WEBVTT 1 00:00:03.160 --> 00:00:20.660 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, hello, and welcome to our Term 2 Ready, Set, Teach CoursePlus for a Successful Term Start. My name is Amy Pinkerton, and I'm a Senior Instructional Designer at the Center for Teaching and Learning, or CTL, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Seth Blackburn from CTL Help. 2 00:00:20.660 --> 00:00:24.610 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And Lauren Dana, who is a fellow instructional designer. 3 00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:33.129 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Alright, so today, and I just realized I am not sharing my screen, so I'll share my screen in just a moment. 4 00:00:36.210 --> 00:01:01.179 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, you should see workshop goals. Today, we're going to start with identifying what is new in CoursePlus, so any new CoursePlus tools and features, followed by learning how we as faculty and teaching assistants can create a positive first impression for students through public-facing CoursePlus pages, how we can welcome students within that first week of the academic term through targeted outreach 5 00:01:01.180 --> 00:01:03.020 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): using CoursePlus tools. 6 00:01:03.020 --> 00:01:08.530 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then how we can communicate with students throughout the academic term using CoursePlus tools. 7 00:01:08.530 --> 00:01:26.760 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then finally, we'll share some resources, including frequently asked questions. And I wanted to give a special shout out to the CoursePlus Faculty Guide. Today, we're going to talk about a lot of different CoursePlus tools, and the Faculty Guide will give you step-by-step instructions for how to use each tool that we mentioned today. 8 00:01:29.330 --> 00:01:33.510 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, and now I'll pass to Seth to let us know what is new in CoursePlus. 9 00:01:35.330 --> 00:01:51.040 Seth Blackburn: Thank you Amy. And hello, my name is Seth Blackburn and I'm a technical support analyst with the Center for Teaching and Learning. I'm essentially the primary support person behind CTL help. So I work with faculty, students and staff on CoursePlus questions and issues. 10 00:01:51.040 --> 00:02:10.240 Seth Blackburn: But today, I wanted to highlight some of the newer features and improvements that we've made to CoursePlus. I'll start with a few smaller quality of life improvements, and then I'll spend some time on our… one of our more significant additions, Assignment Assistant, which is… it offers a few different AI-powered tools for building assignments. 11 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:14.279 Seth Blackburn: So I'm going to start sharing my screen as well, just to go over these things. 12 00:02:16.060 --> 00:02:34.659 Seth Blackburn: Okay, should be sharing now. So first up, I wanted to mention that we've made several improvements to the native lecture player in CoursePlus, and many of these changes were features that students had been requesting for quite some time, actually. And the goal is to just, you know, give students more flexibility and control over how they watch their lectures. 13 00:02:34.690 --> 00:02:42.610 Seth Blackburn: So, first up, I wanted to highlight this autoplay option that we have, and when it's enabled, sections that are part of the same lecture will play consecutively. 14 00:02:42.670 --> 00:02:56.090 Seth Blackburn: So students no longer need to return to the main lecture page to start watching each section of a lecture. And this preference is actually remembered across lectures and courses, so once a student enables autoplay, they won't need to keep turning it on for each lecture that they view. 15 00:02:56.600 --> 00:03:07.820 Seth Blackburn: And then next, we've also added these jump forward and back buttons, and this makes it easier to revisit something that a student missed or skip ahead without having to manually navigate the progress bar. 16 00:03:08.350 --> 00:03:26.220 Seth Blackburn: And then, finally, we've expanded, actually, on our available playback speeds, so students can now watch lectures as slowly as .25 speed, or as quickly as 2x speed. And then, like autoplay, these selected playback speeds are actually remembered across lectures and courses, so once it's set, it stays that way unless you change it again. 17 00:03:26.360 --> 00:03:38.940 Seth Blackburn: And these improvements apply to our standard online lectures, as well as any in-lecture quiz videos. And overall, they're relatively small changes, but they do make the lecture viewing experience more convenient and customizable for our students. 18 00:03:39.260 --> 00:03:45.790 Seth Blackburn: And then I wanted to move on and show you a smaller improvement that we've also made in Quiz Generator, so… 19 00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:51.990 Seth Blackburn: We made a change to how faculty can manage their quiz attempts that are submitted on behalf of students. 20 00:03:51.990 --> 00:04:15.270 Seth Blackburn: So previously, if a faculty member submitted a quiz attempt on behalf of a student, they weren't able to clear that attempt themselves. The student would actually need to begin another attempt themselves if they wanted to replace it. And that was only going to be possible, you know, if the quiz actually allowed multiple attempts. So that created some issues before. But now faculty can clear all quiz attempts, including those that they've submitted on behalf of students. 21 00:04:15.270 --> 00:04:20.820 Seth Blackburn: And this makes it easier to correct mistakes or allow students to restart an attempt without the previous restrictions. 22 00:04:21.019 --> 00:04:39.499 Seth Blackburn: So yeah, as you can see here, the clear answers and allow retake option is there. It's available even though this specific attempt was submitted by a faculty member. And this small change removes an unnecessary hurdle that previously existed in QuizGenerator, and it just gives faculty more control over the management of quizzes in their course. 23 00:04:40.030 --> 00:04:45.800 Seth Blackburn: And then the last, kind of minor change that I wanted to highlight involves hyperlinks on page builder pages. 24 00:04:46.030 --> 00:05:03.309 Seth Blackburn: Previously, the hyperlinks on a page weren't always visually obvious, so depending on the surrounding content, it could be kind of difficult for students to identify which text was actually clickable. But we've updated the styling so that hyperlinks now always appear in this darker blue color, and they are also underlined by default. 