Tag Archives: assignment

Bb Grader App for iPad

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Blackboard’s Bb Grader app allows faculty to grade Blackboard Assignments while on the go from their iPad. Just take a look at a few of the features:

  • View all assignments submitted to the Assignment tool from all of your courses.
    Grade and annotate PDF, Word, Powerpoint, JPG, PNG and HTML files directly in the app.
  • Use assessment rubrics
  • Provide text, audio and video feedback to students
  • Return graded assignments to students as you complete each one or all at once
  • Track student progress using the Retention Center

It may just become your preferred way to grade. Bb Grader is iPad only. Sorry Android and iPhone users. Check out Bb Grader in action in the video below.

12 Days of Learning: Digital Storytelling

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. It’s Day 9 of our series and that means it’s time for digital storytelling.

Digital Storytelling is a way for students to create short stories using digital tools. These stories may include audio, video, images, and/or text. It is a way for students to demonstrate their knowledge about a subject in way other than writing a paper. The process of creating digital stories is often interdisciplinary requiring the use of research, analysis, planning, writing, media and technical skills to convey a story or content knowledge.

Getting started with digital storytelling in your classroom can seem intimidating. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources out there to help. The image below from the University of Houston’s digital storytelling site breaks the process down into steps. Visit their site for all the information on each step and check out the other resources linked below.

Digital Storytelling Resources: 
University of Houston Digital Storytelling
How to Design a Digital Media Assignment
Engage – University of Wisconsin, Madison
Media Commons – Penn State

 

12 Days of Learning: Assignments

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. For Day 3 of our series, learn how to collect, grade and return student assignments in myLesley.

Tired of searching through your email to find the assignments your students sent? Can’t find where you filed the graded version of their final paper? The Assignment tool in myLesley will allow your students to submit their coursework to a digital dropbox-style space. You can then view, provide feedback and return the graded assignment. myLesley will keep a record in the course of when the student submitted the file, your annotations and feedback, the grade and when you returned the graded assignment to them. Your students can access their feedback at any time by returning to the myLesley course site.

Learn more about how to use this powerful tool by viewing the tutorials below. assessments menu

Create an assignment 

Grade an assignment

 

Teaching Body Movement Online with Kaltura Video

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Nancy Beardall teaches Body/Movement Observation and Assessment for the Expressive Therapies program. This September, she taught the course in a fully online format for the first time. Initially, Nancy couldn’t imagine how she could successfully support students learning body, effort, space, and shape at a distance. Enter Kaltura, a video recording and sharing software that is integrated directly into myLesley.

Nancy’s students were required to observe and practice the fundamentals of body movement, but they were only going to be on campus for a few weeks during their summer residency. Nancy’s solution was to record her on campus students performing the body fundamental exercises and then uploaded these videos to her online course using the Kaltura Media Gallery. The online students could then review the videos as often as they needed, comment on what they observed in their assignments and discussions, and then practice the movements on their own. If students had questions, Nancy could refer them to the videos and even reference specific moments or clips within the movies.

body fundamentals video screenshot

The Kaltura videos worked so well that Nancy’s on campus students wanted to use it as well. The videos provided them with an easy way to review and practice their observation skills outside of class. They also uploaded selected dance project videos to Kaltura to share with their classmates for feedback.

Nancy has nothing but good things to say about Kaltura. She refers to it now as a “lifesaver” for her online course. She and her students also found it much more accessible and less cumbersome than previous software tools they had used to share video. Considering that Nancy didn’t get access to Kaltura until three days before the start of her course, and needed to get both herself and her students comfortable with the tool, this is high praise for its ease of use.

So what are you waiting for? Contact eLIS and start using Kaltura Video in your online or face-to-face courses today.

myLesley Blogs, Journals & Wikis, Oh My!

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Did you know that myLesley has its own built-in set of blogs, journals and wikis? They’ve been around for a while, but with the latest myLesley update now is a great time to take another look.

Blackboard blog

What’s so great about Blackboard blogs and wikis?

Faculty who have already switched over to these built-in tools have found them to be far easier to use and set up. This is especially true if you create individual blogs for your students. Now there’s no need to manually set up a separate blog for each student. Just create your blog, click a single button (Individual to All Students) and Blackboard will automatically take care of the rest. Note: If you select the Course option all of the students will post their entries to a shared single blog.

individual blog setting

Blackboard blogs, journals and wikis have the same text editor as the discussion board so your students do not need to learn a new tool. Adding images and media is far more straightforward and obvious and because theses tools are native to the Blackboard environment, they have access to all the Blackboard tools. This includes the ability to easily add and/or record video with Video Everywhere, recording audio with Voice Authoring and integration with the Grade Center.

What you need to know?

All Blackboard blogs, journals and wikis are private to your course and can only be accessed and viewed while you and your students are logged into myLesley. This set-up fully complies with FERPA regulations. This privacy feature also means that you cannot copy blog or wiki content to another course.

If you have created a template for a wiki assignment, we recommend that you set it up in another course, such as a development shell or your myspace (aka Faculty Demo Student Account). You can then manually copy and paste the pages of the wiki into your new course. You could also create a Word document with the structure of each page and save it with your other course resources. This may seem a little more cumbersome than simply copying the wiki from course to course, but it’s easier than having to delete all the pages and student comments from last semester’s wiki assignments in order to start with a clean template.

Where to find out more info?

Please review the support pages below for more info on how to set up the tools, create and edit content, and grade student work.

Blackboard Wikis
Blackboard Blogs and Journals