With the Fall semester underway, and many faculty actively using Brightspace with their students, some common questions are emerging about specific settings, tools and classroom management strategies. While we will only address a few of the most common in this article, please watch this space for the next in the series!
FAQ 1:
Why does the font in my text boxes revert to 12 pixels, making me resize it regularly while I edit?
Answer:
While the tool bar of the text editor indicates 19px as the recommended default font size, the actual system setting is for 12px. You can change this by
- Clicking on Content
- In upper right hand corner click on the “cog” icon with the word Settings
- Under Content Settings, Content Authoring, go to Default Font Settings and choose Lato 18 (or 20)
- Scroll down and hit SAVE. (We do not suggest you change anything else in the settings to avoid unintended consequences.)
FAQ 2:
Why do my students see completed gradable activities (quizzes, assignments, etc.) in the Work to Do widget as “overdue,” even though they have completed them?
Answer:
“Due Dates” trigger very specific actions within the system, which are relevant to gradable activities. We have determined that students are seeing work as “overdue” in the widget because it is inside a module that has been set with a “due date.”
Take the “due dates” off of your modules or other structural, non-gradable components and your students will get the full and accurate benefits of the Work to Do widget on their landing page, with the product functioning as designed. If you want your students to know when a module’s full load of work is expected to be completed, put it in a module overview/intro page, or put it in the description of your module, or simply list it in your full schedule and/or syllabus, as it is informational. Do not set a due date on the module – the structural container of the work for the week.
If you actually want students to lose access to a module after a certain date, use an “end date.” These are designed to control access. “Due dates” on the other hand are designed to trigger the following actions within the system:
- Notifications: a notification can be set by the student to be reminded that a due date for a gradable activity (such as a quiz or assignment) is pending within a few days. Or that it is overdue.
- Annotation on grading views: when a student does their work after the due date a “late” annotation shows up in that gradable activity to let you, the instructor, and the student know the days and hours and minutes the activity was late. And then you, the instructor, can decide what to do about that, if anything. This also shows up in the gradable activity itself and in the Class Progress for both you and the student.
- Work to do: this is a widget that is designed to pull data from the dates in the calendar, which is populated from the start, end and due dates assigned, and is intended as a place the student can go to see all the work that is due across the system in all the classes they are taking. It also shows them if work is overdue. If faculty put the due dates on the modules – something that is in fact a structural component, not a gradable activity – we have tested and determined that the student is going to see that their work within the module is overdue. There is no way to track that students “do” a module by a “due date” as it is not a gradable activity and setting a “due date” on a module appears to interfere with the ability of the system to accurately report in the “Work to Do” widget the status of the gradable activities within that module.
FAQ 3:
Why does my Quick Eval view show an activity tile for a gradable activity even though I have graded everything and zero filled columns for those who did not submit work?
Answer:
The Quick Eval activity view shows activities in a horizontal tile with the following information:
- number of completed attempts/number of students in class
- a live link for new ungraded attempts that you can click on to grade
- information about how many submitted attempts, how many evaluated attempts, and how many published grades/feedback
If you have 19 students in your class and only 16 made attempts, that activity tile will continue to show in your Quick Eval as 3 students have not submitted any attempts. You will see 16/19, 16 evaluated, 16 published, and no live number linking you to the attempts. If you have zero filled those students’ grades who have not submitted, or know they will not be submitting attempts ever, you can use the option to dismiss the activity tile. The Quick Eval shows you how many out of the class made attempts, how many you evaluated and published, and provides a live link to new attempts. Your zero filled grades are not attempts, so they will not show up in Quick Eval as completed, hence the tile will display.
We hope these tidbits will help with some early class management questions. Please continue to use the HVCC ticket system for your questions and concerns at https://helpdesk.hvcc.edu and choose “Submit a Ticket.” As we find common questions and concerns we will collect them and provide information in these articles.
The Center for Distance and Online Learning