Posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2019
Space is still available for faculty interested in participating in the Brightspace Symposium on Thursday, Feb. 21.
The symposium is free of charge and people can attend all or just some of the scheduled activities taking place from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Banquet Salon A in D building — but registration is required. The event is fully catered (breakfast, lunch and a reception are included for registrants) and features a wide variety of fun and interesting opportunities to learn, including speakers, presentations and workshops.
Come and meet the LTS team and hear guest presenters from the University of Ottawa, eCampus Ontario, College La Cite, Brightspace creator D2L, and Mohawk College.
Register for the event here.
Turnitin eRater Grammar Feedback
There has been a small change to Turnitin.
While setting up Turnitin for assignments, instructors can now turn on eRater Grammar checker for their students. This allows learners to review this Grammar feedback immediately upon assignment submission. This is helpful for assignments that are set up to allow multiple submissions. Learners can initially submit an assignment, receive Grammar feedback, and then submit another version that incorporates the feedback. On the due date, that last assignment submitted by the learner can be the final one for grading.
Coming to Brightspace
A new annotation tool for grading assignments will be available in Brightspace in March.
According to D2L, faculty will be able “to provide feedback in the Assignments tool with grades, high-level feedback, rubrics, video, audio, contextual inline annotations, or any combination of these. Annotations … are a great way to tie feedback to specific areas and provide meaningful suggestions.”
Go here to watch a video that highlights how to use the tool.
Posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2019
The LMS team invites faculty to participate in the Brightspace Symposium on the Ottawa Campus Thursday, Feb. 21, presented by the groups who led the transition to a new Learning Management System: Information Technology Services (ITS), Learning and Teaching Services (LTS), the Centre for Continuing and Online Learning (CCOL), and D2L.
The event will showcase featured speakers, presentations and workshops. The keynote address will be given by Shaun Iles, Professor and Educational Technology Facilitator for the School of Liberal Studies at Mohawk College. Attendees can share knowledge during the symposium and discover how the easy-to-use Brightspace technology can help teachers reach learners at all levels.
Meet the LTS team and learn how our solutions can help you address your unique educational challenges.
By sharing insights and best practices, the Brightspace Symposium will help spark the shared passion for learning that connects us all as we build a modern learning culture.
Hold the date: Feb. 21 from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Banquet Salon A in D Building.
Register for the event here. Please RSVP before Feb. 19.
Posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2019
Your LMS team is always working to increase the value of the Brightspace Essentials for Faculty course and continuously creating new content requested by faculty to improve the Brightspace experience.
This week, we are making available our new View as Learner guides, which include step-by-step guides and a video.
We have also created new videos that recommend a workflow for grading assignments, discussions and quizzes. This workflow will help faculty provide feedback to learners in consistent ways.
In addition, we have created resources that faculty can use to utilize the Essentials effectively and find the content they need. For more information, faculty can download PDF copies of our How to Use Brightspace Essentials tip sheet our handy updated How to Use foldout. All of these resources can be found here.
The LMS team is seeking your feedback on how we can improve the Brightspace Essentials for Faculty course resource and tailor it to your needs. Help us by filling out this short survey here.
For additional support, contact us at brightspace@algonquincollege.com
Posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019
You may have noticed some changes to Brightspace this week, in particular to the Assignment feature.
As part of its continuous improvement model, January’s Brightspace enhancements and fixes include the following items:
Improvements to Assignments List View
Instructors can now see information on the assignment name, the number of learners who have completed the assignment, the number of learners who have been evaluated, the number of learners who have had feedback published, and the due date. This allows instructors to quickly determine what assignments they need to evaluate, how far along they are with their evaluations, and if they have published the evaluations.
Read more >
Posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2019
The Brightspace team would like to welcome faculty back for the Winter 2019 semester and extend an enthusiastic thank you for your valuable feedback to the Brightspace survey you received in December.
Your participation is vital to us in our continuing work to make your Brightspace experience — and those of your students — simpler, more intuitive and more efficient in the months ahead.
The next steps in our effort requires your participation in a focus group discussion where we will share the results from the survey and seek your feedback on how we can improve satisfaction with the LMS. We are hosting three focus group sessions the week of January 28. Lunch will be provided for all participants.
Sign up here
In these sessions, we will discuss the Top 5 feedback categories from the survey, the overall results, and what we are doing to address your suggestions and concerns. Download the results by clicking here.
Posted on Monday, January 14th, 2019
Keshana King bubbles over with enthusiasm as she describes how the Brightspace Ambassadors are assisting new students at Algonquin College this term.
“Our program is most beneficial to students just out of high school who are completely new to the college experience and have never used a Learning Management System,” says King, Brightspace Ambassador Program Coordinator with Learning and Teaching Services. She notes it’s also especially useful to many mature students, people who are getting used to technology after a long break or who didn’t work with technology in their previous work experience, and international students.
