Center for Teaching & Learning

Ally assists instructors in building a more inclusive learning environment and improving the overall student experience by assessing the level of accessibility of all instructor-uploaded content in Brightspace. Ally also provides guidance and tips for lasting improvements to content accessibility. In addition, Ally generates alternate formats to Brightspace course documents to meet different learner needs, abilities, and preferences. 

Do you have a question about your teaching or students’ learning that you would like to investigate but are unsure of how to approach the research? Rest assured, you are not alone. Faculty members come to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) from diverse disciplines with disparate kinds of research training. Therefore, many aspiring SoTL researchers are unfamiliar with the educational research methods that are available to them to help answer their questions about teaching and learning. This session will provide an overview of the most common methodologies both quantitative and qualitative. Anyone interested in learning more about educational research methods that can be used to answer pressing questions about teaching and learning is encouraged to attend.

This workshop provides an overview of strategies for grading student work and providing feedback. We’ll demonstrate tools to provide students feedback (inline grading, audio/video, rubrics),  different grading workflows, including Quick Eval, and a snapshot of Brightspace’s automated feedback tool – Intelligent Agents. We’ll also show how students can find their grades and feedback. Please note, if you are interested in learning how to set up your Grade Book, please view “Brightspace Grades.”

In Brightspace, the Quiz tool is used for both quizzes and tests.  In this session we’ll show the workflow for creating quizzes, including:

Creating questions and question types
Creating a question library
Building a Quiz
Grading a Quiz
Quiz statistics and logs

This one-hour workshop explores how faculty can use Brightspace to support an equitable learning environment. The workshop offers course design recommendations and connects Brightspace tools to these four equity-minded principles: 

Fostering Student Sense of Belonging  
Creating Course Structure  
Supporting Student Executive Functioning 
Building Relationships 

In seeking to document student learning, we often default to pre/post tests and surveys. These survey instruments can be challenging to design, to administer, and to interpret. Moreover, they do not necessarily provide us with a window into students’ experiences and may not be ‘true’ to our discipline. An alternative strategy is to approach regular course assessments as opportunities to examine student thinking and learning in our courses. In this workshop, we will explore the potential of using an evaluation mindset to create assignments for SoTL research. This is an opportunity to consider your efforts to improve student learning in the context of research on your teaching, examining outcomes and success in student learning that aligns with your course learning objectives.

Ally assists instructors in building a more inclusive learning environment and improving the overall student experience by assessing the level of accessibility of all instructor-uploaded content in Brightspace. Ally also provides guidance and tips for lasting improvements to content accessibility. In addition, Ally generates alternate formats to Brightspace course documents to meet different learner needs, abilities, and preferences. 

Curious about teaching, and looking for a low-key way to connect with colleagues? Join us for puzzles and podcasts! Today's podcast will be “Unpacking Resilience and Grief” an episode of Teaching in Higher Education that will focus on creating space and supports for grief and struggle among colleagues.

During this workshop, we’ll explore how you can use Release Conditions to create a custom learning path for your course materials in Brightspace. We’ll introduce Intelligent Agents, which can automatically send emails to students who meet course criteria you specify. Finally, we’ll share examples of how you can use Release Conditions and Intelligent Agents together to further customize learning paths and enable timely student communication.

In this workshop we will help you reflect on your teaching and share current research on teaching practices such as Kuh’s High Impact Practices and Universal Design for Learning.

**This workshop is a requirement of the Graduate Teaching Program**

Ally assists instructors in building a more inclusive learning environment and improving the overall student experience by assessing the level of accessibility of all instructor-uploaded content in Brightspace. Ally also provides guidance and tips for lasting improvements to content accessibility. In addition, Ally generates alternate formats to Brightspace course documents to meet different learner needs, abilities, and preferences. 

This workshop provides an overview of strategies for grading student work and providing feedback. We’ll demonstrate tools to provide students feedback (inline grading, audio/video, rubrics),  different grading workflows, including Quick Eval, and a snapshot of Brightspace’s automated feedback tool – Intelligent Agents. We’ll also show how students can find their grades and feedback. Please note, if you are interested in learning how to set up your Grade Book, please view “Brightspace Grades.”

In this session we’ll focus on:

Creating and previewing Assignment (individual and group)
Settings and connecting Assignments to Grades
Editing and reordering Assignments
Evaluating student submissions (including annotations and rubrics)
Using the Submission Log for tracking student work