Dear Faculty,
We hope you have had a great start to the semester! Faculty and staff have worked incredibly hard to update courses and get themselves and the curricula ready to deliver in our first fall in Brightspace, and student feedback so far has been very positive! We recommend inviting students to collaborate with you by sharing feedback about what is working, what could work better, and if they spot any residual mentions to Blackboard in directions, files, videos, or anywhere else in your course site.
In this newsletter issue, we share updates and tips about various Brightspace features, information about ongoing training and support for teaching in Brightspace available for faculty, an upcoming ePortfolio showcase, and an Open UDL workshop. We’re excited to support ongoing teaching excellence at CUNY SPS, and proud of our faculty’s agility and dedication to the student experience. Thank you!
Brightspace Updates and Notes
Instant Messaging tool deactivated system-wide
At the request of the University Faculty Senate, CUNY CIS has disabled the Instant Messaging (IM) tool across the entire CUNY Brightspace system, due to concerns about student privacy.
Module Start, End, and Due Dates
Please note that these work differently than availability dates in Blackboard.For modules with start dates in the future, learners will see the list of module content, but none of it is clickable (grayed out). Once a module end date has passed, the content is similarly inaccessible (grayed out). You can instead use a module due date, which will still appear in the calendar, but keeps content accessible. Of course, you can also manually set a module to active/inactive, by clicking on its eye icon, which will display/hide the module entirely.
OFDIT is working on training and documentation on this topic, particularly the technical aspects. While there is no one size fits all suggestion for using start/end/due dates, pedagogical best practice is to keep course materials such as readings and videos available to students.
Notifications settings
Like and subscribe – and notify! You may have subscribed to discussions in your course (such as a course Q and A topic), but in addition to subscribing, you may need to update your notification settings in your profile in Brightspace if you want to receive an email alert of new posts. Check part 4 of the Notification guide for directions and specifics!
Brightspace Highlight: Emailing Your Class
Posted an announcement and want to then send the announcement out as an email to your class as well? Wanting to email the whole class a file or other information all at once? You can do so quickly using either the Classlist or the Gradebook email tool.
Emailing using Classlist:
-
- In the course homepage, click Tools > Classlist:
-
- Tick the top box on the far left of the Classlist, and then click the Email icon directly above this box:
-
- In the Compose New Message window that opens, enter the text you want to send in the Body field. You’ll see the classlist emails (including your own!) populate automatically into the Bcc field (which protects student privacy), so you may just click the “Send” button when you finish composing, and the email will go to you and all students!
Emailing using Gradebook:
-
- In the course homepage navbar, click Grades
- Follow the steps as above, clicking the same box and Email icon found at the far left of the Gradebook list, and then entering text in the Compose New Message window and clicking the “Send” button when complete:
-
- NOTE: You’ll notice that when you email from Brightspace, the CUNYfirst login email is what populates for you and students. This is how the system is designed, and will connect the communication directly to the “regular” CUNY email the user has in the Brightspace system for delivery and receipt.
Brightspace Training for Faculty
CUNY Central’s ongoing series of facilitated training sessions are still available for faculty who want guided training on getting started, creating quizzes, engaging students, the Brightspace gradebook, and more! Register for as many sessions as you like – you’ll receive a recording of the session in case your schedule changes or just as a helpful reference later on. You can also find recorded training sessions on Central’s YouTube channel playlist. Check out recently added videos addressing frequently asked questions on assignments, quizzes and discussions!
Brightspace Open Office Hours
Throughout the fall semester, OFDIT will continue to offer Open Office Hours in morning, afternoon, and early evening sessions. Drop by office hours as often as you like to get a question answered! Check our Brightspace Office Hours page for the weekly schedule and the link to join.
Brightspace Teaching Guides
The OFDIT team has been working on building out the Teaching Guides site on the CUNY SPS OpenLab. Peruse the site to find helpful content on using Brightspace and external tools including Zoom, Panopto, and others.
