage include:

The Course Tools menu option will be slimmed down to the most used tools and a new Course Extras item added containing less-used tools.
The new Work to Do widget (for students) will be added to course home pages

On August 18th Brightspace will be updated with the following changes:

Date picker has been updated with links to populate the current date and to clear dates
Assignment tool has option to attach documents from OneDrive
Assignment release conditions sync to the corresponding grade item.
The page banner alerting users of outdated browsers to update for best experience has been replaced with popup alerting users that their browser is not supported.
Users can no longer opt to have secondary windows display as popups.
Pulse app users can comment on activity feed posts.
Pulse app has a new Grades tab in courses so users can view all course grades on one page.
Content module descriptions now visible to users of the Pulse app.
Discussions – improved grading workflow to match the assignments grading workflow, improvements to simplify setting visibility and posting restrictions.
Rubrics – improvements to provide a better experience for screen reader users
- Criterion levels indicate name and point value when the radio button has focus of screen reader
- The mobile view has radio buttons with name and point value consistent with the larger screen view.
- Inline grading has been improved to ensure feature parity for screen reader users.
Rubrics – Overall score appears in mobile view in the new assignment evaluation experience.

To read more about these changes you can review the full release notes on the Brightspace Community site.

Lessons – enabling as opt-in to get check

Closing the Learning Loop with Reflections

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Lucy

Reflections are personal + exploratory pieces of writing (or audio or video) that a student is asked to complete after an experience in the course. It “closes the loop on learning”, because it asks students to look back, gain insight into their own progress, and make connections for going forward.

We may ask our students to write a reflection on their experiences during the course. But do we teach them how? It turns out that there is an art to writing a reflection that is actually valuable. When we share it with students we equip them with a lifelong skill.

Feel free to share this infographic with your students.

References

Faculty Portfolios – Reflective Writing. (2017). Digication. https://asu.digication.com/new_faculty_portfolio/my-co-curricular-1-1

This blog post and infographic is inspired by a teaching and learning guru and an all-around great guy named Chris Sheehan. Sadly, Chris passed away in 2020. I consider myself lucky to have learned from Chris, and his work in digital initiatives and student success has made an enormous positive difference in the world.

Rubrics

Posted on July 15, 2021 by Lucy

Rubrics are used to help students meet the grading criteria for each assessment. Not only do they set clear criteria for success, but they make grading better for all. Rubrics also provide the instructor with specific and consistent standards for giving clear feedback to students based on their observations.

Parts of a Rubric

Click on the hotspots on the image below to learn more about each part of a rubric.

Read About Rubrics 📖

Best Practices for Designing Effective Rubrics – (Teach Online, 2019)

Types of Rubrics: Holistic and Analytic – (Queens University, 2021)

Watch a Video About Rubrics ▶️

Easily create and use rubrics in Brightspace

Example Rubrics

VALUE Rubrics are open source and available to download from https://www.aacu.org/value-rubrics.

Sample Rubrics for a variety of assignments from Carnegie Melon University Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation – Creating and Using Rubrics

Bottom Line

Rubrics help students understand expectations. They clarify the criteria with detailed descriptions for each performance level. The rubric can be used as a checklist to help students plan and track their progress when completing assignments.
Rubrics provide feedback. Using a rubric creates a common language between the student and instructor on performance. This feedback can refer students directly to a section of the rubric and to help identify what was missing to move them beyond a performance level.
Rubrics improve learning. By having a rubric to work off of, students are able to reflect and self-assess the quality of their work before submission, helping to motivate them to succeed.

Have Guest Speakers Zoom into Your Classroom

Posted on June 17, 2021 by cookel

Zoom has been the mainstay of many instructors’ toolkits during the pandemic. And although we are transitioning back to face-to-face classes, Zoom won’t be going away anytime soon. Zoom can be very useful for things like individual calls or virtual office hours. Zoom can also be used to bring outside speakers to your class.

While most users are comfortable meeting with other members of the Wentworth community over Zoom, bringing in outside speakers has some challenges due to our security. Understanding the security settings and knowing what to do tell speakers can make the process smooth and seamless for your students.

Security settings: When setting up a Zoom meeting in which you expect a non-Wentworth user to attend, make certain that you set your meeting security option “Require authentication to join” is set to “Sign in to Zoom.” Our Zoom system is set to require logging into Zoom to reduce the possibility of Zoom Bombing (the “party-crashing” that occurred early in the pandemic and left some meeting attendees traumatized from the abuse the “Bombers” hurled at meeting attendees).

While all Wentworth users can activate a Zoom account under our site license, external users can’t use Wentworth accounts and not all external users have a Zoom license. However, setting the security to only require having a license allows any authenticated user to participate if they have the link. This means that a guest speaker can attend using a Zoom account from an employer, or even a free account. When inviting a speaker to join your class, confirm that they have a Zoom account. If they don’t, let them know they will need to sign up for a free account. If you test the link ahead of time, make sure that you remind the guest speaker to have their Zoom login handy so they can log in when prompted. You may also need to temporarily reset the time settings to allow your guest to enter the room when testing.

More information on using Zoom and the error messages that occur when trying to access a Wentworth meeting without a Zoom account are available in our Tech Spot Knowledgebase.

Community Article – Zoom Conferencing _ Technology Services (Pdf version of link above).

Maslow’s Before Blooms: Strategies to mitigate student anxiety

Posted on June 16, 2021 by Lucy

Welcome!

Instructions: Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the slides to advance. If you are on a mobile or tablet, swipe to advance the slides.

This short module was made using Microsoft Sway, one of the apps included in our Microsoft 365 subscriptions. They are easy to make and can embed inside of your Brightspace courses, for a visually pleasing way to deliver course content.

PDF version:
Maslow′s Before Bloom′s_ Strategies to mitigate student anxiety

Perspectives in Teaching & Learning