Category Archives: grades

assessment, grades, information, tutorial

Gradebook Quicktip

Leave a comment

If you are looking to work on your grades offline in excel, and you know you will want to create new columns that you want your students to see, create the columns first in Brightspace, and then export the file as a CSV.  Even though there is language in the process that suggests you can create columns offline, I do not suggest trying to do this.

To create a new column, go to Manage Grades -> New -Item.

Shows the dropdown menu to choose "Item"

If this column only needs to be seen by students, and will not interact with anything else in brightspace, I suggest choosing the Text option for the item type.

shows the list of item types with Text circled.

Text columns are only visible  to students if you have the setting “grade scheme symbol” checked in Grades -> Settings -> Org Unit Display Options -> Student View Display Options.

screen shot of Org Unit Display Options and the Grade scheme symbol

Conversely, if you don’t have this box checked, I guess you can use this column type to make notes about each student that you don’t want them to see? Like name pronunciations or pronoun notes.

 

 

accessibility, assessment, grades, Teaching

Roadmap for Voicethread. Some nice new features on the horizon:

Leave a comment

”

Image of a folded map with a VT logo superimposed

The arc of change in the teaching and learning universe may be long, but it bends towards a more accessible, equitable, inclusive, and human-centric world. We plan on shortening that arc just a little bit in the coming year by introducing the biggest updates to VoiceThread in more than a decade.

A “New VoiceThread” will be available in the coming months, and we’ll have lots of details to share, but what we really want to share now is our redesign philosophy:

  • Significantly more accessible

  • Add a number of pro features, but be simpler to use

  • Designed based on research and user feedback

  • Make it easier for people to have authentic, high-quality, human to human interaction

  • Give everyone time to try it out before fully transitioning to the new version

In addition to the new VoiceThread, we have lots of new goodies on the way:

  • New integrations for Zoom, Google, and Microsoft

  • New assignment type allowing students to comment on classmates’ submissions for a formal grade

  • More powerful closed caption preferences

  • Lots of new mobile updates

Thank you for all your feedback, collaboration, and enthusiasm throughout 2022. None of this work could be possible without you.

– The VoiceThread Team

assessment, grades, Teaching, troubleshooting

Have a used clicker?

Leave a comment

Some used clickers are coming from classroom kits where, because they are used differently than we do here at SBU, have had their clicker IDs changed and they no longer match the ID printed on the back on the device.  This will result in your course results not processing correctly.

To check to see if you device ID is set correctly…

 

press the wrench button
then the go right button twice
press the button under where it says OK
press under OK one more time
You should see Device ID: and whatever the device is set to will show here.
see if that matches what is on the back, printed on the clicker.

IF IT DOES NOT MATCH;  please email sliebschner@turningtechnologies.com   

After contacting Susan, follow her instructions to have this resolved.

 

 

 

 

grades, Teaching, tutorial

New Box View grading in blackboard

Video Leave a comment

Just change the ending to “if you have any questions, please feel free to contact CELT at 2-2777 or celt@stonybrook.edu”

If you want to be able to use these inline editing features, have your students submit MS Word .docx or .doc files.

grades, troubleshooting, tutorial

Oldie but goodie – scrollbars missing in Blackboard

Leave a comment

Let’s set the stage:

You are in your Blackboard grade center in your course.

There are plenty of columns, in fact you are pretty sure there are more than you can see at the moment.  But … there is the vertical scroll bar… and there, I’m pretty sure, is where  the horizontal scroll bar should be, but it is not.

Did I mention that you are on a Mac?  (I am too, no shame there.)

OK – this is a system setting on your Mac.  Go to the Apple menu.

Select “System Preferences…”

Now select General.

and finally, make sure “Show scroll bars:” is set to Always.

 

assessment, grades, Teaching, troubleshooting, tutorial

Missing Clicker Grade? Check this:

Leave a comment

I have written about this before, but the clicker looks different, so I thought it was worth going over again.

There are two different ways that a student can use a clicker to send information to the instructor.  The first is the normal use of the clicker in the classroom… the poll response.  When a student uses this, the screen looks like this,

And when the student answers, they get a confirmation that the answer was received, and as long as the poll was given some grade, they may also get points in their blackboard grade book.

The second thing that students can send with their clickers are Messages.  The student enters into this mode by pressing the wrench button on the clicker,

and then sending the message

The student also gets a happy confirmation that this has been sent.. and messages can only be sent when the polls are open. But there are no grades or points associated with this activity, and if they believe they have answered a poll, they will get a zero.

As the instructor, you can check to see if this is happening in your class by opening the TurningPoint 8 software, go to the Manage tab, select a session file and click on Reports.

If you, like me get this error – ignore it

just click ok

and use the pulldown to select the report type Session Log

 

If you see entries that look like:

“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: D”

You have students that think they are answering polls, but are really sending messages.  If you see things like:

“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: Can you talk more about Mitosis?”