25 00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:13.010 Seth Blackburn: This improves the accessibility of our pages, and it makes it easier for students to very quickly identify links to other course materials or external resources. 26 00:05:13.570 --> 00:05:23.189 Seth Blackburn: So that's kind of an overview of some of the more recent quality of life changes in CoursePlus. But moving on to one of our more significant additions this past year, and that's Assignment Assistant. 27 00:05:24.140 --> 00:05:36.550 Seth Blackburn: Assignment Assistant is a collection of four generative AI-powered tools. These tools are designed to help faculty create, evaluate, and refine their assignments more efficiently. And each of the tools you see listed here are sort of 28 00:05:36.650 --> 00:05:47.389 Seth Blackburn: a slightly different purpose. So, first up is Rubric Builder, and this tool generates analytic or objective rubrics based on assignment instructions that you provide. 29 00:05:47.430 --> 00:05:56.690 Seth Blackburn: You can specify which learning objectives the rubric should assess, and these can be existing course learning objectives, or they can also be custom objectives that you enter. 30 00:05:56.860 --> 00:05:58.490 Seth Blackburn: And the goal is to. 31 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:03.230 Seth Blackburn: Help faculty create more structured and consistent methods of evaluating their students' work. 32 00:06:03.590 --> 00:06:12.370 Seth Blackburn: But next up is the Assignment Insight tool, and rather than creating an assignment from scratch, this tool actually reviews an existing assignment and provides feedback on it. 33 00:06:12.390 --> 00:06:25.339 Seth Blackburn: So it evaluates several different aspects of the assignment, including the clarity of the instructions, its alignment with learning objectives, whether the timeline and the workload are reasonable, as well as how efficiently the assignment can be graded. 34 00:06:25.460 --> 00:06:37.920 Seth Blackburn: It can also identify, like, potential issues with ambiguity or the rigor of the assignment, as well as, like, overly restrictive requirements. But it's essentially a way to get another perspective on an assignment before you actually distribute it to your students. 35 00:06:38.150 --> 00:06:45.510 Seth Blackburn: The third tool we have is called Assignment Creator, and then, as the name suggests, this… it basically helps faculty develop brand new assignments. 36 00:06:45.840 --> 00:06:57.750 Seth Blackburn: So, again, you'd provide it with the learning objectives you want it to address. These can be the official course objectives or custom objectives. There are other customization options listed here, too, like. 37 00:06:57.750 --> 00:07:10.800 Seth Blackburn: the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy the students should work within. And you can tailor these fields to your preferences, and then the tool will then generate the instructions for the assignment, as well as a checklist of the expected deliverables students have. 38 00:07:11.210 --> 00:07:21.700 Seth Blackburn: And the idea isn't necessarily to use the generated assignment exactly as written, but instead it will provide you a good starting point that faculty can refine and customize further. 39 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:36.210 Seth Blackburn: And then finally, we have this AI Defender tool, and this one kind of approaches assignments from a slightly different perspective. It analyzes an existing assignment, and it identifies components that students could easily complete using generative AI. 40 00:07:36.350 --> 00:07:41.920 Seth Blackburn: It then recommends modifications that can make the assignment more resistant to AI-generated responses. 41 00:07:42.360 --> 00:07:50.300 Seth Blackburn: So, importantly, it kind of aims to preserve the assignment's original learning objectives and academic standards, while combating those. 42 00:07:50.450 --> 00:07:57.330 Seth Blackburn: those problems. But it can be particularly useful for faculty who are thinking about how generative AI affects their assessment strategies. 43 00:07:57.790 --> 00:08:05.169 Seth Blackburn: And now that I've kind of covered briefly, like, what each tool does, I wanted to show you what using one of the tools actually looks like. 44 00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:10.540 Seth Blackburn: So, for this example, I'll use the tool that provides feedback on existing assignment instructions. 45 00:08:10.590 --> 00:08:25.620 Seth Blackburn: You'll notice that we can provide several pieces of information. First up is, like, the expected grading time, so approximately how many minutes you can expect to spend grading each student's submission. There's also the group size for the assignment, so it could be an individual or a small group, slightly larger group. 46 00:08:25.970 --> 00:08:43.009 Seth Blackburn: The learning objectives, again, there's one chosen here. There's also the custom objectives, and this is an optional field, so you can use, you know, all learning objectives, or all custom, or combination. And then lastly, the actual assignment description, so this is where you would upload the file that contains the actual assignment description itself. 47 00:08:43.309 --> 00:08:56.310 Seth Blackburn: And then after submitting this information, the tool typically takes about a minute or two to generate its response, and there's even a small game you can play while waiting, but to save time, I'll just kind of show you an example of the completed output when it's done. 48 00:08:56.430 --> 00:09:09.259 Seth Blackburn: So, here you can see on this page, the output will give you kind of an overview of the assignment's strengths. It'll give you some suggestions for clarifying or improving the instructions, as well as just any additional grading considerations. 49 00:09:09.930 --> 00:09:25.849 Seth Blackburn: So, one thing I want to emphasize is that with Assignment Assistant, these tools are intended to assist faculty. It's not intended to replace their own judgment. As with any generative AI tool, the output should be reviewed critically. Not every suggestion will necessarily be appropriate for your assignment. 50 00:09:25.890 --> 00:09:32.580 Seth Blackburn: And you'll also want to make sure that the recommendations actually align with your learning objectives, and what you're actually trying to accomplish with the assignment, of course. 