Brightspace Training

Beginning on August 14th, there will be a number of training sessions designed to get you up to speed with the transition from Springboard to Brightspace. Details on all of the training opportunities are listed below.

What's New in Brightspace

Monday, August 14 – 1:30pm - 3:00pm
Thursday, August 17 – 10:00am - 11:30am
Tuesday, August 22 – 10:30am - 12:00pm
Wednesday, August 23 – 9:00am - 10:30am
Wednesday, August 23 – 5:30pm - 7:00pm
Wednesday, August 23 – 5:30pm - 7:00pm (Wayne Campus)
Wednesday, August 30 – 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Wednesday, August 30 – 2:00pm - 3:30pm (Wayne Campus)
Thursday, August 31 – 12:00pm - 1:30pm

For faculty already familiar with Springboard, this session will show what's changed between Springboard and Brightspace along with all of the great new features that the latest version of Brightspace brings. This session is designed as an overview, rather than a hands-on session. If you are looking for help updating your courses for Fall or, you need step-by-step hands-on training, we recommend one of the other training sessions listed below.

Fall Course Tune-Up (Open Lab)

Wednesday, August 16 from 10:00am - 1:00pm
Monday, August 21 from 12:00pm - 4:00pm
Tuesday, August 29 from 10:00am - 2:00pm

Need some time to work on your Fall 2017 course? Would you like an opportunity to work one-on-one with an instructional designer or multimedia developer? Sign up for our Fall Course Tune-Up to get some assistance with getting your Fall semester courses ready to go!

Design and Development Services will assist you with many of the semester start-up tasks, such as:

Previous semester clean-up, removing old files before copying
Requesting your course merges
Importing your previous semester content into your new Fall course
Demonstrating easy ways to update all of the start and end dates in your course through the Manage Dates tool
Providing instructional design advice on how to ensure that your course runs smoothly in Brightspace
Updating links to external resources
Updating your welcome message / email to students
Assisting with publisher content integration
Requesting copyrighted materials from eReserves
Migrating Panopto videos and StudyMate lessons
Updating office hours in your WebEx Widget
Setting up online proctoring for quizzes and exams (for online courses)
Updating your gradebook and content organization
Updating Intelligent Agents and/or Release Conditions
Providing additional resources to further enhance your Brightspace course

Please register for one or more open labs so we know that you're coming. You are welcome to stay for as little or as long as you like during our scheduled hours.

Brightspace Introduction Training for Instructors

This session will introduce Brightspace including basic navigation, activating your course, adding a News item, adding Content, setting up a basic Grade book, and adding an Assignment dropbox. You will also learn some pedagogical best practices for using Brightspace.

This is a hands-on session; all participants will need to bring a laptop to this training. Register for sessions at https://share.uakron.edu/itl_seminars/index.php.

Tuesday, August 22 from 1:00-3:00 PM
Thursday, August 31 from 9:00-11:00 AM

Brightspace Intermediate Training for Instructors

This session will cover intermediate Brightspace topics including setting up a basic Quiz, creating and managing Discussions, modifying the Navigation and Homepage, and monitoring student progress. You will also learn some pedagogical best practices for using Brightspace. The Brightspace Introduction for Faculty is a pre-requisite for this session.

This is a hands-on session; all participants will need to bring a laptop to this training. Register for sessions at https://share.uakron.edu/itl_seminars/index.php.

Wednesday, August 23, 1:00-3:00 PM
Thursday, August 31, 2:00-4:00 PM

Brightspace Advanced Training for Instructors

This session will cover advanced Brightspace topics including release conditions, creating pages with embedded media, creating and using groups, intelligent agents, rubrics, checklists, the Manage Dates tool, and creating widgets. You will also learn some pedagogical best practices for using Brightspace. The Brightspace Intermediate Training for Faculty is a pre-requisite for this session.

This is a hands-on session; all participants will need to bring a laptop to this training. Register at https://share.uakron.edu/itl_seminars/index.php.

Friday, September 15, 1:00-3:00 PM

Best Practices for Teaching Online (Online session)

During this course you will learn strategies for managing your time in an online course, strategies for building community, tips for hosting live sessions in WebEx, grading strategies, and tips for how to make teaching online enjoyable. You will also have access to video and step-by-step tutorials for all of the tools you will need to know how to use to teach online. This course has been designed to give you a mini experience as an online student in case you have never taken an online course yourself. It is packed full of advice from experienced UA faculty who have taught online and were willing to record their experiences. Depending on your comfort with technology, we estimate that you could complete this in 3-6 hours. Register at https://share.uakron.edu/itl_seminars/index.php.

Start date: Monday, August 14
End date: Monday, August 21

Self-Service Training - Hoonuit (Atomic Learning)

Hoonuit, formerly known as Atomic Learning, has self-service training available for both instructors and students.

Log into Hoonuit.
Search for Brightspace. The University of Akron is currently using version 10.7.x of Brightspace.