Different audiences, Different Needs, One Brightspace

Presenters name goes here

Different Audiences, Different Needs,One Brightspace.

Carrie Galsworthy & Morgan BartlettConestoga College

Overview

Conestoga College uses Brightspace to provide a consistent user experience for learners:• Minimum Standards for content• Instructional Plan for schedule

Other features of Brightspace streamline communication:• Master Courses for multiple section delivery• Program Areas for centralized communication

This presentation examines what works and proposes how we will leverage other Brightspace tools to manage challenges in the process.

Needs Analysis

• Create a consistent learning experience

• Place the focus on learner needs

• Meet requirements of AODA for service and information

• Emphasize ease of use for faculty

Learner-centered

• Presentation of material should not be the cause of challenges for the learner or distract from the learning

• Design needs to stay out of the way

• Learners should not have to think about finding content

Dorian Peters, Interface Design for Learning: Design Strategies for Learning Experiences, 2014.

Minimum Standards

• Every course in a full-time program must have a presence on Brightspace

• Faculty must meet a set of established Minimum Standards with respect to content

• Faculty now have guidelines to create a consistent modular framework

…to organization that is meaningful and helpful to students

From this…

Benefits for Students

• Students can easily access content • Prior to class to prepare• After class for review• Due to missed class

• Students know where to look for content, assignments and grades in all courses

• Students have access to all assignment instructions and rubrics in order to manage time

• Students have easy access to grades and even get notified when they are posted

Benefits for Faculty

• Faculty can easily upload/download content from anywhere

• No need to carry handouts• Meet the requirement for alternate delivery format

• Faculty have a centralized place to communicate with students and provide important due dates

• Faculty have a centralized place to enter grades

• Faculty have evidence of meeting program requirements as well as the needs for accreditation

Benefits for Staff

• Educational Assistants and Learning Strategists can easily access course material in order to help students with accessibility accommodations or learning disabilities

• Peer tutors, library staff, Accessibility Services staff, and Learning Commons staff are better able to help students

• Staff can collect evidence for program audits and accreditation as needed

Instructional Plan

• Every section of every course on Brightspace must have an Instructional Plan

• Each Instructional Plan must have the same information

• The document must be AODA-compliant

• Course and faculty information

• Program and course notes

• Assignment and Evaluation Summary

• Course learning outcomes• Key concepts• Required preparation• Assessments

Solution: a template in Shared Files

Benefits for Students

• Concrete dates provided for each assessment

• Course learning outcomes provided

• Consistency of document eliminates need to interpret the information from instructor to instructor

Benefits for Faculty

• Encourages collaboration among sections of the same course

• Standard template to fill in

• One document to update on Brightspace and take advantage of the notification feature of HTML Files

Benefits for Staff

• Concrete dates provided for each assessment

• Course learning outcomes provided

• Consistency of document eliminates need to interpret the information from instructor to instructor

Master Courses

Faculty leads are encouraged to create master courses in Brightspace to organize and share content, rubrics, and grade settings for courses with multiple sections

• Helps faculty who are hired last minute as they start with a complete course

• Teaching notes can be included as a reference• Ensures that students in all sections are getting

the same user experience including content and evaluations

Other faculty are given “Copy Access” to master courses so they can copy content but not edit it.

Program Areas

A program can create an area on Brightspace for information that is shared by all courses

• Shared content

• Shared communication

Key Lessons

• Master courses set up by tech-savvy faculty have been generally successful since other faculty teaching the course start out with the proper framework and organized content

• Not all faculty feel comfortable with – or have the time to dedicate to – creating their own framework to meet minimum standards

• Conestoga needs a solution where the framework is created for them to ensure that consistent standards can be easily applied

Learning Repository

• The issue discovered with regards to using a template for the instructional plan can be remedied by using the Learning Repository

• A master “template” course can be set up that already has the modular framework created. Faculty will be able to copy this course to get started

• The master course will be populated with College-related content that will be linked to the Learning Repository. Faculty can choose what objects are relevant to their course and we can update those objects as needed in the Learning Repository

Instead of creating a file, faculty choose:Add Object from LOR…

Then they search for “iplan”…

They choose Copy as Content…

The template is added to their course and ready to be filled in

Summary

Conestoga uses the following tools to improve the classroom experience:

• Modular Framework

• Templates

• Course Shells

• Learning Repository

Questions?