Description:

Badges are awarded based on any criteria determined by the instructor. They are meant to provide digital markers that represent accomplishment throughout a course or program. Badges do not contribute to achieving a passing grade; however, badges are awarded for achievements that also can contribute to the type of work ethic that results in a passing grade. For example, an instructor might create a badge that is based on posting 15 discussion posts in the first month of a course, or on perfect attendance, or on academic excellence. These items are the types of trends that can help a learner to succeed in a course or program.

Tagged in: LEARN, How to Videos

Description:

How to Build a Dropbox

Gradebook – Student View:  Hiding and Releasing Grade Items and Details

LEARN’s gradebook is a flexible tool that gives instructors a great deal of control over how information is released to students.

Hiding a Grade Item or Category from Student View

There are many reasons you may wish to hide a grade item or category from student view.  You may wish to release grade items on a specific date, or only show a cumulative grade through the category.

Note:  Hiding grade items within a category may still display a grade on the category depending on the category settings.

Hiding/Releasing a Grade Item

• Enter Course
• Click “Assessments”, and “Grades”
  
• From “Manage Grades” click the “action” button () beside the grade item you wish to hide/release, then click “Edit Grade Item”
  
• Click “Restrictions”
  
• Adjust the “Visibility” settings
  • “Grade item is always visible” will allow a student to see this grade item unless a release condition is restricting it’s view or there are higher level restrictions on its category
  • “Hide this grade item” will hide the grade item from student view until this setting is removed
  • “Grade item is visible for a specific date range” will allow for a timed release of the grade item unless a release condition is restricting its view or there are higher level restrictions on its category
  • Release Conditions can be applied to any grade item. A release condition in its simplest form is a setting that will restrict the release of an item until a defined condition has been met

Hiding/Releasing a Grade Category

To hide/release a grade category follow the same steps outlined for a grade item, except select the “Edit Grade Item” from the category’s “action” button ().  When you apply a restriction to a category it will apply the chosen settings to the items within that category.  Individual settings can still be applied to the item within allowing for staggered releases etc.  Note that even if an individual item in a category is hidden from student view a category by default will show a cumulative grade unless you change those settings.

Changing the Display Settings on a Grade Item or Category

When you first run the “Gradebook Setup Wizard” you made some decisions on what grade details you would like the students to see.  You can run the wizard at any point to make changes, make changes in settings or override those settings on individual grade items and categories.

Gradebook Setup Wizard

• Enter Course
• Click “Assessments”, and “Grades”
• Click “Gradebook Setup Wizard”
  
• Click “Start”
• Follow the prompts

Settings

• Enter Course
• Click “Assessments”, and “Grades”
• Click “Settings” near the upper right hand corner of the page
  
• Click “Personal Display Options” to adjust settings for your view
  
• Click “Org Unit Display Options” to adjust settings for student view

Override Settings in Grade Items/Categories

• Enter Course
• Click “Assessments”, and “Grades”
  
• From “Manage Grades” click the “action” button () beside the grade item or category you wish to modify the student view in and click “Edit Grade Item”
  
• Under “Properties” scroll to the bottom of the page, click “Show Display Options” if it is hidden
  
• Apply any optional “Student View” settings you may want
  
• Click “Override display options for this item” and remove or add options
  • By removing all options under “Override display options for this item” the student will not see any grade for that item. This may be an appropriate setting for a grade category if you are staggering the release of the individual grade items

Click “Save” or “Save and Close”

Releasing the Final Grade

By default the final grade is not visible to students.  It is up to the instructor if/when they wish to release that final grade to the students.

When using the “Gradebook Setup Wizard” to apply the initial settings in the gradebook, you will have decided if you wanted to release the final calculated or adjusted grade to the students. This setting will only affect what the student is able to see.  For your reference and purposes both the calculated and adjusted final grades are available.  You will notice throughout the wizard, and when you view the gradebook settings that there are distinct settings for student or instructor view.

Releasing the Calculated or Adjusted Final Grade

You can opt to release the final calculated grade at any time during a course. Releasing the final calculated grade early will show the students a running total of how they are doing in the course. Note that your program may have policies about not releasing the final grades to students outside of Webadvisor.

To release the calculated or final grade:

• Enter your course
• Click “Assessments”, and “Grades”
  
• From Enter Grades or Manage Grades click the “action” () button beside “Final Calculated Grade”, then click “Enter Grades”
  
• Note whether you are releasing the final adjusted or calculated grade based on the settings applied in the “Gradebook Setup Wizard” or settings
  
  • If you are releasing the final adjusted grade, you will first have to transfer all grades to the “Final Adjusted Grade” column
    • Click the “action” button () beside “Final Grades” (near the top of the page), click “Transfer All” or “Recalculate All”, make any adjustments needed and then “Save”
      
  • Click the “action” button () beside “Final Grades” (near the top of the page), click “Release All”
    • Manually release or un-release grades to specific students by checking or un-checking the box under the “Release Final Grade” column
  • Click “Save”

Release Conditions Introduction (Brightspace Community Video)

Please note that the instructor and student view in this video are using an old version of Brightspace (LEARN) on another institutions system.  The layout of course content may seem unfamiliar.

