The University Counseling Center is excited to announce that it has partnered with Togetherall to provide a new mental health resource to Grand Valley students. Togetherall is an online community where students can anonymously share feelings and receive help from peers and licensed mental health professionals twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Togetherall can be accessed from Blackboard under the Assist area, as well as from the University Counseling Center website.
In addition to mental health discussion forums, students can:
Express their feelings through art
Learn symptom management skills
Take a mental health screener
Keep an online journal
Togetherall will expand access to mental health support and complement existing clinical and community health services provided by the Center. A brief video outlining all that Togetherall has to offer can be found here. We hope that you will share this resource with the students that you teach, mentor, and supervise.
Additional tools are available to faculty and staff as they support student wellness, including student mental health. We encourage you to download the GV Mental Health app, designed to assist those navigating a student mental health concern or crisis. We also encourage you to become a nationally recognized QPR Suicide Prevention Gatekeeper and familiarize yourself with the wealth of self-help materials available to students on the University Counseling Center website.
Frequent New Semester Requests
For those of you preparing to work on your winter Blackboard courses, we would like to highlight a few frequent requests that you can submit for assistance via our service portal.
Course Restore Request (Use this to restore a course from Blackboard archives that is no longer available online in Blackboard)
Adding a User Request (Use this to request a user be added as a teaching assistant, course builder, etc)
Merge Course Request (Use this request to combine two or more sites into one parent site)
Gearing-up for Blackboard Ultra Training
Winter semester 2023 is all about getting you ready to use Blackboard Ultra courses for our launch in Spring/Summer and Fall 2023. Our Blackboard Ultra training comes in a variety of formats to meet everyone's scheduling needs. Lunch-and-learns are quick 20 minute sessions offered around the noon hour. For those with larger blocks of free time, course build-a-thons provide a deeper 2–3 hour dive into getting your course converted and ready for Blackboard Ultra.
Training opportunities for Winter 2023 are posted on our eLearning website and if our scheduled times don't work, your eLearning liaisons are happy to offer a specialized version of any training option for your departments or units. We can even accommodate evenings and weekends so that part-time faculty can join. In short: we are willing to schedule what works best for your departments but we just want to get you to Blackboard Ultra training!
We have a few sessions scheduled before the new semester, in case you would like a sneak peek before we spend all 2023 on Blackboard Ultra Course training.
The eLearning team will be hosting virtual office hours on Thursday, January 5 from 1pm – 4pm and Friday, January 6 from 9am – 12pm to help faculty prior to the new semester. Sign-up for a 30-minute slot and a member from eLearning will send you a personal zoom meeting invitation.
Schedule Time with Your eLearning Technologies Team Member
Anytime throughout the semester, you're welcome to schedule time with our team. Our eLearning Technologies team includes instructional designers, instructional technology project specialists, digital media developers, system analysts, and graduate assistants dedicated to digital learning. Find your assigned eLearning Technologies team members on our eLearning Technologies Support by Colleges website. Feel free to reach out via email or phone, and you can also submit a request in our Service Portal to schedule a consultation.
May your fall semesters end well, your holidays be restful, and your teaching be continually rewarding.
Sincerely,
Kim Kenward Director of eLearning Technologies GVSU Information Technology
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