51 00:09:32.700 --> 00:09:44.659 Seth Blackburn: These tools are also intended to complement the pedagogical support that's offered by our CTL instructional designers, so faculty are still encouraged to work directly with instructional designers when they're developing or refining any assignments. 52 00:09:45.810 --> 00:09:58.170 Seth Blackburn: But that's basically an overview of some of the more recent CoursePlus improvements. We covered a few enhancements to existing tools, as well as Assignment Assistant, which offers new possibilities for creating and refining assignments. 53 00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:10.810 Seth Blackburn: As always, if you have any questions about these features, or if you want help using them in your course, you can contact us through CTL Help. I'm also available for one-on-one consultations if you'd like to walk through a particular tool or workflow. 54 00:10:11.180 --> 00:10:15.340 Seth Blackburn: But yeah, with that, I'll open it up for questions if there are any at this time. 55 00:10:17.910 --> 00:10:21.640 Seth Blackburn: But if there's not any questions, then I'll just go ahead and hand it back to Amy. 56 00:10:23.950 --> 00:10:25.470 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Great, thank you! 57 00:10:25.630 --> 00:10:32.989 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And if you do have questions, you can always post them in the chat, and there will also be other pauses for Q&A throughout today's session. 58 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:35.780 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): I'm just gonna share my screen again. 59 00:10:36.590 --> 00:10:37.350 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Okay. 60 00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:59.250 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): So now we're going to look at start of term tasks in three parts, starting with making a good first impression for prospective students, and then part two will be welcoming your students in the first week of term, and then part three will be connecting with your students throughout the term, all while using CoursePlus tools. And now I'm going to pass it to Lauren. 61 00:10:59.250 --> 00:11:16.840 Lauren Dana: Thank you, Amy. So before your course even begins, you're already making an impression on your students. So both those that are already enrolled, and there's still some students that are deciding whether they want to enroll in your course. So I'm just going to spend a couple of minutes going over how you can make this good first impression. 62 00:11:17.770 --> 00:11:35.830 Lauren Dana: So I want to first talk about some important CoursePlus pages that are publicly visible. So this means that even non-students can see this, and it often serves as a student's first impression of your course. Because of this, it's important to ensure that public-facing pages are current, accurate, and welcoming. 63 00:11:35.830 --> 00:11:39.160 Lauren Dana: So just a couple that are public facing. We have the visitor's view. 64 00:11:39.160 --> 00:11:40.310 Lauren Dana: the syllabus. 65 00:11:40.460 --> 00:11:53.179 Lauren Dana: the overview, the schedule, and the faculty page. So these are all set to public. So I would recommend keeping these pages up to date to help set the tone for a well-organized learning experience from the very start. 66 00:11:55.020 --> 00:12:11.519 Lauren Dana: Kim, I'm going to spend a couple moments on the visitors page, which is often forgotten as you're busy getting ready your your CoursePlus site ready. So as you take a look at your visitors view, we recommend don't just repeat what's on the syllabus. This is a great opportunity to welcome prospective students. 67 00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:26.999 Lauren Dana: and share why they should take this course, and also why are you excited about this course? What do you want students to get out of this course? So we recommend that you think of this page as a friendly elevator pitch to try to get students equally excited and to enroll. 68 00:12:28.740 --> 00:12:40.229 Lauren Dana: Kate, you also want to make sure you update the faculty page. So, this again is one of the first pages that students or prospective students go to learn about the faculty who will be supporting their learning throughout the course. 69 00:12:40.330 --> 00:12:56.460 Lauren Dana: So, to review this information, you just go to your course site, go to the faculty page, click on edit, and you'll be able to make updates. So from here, I'd recommend going through every term or every offering, and remove outdated faculty, staff, or teaching assistants. 70 00:12:56.460 --> 00:13:10.009 Lauren Dana: Update existing photos. I know we… I have some faculty that have photos from 30 years ago, so it might be time to put a new, fresh one in. Make sure your biography's up to date. A lot of times you've done new and exciting things that you want your students to know about. 71 00:13:10.010 --> 00:13:27.410 Lauren Dana: And then you can also update contact information. Make sure that there's profiles and biographies for new faculty members or new TAs, or if you're adding any guest faculty this year. So again, the guide that I shared earlier in the chat has more instructions on how you can update this page. 72 00:13:28.970 --> 00:13:44.559 Lauren Dana: Okay, this is also a really good time to, go through non-student access to make sure that the right people have access to your course site. So, a well-managed course team helps provide students with timely support and creates a smooth learning experience from day one. 73 00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:53.460 Lauren Dana: So to review and update the course access, you'll navigate to the Add Students, TA, Editors, Guest Faculty, and Guest page from Faculty Tools. 74 00:13:53.620 --> 00:14:05.810 Lauren Dana: And on this page, I would do a couple things. The first, I would verify that everyone who should have non-student access is listed correctly. A lot of times, new TAs, faculty may forget to add them. 75 00:14:05.810 --> 00:14:23.969 Lauren Dana: So you want to double-check that first, so make sure you add the TAs, content editors, guest faculty, and other non-staff collaborators. And the great thing about this page, if you're not really sure which role you want to assign somebody, you can actually refer to the information box on the page for role descriptions and permissions. 76 00:14:23.970 --> 00:14:36.889 Lauren Dana: So when adding users, always verify them with their JED email address, especially if they have a common name. You don't want to add the wrong John to your course, right? So just make sure you're using that JED ID or JED email address. 