Category Archives: Teaching

assessment, Teaching, tutorial, Uncategorized

Brightspace: Advanced Assessments

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Previously Titled: New Feature in Brightspace: Graders and Grade Release Permissions

 

Step by Step Advance Assessments

Create an assignment in Brightspace

Go to the Evaluations & Feedback side panel and expand it to see the options.

visual of side panels associated with assignements

expanded evaluation & feedback vidual

These options, depending on what you pick, reveal additional options.

Click on Select Evaluators (you can choose from the people enrolled in your course with a grading permissions role.)

picture of the select evaluators area of brightspace

Choose how evaluations will process with multiple evaluators.  You can choose between:

  • All evaluators work on the same evaluation together. Publishers release this evaluation to learners.
  • Evaluators work on their own evaluations separately. Publishers aggregate results into one final evaluation and release it to learners.

screenshot of the stated evaluation options

IF you have multiple evaluators: Allocate Evaluators to Learners (select which graders will grade which students)

 

the pull down menu lets you choose from

  • Allocate all evaluators to every learner
  • Randomly allocate 1 evaluator to every learner evenly

screenshot of the allocation methods

You can manually finese these generic selections by using the Evaluator Allocations options area and checking or unchecking students for a given evaluator.

If you have new students come in to the course, Brightspace will follow the automatic allocation method you picked for the new learner enrollments.

Choose publishers:

screenshot of the select publishers area

 

Important: It’s best to configure these settings when creating your assignment. If that’s not possible, make any necessary adjustments before receiving submissions. Once a student has been graded, these settings become locked and cannot be changed. Additionally, if submissions exist but no students have been graded, removing all evaluators will permanently disable advanced assessment features. This means grading will revert to the standard assignment process as it existed before these features were introduced to Brightspace.

 

 

notebooklm icon to indicate chat featureChat with my Advanced Assessments NotebookLM about this subject if you have any questions. You must use your SBU gmail to use this feature. (I am learning how to do this and may need to add each person who wants to use this chat. Feel free to reach out with a request if that turns out to be the case.)

 

Deep Dive by NotebookLM: Listen to the Audio here.

 

assessment, Teaching

Brightspace had a conference: Fusion Highlights and Followup

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Highlights:

  • Achievement Plus Product Tour, September 10, 3-3:45pm EST (register here)
information, Teaching

Brightspace March updates

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As with the February Brightspace release, the March 2024 release is also on the smaller side, however, I did want to highlight 2 of the items in the update here. This release is scheduled to be deployed on the evening of March 14th, 2024. The full release notes can be found here: https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/25427-march-2024-20-24-3

The two features highlighted in this email do not require any updates to permissions or enabling of variables.

Brightspace Editor – Consistent link creation with the ability to choose link format:

 

Inserting a link into the Brightspace Editor opens the Add Link dialog, allowing users to determine if their links open in a new window (default) or in the current window, as well as to add text to their link. This provides users with a consistent workflow and control over how links respond in their content.

Add Link opens when inserting links with the context menu or with the keyboard shortcut ctrl+K or command+K:

Additionally, the dialog includes a new Insert Quicklink option, allowing for users to insert a Quicklink:

[Note: a quicklink is a link to another location in your course and it will not break if you copy it forward to other courses.]

The same Link, Text, and Open In options are displayed whether adding a Link or Quicklink, which helps ensure a consistent link creation workflow:

Finally – this feature updates the icons shown in the Insert Quicklink menu so that they all have the same visual style.

In summary, previously, adding links had different field options and behaviors based on how the link was being added to the course. This updates makes the adding link menus consistent across all areas where this can be done.

I encourage you to read the full release notes for this specific update, located here: https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/25427-march-2024-20-24-3#brightspace-editor-consistent-link-creation-with-the-ability-to-choose-link-format-updated

Quizzes – Improved experience for generating quiz reports:

This release introduces a better experience for instructors when running and exporting quiz reports with large amounts of data:


  1.  As an instructor, select a Quiz inManage Quizzes> Statistics.
  2. Select one of the tabs on the top of the page:3. After selecting the desired tab, click either Export option (CSV or Excel)

Upon doing this, a new window appears with a message indicating that the report is being generated:

4. When the report is done being generated, users will be alerted via the Bell icon. Clicking the alert will bring them to the screen to download the report.

