Tag: share

EdTech Digital Media Can Help You Create Engaging Content for Your Courses

Julian Prior

Are you looking for ways to enhance your online teaching and learning experience? Do you want to create media-rich content that captures the attention and interest of your students? If so, you should check out EdTech’s Digital Media services at Langara College.

EdTech Digital Media provides support and resources for Langara faculty and instructional staff who want to translate their ideas into educational, professional, and engaging media content. Whether you want to do it yourself or get some expert help, EdTech Digital Media has something for you.

Here are some of the services that EdTech Digital Media offers:

  • Studio: You can book the EdTech Digital Media studio, a professional space equipped with a green screen, a lightboard, a teleprompter, podcasting mixing desk and various cameras and microphones. You can use the studio to record lectures, presentations, interviews, demonstrations, and more. To book our studio, email us at edtech@langara.ca
  • Audio & Video Production: Get assistance from the EdTech Digital Media team to produce high-quality audio and video content for your courses. The team can help you with scripting, storyboarding, filming, editing, and publishing your media projects.
  • Digital Media Consultation: Before using our studio or other services we ask that you consult with one or more of our EdTech Digital Media team to discuss your media needs and goals. The team can provide you with advice, feedback, and recommendations on how to best use media in your courses. Email edtech@langara.ca to schedule a consultation.
  • Drop-Ins: You can pop by the EdTech Digital Media studio during our scheduled drop-in times for a studio tour or to get quick help or tips on any media-related projects.
  • Green Screen: Use our green screen technology to create immersive and interactive videos for your courses. You can replace the green background with any image or video of your choice, such as a map, a diagram, a historical scene, or a virtual environment.
  • Lightboard: You can use our lightboard technology to create engaging and dynamic videos for your courses. You can write or draw on a transparent glass board with fluorescent markers, while facing the camera and your audience. The lightboard allows you to illustrate your concepts and ideas in a clear and captivating way.
  • Motion Graphics: Take advantage of our expertise in motion graphics technology to create animated and eye-catching videos for your courses. You can use motion graphics to explain complex or abstract concepts, to visualize data or processes, or to add some fun and creativity to your media content.
  • Podcasting: Use our podcasting setup to create audio-only content for your courses. You can use podcasting to share your insights, opinions, or stories, to interview guests or experts, or to provide supplementary or alternative material for your students. Come and talk to us with any ideas or questions you might have about this popular way to share content.
  • Screen Capture: You can use screen capture technology (on your own or with our guidance) to create video tutorials, demonstrations or mini-lectures for your courses. You can use screen capture to show your students how to use software, a website, or an online tool, or to walk them through a problem or a solution.
  • Slide Design: Work with our team to create effective, attractive and accessible slides for your courses.

If you are interested in any of these services, please visit the EdTech Digital Media page to learn more, to book a service, or to contact the team. EdTech Digital Media is here to support you and your media needs. We hope to see you soon!

PebblePad: Unlocking Learning Potential

susanbonham

PebblePad, Langara’s ePortfolio platform, is out of pilot phase and now one of our core tools. It’s well suited to support both open-ended creative assignments and guided authentic learning. If you are looking for a way for students to document, share, and reflect on learning experiences, or if you need them to evidence their skills, capabilities, and achievements, PebblePad can be a great fit. In this age of AI, instructors are also looking to PebblePad for process assignments. 

Use at Langara

At Langara, PebblePad is currently used to support teaching and learning in Nursing, Recreation Studies, Library Technology, English, Geography, Publishing, Co-op, and Supply Chain Management, with more instructors and programs coming on board every semester.

The Affordances of PebblePad

  • Empowers students by providing a private and secure space to actively engage in their learning journey, promoting a sense of ownership and agency.
  • Promotes meaningful engagement in learning through critical thinking and reflection, contributing to a deeper understanding and retention of knowledge.
  • Helps students make connections in learning across multiple contexts: between individual courses, over an entire program, and with knowledge gained outside of formal learning contexts.
  • Supports students’ transition to future employment or academic pursuits by enabling them to identify knowledge, competencies, and creativity and then to showcase their projects and achievements.

How to Learn More

If you’re interested in PebblePad, the next introductory workshop is on January 11th from 10:00-11:00. Participants will activate their accounts, learn the basics of PebblePad, discover how it’s being used in various departments, and get ideas about how it could be used in their own courses.

In addition to scheduled workshops, you’re welcome to reach out to EdTech anytime to learn more about PebblePad.

EdTech Tools and Privacy

Peer Assessment and Privacy Risks

Briana Fraser

Instructors, have you considered how privacy, security, and confidentiality apply to teaching and learning, specifically the data you gather as part of assessment?

