The Department of Justice issued a final rule on digital accessibility that requires all course content to be accessible by April 24, 2026.

To help faculty meet this deadline, YSU Online, ITL, and IT Training Services are hosting Digital Accessibility Collaborative Work Days this month. Join us to get hands-on support updating course materials and ensuring your content meets accessibility standards. Attend any session in person or remotely.

Create an AI Conversations around a topic or scenario to engage your students. AI Conversations include Socratic questioning and role-play exercises. Students can converse with the feature and reflect on their own thoughts or role-play a situation related to their career path.

Discover how Ally for Blackboard can help you to work toward accessible and inclusive course content. This session will show you how to read accessibility scores, use the Course Accessibility Report, and apply quick fixes to common issues. You’ll also see how Ally empowers students with alternative file formats to fit their learning needs. 

Seeing Is Learning: How Visual Design Improves Engagement and Retention explores how thoughtful visual design can significantly enhance the effectiveness of online courses. This webinar will examine how visuals influence learner attention, comprehension, and memory in digital learning environments. Participants will learn practical design principles that help reduce cognitive overload and increase learner engagement. Please bring your own device for the hands-on portions.

Did you know you can provide audio and video feedback to your students within Blackboard? Using video feedback can build connection with your students because it can be more personable.

Watch this short video to see how it works:

New to Blackboard? Not so new, but want a refresher on the basics? You can enroll in Youngstown State Online's Blackboard Training course! The course walks you through the basics and provides links for resources to dive deeper!

This course is designed to help YSU faculty prepare to develop and teach online courses. Successful completion means that you meet the training requirements for developing and teaching an online course at YSU. Enrollment is not limited to those who are new to the online experience or those who haven't met the training requirement. You are encouraged to sign up as a refresher or as an opportunity to engage in discussions about best practices in the online environment.

Carol Dweck’s research about mindsets shows that our beliefs about our intelligence can influence how we approach challenges and academic achievement. With a fixed mindset, we believe our intelligence is static and cannot be developed, so we tend to avoid challenges. With a growth mindset, we believe our intelligence is dynamic and can be developed and view challenges as opportunities. Dweck notes, “the type of praise adults use with kids can shape their mindsets.”

Learn more with these two articles! The first one briefly introduces the research and its findings and the second one dives deeper.

Mindsets: How to Motivate Students (and Yourself)

Academic Tenacity: Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning

Have questions about Blackboard or course design? We're here to help!

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