We want to help make sure that no learner falls behind – and that during this period of self-isolation and quarantines — learners have access to the tools they need to continue learning and collaborating with each other.
With the impact of social distancing, it’s more important than ever to be able to make meaningful connections online. We’d like to share a few great tools that can be used with the Brightspace platform to help you stay connected to your learning community.
We have a new integration with Microsoft Teams Meetings. Now users with Microsoft accounts can create, schedule, and share Teams Meetings from within Brightspace. Institutions and organizations can get up and running immediately through the creation of a custom widget that can be used by instructors to create and share meeting links with students.
This is in addition to tools like WebEx, and Zoom that have traditionally integrated with Brightspace. The Zoom integration allows a teacher to start a meeting with his/her students, adding it to the course calendar and sharing a recording link automatically if the meeting was cloud recorded.
Virtual Classrooms is another excellent option within the Brightspace platform. It can be used to provide a seamless way to connect face-to-face with multiple parties for instruction, assessment, and feedback. Schedule live discussions, office hours, video-based training, and more. Video sessions can be automatically recorded and seamlessly embedded directly into a course alongside other learning materials.
VideoNoteTM is a tool within Brightspace that allows users to record videos and add them anywhere within the platform (e.g. feedback, discussions, content) to help make teaching and learning more personal and engaging. To help ensure all users can learn without barriers, closed captions are automatically created. With so many people using remote instruction to ensure continuity of learning during this time, a longer time limit and increased storage provides another option to record and share lectures. To support ongoing connection to learners in these uncertain times, we are increasing the limits for VideoNote to 30 minutes and 1GB upload starting the week of March 23rd until July 1, 2020.
During these challenging times staying connected is more important than ever. We’d love to hear your tips in the comments section about how you’re virtually connecting with others.
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