Self-explanatory Brightspace site

This article will show an example of how to organize your Brightspace site to be self-explanatory. 

Course: PPH10806 Structure and Function of Plants
Period: Period 5

Short introduction and background

Introduction and story behind the emergence of this learning activity. What was the need, what issue/problem was the teacher facing and wanted to resolve? 

Due to Corona, the course needed to be taught online overnight. We noticed that students needed to be informed even more explicitly than before on what they needed to do, how to do it and when to do it. 

This affected the structure and content of our Brightspace site. We made it as self-explanatory as possible and guided the students through the site by using many functionalities of Brightspace. 

Relevant tools / apps (software) or hardware used

Learning outcome(s)

What has been learned after this lesson/activity has been executed ?

n/a

Lesson idea / Learning activity

Specific description and demonstration of the lesson idea/learning activity.

We sent students a daily announcement to guide them through the course and inform them of what they could expect and needed to do and in what sequence (planning). We used links within the announcement which sent them directly to the particular part of the site or to an activity. In this way they knew exactly what to do to keep up with the course. See screenshots below for an example how this guiding took place. 

Lessons learned / Tips

Mentions tips lecturer has for colleagues based on their experience.

First, we thought that communicating on a daily basis was overkill but students really appreciated this frequency. 

In the beginning, we were very strict about the set due dates. We set them on the same day as the assignment to make sure they would keep up with the course. But noticed that it was difficult for the students to always meet them in an online environment or due to personal circumstances. We prolonged the due dates to the next day so students were able to work during the evening. This flexibility met their needs better. 

We used the due dates to personally communicate with the students that didn’t meet the deadline to find out how they were doing and what the reasons behind the late submissions were. Students very much appreciated this personal approach. The workload for following this up was divided between the teachers and student assistants.  

Contacts

Teacher(s): Hannie van der Honing | Kris van ‘t Klooster
TLC contact (on MS Teams): Eline Noorbergen, Barbara van Mossevelde
Author (interviewer): Anniek Wintraeken

Attachments

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