Posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2023
As the issue with the True/False questions is now fixed, we are making the Brightspace Test/Quiz Question Generator available to all faculty. After importing the quiz questions into a Brightspace Quiz or Question Library, it is imperative to double-check for the accuracy of the quiz questions you just imported using the Preview a Quiz option.
There is one alternative to the Test/Quiz Question Generator, developed by D2L. To access this version, you will need to create a Brighspace Community account. The D2L version supports the same question types, except for the fill-in-the-blank one. More documentation on this is coming soon. Stay tuned!
Note: If you need assistance in verifying your quiz, please schedule an appointment with the DLE Team.
Posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2022
Greetings Faculty,
During final assessment week, the DLE team will use the case management system and the emergency phone number as the only points of access for emergency support. Emergency support is offered to Faculty daily throughout the week on days where assessments are scheduled starting one hour before the first assessment starts and concluding 30 minutes after the last assessment ends.
Instructors can send an email to brightspace@algonquincollege.com with only the phone number they can be reached at in the subject line and will receive a call back as soon as possible. Alternatively, instructors can also call 613 727-4723 ext. 7777 to speak to a support specialist directly. A banner will be displayed in Brightspace throughout the assessment week with this procedure.
Learners who require emergency support during assessment week can reach ITS through the normal support channels. Please refrain from asking your learners to contact us or to open cases in the queue and refrain from opening cases in your learner’s name.
This article explains in detail what is an emergency and how to reach us.
Warm regards,
Michel Marcheterre (He/Him)
Digital Learning Environment Strategist
AC Online
Posted on Friday, June 24th, 2022
Greetings Faculty,
I want to start by thanking everyone who has reached out to provide feedback for additional support to the DLE Team after last week’s announcement. We recognize the value of knowing that someone is just a call away. DLE will offer this service every semester during final exam week.
While the plan for this semester’s final exam emergency support week is not finalized, you can rest assured that we will be offering this service. The goal is to have a plan in place by next week in order to communicate it to you in our following Friday email (exceptionally on Thursday, June 30th).
Warm regards,
Michel Marcheterre (He/Him)
Digital Learning Environment Strategist
AC Online
Posted on Friday, June 10th, 2022
Have you ever wondered how your students see your courses’ content and activities?
The “View as Learner” will not display your course exactly as a student will see it. The workaround is to Add a Test Student account to your courses and impersonate this student to experience your course exactly as a student will see it. You can complete quizzes and submit assignments as a student, then exit the impersonation to view the results as the instructor.
As many other instructors are using this test student, please be aware of the fact that, once you enrol it in your course, any instructor that will impersonate the test student will be able to view your course content as a learner. It is recommended to unenrol the Test Student from your course once your testing is complete. Instructions on how to unenrol a user from your course can be found in this article
Important: Please make sure that you are using the “teststudent” role when adding this account to your courses. If you use any other role (for instance, learner or observer) you AND the rest of the instructors will not be able to impersonate this account.
Posted on Monday, May 30th, 2022
If you are looking for a way to create sign-up sheets for student presentations, project proposals, or office hours we have a solution for you.
This article describes the steps you need to take in order to allow the students to sign up for one of the projects they need to work on, using self-enrolment groups.
Posted on Friday, February 5th, 2021
Turnitin in Brightspace
Turnitin is an originality checking and plagiarism prevention service that checks your student papers for citation mistakes or inappropriate copying. Through the integration with Brightspace and the use of a Brightspace Assignment, Turnitin allows you to check for plagiarism using the Originality Check tool, and also to provide feedback and in-line comments on student assignments using the GradeMark tool.
The Originality Check tool helps you identify the plagiarism by automatically comparing your student submissions to an online database of original content. Originality Reports are made available to you and your students (if you choose to), highlighting key areas, and showing a breakdown of matching sources, with direct links to the matching content.
The Grade Mark tool allows you to make comments on student submissions, offering you unique features, such as pre-written comments (QuickMarks).
Turnitin can be used as both a plagiarism tool and an educational tool, as it helps students understand the proper use of quotation marks, how to cite sources properly, and how to paraphrase.
Helpful articles/videos on Turnitin:
Note: Subscribe to Turnitin updates if you would like to be notified by email when there is a Turnitin service disruption.
