Category: brightspace

Brightspace Changes – December 2019 / January 2020

Ari Crossby

Changes coming to Brightspace in the next few weeks:

  • Brightspace Course Request and TA/Marker Forms: December 18th, 2019

    On December 18th, myLangara Classic is being retired, so our Brightspace course request and TA/Marker Request forms are moving. You can find them on the EdTech Sharepoint site (you will need to log in with your Office 365 credentials).

  • Brightspace Email: December 23rd, 2019

    Brightspace email will change on Dec 23rd, 2019. It will no longer be possible to receive email messages in Brightspace. Your message will be sent from your @langara.ca email address and sent to your students’ @mylangara.ca email address. When they respond to the emails you send from your course, the message will go to your Langara email address, and your replies to them will be sent to your students’ MyLangara email address.

    Click here for more information.

  • Brightspace Login: January 2, 2020

    On January 2nd, the way you access Brightspace is changing. Instead of your Computer User ID (jdoe), you will log in using your Office 365 email address and password (jdoe@langara.ca), and verify using 2-factor authentication, just as you do now for your @langara.ca email.

    This change affects all Langara employees, including TAs or markers (or anyone who needs to log in to Workday for timesheets, income tax receipts, etc.).

New look and name for D2L: Welcome to Brightspace!

Ari Crossby
On Tuesday December 19, 2017, you are going to see a new look and a new name for D2L.
 In line with other institutioBrightspace by D2L logons, we will now be referring to our learning management system (LMS) as Brightspace by D2L. This switch makes sense as D2L is the name of the company based in Kitchener, Ontario, while  their LMS is named Brightspace.
In December, along with the name-change, you will notice a new look and feel with a clean and modern layout. New fonts, icons, colours and a simpler navigation design mean that courses will adapt to different screen sizes and look equally good on different devices. This is known as ‘responsive design’ and it will make the user experience more engaging for our students as they will easily be able to access Brightspace from a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone.
 Some of the key visual changes include:
– A simplified navigation design that looks equally good on screens of any size;
– A consistent, cleaner and more modern design using new fonts, icons and colours;
– A new ‘My Courses’ widget featuring rich photography in a responsive tile-based layout;
– A new image library with over 3000 images to choose from for your tiles.
Even though Brightspace will look different to you and your students after December 19, your workflows will remain the same. Tools such as Assignments, Quizzes, Discussion Forums will work the way you expect them to.
If you have any questions about the upcoming changes,  please contact your EdTech team: edtech@langara.ca

Do more with video: Four great features of the new Kaltura

Ari Crossby

Kaltura (Langara’s multimedia streaming platform) is about to be upgraded. As well as continuing to provide an easily accessible way for instructors and students to upload video and audio content to D2L courses, Kaltura is introducing a number of new features. Here we highlight four that we are excited about – and we hope you will be too.

1. Kaltura MediaSpace

It has always been possible to upload videos to Kaltura in D2L. However, instructors have been asking us for a while whether there is a more user-friendly and visually appealing way to search, watch, upload and share their videos. Kaltura MediaSpace will bring a YouTube-like video portal to Langara with granular user controls over the management of videos, screencasts, audio and other content, including student content. All data is stored in Canada on UBC’s servers and all content uploaded to MediaSpace is private by default.

MediaSpace at Michigan State U

2. Closed Captioning

The Canadian Association of the Deaf have long advocated for the high quality captioning of all video for accessibility purposes. Closed captions in Kaltura are not a new feature – they have been available for a while. The upgraded version enables all users to upload SRT and other closed caption files rather than have Ed Tech do this for you. We are also currently evaluating the use of external video captioning services that integrate with Kaltura.

3. CaptureSpace

At Langara ‘Video Screen Capture’ (i.e Screencasting) is very popular with instructors who use it for a variety of purposes – whether that be providing audio and visual feedback on papers to students in the LEAP program, assisting a flipped classroom model or creating software walk-throughs. Up to now we have recommended and supported instructors in the use of a tool called Screencast-o-matic that we subscribe to for creating video screen captures. The upgraded version of Kaltura brings a new application called CaptureSpace that will be available to download for Windows and Mac computers. CaptureSpace allows you to capture your screen, screen and webcam, webcam only or voice. It also integrates nicely with Microsoft Powerpoint so allows instructors (and students) to easily create slides with narration.

Quizzing in Kaltura

4. Interactive Video Quizzing

Have we saved the best until last? The interactive video quizzing feature in the new Kaltura enables the embedding of multi-choice questions at any point in a video. This is a great way to improve engagement, interactivity and assess understanding. This feature will be available later in the year.

For more information on the Kaltura upgrade please contact Julian, Heidi or Ari in Ed Tech (edtech@langara.ca).