A BRIGHTSPACE
MINUTE

December 12—Looking to January

In this Minute, we wanted to share a few ideas for ensuring a smooth spring semester and to let you know about the various ways you can learn with us next year, beginning on January 4th! This will be our last Brightspace Minute this year, but we'll start up in the Spring again!

A few tips for a smooth start

  1. Consider setting up the grade book before anything else. Establishing how the weighting works for your course and setting up your columns (items), in advance, can help everything fall smoothly into place. (Also, we've found that, with grade books migrated from Blackboard, it's often better to start from scratch rather than trying to edit what's there.)
  2. Keep it simple. As a follow-up to the previous tip, consider how you can simplify your grading plan. Here's an example (only slightly exaggerated!) of a not-so-simple grading plan:
    There's a thing worth 12pts for which students will have to achieve at least 8pts to get full credit (but less than 8pts receives zero credit), and it's worth 80% of one component of work that comprises 25% of the final project grade (which has an optional 3 extra credit points) and is weighted at 18% of the overall final grade!!
    We encourage you to make your life easier. Your grading systems may have evolved organically over the years, but it can be an act of kindness towards yourself to look at them with fresh eyes and reduce complications without compromising your teaching effectiveness.
  3. Make friends with your Student View Account! And by this, we do not mean the "learner view." The student view account is so useful for viewing and testing gradeable activities and seeing how grades appear to students. Read Student View Account for Instructors on the UVM Knowledge Base.
  4. Prioritize improvements. Think about what could have gone more smoothly in the fall and what you'd like to change, but consider taking small steps rather than engineering total overhauls. Feel free to book a consult with us (see below) if you'd like help thinking this through.

Help is available!

Workshops – Whether you're looking to go a little deeper with Brightspace or you're completely new to it, we have January workshops that will meet you where you are. See our calendar.

One-to-One Consultations – Feel free to visit our booking page and set something up at a time that works for you.

Email – Send your Brightspace questions to us at ctl@uvm.edu, and we'll do our best to answer them, or request that you book a consult or point you to the right resources.

Virtual Open Hours – Our scheduled hours are Tuesdays, 9:30-10:30 and Wednesday, 1:30-2:30. Get the links to these Teams meetings on this page. We will not hold Open Hours on December 26th or 27th.

With best wishes for happy holidays,
Center for Teaching & Learning – www.uvm.edu/ctl

P.S. Don't forget, you still need to submit your grades to Banner!