77 00:14:36.950 --> 00:14:47.980 Lauren Dana: The other thing you want to do is remove individuals who no longer need access to course… the course. And if by some chance you accidentally remove somebody, you can easily add them back into the appropriate role. 78 00:14:48.000 --> 00:15:00.040 Lauren Dana: I just want to highlight that students should never be added through this page. They need to enroll through the registration process, so this would only be for teaching, guest facilitators, guest faculty, and TAs. 79 00:15:02.370 --> 00:15:18.740 Lauren Dana: Okay, and then next, we definitely recommend updating the syllabus. So this, this might take a little bit of time. This is one of the most important public-facing pages. So I always recommend that you read through and review the entire syllabus, even if you just taught the course last term. 80 00:15:18.790 --> 00:15:24.469 Lauren Dana: You want to focus on consistency as well as any outdated information that may need to be updated. 81 00:15:24.600 --> 00:15:38.569 Lauren Dana: I also recommend placing yourself in the mindset of your students. So did you need to expand on participation requirements? Or are methods of assessment details unclear? Think about what questions they might have as they go through your syllabus. 82 00:15:38.990 --> 00:15:43.040 Lauren Dana: And then once you review it, you'll want to make any necessary edits. 83 00:15:43.330 --> 00:15:56.369 Lauren Dana: So you'll just need to go into edit mode into the syllabus to make these changes. So any section that has a little pencil icon, so you can see in that image, that little pencil icon, this is a section that you personally can update. 84 00:15:56.370 --> 00:16:09.450 Lauren Dana: If there is no pencil icon, it means it's pre-created by BSPH, so unfortunately you can't change that. And any section that has a chain link next to it means that you need departmental approval. 85 00:16:09.450 --> 00:16:23.639 Lauren Dana: So at this stage, since Term 2 is opening in about a week, it's probably too late to edit these sections and receive approval in time for your course offering, so you definitely want to hold off and just mark this as something to do for the next offering. 86 00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:39.700 Lauren Dana: Just as a reminder, the chain link sections will actually be locked once your course opens, so you can't change them. However, we recommend that all syllabus edits are made before the course opens. You want to make sure it stays consistent from day one through the final day of the term. 87 00:16:40.150 --> 00:16:59.749 Lauren Dana: And just as a gentle reminder, please only use the syllabus on CoursePlus. You should remove all other versions of the syllabus from your course site. So if you had a PDF or a Word document in the online library, you can just delete that. So this will help avoid inconsistencies for students, as well as conflicting information. 88 00:16:59.750 --> 00:17:11.660 Lauren Dana: And honestly, it really makes life easier for you because you only need to update this one version and not be worried about matching them and changing them. So definitely just use that CoursePlus syllabus. 89 00:17:11.660 --> 00:17:24.810 Lauren Dana: And if your students are, you know, a little bit like me and want to go analog and have hard copies, they can still print it out, so they can print it out in a PDF format, so you can still offer that to your students, or even yourself, if you want that hard copy. 90 00:17:26.569 --> 00:17:45.659 Lauren Dana: And finally, I want to touch just really quickly on Gradebook. Don't worry, Gradebook is not public-facing, it's only for your students, but as you're going through your syllabus, it's a really good time to pop into your Gradebook and make sure that the methods of assessment in your syllabus align with those in your Gradebook. 91 00:17:45.660 --> 00:17:48.530 Lauren Dana: So I would definitely take a look at this. 92 00:17:48.540 --> 00:17:57.189 Lauren Dana: This consistency is really important in making a good impression for your students, and providing clarity of how they can succeed in your class. 93 00:17:57.290 --> 00:18:05.590 Lauren Dana: So, as you take a look at Gradebook, you want to make sure that the overall grade is based on the option you would like, so you can choose between percentages or points. 94 00:18:05.890 --> 00:18:29.980 Lauren Dana: And you may already have or want to create categories. So categories can be used in the gradebook to group together related items. So you might have a homework section, a weekly reflection section. So as you can see in the sample on the slide, there's a participation category. And the main thing that you want to do is just make sure the percentages match your syllabus. So if participations were 30% on the syllabus. 95 00:18:30.170 --> 00:18:44.660 Lauren Dana: It should be the same in Gradebook. That consistency is really important. And later on in the session, we'll talk a little bit more of how you can connect Gradebook to CoursePlus tools to allow for an immediate connection with grades and students. 96 00:18:45.330 --> 00:18:47.420 Lauren Dana: Okay, I'm now going to pass to Amy. 97 00:18:48.800 --> 00:19:08.409 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, thank you. And I wanted to, highlight something that was just shared in the chat from Celine. She mentioned, this close to the term start, if you have edits in the chain link sections of your syllabus, the sections that need approval to update, she recommends, emailing your academic coordinator and. 98 00:19:08.450 --> 00:19:18.119 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): sending in the email include send for approval. That way the approval doesn't get lost in the shuffle of things. So, thank you, Celine, for, highlighting that. 99 00:19:18.550 --> 00:19:23.739 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, so now we're going to look at using CoursePlus tools to welcome your students. 100 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:38.630 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And we want to start with, welcoming your students with a, usually what would be in the form of an email, but this could also be something that you record and send with a transcript, say, like a video recording with a transcript. 101 00:19:38.630 --> 00:19:53.210 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): So your welcome to the course message should start with a warm greeting and a brief introduction of who you are. And you can include your role, your connection to the topic, the course topic, and maybe why you're excited to teach the course. 