Have you started thinking about planning your teaching for Semester 2? Here are some of the ways in which FLIE can support you with some useful reminders of some of the steps, and the tools and resources at your disposal.
Plan out your unit
The Digital Pedagogies Framework has been developed to support staff at BU in their preparation for online and blended teaching. Use the framework to help you outline your key content areas and utilise the suggested pedagogical approaches to promote student learning and engagement. You might want to use the framework Checklist to help guide you through.
Structure your unit
Ensure that your unit is easy to navigate by organising information about your unit into the standard content modules; Unit Information & Organisation, Assessment and Your Feedback Matters. Learning materials can then be added under further content modules using a week-based or theme based approach.
Pre-record your lecture materials
Panopto can be used from your office, or at home, to create recordings for asynchronous use. This gives you the opportunity to create more detailed content focused on specific areas, and to create content that is broken up into bitesize learning chunks. Your Panopto videos can then be embedded in the content area of your unit on Brightspace.
To make sure your Brightspace unit has a Panopto folder, click the green Record with Panopto button on the unit homepage. This will create a unit folder on the Panopto server ready for your Zoom recordings. You only need to do this once per unit.
Set up your Zoom sessions
Zoom is the recommended platform for delivery of live lecture and seminar sessions. And integration with Brightspace (via Communication > Zoom) makes it easy for staff to schedule sessions and for students to join them, all from the unit on Brightspace.
Remember to create your sessions to only allow authenticated users to join, so that students log in with their BU Zoom accounts. This improves the security of your teaching sessions and brings the added benefits of accurate attendance logs and the ability to pre-assign breakout rooms.
Prepare for your online engagement
Bring interaction to your teaching sessions with Mentimeter, a tool that lets you engage and interact with your audience in real-time. Audiences can pose questions, respond to quizzes, vote in polls or create word clouds all via their mobile phones. Mentimeter sits outside of Brightspace but can be used in live synchronous teaching sessions and embedded in the content area of units.
Enable collaboration with Padlet, an online virtual bulletin board where students can collaborate and share ideas, links and pictures. Padlet also sits outside of Brightspace but can be used both synchronously or asynchronously to capture feedback and interactions from students, and can be embedded in the content area of your unit.
Best practice assessment
Information on assessment should be made available in the Assessment area of your unit. Ensure there is a clear explanation of how students’ engagement with activities on the unit will be assessed and use Announcements to keep students informed on assessed activities. Plan regular formative assessment tasks, for example short weekly quizzes, and create opportunities for group working. See the Assessment and Feedback toolkit for help and ideas.
Further support and guidance
Further online guidance is available in the Brightspace Staff Resources area where you can find links to:
If you would like further help, please contact your Faculty Learning Technologist.
