How to improve course accessibility with Blackboard Ally
Blackboard Ally is now available to UAF instructors. Here are the first steps you should take to make your online course more accessible.
Two ways to set up Blackboard Grade columns
When creating a total points or final grade column in Blackboard you have a couple of options for how the calculations are made. In the grade column options you may say Yes or No to Running total. This is where it gets tricky. If you say YES that means that the total...Blackboard Student View
It is helpful to be able to view your Blackboard course from the student perspective so that you can get a real feel for how a student interactions with your course. As a student you can submit assignments, post to the discussion forum, take quizzes and see how these...Improve your course with help from a review rubric
As a new semester approaches you should be thinking about making some improvements to your course. There are many review rubric resources available that will help prompt you into making revisions that will better support your students. This week’s tip will share information about some of these helpful resources.
Create mobile-friendly content
Instructors find that more students are using mobile devices to access course content. Following a few considerations for creating mobile-friendly content will not only benefit those who use their phone or tablet for reading, discussing and doing, but is good for universal design for all users.
Integrating science, math into arts, humanities courses
Adding transdisciplinary activities in your course may help engage and motivate students to be more successful. Making content relevant to a variety of discipline areas encourages students to be well-rounded and open to new ideas, skills they can take to any classroom and to the workplace. This week’s tip continues the discussion in considering a STEAM curriculum.
Blackboard Set Grade Center Due Dates
If you are reusing course content from one semester to the next, one of the more tedious clean up tasks you’ll need to do is to update assessment and assignment due dates. Students depend on due dates to keep on task and create some momentum towards completion...What is that Blackboard Support Question Mark?
Our version of Blackboard has an added feature for technical support called EesySoft. you may have noticed a blue-gray question mark that follows you in Blackboard as you move from screen to screen. When you hover of the icon, select the icon and a support page...Creating a communication plan for engaging students
The summer semester is short. Keeping students engaged and thinking about your course can be helped by creating a regular plan for communication at the beginning of the semester. In this Teaching Tip, we’ll discuss how to create a plan and provide considerations for using Blackboard Announcements to push your notifications out to students.
Using Google Forms for learning activities
Explore creating interactive learning activities using the branching and quizzing features in Google Forms. Build a learning activity that will guide students through content and direct them forward to new content or to alternative content to help with their...Blackboard Learn notification settings
Students and faculty alike, can change their preferred notification settings for receiving information from Blackboard classes. Currently you get notified in three areas: Blackboard Dashboard or your home page after logging into the Blackboard system Email Mobile app...Updates on Google Classroom
Google Classroom helps teacher integrate Google Apps into their classroom. The classroom has space for creating assignments, discussions, grading and feedback. This will be a brief overview of how Classroom might be used in your Classroom. To access Google Classroom,...Adding custom questions to Blue evaluation
Course evaluations will be available for student to complete about two weeks before the final day of instruction. This is your chance to get some really good feedback from your students about your course and your teaching methods. In this session we’ll look at...Student feedback
In this presentation we talked about strategies for giving feedback, identifying tools to support your efforts and what quality feedback might mean for you and for your students. Presentation slides and recording links provided.
Blackboard weight grades
The presentation: The recording (through Bb...Use infographics to build community and critical thinking
Use data from an introductory activity to create an infographic to share cohort information and build community in a course. This can show students how they might use infographics as a method to demonstrate critical thinking skills based on the results of their own research.
Blackboard eCampus Template Course Shell
UAF eCampus has created a Blackboard template that can be used as a starting place for those developing an online course. The template is based on best practices for higher education online students. The template navigation contains standard areas for...Introduction: Your Teaching Playlist
EPIC: Home Activities Discussion Builds Case Studies Resources Introduction: Your Playlist So often when we meet someone new we get to know them through credentials — where you’ve been, what you’ve done — and through network — who do you...Google Hangout and Hangouts Meet: Interface Challenge
...5. Interactivity: Group Work and Collaboration
EPIC: Home Activities Discussion Builds Case Studies Resources Collaboration and group work can provide opportunities to practice cooperation, role differentiation, empathy, leadership and communication skills. These kinds of activities come closer to real life work...Google Forms – collecting data
...Quality Matters – Get set up for Self-Review
...New Google Calendar Features
New Features more closely aligned with the IOS/Android apps side by side view new view options, including year view see details with one click menu icon (lasagne) toggles sidebar menu color palette responsive layout One-click view of event details including...Blackboard Grade Center: Column Management and Quick View
Sometimes when you look at the the Blackboard Grade Center, it can be hard to review what the overall picture looks like. You normally see only a few columns unless you have a huge monitor or keep scroll. There is a solution — Column Organization from the ...Blackboard: make course available
By default your Blackboard course is made unavailable until you are ready to turn it on. Most instructors make their courses available a day or two before the first day of classes or most definitely on the first day of classes. Here’s how to make your Blackboard...To total or not to total – Blackboard Grade Center
Every teacher has goals to be effective and efficient. Knowing more about the tools and features in Blackboard’s Grade Center can help you reach your potential. This week’s tip concentrates on different kinds of Total columns you might use in your course to organize and compute final grades. There is a lot of capability and might be the perfect feature for you to implement in your course.
Collaborative Tools for Students
Download Slide...Get students to give feedback beyond “good job”
Let’s not be satisfied with the “feedback sandwich approach” in course discussion. Providing guidance and setting expectations for what good discussion feedback looks like can help move students beyond giving comments that do not prompt further discussion, build on an argument or rethink one’s own stance.
Google Hangouts becomes Google Meet
In the next few weeks, some faculty may notice a switch from “Google Hangouts” to something called “Google Meet”. The two are nearly identical but the change in interface might be a little confusing, so we’ve summarized some of the changes to help you stay ahead of the game.
Blackboard adds new features
New features have been updated in Blackboard Learn relating to assignment submissions. Teachers and students are now able to add attachments via drag and drop. There are also new features that allow tracking of quiz attempts and assignment submissions. Read this week’s Teaching Tip to learn how the new features are giving both students and instructors more power in Blackboard Learn.