102 00:19:53.210 --> 00:20:10.829 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then you can share the purpose of the course, giving students a really high-level view of what the course is about. And perhaps if it's within a certain program, where it falls within the scheme of things. That can help students sort of ground what to expect for the course. 103 00:20:11.450 --> 00:20:27.319 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then you want to help your learners get started by highlighting what to expect within your first week. And you can highlight things about the syllabus and especially highlight any time-sensitive tasks that they need to do within that first week of course. 104 00:20:27.730 --> 00:20:42.099 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And finally, you might want to, you want to explain how learners can contact you or your teaching team, and close with a supportive statement that reinforces that you're there for your students, and what to expect, through the course. 105 00:20:44.530 --> 00:20:53.480 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, and after you've graded your students, now is also a good time to confirm your content page using the Schedule Builder tool. 106 00:20:53.620 --> 00:21:03.330 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): The content page is one of the most important entry points for students, and it plays a key role in how your students experience and navigate the course. 107 00:21:03.660 --> 00:21:13.490 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): This is where students access the majority of course materials, including things like lecture pages, activity pages, and other resources like the online library. 108 00:21:14.730 --> 00:21:16.490 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): When, 109 00:21:16.490 --> 00:21:40.820 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): The content page is also one of those public-facing pages that Lauren mentioned earlier. So you want to make sure that because this page is publicly accessible, you don't include any private or sensitive information on this page. For example, if you're in a face-to-face class and you have some Zoom sessions, you don't want to post a Zoom link on this page because anyone can look it up and find your Zoom link. 110 00:21:42.280 --> 00:21:50.979 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): When you select Edit the Schedule on the Content page, you'll be taken to the Schedule Builder tool, and this is where you can update and manage this page. 111 00:21:51.810 --> 00:22:08.509 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): If you have CTL-produced lectures, they will already be linked to your schedule. And, you may also want to link things like activity or assessment pages, your live talks, and any other important course components, such as discussion forums or drop boxes. 112 00:22:08.750 --> 00:22:26.970 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): At this stage of your course development, this close to the start of term, your content page is probably pretty much set up, and right now, your main focus is just to do a quality check, making sure that everything is accurate, in the correct order, and especially that your dates are up to date. 113 00:22:27.460 --> 00:22:47.259 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): From here, you can also hide individual events or items, so maybe you're still finalizing a live talk, you can hide that until every… the details are finalized, so that students won't see it until everything is ready to go. And you can also rely on automatic syncing. So, say you have a Dropbox. 114 00:22:47.260 --> 00:22:54.550 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): If your Dropbox is tied to your… an event on your content page, you only have to update the 115 00:22:54.550 --> 00:23:08.319 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): date and time on the content page using Schedule Builder instead of going… updating it in multiple places. So, if it's linked to the schedule, you only have to update it in the schedule, so that's helpful. 116 00:23:09.090 --> 00:23:18.109 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And finally, just maintaining a clean, accurate content page will help ensure that your students have a clear and consistent experience from the very start. 117 00:23:19.160 --> 00:23:30.529 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): I mentioned a little bit about the dates. While you're reviewing your dates, I wanted to mention that there are 3 dates that you can update within the content page. 118 00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:48.249 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): The first date is you're available on, and this is the date that students actually are able to click on and access whatever is linked to that event. The due date is the date that students are reminded to… that something is happening. They get an automatic reminder saying, you have a due date coming up. 119 00:23:48.540 --> 00:23:57.529 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then the access ends date is the date that students can no longer access that item. It goes back to being text versus a clickable link. 120 00:23:57.530 --> 00:24:12.310 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And usually, you're gonna see a lot of… everything should have an available on and maybe a due date, but the access ends date is usually blank unless you have a reason that you want students to lose access to something at a certain point in the academic term. 121 00:24:14.650 --> 00:24:18.520 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Alright, and then… Depending on… 122 00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:43.590 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Oops, sorry. So in addition, I did mention that you can link things to the schedule, but if you have something that's not linked to the schedule, you'll need to go into that specific tool to make sure the dates are up to date for that tool. So, for example, a lot of times you might have a sign-up sheet or something that's not connected to the schedule, so you'll need to make sure that if it's not connected to the schedule, that you go into 123 00:24:43.590 --> 00:24:45.220 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): the tool to update the date. 124 00:24:45.740 --> 00:24:54.189 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): One of the most frequently asked questions that we see around dates that I wanted to highlight here is the online library. 125 00:24:54.190 --> 00:25:03.300 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Now, online library, you might not immediately think, oh, there's a date in there, but online library items and folders can have access dates. 