Welcome to this month's eLearning newsletter. Inside, you'll find out about your Spring/Summer Blackboard courses, grading tips, a faculty spotlight on the Power of Padlet, an introduction to our "Did You Know" series, suggestions for creating mid-semester surveys, upcoming professional development opportunities to maximize your tech skills, and an invitation for you to reach out to your eLearning liaisons to provide consultations and support.
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Spring/Summer Blackboard Courses
Beginning March 10, 2025, Spring/Summer Blackboard courses will become available to instructors. If you don't see your spring/summer courses on Blackboard, please contact your departmental coordinator to assign you as the instructor of record in Banner. Student enrollments will begin three weeks before the course start date in Banner (April 14 for most course sites).
As you start thinking about your Spring/Summer courses, you may want to take advantage of the following common requests:
- Merge Course Request. Use this request to combine two or more sites into one parent site.
- Follow these instructions for copying content from an Ultra course to another Ultra course.
- Course Restore Request. Use this to restore a course from Blackboard archives that is no longer available online in Blackboard. Faculty have access to their Blackboard courses for two years and one semester in their list of courses. We retain three years beyond that in our archive.
Use this request to schedule a consultation with your eLearning Technologies liaison for assistance with Blackboard.
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Grading Tips
It's that time in the semester when grading piles up, so we've updated our Service Portal to make it easier to find Blackboard grading resources. Check out this Knowledge Base article, where we've organized key grading tips into categories based on the most-used functions to help streamline your work. Your eLearning liaisons are also happy to schedule a consultation to help check your Gradebook setup and provide guidance.
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Faculty Spotlight - the Power of Padlet
Fabio Espitia, Modern Languages & Literatures, Spanish
Padlet is a virtual bulletin board that allows users to add colors, GIFs, web links, documents, videos, and comments with ease. It's perfect for group work, ice breakers, resource sharing, social annotations, video discussions and more! Hear from Fabio Espitia on how he has been using Padlet for over 10 years and has embraced all the latest features to support student learning.
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Introducing "Did You Know?" – a new addition to our eLearning newsletter!
Each month, we'll share quick tips, feature updates, and time-saving tricks to help you stay ahead of evolving technology changes. Whether it's a new Blackboard feature, an improved workflow, or a hidden gem you might have missed, we've got you covered. This month includes three tips related to grading.
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Did You Know that you can create a comment library for grading? Blackboard Annotate lets you save a library of reusable comments and feedback that can be inserted directly into a student's submission. The comments are stored in Blackboard and are connected to your account so that they can easily be utilized across all your courses while grading! See this resource to learn more.
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Did You Know that you can personalize your grading with audio or video feedback? Blackboard also provides auto-captioning to increase accessibility for students.
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Did You Know you can filter essay questions in your tests for faster grading? If you are grading assessments with essay questions, use the "needs grading" filter to filter out automatically graded questions.
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Design Improvement for Blackboard Rubrics: Pop-Out Window
Beginning March 7, 2025, Blackboard rubrics will pop out in a separate window. This update makes navigating and grading student submissions easier by providing a more comprehensive view of the rubric. Popping out the rubric lets instructors view the student submission and the rubric side-by-side for a more efficient grading experience.
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The Message Manager Folder
You may have noticed a folder in your Blackboard courses that is only visible to instructors, labeled "Message Manager." Developed by the Provost's office Rapid Response Team in conjunction with advising, FTLC, and other faculty and staff, the folder contains a collection of communication suggestions from faculty to students and was inspired by focus groups and interviews conducted with instructors of first-year courses during Winter 2023. This folder provides sample starting points for a variety of styles and incidents.
These templates are not required but are suggestions for faculty looking for ideas. You will find placeholders for students, professors, class names, and office hours that can be customized to fit your course. The Mental Health Communications Toolkit is also available in this folder. Select the month, pick a topic, and copy, paste, and support!
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Technologies and Approaches to Support Mid-Semester Feedback
As students return from spring break refreshed and ready to focus on the remainder of the semester, it's a great time to gather their feedback. Collecting student input allows instructors to fine-tune their teaching, adjust assignments, and ensure everything is on track before the semester ends.
See our list of technologies that can support mid-semester feedback.
- Blackboard Forms: In the Ultra experience, forms have replaced the previous Blackboard surveys, making anonymous submissions possible. To enable this feature, set a due date for the form. For detailed instructions on creating a Blackboard form, refer to this resource.
- Google Forms: Google Forms is a free and user-friendly tool for creating surveys and questionnaires. You can make a form, share it with your students, and collect responses anonymously. Google Forms allows you to export the results to analyze the data. If you don't have a faculty Google account, see this resource for requesting a GVSU Google account.
- Microsoft Forms: Like Google Forms, Microsoft Forms is free to use with our GVSU Microsoft license, allowing you to create surveys and quizzes. You can create anonymous forms, share them with students, and export the data for analysis.
- Paper Surveys: While not digital, paper surveys can still be effective if you teach in person. You can distribute printed surveys to your students and collect them physically.
- Blackboard Journals: Journals are personal spaces for students to communicate privately with the instructor. Students can also use journals as a self-reflective tool. They can post their opinions, ideas, and concerns about the course or discuss and analyze course-related materials.
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Other Professional Development Opportunities Discover a month of engaging and interactive webinars to support your teaching and professional growth. All registrations are managed through Workday Learning. Visit our eLearning Webinar website or scan the list below to explore the upcoming schedule of offerings and get quick access to the registration link in Workday Learning!
In this session, you'll be introduced to the nationally recognized standards for online/hybrid courses. In addition to an overview of each of the eight standards, we'll discuss the QM rubric, what informs it, its value, and how to take the next step toward validating the quality of your online courses and recognizing where you can make improvements.
3/12/25 • 11am – 12pm
During this webinar, participants will learn how to activate their Padlet account and how it can be used for brainstorming, storyboarding, collecting resources (such as images, attachments, hyperlinks, recording videos/audio), gathering group work results, and much more!
3/12/25 • 11am – 12pm
Join us for an insightful seminar designed to empower faculty with the tools and strategies needed to effectively evaluate course level student performance outcomes using Blackboard and EAC's assessment and accreditation solution.
3/17/25 • 12pm – 1pm
In this webinar, we will walk through how you can convert one of your existing assignments into a project that will help your students develop their media creation skills. There are many different methods that you could use, from Panopto assignments to having your students create TikToks for class. Importantly, we will cover different assessment categories that you should consider when developing a rubric for a project of this nature.
3/18/25 • 11am – 12pm
Students need to develop creative, innovative thinking for today's jobs, and instructors can build this into their courses for any subject content. Help students apply their learning with real-world scenarios and authentic assessments and encourage innovative thinking while aligning them to your learning outcomes. This webinar will share many examples, tech tools, and engaging options to try in your courses.
3/25/25 • 1pm – 2pm
Microsoft Efficiencies Series
Learn how to maximize the planning and task-management tools offered in Microsoft 365.
3/12/25 • 1pm – 2pm
3/26/25 • 1pm – 2pm
3/19/25 • 1pm – 2:30pm
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Connect with eLearning!
There are many benefits to working with eLearning. We can assist in optimizing Blackboard course structure, enhancing online and hybrid learning experiences, and incorporating innovative tools to foster active learning. You are encouraged to contact your eLearning Technologies liaisons or submit a consultation ticket at your convenience.
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Sincerely,
Kim Kenward, Director of eLearning Technologies
kenwardk@gvsu.edu
GVSU Information Technology
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