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Brightspace Update: Introducing “Daylight”

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Starting the first week of August, you’ll notice a new look and feel for Brightspace. Your common workflows and the way you use Brightspace tools aren’t changing, but you will notice some positive interface changes. These changes are designed to make the experience more consistent and visually appealing for students.

Examples of Brightspace’s new Daylight Experience user interface as seen on a laptop, a tablet, and a phone. The new course tiles help to visually organize the ‘courses’ page.

Examples of Brightspace’s new Daylight Experience user interface as seen on a laptop, a tablet, and a phone. The new course tiles help to visually organize the ‘courses’ page.

The new look includes a cleaner interface, new fonts and updated icons.

The new user interface, called Daylight, was built with a responsive design. This means that it adapts to different screen sizes and looks great on laptops, tablets and smartphones so that Brightspace is more accessible on more devices.
Some of the changes include:
• Simplified navigation design that is responsive for smaller devices
• Wider page layout for your content so that it’s the focal point of the page
• New fonts, icons, colours and simpler formatting of widgets provide a consistent experience
• Responsive homepage layout that works best with two columns
• New ‘My Courses’ widget featuring rich photography in a responsive, tile-based layout
• New image library with over 3,000 images that you can choose from for new course tilesFaculty and  instructors can continue to develop courses for fall 2017 — no action is needed. Summer courses that are currently in progress will see the new interface when it goes live. The Brightspace tools will automatically adjust to the new layout when it goes live in August.

⇒Technical questions? Contact Academic Technology Services (ATS) in the Dalhousie Libraries: intech@dal.ca or at (902)494-3456.

⇒Other questions? Contact Marc Comeau, Director of Academic Technology Services, marc.comeau@dal.ca

Changes Regarding the Harvard Business Review License

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The Harvard Business Review (HBR) has recently made changes to its licensing provisions, which affect links to the material in Brightspace. Previously, our license with HBR stated that we could not include materials from their database in Brightspace or any learning management system (LMS), but we could provide permalinks to HBR content in the LMS. This has recently changed and our subscription with HBR now requires that we refrain from linking to any HBR content in either Brightspace or on course syllabi.

We ask that all faculty and instructors review their Brighstpace course spaces and syllabi and remove any permalinks to HBR material, and also that they refrain from including any in the future.

To use HBR material in a course, provide the citation to the material without the permalink. Students will be able to search for and access the material from the Library’s main page: https://libraries.dal.ca/  HBR can be accessed by searching for “Harvard Business Review” in the e-journals tab on the Libraries home page and then supplying the appropriate citation information (date, volume number, issue, and start page). Students can visit any library service point or contact the libraries (see https://libraries.dal.ca/help/ask-us.html) for help on searching for and accessing the articles.

We understand the frustration this may cause you and your students, but we appreciate your understanding and assistance in this matter. Failure to remove permalinks to HBR content from Brightspace and syllabi (and to abide by the terms of our license agreement generally) can result in all Dalhousie faculty, staff, and students losing access to this resource.

If you have any questions about this change, or about options regarding the use of HBR materials in your classes, please do not hesitate to contact the Copyright Office at Copyright.Office@Dal.ca or 902-494-2003. We want to thank you again for your understanding, and for helping to foster sustainable copying practices at Dalhousie.

Senate would like to hear from you about technology enabled learning

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Forum: The Future of Dal’s Technology Enabled Learning Environment,
Presented by University Librarian Donna Bourne-Tyson and Executive Director of the Centre for Learning & Teaching, Brad Wuetherick
Thursday, December 8: 3–5 p.m.
Room 170 CHEB & Room 254 Haley Institute, Extended Learning

Register to attend

While technology can greatly enhance teaching and learning, it can also make it challenging for faculty, students and staff to create an excellent teaching and learning environment.  Senate is hosting an event that will provide information about the current state of technology-enabled teaching and learning at Dalhousie and give you the opportunity to discuss your views of its future at Dalhousie.

Watch the video below (8 min) to learn more about what Dal is doing now. The video will also provide you with an overview of nine questions which will be the focus of the discussion on Dec. 8. Cookies and beverages will be available. Door prizes awarded.

 

Brightspace Community Fora

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Brightspace Community Fora (Studley, Sexton, & Carleton Campuses)

As part of the Brightspace implementation, you are invited to attend a Community Forum to hear about new e-Learning tools coming soon, see a demonstration of a sample course and explore some more advanced uses of Brightspace.

Agenda:

  • Welcome and information on upcoming e-Learning tools at Dalhousie
  • Brightspace demo
  • Advanced uses of Brightspace
  • Question and answer period

Studley Campus 
Monday, April 25
1–2:30 p.m.
Kenneth Rowe Building, Room 1016

To register: https://register-eod.dal.ca/workshop.php?id=1504

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Sexton Campus 
Tuesday, April 26
1–2:30 p.m.
A.L. MacDonald (D) Building, Room D501

To register: https://register-eod.dal.ca/workshop.php?id=1505

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Carleton Campus 
Monday, May 2
2–3:30 p.m.
Tupper Building, Room 3H1

To register: https://register-eod.dal.ca/workshop.php?id=1506

 

Brightspace Community Forum (Agricultural Campus)

As participants of the Brightspace Implementation Pilot Project, we welcome you to attend a Community Forum to share feedback on your overall experience. This information will be invaluable for the remainder of the Implementation for other participants, and in ensuring our support focus is appropriately aligned in the coming months.

