This week sees the end of the first tranche of Brightspace training.  In the period since 8th May, a team of 17 people has run 55 training sessions in Brightspace primarily for academic staff but also for administrative staff.  In addition, a number of familiarisation sessions have been run for professional services staff.

Staff completing both sessions are asked to provide feedback via an online training evaluation survey.  So far, the academic survey has been completed by 207 staff.

In terms of how well the training sessions fit staff needs, the overall response has been positive and we recognise that the standardised sessions will not accord with everyone’s needs.  The chart below shows the response from academic staff.

Learning and making the most of Brightspace is a journey for which the training sessions seek to establish a firm, initial foundation.  We cover the core features of Brightspace in the training and give staff pointers and links to information and support on the other features available.   Another survey question is how confident staff feel in using Brightspace.  This shows a range of responses with the average being 6.9/10.

The textual responses reflect the responses to the questions and include:

• “Would be nice if it was a half day longer and in smaller groups. The helpers were useful but while they were helping the training carried on which made it very noisy in the room.”
• “Found it extremely helpful – training staff were very knowledgeable and helpful thank you”
• “Need to get out there and use it”
• “More advice on tailored content that can help me with my units specifically.”
• “Powerpoints used are well presented. Pace of training is suitable. Promote more heavily the ongoing support available: Learning Technologists and CEL. I foresee a lot of academics needing 1:1 support with Brightspace over coming years “
• “Online video instructions would be very helpful”
• “John Moran did a really good job of explaining and supporting the group during this session. But clearly further training will be required, and there are concerns about extent to which everything will be in place prior to September.”

This last comment acknowledges how some areas of the new VLE are still being developed.  For example, the integrations with third party applications such as Turnitin are still underway.  We have therefore excluded in-development areas from the training, choosing instead to provide information on these processes and tools once we are clear how they will operate with Brightspace.  As soon as this information is available, we will disseminate to staff, probably in the form of short videos.

We are also developing an online version of the Brightspace training so that staff can work through it at their own pace and at a convenient time.  We will also use this in the second tranche of training which is scheduled for next year.

Overall, we have been very pleased with how the training has gone and we will now be changing our focus to supporting staff and completing the development as we prepare for go-live in a few weeks’ time.

If you are using Brightspace and have any issues, please log a job in Service Now, identifying the topic as Brightspace, and we will respond to you.

If you missed your training?

We know that some staff who were booked to attend training sessions in this first tranche were unable to attend.  We have added some additional sessions on 28 June and 4 and 7 July.  We are running an A session in the morning and B session in the afternoon.  All the training is in S102.  Please email v4l@bournemouth.ac.uk to rebook your sessions