Gradebook Professional Learning - Three Part Series

The CIT is excited to announce a three-part series of professional learning workshops focused on the Blackboard Ultra Gradebook! The Blackboard Ultra Gradebook is a powerful tool that allows you to manage and track student grades, assignments, and feedback. This series is designed to help faculty enhance their skills and effectively utilize the advanced features of the Blackboard Ultra Gradebook.

Navigating the Gradebook
November 6th - 12:30 pm  - 1:30 pm - Gaige 104

Explore the four distinct gradebook views and learn how to navigate them effectively and reorder your columns. Additionally, discover the benefits of using the student preview feature to enhance your understanding and management of the gradebook:
  • Overview

  • Gradable item

  • Grades

  • Student

 

Grading and Leaving Student Feedback
November 13th - 12:30 pm - 1:30pm - Gaige 104

You can manage grades, apply overrides, and handle multiple attempts seamlessly. Additionally, there are various methods to leave detailed feedback for your students, ensuring they receive the guidance they need to succeed:
  • How to grade assignments, tests, and multiple attempts

  • Post automatically; should you use automatic 0’s?

  • Leaving overall feedback for students

  • How to change an override grade

 

Setting up your Overall Grade
November 20th - 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm - Gaige 104

Setting up the overall grade in Blackboard Ultra is a straightforward process that helps you provide students with a clear view of their academic progress. Customize the display options to ensure the overall grade is presented in a way that aligns with your grading policy. Once configured, the overall grade column will automatically update as you enter grades, giving students real-time insights into their performance:
  • Create a calculated column for your Final/Average grade.

  • Overall Grade Settings Options

 

Other Assistance

Customized Professional Development

One-on-One consultations are available to all faculty by appointment. These customized, one-on-one professional development sessions can be the answer to your faculty technology development and instructional support needs.

  • all areas of Blackboard explored
  • apply technologies to meet your course learning objectives
  • Instructional Design Services
  • getting started with Kaltura and Kaltura Capture

Getting Started with Blackboard Ultra

New to Blackboard and need to get your course up and running or do you need to learn the Ultra Course View? These professional learning webinars will be made up of demonstrations, lectures and live Q&A to begin building your Fall 2024 course(s) in Bb Ultra course view… topics that will be covered include:

  • Navigate the Ultra course view
  • Course Design methods based upon your teaching style and consistent with your syllabus
  • Organizing, building, and managing course content based on pedagogical best practices
    • Ways to bring in content
    • Upload a Syllabus file 
    • Add a link to the syllabus 
    • Use the New Document page
    • Folders vs Learning Module
  • Going over Student Preview mode
  • Communicating with students 
    • Announcements
    • Messages
    • Course Schedule

Assignments, Inline Grading & Rubrics

Learn how to use the Assignments tool to efficiently create assignments that assess students in a variety of meaningful ways and decide on the best way to present the assignments you create. This webinar will include the following topics: 

  • Create/Deploy Assignment
  • Attaching Blackboard Rubric to the Assignment
  • Enable SafeAssign
  • See how students submit to an assignment
  • Accessing Students 1st and 2nd Submissions
  • Insert Inline annotation
  • Audio/Video Feedback for students
  • Post Grades
  • See how students access Grade and Feedback

Creating Online Tests/Respondus LockDown Browser

Learn how to use the Test tool to efficiently create online tests that assess students in a variety of meaningful ways and decide on the best way to present the tests you create. Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard. When LockDown Browser is required for an online exam, students are unable to print, copy, visit other websites, or access other applications. Topics will include:

  • Create and deploy a Test
  • Go through the Test Options
  • Modify an existing question and add image to a question
  • Modify the question points
  • Setting up Student Accommodations and Exceptions
  • Using Question Banks and Question Pools
  • Providing Feedback and Grading Test Questions
  • Enable Repondus Lockdown Browser
  • Brief discussion on using Response test generator to create tests and import into your Blackboard course

Mastering the Gradebook

This webinar provides a comprehensive introduction to the gradebook. Use this valuable tool to assist you in understanding student progress and to make informed decisions on how to improve educational performance. This workshop assumes you are already familiar with Assignments, Tests, and other Blackboard tools. This webinar will cover the following topics:

  • Navigating the Grade Center
  • Go over some housekeeping items
  • Viewing Grade History and Attempt Logs
  • Configuring the Gradebook Settings
  • Configuring your Letter Schema
  • Creating and using categories to group related columns together and organize the data
  • Adding an Average Calculation
  • Adding in Manual Items (Columns)
  • Entering in Manual Grades
  • Ways to Grade/Posting Grades
  • Configuring the Overall Grade Calculations by Weight
  • Modifying the Overall Grade Setting
  • Adding in the Final Grade Letter Total Calculation
  • Setting up the Grade Notations

Organizing Content into Manageable Sections

Does your current course menu have a lot components and is very long? Are you looking to consolidate your course menu and rethink how to organize your course material in the best interest of your students? Then this would be a good session to attend. Topics that will be covered include:

  • ways to store your course content - folders vs learning modules
  • ways to organize (chunk) your course material in more manageable sections
  • how to place your manageable sections in sequential order
     

Kaltura - Upload and Use Media Content in Blackboard

Kaltura is RIC's media streaming server. This webinar will show you how to upload media to your Kaltura account and link said videos within your Blackboard course. Topics will include:

  • Uploading media to your Kaltura My Media
  • Adding a YouTube video to your Kaltura My Media
  • Recording video with Express Capture (webcam in a browser) in Kaltura My Media
  • Recording video with Kaltura Capture in Kaltura My Media
  • Request Professional Closed Captions for your video
  • Embed your video in your Blackboard course
  • Learn how to create playlists
  • Review updates to the media player
  • Learn how to use Analytics in Kaltura My Media

Respondus LockDown Browser

Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard. When LockDown Browser is required for an online exam, students are unable to print, copy, visit other websites, or access other applications. This workshop will cover the following topics:

  • Enabling LockDown Browser on specific tests in a Bb course
  • Setting up LockDown Browser's advanced settings
  • Student experience when taking a test with Lockdown Browser

Ally and Accessibility in Blackboard

Learn how to make your Blackboard courses accessible with Bb's Ally tool. See accessibility scores for uploaded files within your courses and learn how to make your files more accessible with simple, step-by-step instructions from within your course. Also, learn about the alternative formats Ally automatically creates when you upload files to your courses. Ally checks the following file types:

  • Microsoft Office (Word and PowerPoint)
  • PDF's
  • images
  • uploaded HTML files
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