Agenda

  1. Welcome and thank you
  2. Moderated discussion to reflect on the implementation experience
  3. Update on e-Learning (Educational Technologies?) at Dalhousie
  4. Advancing the use of Brightspace
  5. Question and answer period

Agricultural Campus  
Friday, April 29
10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.
Haley Institute, Room 116

To register: https://register-eod.dal.ca/workshop.php?id=1507

Staff profile: Mike Duggan, Faculty Support Specialist

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Mike Duggan

Mike started working at the Dal Libraries in October 2015 as part of the Library Information Technology Services team. Before coming to Dal, he worked at BlackBerry for six and-a-half years in the role of social media technical support.

Mike is a Faculty Support Specialist and he was hired to assist faculty and staff during the migration from Blackboard to Brightspace. Faculty and staff can call, email, or put in a ticket to receive one-on-one support for issues with Blackboard or Brightspace during this transition.

Common questions that Mike gets are about course space, Grade Center, how to use groups, how to use tools (such as ePortfolios), and general technical inquiries.

In addition to supporting faculty one-on-one, Mike has been instrumental in building self-help tools that allow faculty and staff to learn independently about Brightspace.

Some of the self-help tools Mike has developed include:

How to set up assignments
Discussions
Groups
Grade Center
Quizzes
Overall Course Management

Mike’s next project is to build self-help resources/tools for students. He will also soon be involved in delivering training sessions for faculty and staff. “Since being with the Instructional Tech team, I’ve met a lot of great people. It has been a great experience so far and I love coming to work every day!”said Mike.

Best Practices Prior to the Retirement of BbLearn

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As we prepare for the retirement of BbLearn on July 31, 2016, it is important to keep in mind that some course components will not be accessible once BbLearn is retired. Instructors must consider whether these components are of value to them, and if so, are responsible for ensuring that they retain copies in their own records. This archival activity is a useful practice to undertake at the end of each term.

Only course content, materials and blank activity placeholders are migrated into Brightspace. No student-generated submissions, interactions, or external tools are migrated. For example:

  • Assignment submissions and feedback: While blank assignment dropboxes do migrate, previous student submissions to those dropboxes cannot be migrated. If you wish to keep a copy of previous student submissions, you must export them from BbLearn – this can be done in bulk. If you used the inline annotation feature in BbLearn and wish to keep a copy of the annotated version, you must export the marked-up files individually.
  • Discussion board postings: only empty discussion forums will be migrated to Brightspace. If you wish to keep the contents of a discussion forum/thread, you must export those into PDF format.
  • Test/Quiz submissions and statistics: only the tests/quizzes themselves are migrated to Brightspace, ready to be re-offered. The student submissions and associated statistics from prior offerings are not migrated.
  • Grades: only empty gradebook columns are migrated to Brightspace, with no individual values or feedback. You are able to export your entire gradebook, including feedback, into Excel format for safekeeping.
  • Blogs, Journals, Wikis: the contents of Blackboard Blogs, Journals or Wikis do not migrate to Brightspace. CampusPack is integrated into Brightspace and provides a more powerful Blog, Journal, Wiki and Podcast tool. If you used CampusPack with Blackboard, the content is still available but it will need to be re-linked.
  • Blackboard Collaborate recordings: links to archived Blackboard Collaborate recordings will not migrate to Brightspace and alternative methods of access will need to be discussed. Please contact us for more details.
  • Other external tools: integrations with other external tools, such as textbooks and publishers, among others, will need to be re-created in Brightspace. Please contact us for more details.
  • Files: file content does migrate to Brightspace and an archive of file content will be centrally maintained. However, it is recommended that instructors maintain their own copy of files outside of the LMS for safekeeping and backup purposes. We also recommend that files from previous terms be removed from the LMS and stored in another location, such as OneDrive.

If you would like assistance or advice on any of the above, or are concerned about any other aspect of the migration and what does or does not transfer, please get in touch with the Instructional Tech team via email to intech@dal.ca or phone 902-494-3456.

Copyright Messaging in Brightspace: a note for instructors

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By: John Yolkowski, Copyright Services Coordinator, Dalhousie Libraries

As Dalhousie makes the migration to Brightspace, the new Learning Management System (LMS), instructors will notice some changes and new features. For instance, when you first log into Brightspace you will be presented with this pop-up notice:

pop up notice

In order to gain access to Brightspace, you will need to click “I confirm,” to confirm that you are aware of your copyright responsibilities. This pop-up message will appear each term as a reminder about copyright.

