Experience Brightspace as a student
Tirza Smits and Rianne Weber (Education and Child Studies) developed a Brightspace course where lecturers can see and experience Brightspace as students do. The goal: to inspire lecturers to try more new things. "So much more can be done with Brightspace than you think. We'd like to show that."
Tirza Smits and Rianne Weber are ICT and education consultants at Education and Child Studies. Lecturers with questions about Brightspace knock on their door daily. Weber: "We often get questions about how to set up a course in Brightspace, and we notice that there is a barrier to trying new things, also because lecturers don't know how the things they offer in Brightspace look like for their students."
Grassroots scholarship
Thus the idea was born to develop the Student Experience for Teachers. They successfully applied for a Grassroots grant for it. Smits: "The review committee was so enthusiastic that they decided we could introduce the course faculty-wide right away."
Inspiration
And so now the course is here, for anyone to use. Teachers can see and experience what applications such as quizzes, peer feedback assignments and interactive elements look like for students. Smits: "We hope this will inspire teachers to start using more tools. Take the Interactive Document tool - it is still little used but it is the ideal tool to let students prepare for a lecture in a low-threshold way with little time investment."
Updating
Weber: "The project is now complete - but we want to keep updating the Student Experience as new tools arrive. That way, as a lecturer, you stay up to date with all the possibilities Brightspace offers you. And there is more than you think!"
The Student Experience for Teachers - try it yourself!
Register for the Brightspace course