There are a number of "need to know" items that will help you efficiently use the WCLN resources for your students. Let's start with these
FAQ's (click question to jump to answer):
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How to: Navigate in Brightspace?
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How to: Grade Student work?
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How to: Proctor Remote Tests?
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How to: Communicate with Students or Parents (Progress Reports)?
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How to: Use Groups to for Multiple Classes?
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How to: Add Discussion Forums?
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How to: Hide Units You're Not Using?
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How to: Keep Track of Student Progress?
How to: Navigate in Brightspace?
Let's start by making sure we recognize the main Navigation features in Brightspace.
How to: Grade Student Work?
Eventually you'll get some submissions within your Brightspace course. Here's some general directions to get you to the grading areas.
At this point, you're in the grading area and your process for grading from here will depend on the settings for the assignments; rubrics, quick marking, essay marking, file mark-ups, etc...
How to: Proctor Remote Tests?
Proctoring a test remotely can have challenges. Below is a tested approach that works quite well:
These procedures are based on.
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- The teacher has Zoom Pro (for extra time and numbers).
- You've scheduled your students into exam times.
- You've sent your students to the video/checklist so they're ready
(WCLN.ca > Student Support > Preparing for a Remote Exam)
Test Time:
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- As students arrive, I enter their course(s) and change the passwords to something simple.
- As they go into tests, I change passwords back to default.
- Give them a bit of time to settle, then start dropping into breakout rooms, checking-in.
How to: Communicate with Students or Parents?
Communicating with students is a key part of remote learning.
Your district or school may have standard ways to communicate with students and/or parents.
Messaging in D2L is email based, meaning that the messages aren't stored within the site. Therefore, you might wish to get good at organizing your emails so you can keep track of communications (eg. folder for each course) .
One excellent tool for communication within Brightspace is the "Intelligent Agents."
Intelligent Agents
How to: Use "Sections" for Multiple Classes?
The "Section" feature in Brightspace is pretty handy if you have multiple blocks of a course and/or have two (or more) teachers sharing a course. Note: if you're used to using Moodle, you might want to make a "group" but a "group" has a different purpose in Brightspace.
How to: Add Discussion Forums?
If you are in a scheduled (classroom or blended) setting, you'll find that discussion forums are fantastic ways to get students "talking."
Classroom teachers are often surprised by how comfortable students are within a discussion forum, not realizing how natural this form of communication is for digital natives.
Quiet students (who often avoid class discussions) will start to thoughtfully express themselves in a forum settings. Small groups of extroverts no longer dominate the conversations.
How to: Hide Unused Sections?
If you are only using parts of a particular course, you may wish to hide the other parts to make it easy to navigate for students.
Some teachers prefer to keep the unused units visible for students to review other areas of the course when needed.
Your strategy depends on your students and how you present. You can change your mind at any point.
How to: Keep Track of Student Progress?
There are a number of useful tools in Brightspace for keeping track of your students' progress within a course.