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
Equal learning opportunity for all
Increasing accessibility for students within a post-secondary learning environment is an ongoing challenge for the thousands of colleges located in the US. To varying degrees, educational institutions are seeking to improve and enhance campus facilities, services and courseware to be more fully accessible to people with disabilities as well as address all cognitive learning styles. Inver Hills Community College, part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System (MnSCU), is an educational institution at the forefront of improving accessibility for its students. The college’s charge, for more than forty years, has been to improve its community by providing higher education for a variety of learners. With more than 70% of students from underrepresented populations and 20% first generation college students,[1] Inver Hills Community College strongly believes that fulfilling this principle means making education accessible to all.
The great zombie collaboration
It started as a joke. Professors from the virtual campus at HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, were brainstorming creative ideas for new interdisciplinary courses when someone said, “It’s not like we could do a zombie course.” Or could they? It was the ideal subject for studying from a wide range of perspectives—in fact, there were so many possibilities for collaboration that the course grew to include eight faculty members across five disciplines and seven different specialties. “Zombies in Contemporary Culture” was born, a groundbreaking experiment in academic teamwork made possible by blended learning.
Early identification of at-risk students improves retention rates
La Cité, a French-language college of applied arts and technology, has embarked on an ambitious multi-year program to improve student retention through the earlier identification of students at risk. Ninety percent of La Cité teacher-student interactions continue to happen face-to-face, so the program puts the emphasis on instructor observation within the classroom and qualitative feedback provided to students through the learning management system (LMS). The approach is not only proving to identify at risk students sooner—it is creating a cultural shift within La Cité’s faculty ranks, with instructor focus moving away from just teaching “material” to teaching “students.”
Engaging every learner
Each year, 2,100 students enroll in Dr. Jaclyn Broadbent’s first-year blended Health Behaviour class. It’s a daunting number for any professor—but Dr. Broadbent of Deakin University in Australia, isn’t just any lecturer. Although her students come from four different campuses and represent varying backgrounds and skill sets, she’s determined to get through to each and every one.
To set itself apart, a community college creates a different kind of MOOC
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are valued for their ability to reach an international audience through the web and blend traditional educational tools, such as videos, with open forums for discussion to create rich academic communities. As of early 2013, the only MOOCs offered in Canada were typically at the university level. They were theory-based and led by academics. Could a community college compete? Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, wanted to be the first to find out.
Going beyond compliance to emphasize accessibility in the learning experience
Serving more than 1.3 million college-age residents across five counties, Portland Community College (PCC) is Oregon’s largest multi-campus higher education institution. It is divided into four comprehensive campuses, seven centers, and dozens of independent locations throughout the community.
Brightspace helped Oral Roberts University improve retention.
Oral Roberts University (ORU)—located in Tulsa, Oklahoma—is an interdenominational Christian liberal arts university founded in 1963 by evangelist Oral Roberts. ORU was founded to educate the whole person: mind, body, and spirit. A comprehensive university dedicated to student outcomes, ORU offers more than 65 undergraduate majors as well as 14 masters-level programs and two doctoral degrees. The Tulsa campus is home to students from all 50 U.S. states and 83 countries. Faculty members educated at the nation’s top graduate schools serve as academic, professional, and spiritual mentors to this diverse student population.
A flexible learning platform gives all students access to enriched resources
The only downside of teachers at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) loving their new Web 2.0 tools was that they loved a very wide variety of them. They all had different usernames, passwords, and URLs. While the Board used a standardized blogging platform built in-house, they were also branching out in different areas to use different Learning Management System (LMS) tools. That meant they were unable to support one another and, since they were being hosted in a variety of spaces, it was next to impossible for the Board to provide guidance.
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