Product Idea Exchange (PIE)
The Product Idea Exchange (PIE) allows you to share your ideas for improvement and vote for those you would like to see developed. To contribute to PIE, visit the Product Idea Exchange website.
If you would like to see a list of current PIE Items that have been up-voted by you, and also the items that the committee previously voted up and were implemented by D2L, check our LMS Website.
Note: To access and up-vote PIE items, you will first need to register to be part of the Brightspace Community here: https://community.brightspace.com/SelfRegistration.
Reminder – The ONLY Email Address for Brightspace Support
We would like to remind you that Faculty and Staff should be using only the brightspace@algonquincollege.com address when asking for Brightspace Support. In order to make sure that your email reaches us, and we provide the help you need, please take a moment to delete all other emails that contain the word brightspace from your address book. Note that, when emailing the correct email address for Brightspace Support, you will receive an automatic reply with your case number.
Posted on Monday, January 25th, 2021
Hiding Grades in Brightspace
We all know that hiding grades in Brightspace sometimes presents a challenge, as it depends on the type of gradebook columns. We NOW have a great video created by Tamara and Vanessa, explaining in details how to hide two types of gradebook columns: associated with a Brightspace activity (quiz, assignment or discussion) and columns without any associations.
Important: After following the steps outlined in this video, also make sure that your final calculated grade column is hidden, as students can access the grades for hidden columns by clicking on the small calculator icon, beside their percentage for the final calculated grade!
If you need to learn How to Hide the Final Calculated Grade column, this article shows you the steps you need to take.
Reminder: Digital Learning Environment Knowledge Base (DLEKB)
We would like to remind you to check our Digital Learning Environment Knowledge Base that contains more than 150 articles on various Brightspace tools. Please know that we read and welcome your feedback on these articles. Keep them coming and send us suggestions for new articles.
Zoom Resources
As many of you are teaching for the first time using Zoom, we have put together a list of Zoom resources that we hope you will find helpful. This video created by LTS provides a quick guide on almost everything you need to know about Zoom.
How do I schedule a Zoom meeting?
- You can schedule it from within your Brightspace course – ideal for when you give lectures to your students. After you schedule the meeting, the link to the new meeting will automatically show up in your students’ course calendar. They will have access to the meeting on the date and time you chose in the meeting’s settings. Note that your students won’t need to sign up for a Zoom account, as they will automatically have access to your Zoom classroom, as participants.
- Via the portal or the application, outside your Brightspace course, by signing into the Algonquin College Zoom Portal – recommended for small groups’ meetings, when the participants don’t have Brightspace accounts and/or you don’t want your students to join the meeting by mistake.
How do I set up my Zoom account?
When you first access Zoom Classroom from within your Brightspace course, your Zoom account is automatically created for you. If you don’t have a Brightspace course, but you need to schedule Zoom meetings, you will create the account via the Algonquin College Zoom portal.
How do I manage my Zoom recordings?
Read our KB article on How to manage your Zoom Recordings in Brightspace. Zoom recordings of sessions that are scheduled through Brightspace via Tools > Zoom Classroom, and saved to the cloud, are no longer automatically shared with students in the Brightspace course. Previously, a link to the recording would appear immediately for students via Tools > Zoom Classroom, under Cloud Recordings. This KB article explains How to Publish Zoom Cloud Recordings.
How do I deal with Zoom in Combined/Merged courses.
This article explains how to set up Zoom meetings in a Combined/Merged Course.
Zoom Breakout Rooms
If you are using breakout rooms in ZOOM when delivering your class lecture, and you would like to allow your students to choose the room they want to be in, please note that the “Let participants choose room” option is available to select during a ZOOM meeting, but ONLY for the versions 5.3 or newer. Update your software from your Zoom app or from your profile under the Algonquin College Zoom portal.
Posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2021
We are happy to announce that we have now implemented a new email address (No Reply Brightspace <NoReply_Brightspace@algonquincollege.com>) used by ALL Brightspace tools that need to use an email address. The two email addresses that we are replacing are d2lsupport@algonquincollege.brightspace.com (used by Intelligent Agents and Assignments Submission receipts) and noreply@algonquincollege.brightspace.com (used when announcements and other notifications are being sent as emails). These two email addresses that we are replacing are owned by D2L and, if by mistake a user would have replied to these emails, no automatic reply was being received. This fact was creating some confusion among those users who were expecting an answer, falsely believing that their emails were being sent to the teachers or to Brightspace Support.