Attaching a Release Condition to a Quiz

(Brightspace Community Video)

Release conditions allow you to create a custom learning path through the materials in your course. When you attach a release condition to an item, users cannot see that item until they meet the associated condition. For example, you could attach a release condition to the second topic in your course’s content area that would hide that topic until users viewed the topic before it. Or you could create a condition that required users to view a content topic before gaining access to a quiz, or one that required them to post to a discussion topic before they could see a content module.

If you attach multiple conditions to an item, users must meet all conditions before they can access the item. For example, you could require users to visit the first three content topics in a unit before gaining access to an associated quiz.

More information available from the d2l Resource Centre:  https://documentation.desire2learn.com/en/Release%20Conditions

Intelligent Agents Video (Brightspace Community Video)

Log in Criteria + Release condition Intelligent Agents (Brightspace Community Videos)

Intelligent agents monitor an org unit (course) to find activity that matches criteria that you set. The criteria that the agents search for are login activity, course activity, and release conditions in Learning Environment.

Example uses for intelligent agents include:

• Emailing users with grades below a certain level.
• Checking for users that have not logged in within a specific number of days.
• Checking for users that view a specific content topic.

Detailed instructions available through d2l Resource Centre: https://documentation.desire2learn.com/en/Intelligent%20Agents

Tagged in: LEARN, How to Videos

Description:

You can import CSV files into Respondus, but please keep in mind that it does not support the import of Excel “.xls”/”.xlsx” file formats.

In order to make Respondus work with CSV files, you need to create CSV document in a specific format so that Respondus can accept it and create a quiz.

Please note that CSV only supports the five common question types:

MC = Multiple Choice
TF = True or False
MR = Multiple Response (Multi-Select)
FB = Fill in the Blank (Short Answer)
ES = Essay (Long Answer)

You will need to use the Respondus Standard Format for importing the other supported question types.

Importing the CSV File Into Respondus

1. In Excel, save the .CSV file and then close file in excel.
2. Open Respondus
3. Click “Import Questions”
   
4. Change the “Type of file” to “Tab/Comma Deliminated” and then click “Browse”
5. Select the file and click Open.
6. Next, leave all the default settings and click “Preview” (this is where you may get an error if you haven’t closed the file in excel) *optionally you can indicate it should skip the first row.  In your CSV that row is not actually questions.  If you don’t do this step you will simply get a warning later.
   
7. Click OK if everything is looking good.
8. Next you have to name it, click Preview again, and then Finish.  *make sure to review the warnings and notes. In the example below, all of the warnings are from not telling it to skip rows up on step #6.
   
9. Confirm everything looks good in Repsondus, and you’re good to go!

For more information about how to import CSV file into Respondus click here: Importing CSV Files, or contact LEARN Support at learn@rrc.ca

LEARN Templates are an easy way to give your course content a unified and professional look and feel. You don’t need any design or programming knowledge, all you need to do is copy and paste!

Templates are a great way to not only make your course content look good but also to give it a consistent look and feel between pages and topics. When course content has a consistent and professional look, it is easy to read and follow for students and helps them focus on the important information in your course without potentially clumsy and distracting formatting.

Read More →

For years I have been talking about doing some deep analytics on RRC’s usage of its LMS. This information is valuable to the College and the Teaching Learning Technology Centre in many ways:

• It helps us identify and learn from excellent usage of technology
• It helps us identify and learn from poor use of technology
• It gives us focus and targets for training – where are we in the use of certain tools?
• It informs us on the depth of our students’ experience with educational technology at RRC
• It can give us incredible insights into the nature of courses through analyzing gradebooks and assessments
• On an active basis it can allow us to identify students who may be at risk of attrition and direct them towards remedial resources

Fundamentally it allows us to learn from our successes and failures and use that information to embark on new paths. Read More →

Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams

Respondus is a tool that helps you create and manage exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to LEARN. Exams can be created offline using a familiar Windows environment, or moved from one eLearning system to another. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project.

If you have your quizzes already in Word or some other document format, we’ve developed a guide to Respondus Formatting For Importing Questions.

Check out our how-to video section for step by step video tutorials on how to use Respondus.

RRC has a site license for Respondus, which means that you can have it installed on your work computer. Click here for the Respondus download and for the Respondus license. If you don’t have permission to install Respondus on your machine, put in a caselog with ITS to request installation.

How Do I Install Respondus?