Students are most engaged with courses that require human connection. Instructors set the tone for engagement. Here are some ways you can encourage collaboration and build community among your learners.
Once you’re inside your Brightspace course, you can quickly create an Announcement for your students from the course home page.
An announcement item stays on the homepage of your course until dismissed by the learner, and is simultaneously sent by default to the student’s email.
DIID recommends creating and scheduling Announcements in advance to deliver targeted messages and timely reminders.
Be sure to use both the Start and End Dates on scheduled Announcements to ensure the Announcement is available only during its window of relevancy.
Intelligent Agents can be used with release conditions to send email to users for any number of reasons. You can congratulate them for work well done, remind them of missed work, update them on changes to the course, and more.
Setting release conditions for an intelligent agent ensures that the email only goes to learners who have met the conditions you set. This means, for example, that students who DID submit an assignment won't get the reminder that it is due. This scenario is ideal for using release conditions with the "not" operator. Once a user meets a release condition, the condition is cleared for that user and cannot be reset. Learn how to set up intelligent agents in Brightspace.
As an alternative to Intelligent Agents, you can use release conditions in the Announcements Tool. An announcement can be set to release only to the student(s) that meet whatever criteria you set (current course grade, submission of assignments, etc.)
Advantages:
Student may not be checking their email, which means intelligent agent email never actually reaches them, but an announcement might pop up on their phones if they use the Brightspace Pulse app.
Student sees the announcement in their course right in front of them.
Student gets an email via Brightspace announcement notification.
Student gets a red dot in their notification area at the top of the screen.
Student gets notification via Pulse app if they're using it.
Great for a student that is actively engaged and in Brightspace as things "pop" in front of their eyes without going to a different email tab.
Disadvantages:
No log to show who has gotten the announcement delivered to them.
See Intelligent agents all in one place. Announcements you may have to dig around a little bit.
A disengaged student may not be checking their email OR Brightspace OR using the Pulse app.
Not able to CC an Advisor
DIID recommends emailing your class from the Classlist once your course opens to learners. The email you send from the Brightspace Classlist will go to your students’ NICC email.
Think of these as one-way messages; students cannot reply directly to the email they receive (replies will bounce to online@nicc.edu). Recipients’ names and addresses will be listed under BCC: to protect the privacy of the individuals.
Note that Brightspace does not have an autosave feature for email.
Instructors should post regularly to their course discussion topics. If the only voices regularly present in discussions are those of students, your course is missing a valuable mode of online instruction.
Instructors can post their own or sample contributions to their discussion topics in advance; doing so will ensure that the first student to post to the discussion topic will have a post to reply to.
Refer to the Overview of Regular and Substantive Interaction page for additional suggestions.
Activity Feed is a course homepage widget, enabled upon request by DIID, that provides a central location for learners and instructors to post messages that are visible to the entire class. For example, you might post reminders about upcoming assignments and links to course materials. Students can comment on your posts but cannot make original posts to the feed.
A course homepage pop-up window can be achieved by creating a module in your course called Welcome which can be hidden if desired. Anything in the module description will show up in the pop-up message on the student’s homepage. To turn on this feature, activate a course homepage that includes the Welcome Window option by selecting the ellipses on the bottom of your course homepage.
Specific module descriptions and images can be pulled into these pop-ups, allowing instructors to deliver targeted messages to learners. Students will need to dismiss or X-out the custom pop-up in order to advance into the course.
Instructors can schedule synchronous Chat sessions with students. The Chat tool functions similarly to a traditional chat room. Only text-based communication is possible in the Chat, with the instructor possessing no special tools or designation in the space. Scheduling Chats with learners is a way to facilitate low-stakes interactions with learners akin to Office Hours, bonus discussions, etc.
Make it easy for you and your students to schedule individual appointments or set up time slots for student conferences. We recommend the following free resources:
Google Calendar Appointments: This feature of your Google Calendar allows you to set days and times for appointments. Once you go through the setup process, you will have a link to a booking page that can easily be added to your Brightspace courses. To learn more, visit the Google Calendar appointments schedule page.
Calendly: Similar to Google's tool, Calendly also allows for appointment scheduling and creates a booking page. Calendly also has a meeting poll feature that you can use to find the best times for your class to meet for review sessions or other synchronous activities. Visit the Calendly website to learn more.
Some instructors choose to communicate with students outside of Brightspace. Here are just a few external tools that are free and easily accessible:
The Remind app: free tool that you can use to send reminders to your classes. Students join via code and can choose to receive email or text reminders. Visit the Remind app website to learn more.
TextFree: Web-based and app versions allow you to text learners from a phone number that you choose during setup. Calling is also supported, though the text features work more smoothly.
Google Voice: While this tool is not available through your NICC Google account, some instructors use personal Google accounts to create Google Voice accounts to call and text students using a Google Voice phone number.