There are many ways to incorporate your unique teaching style into your D2L Brightspace courses. Understanding different elements of the tools you know and love will empower you to bring your course to the next level and save you time along the way.
This blog outlines simple tips and tricks to make your online teaching memorable for all learners from our success experts.
Content and Organization Features
D2L Brightspace provides a simple structure for organizing content through modules and categories.
Modules: Organize course content like folders on a computer by time frame (e.g., Week 1), by topic (e.g., Cellular Biology), or by course components (e.g., Final Project). You can also pace your course at a granular level using Manage Dates of Bulk Edit and set dates for your submodules to be released.
Categories: Organize your assignments into categories to make it easier for users to navigate. While modules are used for organization in content, categories can be created in assignments, quizzes, and grades to organize items. Grouping items into categories makes it easy for learners to follow along and provides unique features, such as dropping the lowest grades in a Grade Category.
Assignments and Evaluation Tools
Everything you need to create and edit an assignment, including viewing submissions, associating assignments to rubrics, and providing detailed feedback, can be done on a single screen when creating your assignment.
When it comes time to mark, Quick Eval is the one-stop-shop grading solution. This tool helps you view and sort submissions that are awaiting evaluation. Submissions made to assignments, quizzes, and discussions are displayed in a sortable list and can be selected to take you directly to their assessment page. Once you complete an evaluation, publish your feedback, or save it as a draft, you can return to the Quick Eval list to continue evaluating.
It’s a good idea to use D2L Brightspace’s gradebook to help organize your grades. The Grade Setup Wizard helps customize the behavior of a course gradebook. It’s also a secure way to provide grade information to students.
Engagement Options
D2L connects instructors and learners with Brightspace Pulse, which helps students receive critical course notifications, understand what’s going on across all their courses, unify their calendars, and see their grades. In one simple app, students can look at their courses and have what they need to manage their study time, priorities, and workload.
Another way to engage students is through Intelligent Agents. This feature sends an automated email when instructor-defined criteria are met. Instructors can set Intelligent Agents to run automatically and manually. For example, this feature can be used to email students who have not logged in recently, whose grades have fallen below a certain level, or who have viewed (or not viewed) specific topics in Content.
Finally, video is a hallmark of engaging online experiences. Video Note in the Brightspace Editor can be used to record video using your computer’s webcam and instantly publish it in your D2L Brightspace course. This visual and auditory format is an excellent way to create a more personal touch, explain complex concepts, and answer students’ questions. With recordings up to 30 minutes in length and with automatic closed captioning, creating content has never been easier. Use Video Notes in announcements, instructions, assignment feedback, and anywhere else you can Insert Stuff.
D2L Brightspace has a variety of different content, evaluation, and engagement tools to help you incorporate your unique teaching style in your courses.
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