Preparing your Blackboard Learn Course Sites for Fall 2022

As you start to work on your fall courses, we wanted to share with you the following important information that will help you prepare your course site in Blackboard Learn.

Copying a Course
If you had us increase your course content collection quota in the course you are copying forward, please make sure to reach out to us before starting the course copy. We will need to increase the course content collection quota in the new course first.

To copy a previous course site into a new one in Blackboard Learn:

1. Go into the course site that has the content to copy. In the Control Panel, expand the "Packages and Utilities" section and click Course Copy.
2. On the next screen, in the “Select Copy Type” section, make sure Copy Course Materials into Existing Course is selected in the drop down menu.
3. Now, in the “Select Copy Options” section, next to the Destination Course ID field, click Browse. Then, find and select the Course ID for the new course (the one you want to put the content into). Click Submit.
4. Select the Course Materials that you want to copy over to the new course. Usually, Select All is the best choice, although you might not want to copy announcements.
• If Select All is not used, make sure to include Grade Center Columns and Settings if Assignments and/or Tests are being copied.
• Also, under Discussion Board, select "Include only the forums, with no starter posts" if threads are not created by the instructor for students to respond to. If not, all student threads will copy over as anonymous and they will need to be deleted.
  
  
5. In the “File Attachments” section, keep the default settings.
6. Click Submit.

Please note: When a previous course site is copied over into a new course site, any new or changed content areas will be added to the bottom of the course menu (below Help). You can easily move them up into the appropriate spot in the course menu by dragging/dropping the menu item. 

    
  

Starting in the summer, the course template was changed from Course Information to Syllabus and Course Information. The new Syllabus and Course Information area may be blank with your course materials in Course Information towards the bottom of the course menu. To avoid confusion, we encourage you to post your syllabus and any other course information in the Syllabus and Course Information area and either delete or hide the other Course Information content area.

Making your Course Shell Available to Students
When your course shell is ready for students to view, you will need to give them access. All course sites are unavailable to students by default. You can easily make your course sites available from the My Home page using the Qwickly multi-course tool.

If you are in your course site, you should see a lock icon up at the top of your course site (to the left of Edit Mode). If you click that lock icon, it will make the course available to students. If you do not see the lock icon, here are the directions for making it available to your students.

To open your course:

1. In your Blackboard Learn course shell, in the Control Panel, expand the Customization section and click Properties.
2. On the next screen, scroll down to the “Set Availability” section and select Yes to make the course available.
• Note: We recommend that you select Yes and Continuous instead of Use Term Availability and Select Dates. Term Availability is set to the last day of classes and will close your course site that day (even though your students might still need access to finish up the course).
3. Click Submit to enable your students to see and access your course shell.

Preparing your Blackboard Learn Course Site for a New Semester
If you have already been using Blackboard Learn for your courses, please check out this handy reference to help you prepare your Blackboard Learn course site for a new semester at https://bit.ly/3a0NjCT.

Blackboard Learn Pre-Semester Course Checklist
Once your course has been copied over, please review this checklist at https://bit.ly/3sulKrZ to help you make sure your course site in Blackboard Learn is ready to go for the upcoming semester.

Blackboard Learn How-To Guide for Faculty
If you have any questions about using some of the features of Blackboard Learn, we encourage you to check out our Blackboard Learn How-To Guide for Faculty at https://sites.google.com/northshore.edu/blackboard-faculty/home. Here we have step-by-step guides to learn how to use the top ten Blackboard Learn features as well as links to some recorded workshops and additional resources for faculty and students.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please do not hesitate to contact me or the Blackboard Learn Helpdesk at bbhelp@northshore.edu.

20 Minute Mentor - Online Faculty Professional Development - Fall 2022 Schedule

The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI) offers faculty a professional development series from Magna Publications, called the 20-Minute Mentor. The goal of the 20-Minute Mentor series is to offer faculty practical professional development opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online, assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.

Information on how to access the 20-Minute Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin and the iDevelop e-newsletter.

New video presentations (with supplementary materials) go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only accessible through Sunday. 

The following sessions are on the schedule for fall 2022. For session descriptions, objectives, and mentor bios, click on the titles below. 