SPS Events and Announcements
Policy Updates
With a new academic year comes new and updated policies. Please review CUNY policies as well as CUNY SPS-specific policies. You and your students can always find a link to CUNY SPS academic and student policies in the Student Resources menu on the Brightspace home page.
Open UDL Workshop: Making your Courses Accessible to All
OFDIT and the CUNY SPS OER Initiative are pleased to invite all faculty to participate in the Open UDL Workshop (October 21 to November 4, 2024).
This fifteen-day, asynchronous online workshop provides an in-depth introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and to the intersection of UDL and Open Educational Practices (OEP), which include OER and Open Pedagogy. Participants will review the principles of UDL and explore how OEP can help reduce accessibility barriers for all learners, including those with disabilities. Participants will also learn about best accessibility practices in online courses, including identifying and fixing common accessibility issues. For their workshop project, participants will complete an inventory of one of their courses from a UDL perspective and create a plan for implementing UDL principles and open practices.
Eligible faculty participants will be compensated with 7 NTA hours upon successful completion of the workshop. Registration is open through Monday, October 14. For more details, please see our Advanced Workshops page on the SPS Faculty Community Site.
ePortfolio: A Journey of Reflection
The ePortfolio Team invites you to our inaugural event of the 2024-2025 academic year. We’re welcoming the CUNY SPS community to learn from students who are building their portfolios this semester. Whether in their first semester, at the final term of a degree, or somewhere in between, this event will capture and showcase students’ work at distinct junctures and discuss the role of reflection along the way.
If you would like to nominate a student who has a stellar ePortfolio, please fill out this form.
CUNY Faculty Development Opportunities
CITA Teaching Matters Special Series on Generative AI
Friday, 9/27, 11:00am-12:00pm – Engaging with Generative AI: Which Tool Does What? (register here)
Friday, 10/25, 11:00am-12:00pm (registration opens on 10/1) – Student Motivation and Engagement: AI and Non-AI Assignments to Enhance Learning
Friday, 11/22, 11:00am-12:00pm (registration opens on 11/1) – Supporting Students’ Ethical Use of AI: Ideas and Practices in Humanities and STEM Fields
Save the dates for the Spring AI sessions: 2/21, 3/21, 4/25 (all 11:00am-12:00pm)
Friday, 11/8, 11:00am-12:00pm – CITA Book Club “Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning” by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (register here)
Faculty Webinar Series for Online Instruction
Thursday, 9/26, 3 pm – Engaging Students in Your Online Courses (register here)
In this webinar, you will learn how to transform your online courses into dynamic spaces where students feel connected and motivated to participate. With Dr. Brett Christie, Dr. Breana Bayraktar, CUNY Faculty Dr. Heath Grant, and CUNY Online Instructional Designer Chelien Brown.
CUNY Survey to Assess Need
for Video Hosting
As you know, CUNY SPS offers Panopto as a video recording, storage and streaming service. CUNY Central is now collecting information about how video/multimedia is used throughout CUNY by faculty, students, staff, librarians, etc. to better assess the need for a CUNY-wide video hosting system. If you would like to provide input, you can complete the survey here.
Faculty Corner
From Business faculty Robin Whitney:
“I noticed that when you send an email to the whole class using the Classlist or Gradebook email tool, the subject line defaults to the long version of the course name each time. Since this isn’t specific (or helpful if students want to search for an email from you later), I make it a practice to delete out that default subject line and replace with the Headline for the announcement I’ve posted and am emailing out, or a phrase related to the actual content of the email I’m sending.”
If you have a pedagogical tip from your new experiences in Brightspace (in 200 words or less!) that you think might help others, we would love to hear from you and add your submission to our next Faculty Newsletter! You can use our Faculty Corner Submission Form to submit.
As always, OFDIT is here to help! We are available for one-on-one support and are also happy to schedule a Zoom call to discuss any questions you may have. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at facultysupport@sps.cuny.edu.
All the Best,
Your OFDIT Team
