Aligning Effective Instructional Strategies with Academic Technologies: Improving Instructor-to-Student Interaction using D2L Brightspace Tools 

August 31 – September 20

Description 

The Quality Improvement Process site provides examples of ways to to support instructor-to-student interaction in courses.

• Maintaining instructor presence through regular communications (announcements, updates) and specific student-instructor interactions.
• Engaging in heightened monitoring of student progress throughout the first few weeks and actively communicating with students when they get behind or are having difficulty with the material.
• Monitoring student activity and intervening to redirect behavior as needed.
• Providing ongoing, prompt, and substantive feedback early enough and throughout for students to adjust their performance.

By the end of this three week course you will be able to using D2L Brightspace tools including the Classlist, Announcements, Intelligent Agents, and Discussions tools in your course to improve instructor-to-student interactions in your course. You will be introduced to key workflows and effective practices for developing communication, collaboration, and student engagement.

Introduction Video from the Instructor

Coming soon!

Course Learning Objectives 

After completing the course, participants will be able to: 

• Identify and apply communication tools within D2L Brightspace (including the following tools Classlist, Announcements, Intelligent Agents, and Discussions) to facilitate instructor-to-student interactions in your own course  
• Select and implement one of the D2L Brightspace tools in your course 

Technical Skill Requirements 

• Use a web browser 
• Create, save and upload Word documents 
• Navigate Microsoft Windows 
• Create and send an email using your Minnesota State account 
• Evaluate and decide whether or not to use OneDrive 
• Perform basic tasks associated with the following D2L Brightspace tools: Content, Quizzes and Assignments 

Materials Required 

Participants should have access to their own D2L Brightspace course (sandbox or development are acceptable) to practice using the available communication tools.

• Contact your campus D2L/IT Helpdesk to create a D2L Brightspace “Sample/Sandbox” Course if you do not have one.

Suggested Audience 

Faculty (Full-time and part-time), Instructional Designers and Technologists, and Faculty Developers/Trainers. 

Estimated Time Commitment 

Most participants are able to complete this course by committing 4-6 hours per week. 

Reflect on your Professional Development 

As you progress through this course, please consider how you can use the assignments as a way to highlight your work on your Professional Development Plan. Consider sharing your work with your leadership team. 

Registration Required

Use the RSVP tool below to register. There is a limit of 30 participants per course.

Because we need time to enroll participants into the corresponding D2L Brightspace Course site, we will close RSVPs one week prior to the start of this course. 

Reminders Coming:  We use the email address you provided to send you reminder emails as the event date gets closer, but we suggest you add this event to your calendar. 

Data Use: Campuses want to know if their faculty are using the educational development resources and opportunities made available from Minnesota State to best tailor their on-campus offerings. We will provide participation information upon campus request. You may opt out of this report by contacting Catherine Ford at Catherine.ford@minnstate.edu. We plan to use your contact information to send you information about upcoming events on the NED Events Calendar for which you may be interested.

Accommodations: If you require accommodations (live captioning, etc.) to participate in this event, please send an email to the person at the bottom of this page. 

Course Location 

This course is hosted and facilitated using shared D2L Brightspace instance of Minnesota State called, MnSite. Using the RSVP tool below allows us to send you reminders about this course and share important information following the course including how to access the corresponding D2L Brightspace course site.  

Questions?  

Please contact the course instructor, Suzanne Schlangen