Instructors share in the responsibility to ensure the materials you have uploaded into your course space are copyright compliant. This means you have the permission of the copyright holder to upload the item, or you are making content available under an exemption in the Copyright Act, like Fair Dealing (see our Fair Dealing Guidelines here).

If you are unsure about whether your course is copyright compliant, Dalhousie Libraries’ Copyright Office has tools to help you:

  • As well, we also provide a Copyright Course Review Service on request, where Copyright Office staff will review your course space for copyright concerns, and provide suggestions/clearances for material that may be infringing.

If you have any questions about copyright and your course-space, this pop-up window, or would like to take advantage of our course review service, please contact us at Copyright.Office@Dal.ca or 902-494-4346. Thank you again for playing your part in ensuring sustainable and ethical copying practices at Dalhousie.

Copyright and Brightspace

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By: John Yolkowski, Copyright Services Coordinator
Dalhousie Libraries

CpoyrightVideo
As an instructor of a specific course-space in Brightspace, you will need to ensure that the materials and readings you are loading into Brightspace are copyright compliant. When you first login into Brightspace, you will be prompted to answer a question about this.

So, what does this mean? How do you know if your material is copyright compliant?

At Dalhousie we have created short video tutorial which can help answer these questions. It explains Dalhousie’s Fair Dealing Guidelines, licenses and where to go for additional help in addressing copyright questions.

You can watch the video here: http://libcasts.library.dal.ca/Copyright_and_Brightspace/

Thank you for playing your part in helping to foster ethical and sustainable copyright practices here at Dalhousie!

Understanding the migration process

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By: Brian Lesser,
Instructional Technology Architect & Applications Administrator for Library Information Technology Services (LITS), Dalhousie Libraries


At this point in the project, we’ve had a chance to refine our migration processes and thought it would be helpful to describe the process so that instructors have an idea of what to expect as the migration unfolds across the institution in phase 3.

All courses taught in the Spring/Summer 2016 term and onwards will be taught in Brightspace, regardless of Faculty or Department. Upcoming academic course spaces will be developed automatically in Brightspace a few months before the start of each term. All upcoming ‘academic’ course spaces are created as blank spaces, and instructors are able to build from scratch in these spaces if they choose.

There is also the option for instructors to copy content that has been migrated from Blackboard. If an instructor has taught the same course recently on Blackboard, that content will be made available in a separate ‘migrated’ course space for review. If the instructor wishes, they are able to copy some, all, or none of the migrated content directly into their ‘academic’ space. The instructor could also choose to maintain the migrated course space as reference for the next 12 months as they build anew in Brightspace.

The first step in our migration process is for the migration team to take a snapshot of the content of each course to be migrated from Blackboard for each term. These snapshots, or packages, are then transferred to Brightspace to be imported into a ‘migrated’ course space. The behind-the-scenes import process is mostly automated and the content transfers over well, however, student employees still access every migrated course in Brightspace to check for accuracy and consistency.

After the migrated content has been verified, it is returned to the original instructor for their reference or potential reuse. There will be some delay between when the course becomes unavailable on Blackboard as the snapshot is taken, and when access to the content is available for the instructor in Brightspace. We are continually improving our processes to minimize this delay, but in all cases we will ensure that instructors have access to their content a minimum of 3 months prior to the start of the upcoming term.

When choosing which courses to migrate automatically, we are referring to the academic timetable to determine when a course was last taught in Blackboard and whether it will be offered by the same instructor in Brightspace. We will also be able to migrate courses on request if a course is not taught every year or if an instructor normally teaches a course but will not be teaching it this year and wants their content migrated for reference or future reuse. If an instructor wishes to share their content with an instructor teaching an upcoming offering, please notify intech@dal.ca, with authorization to release the content, so that we can include the course in the bulk migration.

An important note to consider in the migration is that no user or student generated material is brought into Brightspace. For example, the migration process will not include past grades, discussion postings, assignment submissions, quiz statistics, usage reports, etc. These items must be archived separately and maintained by the individual instructor, if desired. Instructions on how to archive this user/student material will be communicated shortly.

Best Practices when Using Homepages in your Brightspace course

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By: Adrienne Sehatzadeh, Instructional Designer
Centre for Learning and Teaching

The homepage is the first impression of your course that students have, so you want to make sure it is practical, functional and easy to navigate.

The standard default course homepage is intentionally very basic with and only contains two widgets – News and Updates. You can create new homepages to reflect the way you teach or the kind of engagement with the space you would like students to have.

One way to manage the number of widgets (or placeholders) on your homepage, especially for online courses, is to have a homepage for the first week of the course which would contain instructor information and perhaps welcome video, course video tour and links to syllabus and other important information that students must access in the first week. (Most of this important information will also be available to students when they click into the course content.)

This short two-minute video might help you generate ideas on how best to build out your homepages for your courses.

Please contact one of the Instructional Designers at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at http://www.dal.ca/dept/clt/e-learning.html if you would like to consult on how best to do this. You can contact intech@dal.ca for training on how to set up your homepage(s)

To access other video resources and training materials, go to dal.ca/elearning and click on the link to training resources.

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