“International students face huge changes coming to a new country, and Brightspace can be one of them. It’s a great feeling to be able to help people because you’re a student helping other students, knowing that they’re going through what you’ve gone through.”
Read more >
Posted on Monday, January 7th, 2019
The latest update to Brightspace has a new feature that automatically changes the notification settings for all users. Now, all students and instructors will automatically receive an email when new announcements are posted or updated within a course.
Previously, students had to enable the check box themselves in order to receive notifications of emails. This will ensure that announcements are sent to their Algonquin email accounts. Students will now have to actively opt out of receiving emails if they do not want to receive announcements in this way.
The LMS team worked to find a solution and successfully made the change, addressing faculty suggestions to enable email notifications for announcements by default.
Posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2019
Happy New Year from your LMS team, which is ready to assist faculty prepare for their Winter 2019 courses and to provide Brightspace training.
Anyone scheduled in Genesis to teach a Winter course will find it listed in “My Courses” in Brightspace under the 2019W tab. Faculty can use the course readiness checklist available here to ensure their course is ready for the new term. The checklist links to useful tip sheets about preparing content.
Training opportunities for Brightspace are readily available for faculty. These include one-hour sessions on grading learners, using quizzes, setting up grades, using TurnItIn, and using rubrics.
The three-hour Brightspace Essentials workshop is for returning faculty who have not yet completed any Brightspace training. New faculty are invited to complete training via the Part-Time Faculty Orientation program. Registration is through the PD registration system here.
Faculty can also book appointments for one-on-one support here or drop in to C123 Mondays to Thursdays from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Fridays from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
For more information about Brightspace at Algonquin College, call x2501 or email brightspace@algonquincollege.com
Posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
As the Brightspace Support team encounters common technical questions, they will now be posted within a new Common Solutions section of the Brightspace Support website.
Refer to this page as well as the FAQ section regularly to see if your questions or concerns are already listed here.
https://www.algonquincollege.com/brightspace/common-solutions/
https://www.algonquincollege.com/brightspace/faqs/
Summary of new features — December release
As part of D2L’s continuous improvement model, Brightspace implements incremental enhancements each month to the Learning Management System.
By Dec. 21, you will notice the following changes within Brightspace:
Assignments
Changeable assignment and submission type
- Modify existing assignments by changing assignment or submission types, without having to create a new one, if it has no learner submissions.
Learner name links directly to Evaluate Submission page
- Access Evaluate Submissions by clicking on learner’s name on Submissions
- Previously, clicking on learner’s name launched sending student an email; sending email to students still possible by clicking on box beside student name and clicking Email
Improved Grading Experience
- You can click on submission’s file name to download
- Markup Document button is now called Launch Turnitin
- Publish and Save Draft buttons are more conveniently located; there is also an extra Next Student link
Discussions
Improved rubrics grading experience
- Rubrics assessments and feedback automatically save as draft while updates are in progress
- In draft state, rubrics will not be visible to learners until instructor clicks on Save & Publish
- Feedback can be bulk published to all or select users
- Published feedback for changes to the Total Score can be removed through a new feature called Retract Feedback. (Overall Score and Overall Feedback can be edited without retraction)
- New grading pop-up window for easier grading contains all rubrics for the discussion, a list of all posts made by the student, and a place to enter Overall Feedback
Rubrics
Improved Creation Experience
- Auto-save during creation and editing
- Change rubric type and scoring method during creation
- Re-order criterion via drag and drop (or keyboard)
- Improved logic for points-based rubrics where new levels automatically follow existing point scoring sequences
- Individual criterion cells in custom point rubrics dynamically scale when editing its out of value
- Overall Score is visibly separated from rubric and displayed in its own section
Quizzes
Enhanced Written Response question type
- Instructors can add initial text to Written Response questions
Posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2018
Your LMS team is available to assist faculty with getting their grades ready for submission or to help them prepare for their Winter 2019 courses.
Anyone scheduled in Genesis to teach a Winter course will find it listed in “My Courses” in Brightspace under the 2019W tab. Faculty can use a course readiness checklist available here to ensure their course is ready for the new term. The checklist links to handy tip sheets about preparing content.
Training opportunities for Brightspace are readily available for faculty. These include one-hour focused sessions on grading learners, using quizzes, setting up grades, using TurnItIn, and using rubrics.
The three-hour Brightspace Essentials workshop is for returning faculty who have not yet completed any Brightspace training. New faculty are invited to complete training via the Part-Time Faculty Orientation program. Registration is through the PD registration system here.
Faculty can also book appointments for one-on-one support here or drop in to C123 Mondays to Thursdays from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Fridays from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
For more information about Brightspace at Algonquin College, call x2501 or email brightspace@algonquincollege.com