Category: General

Early this summer Brightspace introduced the Work To Do widget. While targeting student success and keeping students up-to-date with their work the tool can help instructors too. A common complaint we hear from instructors is that students don’t read before class or submit assignments on time. When students read the…

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…

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. [wmd-divider…

What is Gradescope? Gradescope is an online grading platform used to grade homework, quizzes, group projects, and exams. It reduces grading time, increases grading consistency, and provides statistical summary for every assignment. Gradescope helps you seamlessly administer and grade all of your assessments, whether online or in-class. Save time grading…

This month the changes to Brightspace are not as dramatic as last month but the interface improvements continue. All changes described below will take effect June 16, 2021. First, there is a new format painter in the text editor. This addition makes it easier to make text formatting match. Along…

Do you use quizzes in Brightspace? Are you looking for a way to prevent students from browsing websites or using other applications during a Brightspace quiz? If so, we have a tool for your students. LockDown Browser is a special application that runs on a student’s computer that locks them…

Over the break between spring and summer semesters, we unified accounts on Panopto — or rather we tried to unify the accounts. The good news is that you have access to all your content. The bad news is it may not be easy to find. When we first implemented Brightspace…

A formative assessment is a low- or no-stakes assessment that provides extensive feedback on incorrectly answered questions. It also provides positive reinforcement on correctly answered questions. Formative assessments both measure how well a student is learning during instruction and give the student useful feedback to improve learning outcomes. By contrast,…