• August 22 - How Can I Use the First Day to Set the Tone for a Semester of Learning?
• August 29 - How Can I Reach and Teach Struggling Students?
• September 5 - What Are the Benefits—and Challenges—of Hyflex Instruction?
• September 12 - How Can I Use Everyday Interactions to Instill a Growth Mindset in Students
• September 19 - What Are 5 Easy-to-use Technologies That Have a Big Impact on Learning in the Online Classroom?
• September 26 - How Can I Teach with Confidence in the Hyflex Classroom?
• October 3 - What Interventions Help Students Master Deep Reading and Engage with Assignments?
• October 10 - How Can I Help Online Students Develop Autonomy and Take More Responsibility for Their Learning? 
• October 17 - What is Ungrading and How can It Unleash Your Students Potential?
• October 24 - How Can I Create an Engaging, Student-Focused Syllabus?
• October 31 - How Can I Spark Conversation in the Classroom?
• November 7 - How Can I Create Authentic Engagement Through Feedback Dialogue? 
• November 14 - What Brain-Based Techniques Can I Use to Engage Students During Class?
• November 21 - How Can You Become More Intentional About Culturally Responsive Teaching? 
• November 28 - How Can I Be My Own Instructional Designer?
• December 5 - What Are 3 Calendar Hacks for Faculty to Avoid Stress and Burnout?

We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to ctli@northshore.edu. 

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (4/4/2022)

Welcome to iDevelop, a weekly eNewsletter providing faculty with information about professional development opportunities at NSCC. The intent of this eNewsletter is to spotlight the various professional development events for faculty in one convenient location as well as share best practices, resources and tips related to the teaching practice. iDevelop is being brought to you by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI).

  

  
20 Minute Online Professional Development

The Monday Morning Mentor series will be available over the fall semester to bring you professional development in twenty minute snippets. The topic for the week of April 4th is How Can I Use Microactivities to Engage Students and Improve Learning and Retention? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/product/program/how-can-i-use-microactivities-to-engage-students-and-improve-learning-and-retention/.  The complete spring schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2022/01/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html. 

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

Other Professional Development Opportunities

• Unity in Diversity Days (Merrimack College). "Unity in Diversity Days, a two-day program, is now in its fourth semester and is sponsored by the President’s Initiative on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The program features a diverse group of scholars, artists and advocates, designed to broaden and deepen our understanding of systemic inequalities with a focus on current issues. Some of the topics we highlight this semester include diversity in education, restorative justice, the role of art in transforming communities, health disparities, and the future of gender inclusivity. Additionally, speakers will share knowledge and strategies, designed to enhance our awareness and ability to overcome inequities on campus and in the workplace by taking care of ourselves." NSCC faculty and staff are invited to attend any of the presentations during our Spring 2022 Unity in Diversity Days program, scheduled for Tuesday, April 5 and Wednesday, April 6. All sessions are free and open to the public but require pre-registration. More information is available at https://www.merrimack.edu/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/programs/unity-in-diversity-days/unity-in-diversity-spring-2022-event/.
• The Experiences of Women in The Soviet Union During World War II. Registration is open for our event on women's experiences in the Soviet Union during World War II, co-sponsored by North Shore Community College and Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The webinar will be held Thursday, April 14th from 7:00 to 8:30 pm. To pre-register, please visit our website, https://www.northshore.edu/events/soviet-women.html, and scroll down until you see the blue Register button. Click on that button to enter your information. If you have questions, please reach out to Kara Kaufman at kkaufman@northshore.edu or Lawrence Davis at ldavis@northshore.edu. 
• 2022 NSCC Visiting Writer Event. Visiting Writer and Professor Emeritus Carl Carlsen will read from his new book Brickyard Stories 2.0: A Lynn MA Neighborhood Before and After Urban Renewal, an oral history full of storytelling, poetry, prose, and photographs. This event will take place on Zoom on Tuesday, April 26 from 9:30 to 10:45 am and Wednesday, April 27 from 9:30 to 10:45 am. Please see https://www.northshore.edu/faculty-staff/bulletin/03-14-22.html#writer for more information and Zoom meeting links. 
• Digital Teaching Symposium 2022. Blackboard is sponsoring this free virtual event focusing on sharing best practices in digital teaching on Thursday, April 21. More information as well as the registration link is available at https://go.blackboard.com/digital-teaching-symposium.
• 2022 Northeast OER Summit. Registration is now open for the 5th Annual Northeast OER Summit. The Summit is virtual and will take place May 26 and May 27. Registration for the Summit is free until April 8th so register now if you are interested at https://umass.irisregistration.com/Site/OER. 
• REMOTE: The Connected Faculty Summit – Maximizing Success for Learners. “REMOTE is a free virtual event hosted by Arizona State University where frontline faculty and decision makers from global universities and colleges share highly relevant strategies and interventions for all learning modalities - classroom, blended/hybrid, and online. REMOTE helps to design and deliver the best possible experiences and outcomes for teachers and learners - from learner variability, adaptive learning, to effective use of tools and equitable use of digital learning.” (Summit description) The Summit will take place June 8 and June 9. More information and registration link available at https://www.theremotesummit.org/. For a preview of what REMOTE covers, last year’s sessions are available on ASU TEACH ONLINE at https://teachonline.asu.edu/remote-conference-2021/.