To support teaching and learning, you gather and analyze data about students all year and in many ways, including anecdotal notes, test results, grades, and observations. The tools we commonly use in teaching and learning, including Brightspace, gather information. The analytics collected and reports generated by teaching and learning tools are sophisticated and constantly changing. We should, therefore, carefully consider how we can better protect student data.  

When considering privacy, instructors should keep in mind that all student personal information belongs to the student and should be kept private. Students trust their instructors to keep their data confidential and share it carefully. Instructors are responsible for holding every student’s data in confidence.  This information includes things like assessment results, grades, student numbers, and demographic information. 

Although most students are digital natives, they aren’t necessarily digitally literate. Instructors can ensure students’ privacy by coaching them about what is appropriate to share and helping them understand the potential consequences of sharing personal information. 

One area of teaching and learning in which you may not have adequately considered privacy or coached students to withhold personal information and respect confidentiality is peer assessment. Peer assessment or peer review provides a structured learning process for students to critique and provide feedback to each other on their work. It helps students develop lifelong skills in assessing and providing feedback to others and equips them with skills to self-assess and improve their own work. However, in sharing their work, students may also be sharing personal identifying information, such as student numbers, or personal experiences. To help protect students’ personal information and support confidentiality, we recommend that you consider the following points.

Privacy Considerations for Peer Assessment 

  • If student work will be shared with peers, tell students not to disclose sensitive personal information. Sensitive personal information may include, for example, medical history, financial circumstances, traumatic life experiences, or their gender, race, religion, or ethnicity. 
  • Inform students of ways in which their work will be assessed by their peers. 
  • Consider having students evaluate anonymous assignments for more objective feedback.  
  • Coach students to exclude all identifiable information, including student number. 
  • If students’ work is to be posted online, consider associated risks, such as
    • another person posting the work somewhere else online without their consent; and
    • the content being accessed by Generative AI tools like ChatGPT that trawl the internet to craft responses to users’ queries.

This article is part of a collaborative Data Privacy series by Langara’s Privacy Office and EdTech. If you have data privacy questions or would like to suggest a topic for the series, contact Joanne Rajotte (jrajotte@langara.ca), Manager of Records Management and Privacy, or Briana Fraser, Learning Technologist & Department Chair of EdTech.

Brightspace Accessibility in Five, Bonus: Accessible Uploads

Luke McKnight

Brightspace plus accessibility logoBrightspace is an excellent tool to provide equitable, inclusive access to course content, documents, and media. 

As you create content, take advantage of Brightspace’s built-in tools and the Accessibility Checker to ensure what you share is accessible. Accessible content is inclusive, democratic, and maximizes learner independence. 

However, Brightspace is also a good tool to distribute other material such as lecture slides and documents. It is important that that material also be accessible. 

Creating accessible Word and PowerPoint documents is straightforward. Ensuring a PDF is accessible requires additional time and understanding of unique tools and code. 

The best practices (link text, colour contrast, headings, tables, and text equivalents) listed in this series apply to documents of all types. The process to ensure accessibility is slightly different depending on software.  

Microsoft Office Files

Word and PowerPoint have a built-in accessibility checker. To use this tool: 

  1. Navigate to Review 
  2. Select Check Accessibility 

Read more about making Office documents accessible.

PDF

To make accessible PDFs, it is best practice to make a Word or PowerPoint presentation accessible and then export to PDF. Adobe Acrobat Pro is required to ensure your PDFs are accessible. Try to avoid PDFs for content, except for forms and content to specifically be printed directly. For more information on making PDFs accessible, consult Langara’s Accessibility Handbook for Teaching and Learning. 

docReader

Brightspace now features the docReader tool. When a Word, PowerPoint, or PDF file is uploaded a Brightspace course, students will be able to have them read aloud using the Open with docReader button below the document viewer pane.

This tool does not absolve content creators of generating accessible content. This tool will not be able to read inaccessible documents.

Check out the other posts in the Brightspace Accessibility in Five series:

  1. Link Text
  2. Colour
  3. Headings
  4. Tables
  5. Text Equivalents

Brightspace Accessibility in Five, 5: Text Equivalents

Luke McKnight

Brightspace plus accessibility logo

Brightspace is an excellent tool to provide equitable, inclusive access to course content, documents, and media.

As you create content, take advantage of Brightspace’s built-in tools and the Accessibility Checker to ensure what you share is accessible. Accessible content is inclusive, democratic, and maximizes learner independence.

In the fifth of this five-part series, we will learn about text equivalents (alternative text and closed captions).

Alternative Text

Alternative text explains the content and context of an image to screen reader users. To write effective alternative text, consider how you would describe the graphic to a friend over the phone. Try to include all relevant information using proper grammar in less than 120 characters. Learn more in the Langara Accessibility Handbook alternative text chapter. 

Images may be marked as decorative if they are only included for visual effect or if the information in the image is also present in text adjacent to the graphic. 