You have students who are sending messages, thinking you will see them and respond.

If you would like to see messages during class – you can.

You can click on the button as seen above that looks like a comic dialog bubble..  and that brings up a chat area that looks like this:

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to either TLT @ tlt@stonybrook.edu or Turning Technologies at support@turningtechnologies.com

 

assessment, grades, Teaching, tests, troubleshooting

Clicker Version Alert

Leave a comment

Right now – SBU is using Turning Point Cloud for clickers in our classrooms.  As of tomorrow (May 31st), Turning Technologies will be releasing a new version of the software called Turning Point 8.  It will show up as a download from your instructor user account through Turning Technologies:

 

 

Turning Point 8 is NOT backwards compatible.  Any assessment and quizzes made with Turning Point 8 will NOT work in our classrooms and lecture halls.  (See above in the screen shot where it says “Before you download, please check with your institution…”)

The new version also will not be compatible with loading grades into blackboard until we decide to switch to the new version… so even if you only teach with your own laptop, you will not want to use anything but Turning Point Cloud at this time.

 

grades, pedagogy

Just so you know what we are sending…

Leave a comment

This letter went out to all SBU students that had previously registered clickers (and were registered for class in the Fall 14 semester) from within our Blackboard system:

Dear Student

As a previously registered clicker user you are receiving this code so that you can have a free Turning Account and ResponseWare license which will last without further payment for 4 years (48 months).

This license code is for you, do not share this with anyone else.

To Create an Account and Activate License:

Create an Account and Register Devices:
1. Log into https://blackboard.stonybrook.edu – go into any course, then Tools -> Turning Account Registration. You will be taken to the Turning Account Registration website.
2. Complete the necessary fields below Sign Up and click Create Account.
3. Complete additional information and click Save.
4. Sign in with Username and password.
5. Click License tab.
6. Click Purchase.
7. Enter 4SBU and submit.
8. Enter your license code: fakecode
9. Click Redeem.

Any questions can be directed to our Technical Support Team at support@turningtechnologies.com or 866.746.3015.

Detailed instructions are attached as well

assessment, grades, tutorial

Clicker registration changing

Leave a comment

This Fall, Turning Technologies is changing their software to a cloud based registration system.  This doesn’t change it’s functionality for it’s use in the classroom or class preparation, and the software is already available online here:

turningpoint cloud image

 

 

As an instructor, be sure to create a turning account that is an “Instructor” account.
We are still using Turningpoint 5 till the end of the Summer II session, and therefore do not have the new building block for the cloud version installed on Blackboard. (Getting a roster/uploading grades will not work in TurningPoint Cloud till the Fall semester.) Just tried – and you can get your roster from the new software with the current production server of Blackboard.

 

The only difference in functionality is that we are allowing the use of ResponseWare for iOS/Android/web. This will allow students to use their smart device or laptop instead of a physical clicker — if you allow it. There are things to consider beforehand; like whether you want them using their devices in the classroom, the fact that they can poll in from remote locations (with assistance from a student in the class feeding them info), possible saturation of our wireless infrastructure and possible lack of cell service penetration.

 

Call me if you have any questions and here is a video showing how to download the new software and create your cloud account:

 

grades, Teaching

Turningpoint Clicker grading issue

Leave a comment

Clickers are used to gain student involvement in even the largest classrooms. At Stony Brook University, a lot of our instructors will assign points to the students  whether they get the question right or not. Sometimes the same amount of points, sometimes not – and sometimes those grades make it to the grade book and sometimes, they only measure whether the students were responsive enough to merit attendance for the day.

So what does it mean if the results manager shows a 0 in the situation where the instructor gives points whether the students got the answers wrong or not? First, make sure that the instructor marked something as correct.  If most students have a grade of some sort – but one or two students have zeros across the board, this isn’t likely the issue. You can double check that something was marked as correct, by going to the Turningpoint Manage tab selecting a session, and clicking Edit Session.

example of the edit session window

example of the edit session window

In the above picture you can see that answer 1 is marked correct and that both incorrect and correct answers would get a value of 1. So this doesn’t account for the 0 in the results manager or grade book.

The next thing that could be wrong, could be that the student unwittingly was in “Send Message” mode, rather than just in the regular polling mode. To find out if this is the case, go to Manage tab, then while having a session highlighted, click the Reports button.

 

where to find the Session Log report

where to find the Session Log report

Then for the type of report, choose “Session Log.”  Here is where Turningpoint keeps messages that were sent to you when polls were open.  You can see below, someone did in fact send “Hi.”

Session Log from Turningpoint

Session Log from Turningpoint

However, you can also see that two students were sending in what they thought were answers to the polls.  If these students have zeros – you now know why.