126 00:25:03.300 --> 00:25:18.569 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): set up. So, and those don't carry over from, they don't automatically update from year to year. So, check your online library for date controls and also hidden folders to make sure that everything is accessible and visible to your students. 127 00:25:21.080 --> 00:25:29.860 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Alright, and then, finally, students can, download the schedule to their own personal calendars. However. 128 00:25:29.860 --> 00:25:45.190 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): If you make changes to your schedule after they've downloaded it, their calendar won't be updated automatically. So you do need to announce all changes to the course schedule after the term starts, to alert students to update their personal calendars. 129 00:25:45.580 --> 00:25:51.370 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, and now I will pass back to Lauren to talk to us about connecting with your students. 130 00:25:51.370 --> 00:26:12.379 Lauren Dana: Great, thank you, Amy. So once your course opens, we really want to be intentional about how you connect with your students. I know if you teach an online course, sometimes it feels like the void, right? Is anyone there as they're going through their lectures? So we just wanted to spend the next few moments going over ways to connect with your students, and how CoursePlus tools can help you do that effectively and efficiently. 131 00:26:12.770 --> 00:26:27.770 Lauren Dana: So one of the simplest ways to create connections in a course is through consistent weekly emails. While they're often used as reminders, they really can do so much more. They help build community, maintain instructor presence, and connect students to the course from week to week. 132 00:26:27.940 --> 00:26:32.299 Lauren Dana: I recommend including a few key elements in each email. 133 00:26:32.340 --> 00:26:49.750 Lauren Dana: So start with course updates, such as announcements or reminders, and rather than just listing topics, help students see how this week's concepts connect to previous lessons, and how they'll support upcoming learning as well. These connections will help reinforce the overall course narrative. 134 00:26:49.820 --> 00:27:03.249 Lauren Dana: You can also highlight due dates and offer a brief assignment debrief after major assessments. Recognizing common strengths or misconceptions show the students that you're engaged with their work and synthesizing their work as a whole. 135 00:27:03.830 --> 00:27:17.210 Lauren Dana: Another great strategy is to incorporate current events or recent examples related to your discipline. So, again, this will help students see the real-world relevance of what they're learning, and encourage them to transfer course concepts beyond the classroom. 136 00:27:17.610 --> 00:27:27.199 Lauren Dana: Finally, CoursePlus has some really great features that make this whole weekly email process easier. So the class email tool lets you send messages to the entire class. 137 00:27:27.260 --> 00:27:46.290 Lauren Dana: You can schedule delivery so that emails arrive at consistent times each week, so maybe you want to send it out every Monday morning, or every Friday afternoon. You can archive and reuse past emails, so that makes it easier for future you, who can just pull what you sent last year, update it, change, review, and get it ready to go. 138 00:27:46.340 --> 00:27:54.150 Lauren Dana: And you're going to see all of these options available to you when you go to the class email tool under Communications on your CoursePlus site. 139 00:27:56.400 --> 00:28:17.160 Lauren Dana: Okay, and then as we mentioned earlier, another important way to increase student connection is by keeping your gradebook updated. So, as you know, grades are incredibly important to our students. I'm sure you've heard that before. So prioritizing your gradebook is really a great way to communicate with students how they're doing in your course. It also probably prevents a lot of emails to you and your TA as well. 140 00:28:17.180 --> 00:28:30.219 Lauren Dana: So, the first thing, as Amy mentioned, you want to make sure every graded activity is linked to the appropriate CoursePlus tool. So whether it's peer assessment, discussion forum, quiz generator, Dropbox, in-lecture quizzes, or a Pathfinder. 141 00:28:30.220 --> 00:28:37.570 Lauren Dana: Connecting the assignment correctly ensures that the grades flow into the grade book and provide students with consistent experience. 142 00:28:37.900 --> 00:29:02.020 Lauren Dana: Whenever possible, you want to attach a rubric to graded assignments. Rubrics will clarify your expectation before students begin their work, promote more consistent grading, and it makes feedback easier for students to interpret and apply. So this is an option in Gradebook that you can add for any assignment. I did just want to give you a quick reminder that students cannot see the rubric in Gradebook until you have completed it. 143 00:29:02.020 --> 00:29:12.230 Lauren Dana: So you want to make sure that you share the rubric with your students in another location, probably on one of your assignment page builder pages, just so that they can see what you're expecting as well. 144 00:29:12.950 --> 00:29:25.819 Lauren Dana: You can also use the gradebook to provide meaningful feedback through written comments or file attachments. So personalized feedback will help students understand what they did well, where they can improve, and how to succeed on future assignments. 145 00:29:26.080 --> 00:29:41.849 Lauren Dana: And finally, this may sound obvious, and it is… but it can be an easy step to overlook. You want to make sure that the grades are actually visible to students. So before the course begins, or after grading an assignment, just double-check that grade visibility settings in the gradebook. 146 00:29:41.850 --> 00:29:54.730 Lauren Dana: So that students can access their scores and feedback without unnecessary confusion or emails. So that'll be that little, like, eye icon, so if it's a slash through it, it means it's not visible. If there's no slash, you're good to go, and students can see it. 147 00:29:57.520 --> 00:30:05.340 Lauren Dana: Okay, next we're gonna talk about the discussion forum. So again, this is an incredibly valuable space for building engagement. 148 00:30:05.540 --> 00:30:06.520 Lauren Dana: And… 149 00:30:06.690 --> 00:30:17.319 Lauren Dana: building community, especially when it's managed intentionally. So, from a practical sense, what I first recommend is, if you're going to be grading the discussion forums, you should link it to the gradebook. 