All posts by Diana Voss

Brightspace Groups for Active Learning

Attendance Verification, Brightspace, Grades

This week was the first time I tried using Brightspace groups in Javits 106 Active Learning classroom. If you are not familiar with the space, it’s tables of 6 in an Octagon shaped room. There is no “front” of the room so each table has a display

I created Brightspace Groups with an attached assignment prior to class and displayed group assignments on the displays around the room so everyone knew where to sit. The students used the lapboards or worksheets (their choice) to identify various characters that they knew of who had “Followership” traits.

Types of followers

At the conclusion of class, I asked 1 student from each table to take a picture of the results and submit their groups work via Brightspace. Since I had attached the Assignment to the “Attendance” Category in my Grades, I was able to quickly update attendance for class at the end of the day.

The only issue that arose was that one of the students was not assigned a group and therefore could not see the assignment. We were able to resolve this during class.

Using this tool was not only easy but also saved me a some time. I highly recommend giving it a try!

Without students, we could not DoIT!

Academic Technologies, Technical Support, Wednesday Wisdom

When I was an Undergraduate at Stony Brook, I applied for and accepted a position as a student consultant in the Library SINC Site. Back then, there were only 15 student employees. My supervisor , Nancy Duffrin and our CIO , Rich Reeder, recognized the power of empowering students. They supported growth of the program so that 30 years later, the Division now employs over 200 students a year in all forward facing support areas.

If you have reached out for assistance or attended a workshop, chances are you have spoken with one of our superstars! Please share how awesome they are by submitting a nomination today for our Star IT Program.

Our student technologist are: Aidan, Logan, Jingyu, Michelle, Rin, Aaron, ZB, Krisha, Mysha, Ava, Tom, Perry, Martin, Raymond & Christopher. I am so proud of the work that they do!

Nominate a student for STAR IT program

Collecting Data in a minute

Academic Technologies, Attendance Verification, Brightspace

During class this week, students participated in a leadership compass activity**. As part of the activity, I wanted to collect the responses so everyone could see the overall results as well as use the data to figure out how much “space” was needed in the room to have students move to their most dominant direction.

Current image: Dominant Decision Making styles - Pie chart
Vevox Results after students connect via Brightspace

I decided to try Vevox and was pleased with how easy it was to collect & post the results.

Vevox Results published in Brightspace Gradebook

The only action the students had to take was to scan the QR code with their device OR access the link in Brightspace.

I now have the participation results in my gradebook & can also use this activity in future semesters to continue to collect information on dominant decision making styles of all WISE student leaders.

**Adapted from the Northwest Leader Corps training curriculum written and compiled by Nicole Trimble. An EnCorps resource.

Recording attendance in your class

Brightspace, Grades

I was disappointed to discover a few years ago that the “Attendance” register in Brightspace does not connect to grades so I made up my own solution which works well.

If you require attendance in your class, here’s how I manage attendance in my class.

Step 1.  In Grades, I create a scheme called “Weekly Attendance” that looks like this: New Scheme screen in Brightspace

Step 2.  Create a item for each date you want to record attendance AND apply the Weekly Attendance scheme to the item:

Add Grade Item screen

Step 3 :  Enter grades for that item and you should have a drop down box that looks like this:

Enter Grades screen

 

Countdown to Fall starts now.. .Welcome Back!

Academic Technologies, Brightspace

Our Fall Semester is quickly approaching and both DoIT & CELT are working together to deliver several new tools this semester.

During the semester, we will share experiences with these tools here and welcome instructors to contact us who would also like to blog about their experiences.

All new tools have corresponding service pages and self help articles.  Throughout the month, we will be hosting MiniBytes as well as providing links to sessions led by Vendors.

Visit it.stonybrook.edu for details AND should you decide to use Vevox or other technology in your class, please remember to add tech statements to your course so your students know how to get help.

We look forward to working with you this Fall!

April Fool’s Day Challenge!

Brightspace, Technical Support, ,

April Fool's day - Is this a prank or not?

A few weeks ago,  Martin & Logan (2 of our student techs) asked me if they could write an article for the DoIT website on April Fool’s.  I laughed and shrugged it off.   The suggestion indeed sparked some creativity in our office.   Jokes were made like “we should answer “Joe’s Pizza” when the phone rings and a few other suggestions that, honestly I was concerned might stress those out who needed help so I refused to encourage the idea….UNTIL…

A KB article needed to be fixed and a lot of full time staff were out that day. I turned to one of our student techs and asked them to edit it, and they did so, perfectly.  They were so pleased with, not only the work they had done but that, we (DoIT) trust our students to publish information, that I felt inspired to revisit the “april fool’s article” idea.

I challenged Martin & Login to write a KB article on how to use Brightspace Glossary and promised that if it was well written, they could create a “GenZ glossary” edition for April Fool’s and they accepted & completed the challenge!

Displays how the Glossary tool in Brightspace looks like

To learn more about how to create a glossary AND to learn some “lingo” , take a moment to read our latest article: https://it.stonybrook.edu/help/kb/brightspaces-glossary-tool 

If you have a suggestion for a KB article for our website, please email us at: academictechnologies@stonybrook.edu

Utilize Due Dates on Assignments

Academic Technologies, Brightspace, Wednesday Wisdom

When talking about Brightspace with students and their experiences, a frequent request is for instructors to post assignments with due dates so that they appear on the student’s Brightspace google calendar & /or on the work to do widget like this:

Images of Work to Do widget & Course calendar

If you currently do not have the Work to Do widget , you can add it to your Homepage by following these steps:

  1. Click on Course Administration
  2. Select Homepage
  3. If you have never customized your homepage, you will need to make a copy of the existing one
  4. Edit the homepage and in the widgets section, select “Add Widgets”
  5. Scroll all the way down and select “Work to do”

For additional information, visit Brightspace’s “Manage widgets on your homepage” guide

Pre semester checklist for Instructors using Brightspace

Brightspace

Our Fall semester is quickly approaching!  If you are new, welcome!   If you are returning, welcome back!

In keeping with our back to school news tradition, our team has updated our Brightspace checklist which you can find here:

image of a checklist that links to: https://it.stonybrook.edu/help/kb/start-of-the-semester-top-10-brightspace-tips  when clicked on.
Start of the semester checklist

Over the next few weeks, we will posting updates here based on  questions we receive from you so please check back from time to time.

We look forward to working with you this Fall!