With the new email address that the DLE team is NOW able to monitor, there is an auto reply provided immediately, with feedback and links to resources that will help you either answer your questions or direct you to the right mailbox.
Note: We are encouraging you to check your Outlook address book and remove the old email addresses from the list of saved contacts.
Resources for Combined/Merged courses in Brightspace
We have put together a list of articles related to combined/merged courses, as many of you are using this type of courses for the first time this semester:
- If you are teaching multiple sections of the same course and are spending lots of time loading the same content to all your sections, please know that you have the option to combine or merge the sections.
Note that in addition to combining/merging regular courses, it is possible to have all students from multiple program levels enrolled in one AllLevels program homeroom.
- Posting Announcements to Specific Sections in a Combined/Merged Course is possible. By doing this, you will limit the number of announcements that don’t apply to all your course sections and avoid creating confusion among students.
- When needing to restrict the course content to specific sections, you will have to use the release conditions outlined in the Distributing and Restricting Content to Specific Sections in a Combined/Merged Course article.
- When scheduling Zoom meetings from Tools/Zoom Classroom, you would want to avoid having all the events showing up in all your students’ calendars. Learn how to Restrict a Zoom Calendar Event to a Specific Course Section.
- If you would like to send an email or view the grades only for a specific section, Brightspace allows you to Sort the Classlist and Grades by Section.
- The most common question is about the possibility of having the same assignment or quiz available to different sections at different dates/times. You can accomplish this by using the Special Access options and setting up different start/end/due dates for different sections. These two KB articles show you How to Provide Special Sccess to a Quiz and How to Create Special Access for Assignments.
Posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2020
New great feature introduced by the November release: Retake incorrect questions in subsequent attempts
This feature introduces a new option for Quizzes Attempt settings that allows students to only retake their incorrectly answered questions from previous quiz attempts. When you edit a Brightspace quiz (Activities/Quizzes), the new option is available for you to select from the Assessment tab. Each learner only sees the questions they had previously answered incorrectly in the same order as the initial attempt (including quizzes with random sections and random questions).
Brightspace Tips
Are you marking your students’ assignments anonymously?
Anonymous Marking is a tool in Brightspace which allows you to mark your students Assignment submissions without knowing the identity of the student. In case you are using Anonymous Marking, note it is not possible to publish individual evaluations. To maintain anonymity, all evaluations have to be published at the same time using the Publish All Feedback button. When marking, the first step is to save the grades/feedback as a draft (select Save Draft to save), and then go back to Activities/Assignments/View Submissions page and click on the Publish All Feedback button.
Do you need to copy ONLY the final exam (or any other quiz) from one course to another?
Use the Select Components button when you perform a course copy and select only the Quizzes option, followed by Selected Quizzes, and then the quiz you wish to copy. If your quiz is created as a random quiz with questions from the Question Library, make sure you also copy that particular section from the Question Library, by selecting the Question Library option, along with the Quizzes one. By doing this, you will make sure that you will have that Question Library section in the destination course, for usage in other quizzes.
Preparing a CSV (Excel) File for Uploading Grades into ACSIS
At the end of each semester, you are asked to upload the final grades for your students to ACSIS. This article provides you with step-by-step instructions describing how to prepare a .csv (Excel) file from the gradebook in Brightspace in preparation for submitting/uploading grades to ACSIS.
Does your course contain TechSmith Relay videos?
The TechSmith web server will be shut down on December 31, 2020. Any content not retrieved by this date will no longer be available to users.
You may have inherited a Brightspace course that contains TechSmith Relay presentations, created by you or another faculty member (past or present). The URL will typically contain “replay.algonquincollege.com” and will also indicate the username of the original creator, e.g. “replay.algonquincollege.com/replay/kershar/…” For more information, and the steps that you should take to address this, please take a look at this myAC post.
Posted on Monday, November 30th, 2020
Course shells for the Winter 2021 courses have been created and made available to instructors in Brightspace. If you don’t see your course(s) in Brightspace, please check with your department and make sure that you have been scheduled in Genesis, prior to emailing us.
This week’s DLE Weekly Update contains information on Common Questions at the Beginning of the Semester and DLE Support Hours over Holidays.