When uploading a new image, Brightspace automatically prompts for alternative text. Enter a description in the Alternative Text field or check This image is decorative. Screenshot of Brightspace provide alternative text prompt

To add alternative text to existing images: 

  1. Select an existing image and choose Image options
  2. Check Image is decorative or enter a description in the Alternative description field.

Closed Captions

Captions provide a text equivalent of all audio elements in a video, presented visually in time with the video. Closed captions can be toggled on or off by the viewer. Open captions are ‘burned’ into the video and cannot be turned off.

Traditionally, we think of captions as an accommodation for viewers who cannot hear the audio in a video due to hearing loss. Statistics suggest 4-5% of the general population suffer some form of hearing loss. That number increases to around 20% for people over aged 60. However, 80% of 18 to 25-year-olds regularly use captions when watching video.

Captions are not just an accessibility essential, but also an excellent universal design for learning tool.

All new uploads to Kaltura (either in Brightspace My Media or Mediaspace) will have machine-generated captions automatically ordered. Videos added to OneDrive/SharePoint can have machine-generated captions ordered manually. Machine-generated captions are not accurate enough and must be edited. To learn more about captioning, read the Captions and Transcripts chapter of the Langara Accessibility Handbook.

Accessibility Checker

Brightspace includes a built-in accessibility checker. The checker appears on the second row of the editor toolbar.

  1. Select More Actions to reveal the second row of the toolbar
  2. Select Accessibility Checker

The accessibility checker will highlight many accessibility issues and offer solutions to correct them. However, the checker tool will not check videos for captions. This must be verified manually.

Check out the other posts in the Brightspace Accessibility in Five series:

  1. Link Text
  2. Colour
  3. Headings
  4. Tables
  5. Text Equivalents
  6. Bonus: Accessible Uploads

A.I. Detection: A Better Approach 

Briana Fraser

Over the past few months, EdTech has shared concerns about A.I. classifiers, such as Turnitin’s A.I. detection tool, AI Text Classifier, GPTZero, and ZeroGPT. Both in-house testing and statements from Turnitin and OpenAI confirm that A.I. text classifiers unreliably differentiate between A.I. and human generated writing. Given that the tools are unreliable and easy to manipulate, EdTech discourages their use. Instead, we suggest using Turnitin’s Similarity Report to help identify A.I.-hallucinated and fabricated references.  

What is Turnitin’s Similarity Report 

The Turnitin Similarity Report quantifies how similar a submitted work is to other pieces of writing, including works on the Internet and those stored in Turnitin’s extensive database, highlighting sections that match existing sources. The similarity score represents the percentage of writing that is similar to other works. 

AI Generated References 

A.I. researchers call the tendency of A.I. to make stuff up a “hallucination.” A.I.-generated responses can appear convincing, but include irrelevant, nonsensical, or factually incorrect answers.  

ChatGPT and other natural language processing programs do a poor job of referencing sources, and often fabricating plausible references. Because the references seem real, students often mistake them as legitimate. 

Common reference or citation errors include: 

  • Failure to include a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or incorrect DOI 
  • Misidentification of source information, such as journal or book title 
  • Incorrect publication dates 
  • Incorrect author information 

Using Turnitin to Identify Hallucinated References 

To use Turnitin to identify hallucinated or fabricated references, do not exclude quotes and bibliographic material from the Similarity Report. Quotes and bibliographic information will be flagged as matching or highly similar to source-based evidence. Fabricated quotes, references, and bibliographic information will have zero similarity because they will not match source-based evidence.

Quotes and bibliographic information with no similarity to existing works should be investigated to confirm that they are fabricated.  

References

Athaluri S, Manthena S, Kesapragada V, et al. (2023). Exploring the boundaries of reality: Investigating the phenomenon of artificial intelligence hallucination in scientific writing through ChatGPT references. Cureus 15(4): e37432. doi:10.7759/cureus.37432 

Metz, C. (2023, March 29). What makes A.I. chatbots go wrong? The curious case of the hallucinating software. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/technology/ai-chatbots-hallucinations.html 

Aligning language models to follow instructions. (2022, January 27). OpenAI. https://openai.com/research/instruction-following 

Weise, K., and Metz, C. (2023, May 1). What A.I. chatbots hallucinate. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/ai-chatbots-hallucination.html 

Welborn, A. (2023, March 9). ChatGPT and fake citations. Duke University Libraries. https://blogs.library.duke.edu/blog/2023/03/09/chatgpt-and-fake-citations/ 

screenshot of a Turnitin Similarity Report, with submitted text on the left and the report panel on the right

Brightspace Accessibility in Five, 4: Tables

Luke McKnight

Brightspace plus accessibility logo

Brightspace is an excellent tool to provide equitable, inclusive access to course content, documents, and media.

