Category Archives: myLesley

Introducing Kaltura Media’s Interactive Video Quiz

Posted on by

Kaltura Media’s new Interactive Video Quiz tool allows users to seamlessly embed multiple choice questions at any point in a video through a user-friendly interface. As viewers watch the video, the questions will appear at the chosen points and the video continues after each question is answered. Flexible settings allow creators to choose whether viewers can repeat sections, skip questions, revise answers, get hints, and discover the correct answers, allowing the Interactive Video Quiz to be used to increase engagement, test knowledge and retention, gather data, and more.

The following video tutorial will walk you through the process of creating an Interactive Video Quiz.

More information on creating an Interactive Video Quiz may be found here: Creating an Interactive Video Quiz.

Interested in seeing the video quiz from the student perspective? The following video tutorial will walk you through the process of taking an Interactive Video Quiz as a student.

Broken Menus After Course Copy?

Posted on by

In this exciting episode, Agent L helps faculty struggling with missing menu items after copying their online course.

Ben Fridayagent LBen Friday: Agent L! Online course instructors are missing menu items after copying their course! It’s a disaster!

Agent L: Ben, take a deep breath. Now, tell me what’s going on.

Ben: Okay. So the course menu on the right, is from the original course and the one on the left is from the course after it was copied into a new myLesley course. The Discussion Board, My Grades, Faculty and Technology Resources are all missing. What are we going to do!?!

two menus

Agent L: Hmmm…. I think I know what is going on. The online instructors copied their content into a blank course site where those menu items didn’t already exist. When they selected the content to copy into their course, they only checked the items they thought they needed such as the content areas and the tools they were using in their course. This seems logical, right?

Ben: Yeah. Why copy stuff you don’t need?

Agent L: Exactly. It makes sense… EXCEPT there are lots of things linked together behind the scenes in a myLesley course. One of those ‘hidden’ items is Settings, especially Navigation Settings. These are links to course tools and other types of content.

The menu items for the Discussion Board and the other missing items are just navigation links to the tool. The Discussion Board is still there. The tool link didn’t simply didn’t copy to the new course because when we left Navigation Settings unchecked we told the system we didn’t want that information.

settings

en: Okay, that makes sense, but what do we do now? Do we have to recopy all the courses?

Agent L: No. It’s an easy fix. We can create new links to the tools. It will only take a minute or two.

Click on the + sign at the top of your course menu and select Tool Link.
Tool link

Add Tool Link OptionsEnter a Name for the tool you are linking to.
Select the tool from the Type menu.
Check Available to Users so your students can the link and click Submit.

Voila! The missing menu item is back.

Ben: That’s brilliant, Agent L! But are we going to have to recreate those links every time we copy the course?  

Agent L: No, Ben. To prevent the issue, we simply need to be a little less selective when copying our course content.

Instead of tediously going through and selecting only the items you think you want to copy, click Select All at the top. Then uncheck anything you know you absolutely don’t want. For most faculty, the only thing you want to uncheck is Announcements. The Announcements tool will still be in the new course, but then you won’t need to delete all those announcements to your students from last semester.

Course Copy Options

Ben: That’s… actually much easier.

Agent L: You’re welcome, Ben.

 

agent L  Learn more about copying your course and modifying the course menu at the Agent Support Site.  

Email Your Students Without Knowing Their Email Addresses

Posted on by

myLesley has a couple of helpful tools that allow you to easily communicate with your students without having to first look up their email addresses or create an email list.

Announcements

Announcements allow you to post timely information and reminders to your students in your myLesley course. You can also send the announcement as an email to all of your students, allowing them to receive the information even if they are not logged into the course. Want to remind them that you are meeting in the lab tomorrow? Learn how in the video below.

Send Email

The Send Email tool allows you to easily send email to a single student in your class, a small group or all students without ever leaving myLesley. You can also email TA’s or another instructor co-teaching with you. Your students can use this tool as well. So much for the excuse that they lost your email address.

Online Tutoring Expands at Lesley

Posted on by

This Fall, Lesley’s Center for Academic Achievement (CAA) launched a pilot of Brainfuse’s Help Now Online Tutoring platform to support online students, off-campus cohorts and other Lesley students whose busy lives prohibit them from accessing tutoring in the CAA. Brainfuse’s Help Now tutoring program includes individualized tutoring and study tools to help Lesley students be successful in their classes. This initiative is one of the Retention Center’s priorities as a result of last years’ exploration of qualitative and quantitative data on student persistence.

HelpNow consists of three components: live tutoring, asynchronous and synchronous writing labs and a learning skills center.

  • Live tutoring: Live tutoring is provided in a variety of college disciplines including business, math, social sciences and hard sciences. Tutors and students communicate in real time through the Brainfuse online classroom. All sessions are recorded for later review.
  • Asynchronous Writing Lab: Students submit their writing online through a secure service. Within 24 hours, a writing specialist will return the paper along with a detailed analysis focusing on organization, voice, and coherence. In addition to Brainfuse tutors asynchronous online writing support continues to be available directly from CAA tutors.
  • Live Writing Lab: Students who are in the preliminary stages of the writing process have the option to receive live, one-to-one writing assistance from a writing specialist.
  • Learning Skills Center: Students address academic needs such as reading comprehension, developmental math and science or time management to build essential skills for college success. Students are offered a variety of learning options based on the way they learn best.

Brainfuse is integrated into myLesley so all students have easy access to connect with a live tutor. Tutors are experienced classroom teachers with graduate training in their discipline.

Usage so far this semester has been highly successful especially in the Business and Math programs where it was piloted and strongly promoted. Students can easily access Brainfuse Online Tutoring from their myLesley home page. Subjects include Accounting, Statistics, Economics, Calculus, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Writing, Psychology and many others.
brainfuse access

 

 

A New Webinar Tool in myLesley

Posted on by

There’s a new web conferencing tool coming to myLesley this January and it’s called Collaborate Ultra.

Why are we excited?
Collaborate Ultra runs in your web browser window. That means that there’s no need to download and install the latest version of java or the Collaborate Launcher before you can join an online meeting. Just click on the webinar link and join your session.

Collaborate Ultra has been completely redesigned with a streamlined interface that’s easy to navigate. Users can easily view content, manage their audio/video, and participate in the chat.

Collaborate_Ultra_InterfaceThe new interface also includes the gallery or grid view of participants that you have been craving. Now you can see everyone’s face, not just the speaker.

grid view

Do you share your computer screen to demonstrate how to do something or give a tour of your course? Collaborate Ultra’s screen sharing feature is faster, smoother, and easier to use than the old Collaborate so your participants will be able to easily follow along.

 

A few important details
Collaborate Ultra works best in the Chrome web browser. Other web browsers, such as Firefox or Safari, will be missing a couple of features:

  • The gallery view of webinar attendees is only available in Chrome. When using another browser you will only be able to see the webcam of the person speaking.
  • In order to share your screen you must use Chrome. When using other browsers users will be able to see what is being shared with them, but will not be able to share their own computer desktop.

Your old Collaborate recordings will still be available to you within your myLesley course. Simply go to the old Collaborate tool to access them as always.

 

Learn more about Collaborate Ultra
Get all the info on how to use Collaborate Ultra at our support site and check out the video below to get a tour of the interface.