Workshops for Brightspace Users
The Office of Online Learning and Academic Technologies is offering the following
workshops throughout the year. Except where noted, all workshops are led by Todd Taylor, Online Learning Manager.
Register for all sessions here.
Working with Groups
Tuesday, January 28 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, January 29 from 3pm - 4pm
The Working with Groups workshop will outline how to create groups, how to assign
a discussion to a particular group, how to enable “lockers” and group discussions
to monitor the progress of group assignments, how to create a group assignment, and
how to grade a group assignment.
Adding and Structuring Content
Tuesday, February 4 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, February 5 from 3pm - 4pm
The Adding and structuring content workshop will provide exercises on adding modules,
embedding existing videos and audio files, adding existing graded activities to modules,
and adding new pages. You will also be provided with exercises on moving content within
a move as well as how to change a module title. This workshop will outline how to
ensure content is released to students.
Adding Assignments
Tuesday, February 11 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, February 12 from 3pm - 4pm
The Adding Assignments workshop will focus on building out basic assignments in Brightspace.
You will be provided with an example of an assignment. The exercises will outline
how to create a basic assignment with an appropriate title, score, description, submission
method, and visibility.
Setting up the Gradebook
Tuesday, February 18 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, February 19 from 3pm - 4pm
The Setting up the Gradebook workshop aims to provide you with a show-and-tell of
the gradebook from the perspective of the student. In doing so, the workshop will
aim to explain how the gradebook communicates to the student their performance. The
workshop will then provide exercises on how to set up the gradebook. First, the workshop
will outline the recommended settings for the gradebook. Then, the workshop will guide
participants through the process of creating high level categories. Finally, the workshop
will show how to associate assignments, discussions, and quizzes with those categories.
Managing Accessibility in Brightspace
Tuesday, February 25 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, February 26 from 3pm - 4pm
Accessibility is about ensuring courses are perceivable, operable, understandable,
and robust for all learners, regardless of ability or situational context. Using approved
technology tools will help ensure the operable and robust dimensions of accessibility
are fulfilled. As instructors, however, there are steps to take to ensure courses
are perceivable and understandable. This workshop will showcase the Accessibility
Report in Brightspace and walk you through how to address common accessibility opportunities.
Adding Quizzes in Brightspace
Tuesday, March 4 from 3pm - 4pm
Wednesday, March 5 from 3pm - 4pm
This workshop will provide a deep dive into quizzes. The workshop will demonstrate
a quiz, including the different types of quiz questions. You will be invited to reflect
on the types of quiz questions that they might use in their course. The workshop will
then provide exercises on how to build out a bank of questions, including best practices
such as a bank of recall questions and a bank of short answer questions, as well as
a consideration around scoring each. Exercises will then turn to associating the questions
with a quiz.
Building Quizzes in Brightspace with AI in Mind
Tuesday, March 11 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, March 12 from 3pm - 4pm
A purpose of quizzes is to evaluate what information students have retained. When
students do not know an answer, they may guess the correct answer, which may overestimate
knowledge retention. Students may also be tempted to look up information. With generative
AI, such as Microsoft’s Copilot or ChatGPT, this can be done in a browser window.
This session will propose allowing and scoring “I don’t know” responses to reward
students for self-identifying areas where information has not been retained. Advanced
Brightspace Quiz features such as scoring multiple options, custom feedback messages,
release conditions, and setting a completion score will be explored.
Independent Student Work with AI in Mind
Tuesday, March 18 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, March 19 from 3pm - 4pm
Do you find that students are turning to Generative AI for answers when working on
your most tried-and-true assignments? This workshop will review where independent
student work fits into your instructional mix and activities. Participants will be
invited to think about those assignments they have relied upon in the past, but now
are heavily impacted by AI usage. Personas will be leveraged to identify reasons for
generative AI usage and help brainstorm possible safeguards.
Milestones with AI in Mind
Tuesday, March 25 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, March 26 from 3pm - 4pm
Setting milestones in assignments and projects can help instructors get to know their
students' voices and assess their genuine understanding of the material as they work
through it. This workshop will employ process mapping to break a complex assessment
task down into discrete milestones. The proposed task will be an essay or similar
writing deliverable. Milestones will be evaluated using the learning outcomes to distinguish
between critical competency-based tasks and tasks that can potentially be outsourced.
Document histories in Google Docs will be demonstrated and multimodal deliverables–such
as think aloud recordings–will be discussed.
Independent Student Work - Assessment Strategies with AI in Mind
Tuesday, April 8 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, April 9 from 3pm - 4pm
This workshop will explore the alignment between learning outcomes and assessment
strategies. Participants will use a course outcomes matrix to evaluate alignment and
the progressive development of skills. For assessment outputs that AI may challenge,
we will draw on learning outcomes to ideate alternative strategies. Finally, the workshop
will consider reflection prompts that may help learners consider the relevance of
their learning. The overall thesis of this workshop is that unwanted AI usage may
be a symptom of tasks that are not aligned with the goals of learners or the course.
Independent Student Work - Expectations with AI in Mind
Tuesday, April 22 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, April 23 from 3pm - 4pm
This workshop will explore a framework for writing assignment prompts that are both
human and AI friendly. A goal will be to generate valid and reliable outputs when
these prompts are used with AI. These outputs will represent your baseline. They ensure
instructions and expectations are clear. In contrast, human outputs will allow your
students to contribute their own voice and experiences.
Creating Rubrics in Brightspace
Tuesday, April 29 from 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, April 30 from 3pm - 4pm
This workshop aims to raise awareness and build technical skills around the use of
rubrics. The workshop will be broken down into three parts:
- Rubrics from a student perspective - Instructors will be shown an assignment that has a rubric embedded. In doing so, terminology will be introduced so that faculty will be familiar with criteria, grading language, as well as the use of positive language.
- Creating and inserting rubrics - Instructors will be provided with a demonstration on how to create a rubric. A rubric will be first created with all criteria equally weighted, then faculty will be shown how to add custom points.
- Grading with rubrics - Instructors will be briefly provided with a walkthrough of how to grade with rubrics.
Get Help
If you need assistance with Brightspace, call the SUNY Online Support Services Help Desk (open 7 days per week) at 1-844-673-6786 during the following hours:
Monday - Friday 7:00AM-12:00AM Midnight EST
Saturday 10:00AM-6:00PM EST
Sunday 10:00AM-9:00PM EST
If you are having trouble with your FIT Username and Password, call IT for FIT at (212) 217-4357.