Previously, clicking either export button would open a new window and depending on the size of the report, it could hang, freeze or even time-out altogether. This new method of report generation prevents this from happening.

A note about Brightspace updates:

Brightspace uses a Continuous Delivery model for monthly updates and SUNY is part of “Wave 3” on the update schedule. Please see this Wave Schedule for the date range of when an update will be deployed: https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/1048-wave-schedule. Current, past and future release notes can also be located in the sidebar of this page.

assessment, Teaching, tutorial

Open Workshops for polling/clickers today

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Echo360 (which bought Turning Technologies) will be on campus today (9/12/23) to run two workshops and to assist walkup students with their clickers/mobile licenses.  Workshops are in the Faculty Center in the Melville Library 10-11 and 3-4 (beginner and advanced).  Students should go  to the SINC site for the walk up assistance.

 

Teaching, tutorial

Brightspace – Managing Restrictions in Discussions with Groups

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If you want to have discussion boards used in  your class, and also use groups in such a way that members of different groups do not see each others posts… rather they only see the posts from their own group in the discussion board – these are the steps you follow.

Please note that these are steps that should be taken before the discussion board has any posts.

Go to Groups:

Set up your Groups, by creating a Group Category:  I used the # of groups “Enrollment Type” option.

Click Save.

Go to Discussions:

*This assumes you already have the discussion boards in place.*

Use the drop down to the right of the Topic name to “Edit Topic”.

Go to “Availability Dates & Conditions” on the right hand part of the screen.

Click on “Manage Restrictions”.

Select “Restrict Topic and Separate Threads” Users in the selected groups/sections can view this topic but will only see threads from their group/section.

It is possible to have multiple Group Categories and Course sections to chose from.   You will probably have only one Group Category.

Click Add.  Click Save and Close.

 

You should now see under the topic name an indication that Group/section restrictions have been applied.

 

 

 

 

adaptive learning, Teaching

ALEKS (McGraw Hill) added to Brightspace.

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As you know, many items can be added to the basic Brightspace experience.  For a full list of the current “add ons” – you can look here: https://it.stonybrook.edu/help/kb/brightspace-add-onsltis

ALEKS is a product made by McGraw Hill “ALEKS is a research-based, online learning program that offers course products for Math, Chemistry, Statistics, and more. Rooted in 20 years of research and analytics, ALEKS is a proven, online learning platform that helps educators and parents understand each student’s knowledge and learning progress in depth, and provides the individual support required for every student to achieve mastery.” Right now it is being used in some Chemistry classes here at SBU.

Any additional instructors interested in using this should feel free to reach out and let us know so that we may turn it on for your course.

To locate these tools inside of Brightspace, you would go to Content, find or create the module that you want your link to appear within, and then go to Existing Activities search through the list to see if what you are looking for is there and if not, click on External Learning Tools for access the more items.  Make sure to click on the link to the tool after creating it to assure that it is fully configured for your class.

 

 

Teaching, tests, tutorial, Uncategorized

Need to regrade a finished quiz?

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If you realized after the fact that a quiz/exam assessment had an error – just fixing the question will let you know that it will only affect future users who take the exam.  You should still correct it there, but in order to regrade, we need to do something else.

Go to the Exams/Quizzes area.  Find the assessment that had the problem.  Click on the dropdown menu to the right of the name of the assessment.  Click on Grade.

 

 

 

Now click on Questions

Check the radio button for Update all attempts.  Find the Question that had an issue.

Clicking on the question will give you a break down of how it was answered and shows what was graded as correct.

Here you can choose whether to give every one points, or just give points to the people who answers in the desired manner.

Click Save.

 

accessibility, assessment, grades, Teaching

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

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”

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

Teaching

Shhh! (instructors can use Chat GPT too – don’t tell anyone – top secret)

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Me: write a multiple choice question about glaciation

GPT:  What is the process of large ice sheets moving across the land and shaping the Earth’s surface through erosion and deposition? A) Volcanism B) Tectonic activity C) Glaciation D) Weathering and erosion.

Me: How could we use bloom’s taxonomy to improve that question?

GPT: To use Bloom’s Taxonomy to improve the question, it could be rephrased to encourage higher order thinking skills. For example:

“How does the process of glaciation shape the Earth’s surface, and what is the evidence for this process? Analyze and evaluate the impact of glaciation on various landforms.”

This revised question now requires the examination and evaluation of the concept of glaciation, rather than simply recalling information.