150 00:30:17.320 --> 00:30:28.700 Lauren Dana: So what this does is it streamlines the grading process and everything is organized in one place. So as your TA or you are grading the discussion forum, you can actually place the grade comments. 151 00:30:28.700 --> 00:30:33.490 Lauren Dana: on the discussion forum, and it'll sync to the gradebook, so it's a much easier experience. 152 00:30:33.830 --> 00:30:58.460 Lauren Dana: You also want to review your discussion forum settings. So you have category and topic settings. So the CTL help guide, so the one we placed in the chat, it's going to walk you through a range of options that you can have, that you can select. So, for example, you could have students have to post before they can view other posts, if you want some original content. You can make a topic read-only after a due date, so that students aren't posting late. 153 00:30:58.490 --> 00:31:02.799 Lauren Dana: So I would just go through each of these options and see what works best for you. 154 00:31:03.300 --> 00:31:27.120 Lauren Dana: Can you also want to enable discussion alerts? I think this is really important. As a faculty, sometimes we do forget to check the discussion forum. We get busy, life gets complicated. But if you check these email alerts, you will be able to receive an email when there's activity on the discussion forum, rather than having to always go in manually. So again, there'll be more information on that PDF. 155 00:31:27.120 --> 00:31:41.999 Lauren Dana: I personally recommend signing up for daily emails. There's the option to receive an email each time a student posts. To me, that's very distracting. You're getting a lot of emails if that happens. So I recommend the once a day. It's a great thing to review as your day ends. 156 00:31:42.830 --> 00:31:53.889 Lauren Dana: And before the course begins, I would definitely develop a discussion forum response plan with your teaching team or even just with yourself. So I would think about who will respond to the posts. 157 00:31:54.220 --> 00:32:10.720 Lauren Dana: How often will you participate? Every day, once a week? And what is your goal for response time? 24 hours, two business days. So having a plan helps you maintain consistent instructor presence while setting realistic expectations for both yourself and your students. 158 00:32:11.780 --> 00:32:36.759 Lauren Dana: Okay, another option to think about is how to keep discussions fresh and relevant. So, similar to the emails, you can consider sharing current events, news stories, recent articles related to your discipline. So, again, these kind of posts encourage students to connect concepts with real world issues. And they do often lead to richer discussions because students are pretty excited or have strong opinions about what's going on in today's world rather than just a reading from 10 years 159 00:32:36.760 --> 00:32:37.620 Lauren Dana: ago. 160 00:32:37.990 --> 00:33:02.489 Lauren Dana: And then finally, I would definitely recommend paying attention to any issues or questions that students have so that you can address it for this offering. But I also recommend even when the course ends, going through those questions, and it may be something that you can update or revise for the next offering. So for example, if they have a lot of questions about an assignment, maybe you want to revisit the instructions so that they don't have as many questions. 161 00:33:02.520 --> 00:33:07.469 Lauren Dana: So there's a lot of great qualitative data you can pull from the discussion forum. 162 00:33:09.800 --> 00:33:17.969 Lauren Dana: Okay, I also just want to quickly remind you to keep checking on student activity. So, we don't want student engagement to stop just that first week of class. 163 00:33:17.970 --> 00:33:31.030 Lauren Dana: So it's really important to keep consistently checking this. So regularly review course analytics to identify students who have maybe stopped accessing materials, who are falling or who are falling behind. 164 00:33:31.030 --> 00:33:36.289 Lauren Dana: So a decrease in activity is often an early indicator that a student may be struggling. 165 00:33:36.310 --> 00:33:55.159 Lauren Dana: So, when you notice a student hasn't been engaging with a course, we recommend reaching out with a brief supportive check-in. You can just see how they're doing, remind them of resources, and encourage them to reconnect with the course. Often, students really appreciate knowing that you've noticed their absence and disengagement, and care about their success. 166 00:33:55.730 --> 00:34:06.429 Lauren Dana: These proactive check-ins not only help students stay on track, but it also reinforces your instructor presence and demonstrates that engagement is a priority to you, not just that first week. 167 00:34:06.750 --> 00:34:27.109 Lauren Dana: And as a reminder, you can find all this data by going to faculty tools, administrative reports, and student activities. So you can check things like how often they access the course site, if they've watched the lectures. There's definitely a breadth of interesting information and data in here that's worth taking a look at on a regular basis. 168 00:34:29.350 --> 00:34:47.969 Lauren Dana: Okay, and then I would be remiss not to mention live talks if we have any fully online faculty here. So we recommend that you schedule live and prepare for live talks as soon as you can. It's one of the most engaging parts of an online course, so we definitely want to keep students informed and prepared. 169 00:34:48.070 --> 00:34:59.919 Lauren Dana: So the first one seems obvious, but as soon as your schedule is finalized, update the live talk dates in Course Plus. So you want to give students plenty of advance notice to help them plan around work, family, and other commitments. 170 00:35:00.980 --> 00:35:16.020 Lauren Dana: To help students get the most out of each live talk session, I would recommend providing supplemental materials ahead of time. So this might include assigned readings, discussion questions, speaker biographies, or other resources that help the students come prepared to participate. 171 00:35:16.670 --> 00:35:33.570 Lauren Dana: It's also really important to clearly communicate your attendance policy, participation expectations, and any makeup assignment requirements for students who cannot attend. So, setting these expectations early reduces confusion, and it minimizes questions later in the semester. 