Tag Archives: mylesley

An LMS Review at Lesley

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The Digital Experience Committee and Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLTech) Committee are currently conducting an LMS Review. Lesley University has been using Blackboard as our learning management system (LMS) since 2005. During this time LMS’s and elearning have changed dramatically. In July 2015, Blackboard released a brand new version of its LMS called Blackboard Ultra. Blackboard Ultra is a major redesign compared to the current version of Blackboard. Since moving to this version would be such a big change, it seemed worthwhile to revisit the LMS market to determine if another LMS would better fit the needs of Lesley University and its faculty and students.

How We Use the LMS (Blackboard):
Lesley uses the LMS as the primary classroom venue for fully online courses and to enhance face-to-face courses, allowing for students to submit assignments, collaborate together outside of class, and to bring outside resources into the classroom.

The LMS Options Currently Under Review:
The Digital Experience Committee scheduled demos with:

The review committee also looked at Haiku and decided to eliminate them from further consideration after the initial vendor demo. Pearson and MoodleRooms were also given brief consideration, but demos were not scheduled with these vendors as they did not seem to fit our needs.

Blackboard Ultra is not yet ready for us to do a full review of its platform. We are, therefore, reviewing Blackboard’s Software as a Service (SaaS) options. This would allow us to keep our current version of Blackboard/myLesley while moving to a cloud-based model that would allow for continuous maintenance with little to no downtime for upgrades.

After reviewing detailed descriptions of each of the Learning Management Systems in the TL Tech committee, a smaller subcommittee of faculty was selected to decide which vendors should provide demonstrations to the entire campus. This faculty subcommitee is currently reviewing and testing these options. We are also in the process of scheduling on-campus vendor-led demos of the systems of most interest to faculty. Keep an eye on this blog and announcements from Faculty Development at Lesley for dates and opportunities to participate. Contact elis@lesley.edu with questions and comments.

Updating Dates in myLesley

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In today’s episode, Agent L once again saves the day … and Ben Friday’s sanity. Read on and learn how to update all the due dates in your myLesley course.

agent LAgent L: Hi, Ben. What’s going on? I thought we got all the syllabi updated.

BenBen Friday: We did, Agent L, but now we need to update all the assignment due dates. The new semester is starting in a few days and all the dates are for last semester. We have to go to each assignment and fix the due date.

Agent L: Oh, Ben. You do know you can update ALL the dates in one place, right?

Ben: What?!? How? Where?

Agent L: It’s called the Date Management tool and you can find it in the Control Panel. It’s part of the Course Tools section.
agentLhalffig_leftdate management

You have three options for updating the dates.
date management options

You can use the course start date to adjust all the dates in the course based on the date your course starts. For example, if your original course started on January 1st and you had a paper due on January 10th, that’s 9 days after your course start date. If your new course starts on February 29th, entering your course start date will adjust the paper’s due date to March 9th or 9 days after the new course start date.

You can also select to adjust by number of days. This will shift all the dates by the number of days you enter. If you enter 30 days, then your all your course dates will shift by that many days. The paper due on January 10th, will now be due on February 9th. This one might require a little math, but is a good option if know the exact number of days you need to shift dates.

The third option is to list all dates for review. This option will display all the existing dates in your course and allow you to adjust them manually. This is a good option if you already have all the dates in your syllabus or made some adjustments in your course assignments. You will still need to adjust each date manually, but you can do it all in one place rather than navigating to each dated item in the course.

Ben: That’s brilliant, Agent L! This is going to save us soooo much time. I’ll let everyone know. See you later.

Agent L: Ummm… Ben? What about that coffee? … Maybe next time.

To learn more about the Date Management tool watch the video tutorial below or view Blackboard’s help page. For more myLesley tutorials, visit the Agent Support Site.

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.

Updating Your Syllabus in myLesley

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In this episode, Agent L helps faculty easily update their syllabus AND all the links to it their myLesley course.

BenBen Friday: Hi, Agent L. No time to talk now. We will have to grab coffee some other time. Must run.

Agent L: Ben, what happened? Why is everyone so busy?

Ben: A new semester started and faculty have uploaded their updated syllabi to their myLesley courses.

Agent L: That’s great! They are sharing their syllabi digitally instead of on paper. … Isn’t it…?

Ben: Yes, but they’ve linked to the syllabus from multiple places in their online course site. All of those links need to be updated with the new file. It’s a lot of work to go through your course to find and update them all.

Agent L: Ummmm…. Ben…. there’s a much easier way to do this.

Ben: What? How?

Agent L: We can overwrite the old syllabus file with the new one in Course Files. All the links to that file will be updated to the new file in one step. Here, let me show you.

Log into the course you need to update. Then go to the Course Management area in the left-hand menu.

CourseFiles  agent L

Click on Content Collection and then the Course ID for your course. It’s elis_training_2014 for this course. This will open up the Course Files area of your course. It contains every file (documents, images, videos) uploaded to your course.

Locate the syllabus file in the list. Now click on the gray arrow at the end of the file name. Select Overwrite File from the menu that opens.

overwrite file

Click Choose File and locate the updated syllabus document on your computer.

choose file

WAIT! THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT!
The new syllabus MUST have the same file name as the old syllabus. The contents of the document can change, but you will need to save the new syllabus with the same name as the old one.

YES NO
old file name Syllabus_English101.docx Syllabus_Fall2015.docx
new file name Syllabus_English101.docx Syllabus_Spring2016.docx

Once you have selected your updated syllabus file, click Submit.

That’s it. All the links to the syllabus will now download the new one.

Ben: You mean we don’t need to tediously go through the entire course and change all the links. We only need to replace the file.

Agent L: Yep. As long as the new syllabus has the same file name, it will work perfectly. It also works with reading lists, study guides, rubrics, images… any file really.

Ben: Wow! That’s great! Maybe I have time for coffee after all.

 

agent LTo learn more about how to best take advantage of your Course Files, see Blackboard’s Best Practices on Attaching Files. For more myLesley tutorials, visit the Agent Support Site.

Pump Up Your Pedagogy

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Next week is Pump Up Your Pedagogy week. Join us for three days of events. Learn more about:

  • preparing for missed classes due to snow or other emergencies
  • how to engage students with social media
  • creating and managing online discussions
  • collaborating online using OneDrive and Skype for Business
  • creating and using video with Kaltura
  • using VoiceThread for peer review
  • finding grant resources
  • the library’s streaming video databases
  • the mobile constructivist classroom
  • and much much more….

Faculty Development Day on January 21st will focus on inclusivity and how to create a safe and inclusive classroom environment.

Download the schedule and make your plans. We’ll see you there.