Upcoming Webinars of Interest

• Career and College Promise: Helping Students Be All They Can Be! (NISOD webinar) on Monday, April 4 from 2:00pm-3:00pm. “This webinar describes the Career and College Promise (CCP) Team and its impact on student success. By offering support before, during, and after enrollment, the CCP team holistically serves each student and develops a symbiotic relationship with local high schools. Nash Community College doubled the number of courses being taken by our CCP population from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021, and our statistics with student success remained stable. This webinar provides best practices for supporting students and partnering with high school and college personnel. Participants learn easy-to-implement strategies that increase enrollment and student retention.” (webinar description) The webinar is free to NISOD members. More information and the link to register is available at https://www.nisod.org/forms/webinar-series/register.php?id=453&code=57kL4QDy2xOcjbiqt61gCB4b909vy2FynMo4WovP.  
• Sustainable OER Course Design (CCCOER Webinar) on Wednesday, April 13 at 3:00 pm. “Building courses on OER is a great way to provide students with access to learning materials while providing for increased customizability on the part of the instructor. But how can courses be designed to facilitate future reuse and adaptation? This webinar will feature a variety of speakers offering their experienced-based perspectives on designing OER with sustainability in mind, including strategies for ongoing maintenance and content portability.” (webinar description) More information and registration link is available at https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/sustainable-oer-course-design/.  

Assessment Fellow Open Office Hours

This semester, the Faculty Assessment Fellows will be holding Monthly Open Office Hours to provide peer-to-peer assessment support, tips, and resources. The next session will be an opportunity to discuss and brainstorm Curriculum Mapping strategies with faculty colleagues from across the college! Join Assessment Fellow Luciano Sappia at this next session of open office hours! Drop in for a lunch time Zoom chat from 12:30 to 1:30 pm on Wednesday, April 13. Please use the following Zoom meeting link, https://northshore-edu.zoom.us/j/92185571848?pwd=MEFzQ1ZieWdqNGdveDJSSGcwNk9XZz09.

CTLI Coffee and Conversations Series

Over the spring semester, the CTLI will be hosting a series of informational sessions on a variety of teaching, learning, and assessment topics. The Coffee and Conversations sessions will be held virtually twice a month on Fridays from 9:30am to 10:30am. Please join us with your favorite cup of coffee or tea and we will bring the topics to hopefully spur plenty of conversations.

Our next session will take place on Friday, April 15th and the topic will be "Demystifying Curriculum Committee Forms and Writing Strong Student Learning Outcomes''. The session will be facilitated by Lori Azzara and is designed to work with faculty who want assistance in understanding how to successfully complete the various Curriculum Committee Forms.  Additionally, Lori will assist faculty with the development of SLOs for individual courses or programs. The session is designed to answer questions and provide detailed assistance to participants rather than simply providing information - in other words, it's "user friendly."

Please use the following Zoom meeting link for all Coffee and Conversations sessions:

https://northshore-edu.zoom.us/j/99574231620?pwd=bjgrVkIvRjRQUzZJcmtGeWRCWksyUT09

Future Coffee and Conversations sessions will be held on the following Fridays (listed below) so please save the dates in your calendar:

•  April 29
• May 6

Topics have been scheduled for a few of these sessions but we would love your feedback on some topics for the other sessions. Please share any ideas around what you might like to learn more about at https://forms.gle/yGifSTLdZmmyp75p7.

We hope to see you at one of the sessions!

Interesting Articles and Resources

• Authentic Assessment Strategies: Assessing Learning that Empowers Your Students (Faculty Focus Live podcast) “How do you know that student learning is actually happening? Usually through assessment, right? But how can you assess students without just a quiz or paper? How can you empower them and motivate them to learn, and want to learn, so that assessment becomes something that is both powerful for you as an instructor and to the student as a learner? In today’s episode, we’ll talk about authentic assignments and authentic assessment, specific active learning assessment strategies that you can use in your class, and how to use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to help mold your assessments.”, https://www.facultyfocus.com/faculty-focus-live-podcast/ 
• Using Courage, Compassion, and Connection to Combat Disconnection, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/using-courage-compassion-and-connection-to-combat-disconnection/ 
• Building a Social and Emotional Learning Community for Our Students, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/equality-inclusion-and-diversity/building-a-social-and-emotional-learning-community-for-our-students/
• How to Give Your Students Better Feedback With Technology: Advice Guide, https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-give-your-students-better-feedback-with-technology/

Share Your Teaching Resources and Professional Development Opportunities

If you have any teaching resources that you would like to share with other NSCC faculty or know of any other professional development opportunities that NSCC faculty might be interested in, please feel free to send them to ctli@northshore.edu and we will share them in the upcoming issues of iDevelop.

We hope you have enjoyed this weekly eNewsletter and would love your input. Please let us know if you have any feedback on the format, content, and resources or if there is anything else you would like to see in the eNewsletter.

