We in Instructional Design love Biology Professor, Paul Webb, for his approach to creating enlivened and thoughtful course content.  He is known for adding a layer of humor to his courses, and making complex biological concepts more accessible and fun.  As a Fall Brightspace Pilot instructor, when we challenged him to learn and create a course in Brightspace, we knew he would not let us down.  After a semester in teaching in Brightspace, here’s what he has to say: 

“I have really enjoyed the challenge of transitioning my courses to Brightspace. While it would have been relatively easy to import my Bridges content as it currently exists, instead I took this opportunity to rethink how I presented my course materials and do some building from the ground up to take advantage of Brightspace's features. One particular change I made is to increase the interactivity of my course materials. I have long provided students with my own full-text lecture materials in place of a textbook, and with Bridges these were in the form of a static PDF file. With the html editor in Brightspace, I have converted these static files into interactive web pages, including video clips, embedded quizzes and problem sets, and more. Brightspace's user interface is intuitive, and easy to navigate. Other features I really like include the grading tool, which allows me to annotate, markup, and return student submissions without having to download and reupload the assignments. I also like having the ability for both instructor and students to leave video messages. For years I have had students post a short video introduction to themselves at the start of the semester, and this always required third party sites, or a cumbersome set of steps through Bridges and Panopto. Now this capability is seamlessly built into Brightspace itself. It has been a bit of a learning curve for both me and the students, in terms of figuring out which settings and layouts make the most sense for all of us, but the training provided through the pilot program, and the excellent support from the ID staff have made for an easy transition. I am looking forward to the challenge of expanding my Brightspace course offerings next semester.” 

You can learn more about Paul Webb here:  Paul Webb bio | RWU FSSNS
More about the tools Paul used in his Brightspace course Creator + and H5P

Natasha participated in the intensive Brightspace summer pilot program, which trained faculty to teach in Brightspace for this fall.  She quickly adapted to the new platform, and developed her online course content to align with her dynamic teaching style.  Here are some of her reflections:

"Transitioning to Brightspace from Bridges has been wonderful for both me and the students. Learning about the available tools has helped me to be thoughtful about what kinds of ways I can experiment with my pedagogy.  Finding ways to tinker with tools in my sandbox, and use the support provided both by our ID team and Brightspace has been a meta-lesson in how important experiential learning can be. Students who are accustomed to using other learning management systems are much more comfortable with the look and feel of Brightspace, and navigating in the course is a lot more intuitive for everyone involved. I have been thrilled to build lessons and assessments on which I know I can improve each year without having to rebuild from scratch. This will allow me to save my time and energy for the more impactful and relational parts of teaching.  The style of Brightspace helps me to design a thoughtful course page that can accommodate different learning styles and strengths, and make sometimes complex and technical material much more fun and accessible."

Natasha is an accomplished faculty member at the Law School, and you can can read more about her academic career, collaborations and publications in her faculty profile.