Welcome to our October newsletter! Inside, you'll find tips for creating mid-semester surveys to gather valuable feedback, reminders of our favorite grading strategies, an exciting new feature enhancement for compiling course activity logs, an invitation to attend the Innovation Open House scheduled for 10/29, reminders about requesting Blackboard templates for curriculum planning and suggestions for upcoming professional development opportunities to help you continue growing your skills and knowledge.
In this newsletter:
| |
|
Technologies and Approaches to Support Mid-Semester Feedback
Collecting student feedback midway through the course is an excellent way for instructors to fine-tune their teaching, tweak assignments, and ensure everything is on track before the course ends. It also shows students that their input matters and that you're genuinely invested in their learning. To simplify this process, we've gathered some handy tools and strategies to help you gather mid-semester feedback.
Do you need some sample questions or approaches to use for your mid-semester survey? The Pew Faculty Teaching & Learning Center has compiled a variety of feedback-gathering methods that can be modified to meet your needs.
Start-Stop-Continue Survey
Consider using the Start-Stop-Continue survey to gather student feedback on what the instructor should start, stop, and continue doing to enhance the learning experience. You can also ask students to reflect on their actions and identify what they should start, stop, and continue doing to take greater ownership of their learning.
Technologies that Support Anonymous 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 a free tool with our GVSU Microsoft license for creating 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.
| |
Grading Tips
It's worth repeating, so here's a link to last month's newsletter with grading tips. In addition, see this article, where we've compiled some of our favorite Blackboard grading tips in our Service Portal for additional assistance to help streamline your grading workflow.
Remember, we also offer drop-in hours every Wednesday from 12pm – 12:30pm via Zoom. Join us at this Zoom link or schedule a consultation with your eLearning liaison. They are happy to review grading workflows and your Gradebook setup.
| |
November's Blackboard Enhancements
The November 8, 2024 update to Blackboard will include the ability to download your student activity logs in your Blackboard course as a CSV file. Reviewing student activity helps inform decisions in academic disputes and can help you identify students at risk. Here's a reminder on the various reports available in your Blackboard course.
- Activity and Grade Scatter Plot: A scatter plot of your course activity and grades.
- Activity Matrix: This report compares each student's number of submissions to the average across all students in that course. The report includes a graph of submission trends over the entire term, the number of submissions, the average number of submissions in the course, the days since the student's last submission, and the previous submission type.
- Course Submission Summary Report: Submission information for each student, including assignments, tests, surveys, graded discussions, and journals.
| |
Benefits to Requesting Template Courses in Blackboard
Many faculty members requested Blackboard Ultra templates for curriculum development during our migration to Blackboard Ultra. We also encourage departments to consider using template courses to help their part-time faculty. Shared course templates promote instructional consistency and help facilitate smooth transitions during instructor changes. Course coordinators with the course leader role can add/remove part-time faculty as needed. Additionally, since templates aren't tied to a specific semester, they remain available for ongoing use and won't be archived after a particular term.
If you'd like to request a Blackboard template, use this request form in our Service Portal. The form also allows you to specify who needs access to the template so they can easily copy the content into their Blackboard courses.
Contact your eLearning liaisons if you need assistance requesting or developing course templates.
| |
Innovation Open House Scheduled 10/29
You are cordially invited to the Innovation OPEN House, hosted by the IT Innovation + Research team.
- When: Tuesday, October 29, from 2:30pm – 4:30pm
- Where: the futureEDlab in Zumberge 3015.
Join us for an exciting afternoon exploring cutting-edge projects and transformative technologies that are shaping the future of higher education. This event will showcase extended reality-based (virtual, augmented, and mixed reality) interactive demonstrations, discussions with colleagues, and opportunities for collaboration across disciplines.
Your insights and expertise are invaluable to driving innovation forward, and we look forward to discussing how we can collaborate. Light refreshments will be available.
| |
Upcoming Professional Development
Registration for our professional development offerings is now conducted through Workday Learning instead of Sprout. The learning app is available in Workday, and our webinars can be easily viewed from our eLearning Webinars website.
After signing up, please allow up to 15 minutes to receive the Outlook calendar invitation, which will include the Zoom meeting link. Departments can also request that these webinar topics be customized and scheduled at their convenience. See our 2024 Fall Webinar flyer for more information.
11/6/24 • 1pm – 2pm
11/7/24 • 11am – 12:15pm
11/7/24 • 1pm – 2:30
11/12/24 • 11am – 12:15
11/14/24 • 12pm – 1pm
11/17/24 • 11am – 12:30pm
11/21/24 • 1pm – 2pm
| |
Sincerely,
Kim Kenward, Director of eLearning Technologies
kenwardk@gvsu.edu
GVSU Information Technology
| |
|
| podcast by Jamison Wieser from Noun Project / Question by Adrien Coquet from Noun Project / feedback by Vectorstall from Noun Project / moving by Adrien Coquet from Noun Project / door open by shashank singh from Noun Project / wellness by Adrien Coquet from Noun Project / reminder by conchan from Noun Project / explain by Iconographer from Noun Project / Six by Adrien Coquet from Noun Project / Tour by Colourcreatype from Noun Project / key by Aaron K. Kim from Noun Project / closed by Gregor Cresnar from Noun Project / cleaning by Nubaia Karim Barsha from Noun Project / new by jiskan427 from Noun Project / leaf by Deepz from Noun Project / foundation by M. Oki Orlando from Noun Project / working together by Khoirin from Noun Project / Accessibility by mikicon from Noun Project / Toolbox by Danil Polshin from Noun Project / startup by Gregor Cresnar from Noun Project / Training by Adrien Coquet by Noun Project / origami paper bird by farra nugraha from Noun Project / Suitcase by Asiah from Noun Project
| |
|
|