Thank you,
CTLI  

20 Minute Mentor - Online Faculty Professional Development - Spring 2022 Schedule

The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI) offers faculty a professional development series from Magna Publications, called the 20 Minute Mentor. The goal of the 20 Minute Mentor series is to offer faculty practical professional development opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online, assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.

Information on how to access the 20 Minute Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin and the iDevelop e-newsletter.

New video presentations (with supplementary materials) go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only accessible through Sunday. 

The following sessions are on the schedule for spring 2022. For session descriptions, objectives, and mentor bios, click on the titles below. 

• January 17 - How Can I Build an Antiracist Syllabus?
• January 24 - How Can I Plan (or Revise) My Courses More Efficiently?
• January 31 - How Do I Structure Virtual Office Hours to Promote Student Use?
• February 7 - How Do I Create a Class That Support First-Year Students?
• February 14 - What’s Different About Teaching Online, and How Do I Change So My Students Succeed?
• February 21 - How Can Disruptive Innovation Impact STEM Education?
• February 28 - How Can I Assess Students in my Online Classes through Student-created Videos?
• March 7 - What Are Practical Solutions for Managing My Online Teaching Workload?
• March 14 - How Can I Write Better Exam Questions to Measure Student Performance and Learning?
• March 21 - What Are Active Strategies for Structuring a Synchronous Class?
• March 28 - What Are Three Proven Ways to Manage My Online Discussion Board and Actively Engage Students?
• April 4 - How Can I Use Microactivities to Engage Students and Improve Learning and Retention?
• April 11 - How Can Online Instructors Make Themselves More Visible to Students?
• April 18 - How Can I Be a More Productive and Effective Teacher?
• April 25 - How Can I Redesign a Classroom Assignment for Online Teaching?
• May 2 - What Culturally Responsive Teaching Techniques Can I Use to Improve Learning?

We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to ctli@northshore.edu. 

Preparing for Spring 2022 Courses in Blackboard Learn

As you start to think about your spring courses, we wanted to share with you the following important information that will help you prepare your course site in Blackboard Learn.

Copying a Course
If you had us increase your course content collection quota in the course you are copying forward, please make sure to reach out to us before starting the course copy. We will need to increase the course content collection quota in the new course first.

To copy a previous course site into a new one in Blackboard Learn:

1. Go into the course site that has the content to copy. In the Control Panel, expand the "Packages and Utilities" section and click Course Copy.On the next screen, in the “Select Copy Type” section, make sure Copy Course Materials into Existing Course is selected in the drop down menu.
2. Now, in the “Select Copy Options” section, next to the Destination Course ID field, click Browse. Then, find and select the Course ID for the new course (the one you want to put the content into). Click Submit.
3. Select the Course Materials that you want to copy over to the new course. Usually, Select All is the best choice, although you might not want to copy announcements.
1. If Select All is not used, make sure to include Grade Center Columns and Settings if Assignments and/or Tests are being copied.
2. Also, under Discussion Board, select Include only the forums, with no starter posts if threads are not created by the instructor for students to respond to. If not, all student threads will copy over as anonymous and they will need to be deleted.
4. In the “File Attachments” section, keep the default settings.
5. Click Submit.

Please note: When a previous course site is copied over into a new course site, any new or changed content areas will be added to the bottom of the course menu.

Make Your Course Available
All Blackboard Learn course sites are unavailable to students by default. Here are the directions for making the course site available to your students. If you are in your course site, you should see a lock icon up at the top of your course site (to the left of Edit Mode). If you click that lock icon, it will make the course available to students. 

If you do not see the lock icon, here are the directions for making it available to your students.

To open your course:

1. Go into the course site.
2. On the Control Panel, expand the "Customization" section and click Properties.
3. On the next screen, in the "Set Availability" section, select Yes to make the course available.
4. Click Submit.

Preparing a Blackboard Learn Course Site for a New Semester
Please check out this handy reference at http://goo.gl/pZbUZ8 to help you prepare a  Blackboard Learn course site for a new semester.

Blackboard Learn Pre-Semester Course Checklist
Once your course has been copied over, please review this checklist at https://goo.gl/18q3r5 to help you make sure your course site in Blackboard Learn is ready to go for the upcoming semester. 

Blackboard Learn How-To Guide for Faculty

If you have any questions about using some of the features of Blackboard Learn, we encourage you to check out our Blackboard Learn How-To Guide for Faculty at https://sites.google.com/northshore.edu/blackboard-faculty/home. Here we have step-by-step guides to learn how to use the top ten Blackboard Learn features as well as links to some recorded workshops and additional resources for faculty and students.  

Please do not hesitate to contact the Blackboard Learn Helpdesk at bbhelp@northshore.edu if there are any issues with Blackboard Learn.