Presentation at Brightspace Ignite Ontario on October 29, 2015. Different Audiences, Different Needs, One Brightspace - Morgan Bartlett and Carrie Galsworthy, both of Conestoga College

1. Presenters name goes here
Different Audiences,
Different Needs,
One Brightspace.
Carrie Galsworthy & Morgan Bartlett
Conestoga College

2. Overview
Conestoga College uses Brightspace to provide a consistent
user experience for learners:
• Minimum Standards for content
• Instructional Plan for schedule
Other features of Brightspace streamline communication:
• Master Courses for multiple section delivery
• Program Areas for centralized communication
This presentation examines what works and proposes how
we will leverage other Brightspace tools to manage
challenges in the process.

3. Needs Analysis
• Create a consistent learning experience
• Place the focus on learner needs
• Meet requirements of AODA for service and
information
• Emphasize ease of use for faculty

4. Learner-centered
• Presentation of material should not be the
cause of challenges for the learner or distract
from the learning
• Design needs to stay out of the way
• Learners should not have to think about
finding content
Dorian Peters, Interface Design for Learning: Design
Strategies for Learning Experiences, 2014.

5. Minimum Standards
• Every course in a full-time program must have a presence
on Brightspace
• Faculty must meet a set of established Minimum Standards
with respect to content
• Faculty now have guidelines to create a consistent modular
framework

7. …to organization that is
meaningful and helpful to
students
From this…

8. Benefits for Students
• Students can easily access content
• Prior to class to prepare
• After class for review
• Due to missed class
• Students know where to look for content,
assignments and grades in all courses
• Students have access to all assignment
instructions and rubrics in order to manage time
• Students have easy access to grades and even
get notified when they are posted

9. Benefits for Faculty
• Faculty can easily upload/download content from
anywhere
• No need to carry handouts
• Meet the requirement for alternate delivery format
• Faculty have a centralized place to communicate
with students and provide important due dates
• Faculty have a centralized place to enter grades
• Faculty have evidence of meeting program
requirements as well as the needs for
accreditation

10. Benefits for Staff
• Educational Assistants and Learning
Strategists can easily access course material
in order to help students with accessibility
accommodations or learning disabilities
• Peer tutors, library staff, Accessibility
Services staff, and Learning Commons staff
are better able to help students
• Staff can collect evidence for program audits
and accreditation as needed

11. Instructional Plan
• Every section of every course on Brightspace
must have an Instructional Plan
• Each Instructional Plan must have the same
information
• The document must be AODA-compliant

12. • Course and
faculty
information
• Program and
course notes
• Assignment
and Evaluation
Summary

13. • Course learning outcomes
• Key concepts
• Required preparation
• Assessments

14. Solution: a template in Shared Files

15. Benefits for Students
• Concrete dates provided for each
assessment
• Course learning outcomes provided
• Consistency of document eliminates need to
interpret the information from instructor to
instructor

16. Benefits for Faculty
• Encourages collaboration among sections of
the same course
• Standard template to fill in
• One document to update on Brightspace and
take advantage of the notification feature of
HTML Files

17. Benefits for Staff
• Concrete dates provided for each
assessment
• Course learning outcomes provided
• Consistency of document eliminates need to
interpret the information from instructor to
instructor

18. Master Courses
Faculty leads are encouraged to create master
courses in Brightspace to organize and share
content, rubrics, and grade settings for courses with
multiple sections
• Helps faculty who are hired last minute as they
start with a complete course
• Teaching notes can be included as a reference
• Ensures that students in all sections are getting
the same user experience including content and
evaluations

19. Other faculty are
given “Copy Access”
to master courses so
they can copy content
but not edit it.

20. Program Areas
A program can create an area on Brightspace
for information that is shared by all courses
• Shared content
• Shared communication

22. Key Lessons
• Master courses set up by tech-savvy faculty
have been generally successful since other
faculty teaching the course start out with the
proper framework and organized content
• Not all faculty feel comfortable with – or have
the time to dedicate to – creating their own
framework to meet minimum standards
• Conestoga needs a solution where the
framework is created for them to ensure that
consistent standards can be easily applied

23. Learning Repository
• The issue discovered with regards to using a
template for the instructional plan can be
remedied by using the Learning Repository
• A master “template” course can be set up that
already has the modular framework created.
Faculty will be able to copy this course to get
started
• The master course will be populated with College-
related content that will be linked to the Learning
Repository. Faculty can choose what objects are
relevant to their course and we can update those
objects as needed in the Learning Repository

24. Instead of creating a file,
faculty choose:
Add Object from LOR…
Then they search
for “iplan”…
They choose Copy as
Content…

25. The template is
added to their
course and ready
to be filled in

26. Summary
Conestoga uses the following tools to improve
the classroom experience:
• Modular Framework
• Templates
• Course Shells
• Learning Repository

27. Questions?