Resource Library
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The Ultimate Guide to Instructional Design
Our experts break down what instructional design is, what instructional designers do and share tips for creating engaging, inclusive educational content that learners will love.
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9 Things to Consider Before Making an LMS Switch
About the eBook Your LMS functions as the heart of your academic institution—it not only hosts and manages learning material, but also helps students to successfully hit learning outcomes. However,…
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SNHU turns student data into student success
How SNHU Turns Student Data Into Student Success Ensuring student success has become one of the biggest challenges for colleges and universities. With the adoption of education technology, higher education…
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Make Data-Driven Decisions with D2L Brightspace
Now more than ever, instructors need easy-to-action, on-time information that supports student growth without breaking the bank. Get ready to move beyond the limitations of a learning management system (LMS)…
Latest Resources
7 Benefits of Video-Based Assessment
How do you give relevant, timely feedback on student presentations when your class is entirely online? One professor came up with an answer.
How to Step up Your Engagement Game with Gamification
Learn how to gamify your learning materials & how it can help you take student engagement to the next level.
Making high education affordable to all with new pilot program
The average cost of a private, non-profit four-year university degree is $31,231 across the U.S., while the cost for a public four-year school hovers around $10,000 per year, according to the College Board. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York puts student debt at more than $1.3 trillion, meaning it has reached a crisis level. University can be a prohibitively expensive proposition for some people. Many lower-income students often find themselves working part- or full-time in order to raise sufficient funds, or they face other barriers to entry, such as lengthy commute times because they have to live at home. This demands flexibility of their schedules, which offline courses are often unable to offer. In all, this is creating a system that is inaccessible to many who have a desire to learn, says Dr. Jodi Henderson-Ross, Assistant Professor of instruction at the University of Akron. While online learning has often been hailed as a solution to some of these challenges, there remains a stigma associated with the space. “Rightly or wrongly, there’s an assumption that online learning isn’t as academically rigorous,” she says. Against this backdrop, the University of Akron wanted to change that.
RIT’s student base created a unique need for highly accessible software
Making content accessible is always important to teachers, but for Sandra Connelly, an assistant professor of Life Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), accessibility can take on different meanings. For one student, it meant literally being able to access the material. With videos being hosted on YouTube, he was unable to view them being based in China. This presented an interesting problem: while she’d been steadily moving her class material online, how would students, who have restrictions on materials, regardless of their location, be able to access everything?
Smith School of Business re-engaged faculty & cut back on administrative burden
When it came to their learning management system, the IT staff at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business used to spend much of their energy just keeping the lights on. The Business School used an LMS built in-house, and it simply sucked up too much time, says Troy St. John, associate director of IT for learning technology and application development. When the school switched to Brightspace, it was like a weight had been lifted. “The custom solution we had in place required a ton of resources dedicated to keeping it up and running,” he says. “We didn’t get a lot of time to add new or innovative things professors asked for. So they kind of stopped asking.” Brightspace’s Valence API gave the IT team a new digital sandbox, allowing them to build cool and useful tools against the existing technology. “Our program offers a really high-touch level of service to students,” he says. “And now, these new tools let us – and our faculty – deepen that commitment.”
Universal Design for Learning is a Philosophy—Not a Practice
Think UDL is just about accommodation and means more work for educators? Think again.
Success with district-wide digital learning initiative
In a recent survey by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 93% of teachers responded that they now use some type of digital technology to teach. Teachers are increasingly experimenting with digital technologies as a way to enable learning strategies, such as adaptive learning, and are engaging with students online to assign web-based projects, provide feedback, and offer interventions. Gwinnett County Public Schools is a school district operating in Gwinnett County, Georgia. The largest school district in Georgia, with 134 schools serving more than 176,000 students, Gwinnett County Public Schools embarked several years ago on an ambitious digital learning initiative to transform instruction and learning inside and outside of its classrooms through blended learning.
Using Brightspace to implement a unique CBE experience
In November 2009, President Obama launched the Educate to Innovate initiative to move American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade. Recognizing that great teaching is part of any child’s success, President Obama also issued a challenge to the nation to recruit and prepare more than 100,000 new teachers over the next decade.
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