Tag: Template

Posts related to the ETD Brightspace Template

Template Changes for Fall 2021

smantleBest Practice

Educational Technology & Design’s Brightspace templates, as defined in a previous blog post, are “visual and structural design guidelines that can help instructors organize courses and create consistency for students”. The templates were heavily used in the 2020-2021 academic year and appeared to have achieved the intended goals. To affirm this achievement and to inform our template revision process, ETD was keen to speak with students directly to hear what they had to say.  

The Faculty of Agriculture’s Winter 2021 templates were modified based on results from a (Faculty of Agriculture) student survey conducted in Fall 2020. The survey provided valuable feedback, but by engaging students in user testing, ETD would be able to obtain real-time feedback with the opportunity for both sides to ask questions. With the Assistant Dean, Students’ (Nancy McLean) assistance, an email was sent to students asking for participants. Three students were randomly selected from the respondents and in early July 2021, ETD ran three separate tests with students sharing their screens via Microsoft Teams as they navigated through a test course site in Brightspace.  

Screen shot of Test Site in Brightspace


The test course site (shown above) was a fictional but realistic blended-format Faculty of Agriculture course, and the scenario was Day 1 of classes. The students were asked to explore the course homepage, the course centre, and module 1 within the course, all while being encouraged to think out loud, sharing what they saw and how they felt.

Key takeaways from the user testing: 

  • All three students read the Announcement on the homepage and stated its importance; preferred a shorter announcement with visual cues (bullets, bold text) over a “wall of text”.
  • All three students appreciated a welcoming and short instructor bio with photo and detailed contact information on the homepage. 
  • After leaving the homepage, all three students looked for the Syllabus to either print or download. 
  • All three students appreciated the concise and consistent course navigation (shown below).

Thumbnail screen shot of the navigation in the test site
The key takeaways greatly confirmed our best practice recommendations and ETD will continue to encourage a thoughtful and welcoming, detailed but not wordy homepage, an easy to find Syllabus, and an organized and consistent layout. 

The design template is something to which we have a degree of control in Brightspace, and it was important to obtain feedback in this area. Template feedback was not unanimous, but the students agreed that visual interest, consistency, and introductory text was all helpful. 

Specific to the template, ETD made the following changes: 

  • Changing the “Course Centre” to “Syllabus and Course Centre”, to clearly communicate where the syllabus could be found.  
  • De-emphasize the Student Help Resources module, to include it in the “Syllabus and Course Centre” module but to designate the content links as “not required”. 
  • Streamline the colour progression in the submodule description areas, to minimize visual surprises.

Thumbnail of the two templates for Fall 2021 at the Faculty of Agriculture

This was an exciting project this summer for ETD, and the student feedback greatly helped to affirm our best practice recommendations and informed our decisions on the template modifications to focus on for Fall 2021. 

 

Updated ETD Winter Templates

smantleBrightspace

ETD’s Templates are visual and structural design guidelines that can help instructors organize and prepare courses for students, and have been specially developed by and for our campus. Prior to COVID, templates were used heavily in all online courses developed with the ETD unit, and have now been used successfully in many of our Fall 2020 courses. Beyond ‘colour boxes’ and structural consistency, the templates reached deeper into content pages and provided courses with their own unique, visual identity.

Streamlining our selection of templates was a strong initiative in the fall. Valuable student and instructor feedback gathered through surveys and through support requests helped ETD determine which changes were necessary in the deployment of three updated Winter templates.

Key changes made for Winter 2021 include:

Consistent and condensed suggested layout for Content
Students indicated confusion with different course layouts and designs. Our goal is to help inspire instructors to establish patterns early in how content is organized and articulate the instructor’s style of assessments and communication. The suggested layout won’t work for all courses, and is therefore fully adaptable.

Use of the Brightspace Calendar
Although use of the calendar tool was widespread in the fall, ETD is making a stronger effort to encourage its use this winter. Students reported relying on the calendar and found the courses that used this tool created far less stress. All that’s needed is to add start, end and/or due dates for all assessments and other critical dates or milestones within the course. We can help you with this, or show you how.

Encourage clearer language in Content links
Providing context by using descriptive titles (i.e. “6.2 Different Vertebrate Skulls [22:39 mins]”) when linking content is a simple but effective step that helps students prioritize, time manage, and gain a level of control in their learning. In this example, a student knows how much time they’ll need to view this lecture video and what topic will be discussed.

Link Assessments within Content
Assessments can always be found within their associated tool (i.e. Assessments/Quizzes), but when they are also linked within Content amongst related topics, students are more apt to find and engage with the assessment when they need it. Additionally, it can be helpful to link all Assessments within the Course Centre (as suggested in the Winter templates) to further reinforce their importance.

Create an Open Discussion for students to talk amongst themselves
Many students described feeling isolated from their classmates. One option ETD explored was to create a discussion forum where students were free to engage with each other and feel a sense of community.

Student Resources and Help module in content
Students expressed confusion with some of the features in Brightspace. ETD created additional Student Help Documents this semester to be included as part of the template package. This module includes links for IT and Brightspace student help, and Student Services and Mental Health links. Instructors can remove any documents they feel are unnecessary.

To provide instructors with additional explanation to our template thought process, ETD created three short videos linked inside each template. Linked in a hidden Information for Instructors module and also embedded in an Announcement (set to disappear prior to the start of classes), these videos provide helpful tips on using the template sites.

The videos can also be viewed using these links (Dal Login required):

Part 1 – https://dal.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=0f10fd96-c520-4b3c-9290-ac6b0120cda7

Part 2 – https://dal.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=8a513a0d-51e9-4634-a172-ac6b01224fe0

Part 3 – https://dal.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=05295312-fbec-4e5a-82a2-ac6b0123136c

To have a template added to your winter course, please contact etd@dal.ca. We can also set up your course structure and create placeholders for your content, if you attach a course outline.

Course Planning for the Winter 2021 Semester

smantleCourse Design & Delivery

Feedback from students during the Fall term has demonstrated that course planning/mapping is an essential step in preparing to offer a course online. Many instructors (and their students) benefitted significantly from taking the time, before beginning development, to map out how the course will be structured, how learning outcomes will be assessed, and what content & activities will guide student learning within each module/unit. By planning the contents of each unit or module, we can ensure that we are only including essential content and avoid overloading students with too many items to view or too many assessments to submit.

A Course Plan Template document (Course Plan Template) is one way to map out how you will organize your course and what resources you plan to include in each unit or module. This will help provide a clear picture of what the course will include from start to finish and will help simplify things when it comes time to create content. The first page of the template document provides an example of a completed plan for a module/unit and the subsequent pages have blank placeholders to fill in. You should feel free to use another template or method if you wish – this document is only one way of doing it.

Once you’ve created a course plan or updated course outline, the ETD office can assist in creating placeholders for your content within a Brightspace template. Email your documents to etd@dal.ca and we can help get your course space set up.