What’s New

This week we are bringing two important improvements to Brightspace: a new Course Outlines menu item, that will offer you and your students direct access to your course outlines file in COMMS, and a new Zoom Virtual Classroom tool, that will enrich the teaching and learning.

Course Outline

Next time when you login to Brightspace, you will see a new Course Outlines menu item. This improvement comes in response to student feedback regarding consistency in the last Brightspace Satisfaction survey, and it will also help faculty with one of the required elements of Brightspace courses as per the new LMS policy, AA42.

Important: If you’ve already copied content from an older course, please make sure that the file under the Course Information module displays the current course outline.

Zoom Virtual Classroom

In addition to the existing Virtual Classroom tool that Brightspace offers, we have integrated Zoom classroom. Zoom is a video conferencing program that allows for multiple participants, audio and video sharing, screen sharing, breakout rooms, working on a whiteboard and recording. This new tool is now accessible from your course Tools menu.

Brightspace Training

Brightspace Training is available for new and returning faculty starting next week. We are offering a Refresher session, recapping some of the basic functionality of Brightspace, and a Beyond Essentials session for those looking to expand and enhance their use of the LMS. Register for these sessions, and look out for future sessions (including Zoom training), on the PD Registration System.

Need a custom training session? Get in touch with Rob Kershaw from Learning and Teaching Services (kershar@algonquincollege.com).

Spring Satisfaction Survey

Thank you to all faculty members who participated in the latest Brightspace Satisfaction Survey. Congratulations to Thomas Bradley, who was selected at random as the recipient of a $25 Connections gift card for participating.

Satisfaction rates continue to increase as faculty become more familiar with the system’s features, but the qualitative feedback received from faculty and students made it clear that there are still challenges to be addressed – some through our training and support, and some through the work of D2L’s product development team. Please keep an eye on our Common Solutions page, and check out the Product Idea Exchange page for opportunities to add your voice to the Brightspace Community in order to effect change.

You can play an important role in the continuing evolution of Brightspace at Algonquin College – and win a $25 Connections Gift Card doing so.

A survey was recently sent to all faculty — another survey was sent to students — asking for responses to simple questions about the Learning Management System. By responding to the survey, which should take less than five minutes of your time, you can help the LMS team understand how satisfied you are with Brightspace, which elements are most useful to you in your work, and which features you feel can be improved.

One of the benefits of Brightspace is that it enjoys regular updates, a feature that makes it adaptable over time to ongoing changes in the needs of users. Help us in our efforts to tailor Brightspace to the needs of Algonquin College by filling out the faculty survey here.

It would be helpful if you would encourage your students to fill out their survey as well. The more feedback we receive, the better we’ll understand how Brightspace is working for the College community. Students can respond to their Brightspace survey here.

Brightspace Fix Notifications

In addition to the monthly release of new system features and improvements, D2L also performs regular fixes for bugs as they are discovered. Those interested can follow the fix notifications in the Brightspace Community. Note that you will need to have an account created in order to have access to this page. Once you login, just click on the “Follow” button to keep being notified of all the fixes.

Some examples include a fix to a loading problem experienced by students who had reached the maximum file size for an assignment and the correction of a rubric loading issue in the mobile environment.

Brightspace Essentials for Faculty

In response to the feedback received earlier in the year, this course will be updated ahead of the 2019 Fall semester. We will make it easier for you to distinguish between essential and more advanced content. The new content will be developed based on the most frequent support and training requests and our intention is to make the content more interactive and engaging. Look out for these updates and a new satisfaction survey in the coming weeks.

If you don’t have access to the “Brightspace Essentials for Faculty” course, please send an email to brightspace@algonquincollege.com.

Summary of the Brightspace Pro Tips Week

The Bites Workshops were well attended and we thank everyone who came to learn, share your best designed courses or to donate pies. A huge THANK YOU to Farbod Karimi, Chair of Learning and Teaching Services, who had the courage to stay brave while three real pies were tossed in his face. All this for a good cause, as we raised $170 for the Food Bank.

Vote the PIE on the Brightspace Email Issue

During the session on the Product Idea Exchange (PIE), highlighting how instructors can contribute to the system updates by adding new ideas or voting on existing ones, an idea on the email issue that we currently are experiencing was posted on the Brightspace Community: Email sent from Brightspace should display as coming from the user’s email address (D5481)

Click here to vote for it!

Note that you must create an account first and become a member of the Community.

Brightspace Activities (quizzes, assignments, discussions)

A reminder that, when working with activities in Brightspace, you must manually create the grade column and associate it with one of the activities. Watch a video here.

Last Call for Pro Tips Week

There’s still time to register for Brightspace Pro Tips Week from May 27th to May 31st. Visit the website here for details and registration.

Brightspace Bites (May 27th – 31st)

Learn the latest hacks from our LMS experts at our ‘digestible’ Brightspace workshops – only 30 minutes each! Each session features refreshments and cheesy door prizes: wireless mice. We know Brightspace requires heavy clicking. Register for a session here.

PIE Drive and Toss (May 30th)

Take a deep-dish dive into the Product Idea Exchange (PIE) on May 30th as we raffle off delicious pies at the PIE Drive. Then, watch Farbod Karimi, Chair of the Learning & Teaching Services, get a pie in the face in our PIE Toss @ Boss! Donate a pie here.

Special Access

Are you aware of the tools to create special access to your assessments? Check out this module in Brightspace Essentials to find out more.

Summer Hours

Beginning April 29, Brightspace support will be available from 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday to Friday. Employees can book an appointment here, walk in to C123, call 613-727-472 ext. 6943, or email for support. If there are faculty who need support outside of these times, please email us and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Satisfaction Survey Response

The LMS team would like to extend their thanks to faculty who responded to the recent Brightspace survey.

The data gathered through the survey provides us with useful and actionable information about satisfaction with the Learning Management System (including its communications and assessment tools, discussion boards, groups, quizzes and surveys, and more) and with Brightspace support and communications.

The data will be put to use to make improvements in three areas highlighted as faculty priorities: support, Brightspace Essentials and communications.

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The April release update to Brightspace provides Algonquin College with early access to the Quick Eval tool, which allows users to see a list of unevaluated learner submissions from across all courses and tools in one place.

By sorting and filtering the list you can prioritize your evaluation work, and by clicking on the user’s name you can open the evaluation screens right from the Quick Eval list. Learner submissions for an assignment, a quiz or a discussion topic all show up in Quick Eval. Starting April 18, you can access the Quick Eval tool on the navigation bar on the homepage of Brightspace.

The Centre for Continuing and Online Learning is pleased to welcome three members of the Brightspace technical administration team to its ranks.

Michel Langlais, Mariana Pietraru and Vanessa Tran — who formerly reported to Information Technology Services — moved to CCOL this week and will continue to work in the Employee Learning Exchange (ELX) alongside their ITS, Learning and Teaching Services (LTS), Centre for Organizational Learning (COL) and CCOL colleagues.

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