172 00:35:34.520 --> 00:35:54.140 Lauren Dana: Again, which you're probably used to by now, you just want to make sure that that live talk page is the central location for everything students need, including the Zoom link before the session, the recording and related materials after the session. So having this one consistent location makes it much easier for the students to find what they need. 173 00:35:54.140 --> 00:36:08.059 Lauren Dana: And finally, you want to make sure you try to upload the live talk recording and any accompanying materials within 24 hours of the session. So posting these promptly allow the students who are unable to attend to stay on pace with the rest of the course. 174 00:36:09.300 --> 00:36:16.429 Lauren Dana: Okay, I'm now gonna pass it back to Amy for some final observations and comments and question and answers. 175 00:36:16.940 --> 00:36:26.900 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, thank you, Lauren. First, I wanted to pause here. Does anyone have any questions about anything we've covered so far? I'm also gonna look at the chat. It looks like… 176 00:36:26.900 --> 00:36:40.460 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): the question in the chat was answered, and I don't see any other questions. But, if you do have questions, feel free to raise your hand in Zoom or post in the chat, and otherwise, I will just share some resources, from CTL. 177 00:36:40.850 --> 00:36:56.559 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): So, in the chat, we shared a PDF. Please go ahead and download that. We'll also share that PDF in the follow-up email to all registrants. And this includes frequently asked questions around the start of term that we at CTL receive from faculty and TAs. 178 00:36:56.560 --> 00:37:17.780 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): There are also links to the CTL Help and CoursePlus Faculty Guide. Again, that's where you can find step-by-step instructions for all the tools that we covered today. And by contacting CTL Help, you can also request a consultation if you want one-on-one assistance, either with Seth at CTL Help or with an instructional designer on more of your design and development questions. 179 00:37:18.080 --> 00:37:36.900 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And I also wanted to highlight the CTL's Teaching Toolkit website. It's a resource with all things teaching and learning at BSPH. It includes things like, live talk instructions, and recommendations for active learning, and etc. So, that's a really great 180 00:37:37.150 --> 00:37:38.750 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): resource to have. 181 00:37:39.470 --> 00:38:04.279 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): I also wanted to highlight more from CTL, including that CTL has a blog that you can subscribe to, and this is where you can find the latest from CTL, including anytime there's a major update to CoursePlus, there's usually an article about it, so that's a great way to stay on top of things from CTL. I mentioned the Toolkit site. On our Teaching Toolkit site has, we have an events calendar. 182 00:38:04.280 --> 00:38:16.239 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): where you can check out upcoming events like next week's workshop, which I'll mention in just a moment. And you can also check out our past workshop recordings by visiting our on-demand workshop videos page. 183 00:38:17.740 --> 00:38:40.769 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then I also wanted to do a shout out that right before term starts is a great time to start preparing your teaching assistants. So if you have a TA or if you are a TA, consider checking out the Teaching Assistantship Training course. It's fully online and self-paced, and it prepares students for the roles and responsibilities of teaching assistantship at BSPH. 184 00:38:40.770 --> 00:38:46.909 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And if you complete all of the modules and the assignments, then you can get a certificate of completion at the end. 185 00:38:48.240 --> 00:39:11.760 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, I mentioned upcoming events. CTL has launched a new generative artificial intelligence, or AI, series back in September. If you go to our past, our on-demand workshops recording page, you can watch the recordings from our September events in this series. But next week, I'll actually be giving a workshop on designing AI-resistant assessments. 186 00:39:11.760 --> 00:39:15.689 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): So that is next week, and there's still time to register if you're interested. 187 00:39:15.690 --> 00:39:29.890 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then in November, Lauren will be co-presenting with Dr. Davina Frick from Carey School of Business on scale simulation-based learning with AI. So go to our events calendar to check those out. 188 00:39:30.050 --> 00:39:47.209 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): I also wanted to highlight, not on the slide, but we have also a regular Teaching Toolkit workshop coming up in November on Polishing Your Presentation Lecture Recording Essentials. That would be great for BSPH faculty who are preparing to record new lecture material. 189 00:39:47.350 --> 00:39:48.050 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Okay. 190 00:39:48.110 --> 00:40:07.830 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then finally, we'd love to hear your feedback about how today went, and also if there are any topics that you'd like CTL to cover in the future. We use your feedback to plan events just like this one. So please take a moment to visit the form. Lauren just posted the link in the chat, or you can scan the QR code. 191 00:40:07.830 --> 00:40:17.159 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): And then otherwise, I will open the floor to all of you to share any questions or comments you may have. And I also want to thank you for attending today. 192 00:40:17.340 --> 00:40:34.749 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): Oh, and Celine just posted in the chat an additional shout out to our blog site. While there's no built-in search functionality, I recommend browsing the posts in the Teaching Tips category, where you can find the power of the prompt, 5 Steps to Boosting Discussion Engagement. Very nice. Thank you, Celine. That's a great shout out. 193 00:40:35.200 --> 00:40:39.469 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): So does anyone have any questions about anything we covered today? 194 00:40:46.280 --> 00:40:47.840 Graham Mooney: No, that was great, thank you. 195 00:40:48.390 --> 00:40:52.879 Amy Pinkerton (BSPH CTL Teaching Toolkit): All right, well, thank you so much, and I hope you have a great start of term.