Dummy Student in Brightspace
Usecase: Going through the course as a student
As an instructor, you want to make sure that a course in Brightspace is properly designed and works the way you want it to before students see a course. Through the functionality 'View as Student' you can view the content of a course from the student's point of view. This way, students can experience how different tools are displayed such as: Announcements, Content and Submission assignments. The functionality 'View as Student' can be accessed by clicking on your name in the top right of the screen and then choosing 'View as Student'.
With assignments, as a teacher you would like to be able to go through the whole process of handing in and grading.
Current solution
In order to allow lecturers to go through the whole process of submission and grading, we have chosen to have the role 'Lecturer A' visible in the Gradebook. The advantage of this is that lecturers can assess themselves when they have submitted a document to an assignment via the 'View as Student' functionality.
A disadvantage of this is that all enrolled staff with the role 'Lecturer A' are also visible in the Gradebook. This makes the Gradebook unnecessarily large and cluttered.
New solution
To allow lecturers to go through the entire process of submitting and grading but not clutter the Gradebook, it is possible to add a dummy student to the course.
A new role will then be created to which the dummy student will be linked, each school will have 3 dummy students. The lecturers with the role 'Lecturer A' will then be given permission to click impersonate in the class list next to the dummy student. With the impersonate function, the lecturer pretends to be the dummy student and can go through the process of submission and assessment.
Tabs in Classlist
Current solution
The view of the Classlist is now clearer by working with tabs per role. Previously, all roles were visible in the overview which made it more difficult for example to email a group of students. The image below shows the old view:
New solution
The new view shows tabs per role: Student, Teacher and All roles available in the course. By selecting the desired role you can easily e-mail users with this role. By default the students tab is shown. If you only want to see a specific section select the View By dropdown and select Sections. Now select the desired section and click on Apply.
Page Numbering Classlist and Gradebook
The default page numbering of the classlist and Gradebook is changed from a minimum of 20 students to 50 students. We did this to make mailing from the classlist easier. With 50 students visible on the screen by default, it is less often necessary to change the page view to a larger number.
Quizzes – Quiz Timing Improvements featuring Synchronous Quiz
This release updates the Quiz Creation experience for instructors and learners by adding a new synchronous quiz option.
With this release, instructors can facilitate quizzes where learners take their attempts simultaneously, which is convenient for in-class sessions. The new addition of synchronous quizzes enables instructors to set up a quiz where the quiz timer starts on the start date for all learners rather than when the learner launches the quiz (asynchronous). The quiz timer then ends for all learners at the same time.
To set up a synchronous quiz:
- From a quiz page, expand the Availability Dates & Conditions area.
- Set start date and time.
- Expand the Timing & Display area.
- Click Timer Settings.
- In the Timing dialog, under Quiz Start, select Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
- Click OK.
Note: If no start date and time is set for the synchronous quiz, the No Start date set alert appears under the selected option, and you cannot save the quiz. The Due Date option is disabled for synchronous quizzes.
To ensure that learners are aware of upcoming synchronous quizzes, instructors should create instructional or manual solutions:
- Make a synchronous quiz visible in the calendar:
- Instructors can select Add availability dates to Calendar or set up an event showing the whole time.
- Instructors should use the Start Date parameter when setting up a synchronous quiz and leave the End Date field empty.
- Learners must have the Allows Out of Date Quizzes to be Viewed in the User Quiz List permission to open the quiz from their calendar and check the Quiz Information page.
- Create an announcement with information about the synchronous quiz.
- Set up an event and give a link to the quiz to provide more context.
Instructors must modify or review quizzes one by one to avoid accidentally modifying quiz availability dates for synchronous quizzes.
A synchronous quiz starts at the Start Date and ends when the time limit has lapsed, regardless of any action taken by the learner. For example, if a learner clicks Start Quiz! 15 minutes after the start date on a 1-hour quiz, they only have 45 minutes left to complete it. To indicate when a quiz becomes available, learners have a countdown timer on the Quiz Information and Start Quiz pages. The Start Quiz! button becomes available when the start date and time is reached.
Figure: A countdown timer on the Start Quiz page.
Instructors can provide learners with information about a synchronous quiz before it starts. Learners can access this information in the Quiz Information page if they have the Allows Out of Date Quizzes to be Viewed in the User Quiz List permission.
If this permission needs to be disabled for any reason, administrators must ensure that instructors can do the following:
- Make sure the activity is visible in the calendar (optional)
- Check that learners are aware of an upcoming quiz
- Provide effective reminders
Data set information is planned for a future release.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Large impact to instructors due to the ability to facilitate quizzes where learners take their attempts at the same time by using a new synchronous quiz option.
- Moderate impact to learners due to the inability to start a synchronous quiz by clicking the Start Quiz! button and the ability to use a countdown timer to be aware when a quiz becomes available.
- Slight impact to administrators due to the need to review the state of the Allows Out of Date Quizzes to be Viewed in the User Quiz List permission.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients.
To enable:
- This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.
- This functionality is not dependent on any new or existing permissions.
- This functionality is not dependent on any new or existing configuration variables.