Making Your Course Available to Students

Making your course available thumbnailEach semester, Brightspace course sites must be activated as all courses are set to “inactive” to prevent students from seeing unused course spaces. Where possible, instructors are encouraged to leave their course start date as is (the default start date) to allow students to see introductory content, such as a welcome announcement and the syllabus. Otherwise, instructors are encouraged to delay commencing significant course activity until the semester begins.

Making Your Course Available to Students [PDF]

Adding Users to Your Course in Brightspace

Link to PDFStudents are added to courses automatically in Brightspace, based on their course registrations. While Instructors do not have to worry about adding students to their courses, they will need to add other instructors, lab instructors and/or teaching assistants to their courses. We recommend searching for users to add based on the user’s NetID.

Adding Users to a Brightspace Course [PDF]

Please note it is NOT possible to unenroll a user from your course. If it is necessary to remove a user from your course, please contact ETD at etd@dal.ca.

Adding/Editing Restrictions Dates, and Manage Dates

Link to PDFAssociating dates with content release is a very effective tool for instructors to manage pace and minimize content overload for students. Release Conditions for a module are grouped with date restrictions, but they can also be applied to assessment items such as quizzes, assignments, and surveys. The advantage of adding a release conditions is that they allow students to access specific materials based on criteria that is not related to date. The manage dates tool gives instructors the ability to efficiently bulk edit and offset the date restrictions of each aspect of their course, such as discussion topics, assessments, announcements, and modules. This tool also gives instructors the option to edit the start and end dates of the course. This is very useful for instructors who wish to give students early or prolonged access to the course materials before the course has started or after the course has finished.

Adding/Editing Restrictions Dates, and Manage Dates [PDF]

Importing Content

Link to PDFEach semester, the course created for the current academic year will be empty. Each instructor can choose how much material to import from a previous offering into the current course space. It is always possible to start from scratch, building a course with updated material. If you did not teach the previous offering of a course and you wish to import this content, you will require permission from the previous instructor to gain access to the old course, as well as any content within it.

Importing Content [PDF]

Ouriginal – Plagiarism detection (formerly Urkund)

Urkund, now known as Ouriginal, is a software platform that integrates with Brightspace for the purpose of verifying the originality of student submitted assignments. Operationally, there aren’t a lot of differences and the name change is reflected in most places within Brightspace.  

From the company’s website, “Ouriginal brings together the combined expertise of Urkund and PlagScan’s plagiarism detection solution, that combines text-matching with writing-style analysis to promote academic integrity and help prevent plagiarism.” Their Quick Start Guide (https://www.ouriginal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Guide-to-the-Analysis-Report_EN.pdf) provides a detailed, step-by-step overview of their improved and modernized interface. At this time, it is still possible to toggle back to Urkund’s report interface.  

After being integrated with a course and connected to assignment dropboxes, Ouriginal works by immediately searching for matches in a student’s submission with the internet, journal publications, assignments submitted by other Dalhousie students, and Ouriginal’s global database of student submissions. Depending on the size of the submission, reports are typically generated within 30 minutes. 

Ouriginal/Urkund can be enabled for any Assignment in a Brightspace course, and reports are generated automatically for any submissions. For information on setting up Ouriginal in Brightspace, visit this post on our blog https://edtechtruro.edublogs.org/2021/08/20/adding-ouriginal-to-your-brightspace-course/. 

Best Practices for Using Ouriginal 

  1. Remind students that their work will be submitted for originality review
    The Faculty of Agriculture’s Syllabus template includes specific language to be included advising students that “all assignments may be submitted to Dalhousie’s current plagiarism detection software”. Please ensure that this language, in its entirety is included in your Syllabus if Ouriginal will be used for student submissions. 
  2. Reiterate the importance of academic integrity
    Including Ouriginal in your teaching provides an opportunity to discuss academic integrity and intellectual property with students. It’s easy to assume that students grasp the significance of academic integrity, but the reality is that they may not have a complete understanding of what constitutes academic integrity. Be clear about your expectations for original work. 
  3. Consider introducing Ouriginal with a low-stakes assessment
    Consider offering a short introductory assignment enabling Ouriginal on this so that both you and the students become familiar with the tool. You can also turn on the setting that allows students to view the Similarity Report for the work they’ve submitted. This setting is off by default, but enabling it can give students a closer look at which skills to focus on. 
  4. Supplement the use of Ouriginal with the resources available from Dalhousie
    The Faculty of Agriculture Brightspace homepage has a widget available that outlines the role students play in academic integrity. Ensure this widget is included on your course’s homepage as it includes links to central resources and additional information. 
  5. Provide Additional Information
    Include Ouriginal’s Student Guide (https://www.ouriginal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/D2L-Student-Guide_EN.pdf) as a link in your course. 
  6. Remember –
    Ouriginal is a tool that helps identify issues with academic integrity, but it does not replace instructor intuition. It is possible for Ouriginal to miss instances of blatant plagiarism (false negative), and it’s also possible for a submission to be flagged as problematic when it shouldn’t be (false positive). Instructors should still complete their own analysis to verify integrity, while assessing the submission. 

 

 

Brightspace Rubric Tool

Link to PDFRubrics are a useful tool instructors can use to define their expectations for students and can be used in providing feedback. The Brightspace Rubrics tool makes it easy for instructors to integrate rubrics into their online or blended courses. The following instructions will cover creating new rubrics and adding rubrics to an assignment or a discussion in Brightspace. A document on viewing rubrics for students has also been included. It is recommended that instructors intending to use rubrics circulate this document to their students.

Brightspace Rubric Tool [PDF]

Viewing Rubrics for Students [PDF]