As you create content, take advantage of Brightspace’s built-in tools and the Accessibility Checker to ensure what you share is accessible. Accessible content is inclusive, democratic, and maximizes learner independence.

In the fourth of this five-part series, we will learn about tables.

Tables

Tables should only be used to present data, not for layout or formatting. Include a header row and/or column and avoid blank, split, and merged cells.

Use the Table tool to insert and modify tables:

Use Table Properties for advanced settings such as style, padding, and formatting.

To set header rows:

  1. Select a cell in the row to be made a header
  2. Open the Table menu and choose Cell Properties
  3. Change Row type to Header and click Save

Do not add images of tables. If you must, ensure the image has alternative text that accurately conveys the table data.

Accessibility Checker

Brightspace includes a built-in accessibility checker. The checker appears on the second row of the editor toolbar.

  1. Select More Actions to reveal the second row of the toolbar
  2. Select Accessibility Checker

The accessibility checker will highlight many accessibility issues and offer solutions to correct them. For tables, the accessibility checker will flag tables without header rows or columns. The checker will also note tables without a caption and suggest users add a summary to long or complex tables.

Watch for more posts in the Brightspace Accessibility in Five series coming soon, including:

  1. Link Text
  2. Colour
  3. Headings
  4. Tables
  5. Text Equivalents
  6. Bonus: Accessible Uploads

Brightspace Accessibility in Five, 3: Headings

Luke McKnight

Brightspace plus accessibility logo
Brightspace is an excellent tool to provide equitable, inclusive access to course content, documents, and media.

As you create content, take advantage of Brightspace’s built-in tools and the Accessibility Checker to ensure what you share is accessible. Accessible content is inclusive, democratic, and maximizes learner independence.

In the third of this five-part series, we will learn about headings.

Headings

Headings are an important part of documents and web pages. Headings create organizational flow, build connections between key concepts, and break up large blocks of text to increase readability. Screen reader users rely on headings to navigate the web and longer documents. For anything beyond a few paragraphs, headings are essential for screen reader users.

Use headings in a sequential, nested hierarchy. For example, use a Heading 1 for the title or topic. Use Heading 2 for major divisions of content and ideas. Use Heading 3 for subtopics of the major divisions. Brightspace supports 4 heading levels.

You can have multiple headings of the same level, but do not skip a heading level. A Heading 2 can follow a heading 1 or a heading 2. A heading 3 can follow a heading 2 or heading 3 and so on.

Headings benefit all readers. Headings:

• Include all, regardless of access means.
• Provide context and explains relationships between ideas.
• Emphasizes key concepts.
• Provides ‘bookmarks’ for natural breaks.
• Allows for easy review and location of content.

Creating Headings in Brightspace

Select the Format tool in the top left of the editor toolbar and choose the appropriate heading level.

For more information about headings and document structure, consult the Langara Accessibility Handbook.

Accessibility Checker

Brightspace includes a built-in accessibility checker. The checker appears on the second row of the editor toolbar.

  1. Select More Actions to reveal the second row of the toolbar
  2. Select Accessibility Checker

The accessibility checker will highlight many accessibility issues and offer solutions to correct them. For headings, the Brightspace accessibility checker will flag text that could be a heading due to formatting (bolded larger font on a line by itself for example) but is not properly coded as a heading. The accessibility checker also flags headings that are out of sequential order (for example a heading level 3 with no preceding heading level 2).

Watch for more posts in the Brightspace Accessibility in Five series coming soon, including:

  1. Link Text
  2. Colour
  3. Headings
  4. Tables
  5. Text Equivalents
  6. Bonus: Accessible Uploads

Brightspace Accessibility in Five, 2: Colour

Luke McKnight

Brightspace plus accessibility logo

Brightspace is an excellent tool to provide equitable, inclusive access to course content, documents, and media.

As you create content, take advantage of Brightspace’s built-in tools and the Accessibility Checker to ensure what you share is accessible. Accessible content is inclusive, democratic, and maximizes learner independence.

In the second of this five-part series, we will learn about accessible colour.

Colour

Ensure you choose accessible colours. Text colour needs to have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against the background. Additionally, colour should not be used alone to emphasize content or convey meaning.

Accessible colour aids all learners. Primarily, accessible colour is required for people with color blindness. However, smart colour choices benefit all learners in numerous ways:

  • Includes all, regardless of access means.
  • Provides similar appearance regardless of device and user settings.
  • Retains all information if printed in black and white.
  • Reduces eye fatigue, glare from the sun, and allows use of dark/night mode or custom contrast settings.
  • Makes content easier to read for everyone.

To change font colours in Brightspace

  1. Open the Select Colour tool in the Editor toolbar.
  2. Choose a colour and use the built-in contrast checker to ensure accessible colour choices./li>

A ratio of at least 4.5:1 is required. Remember that regardless of colours used, ensure that colour is not the only method used to highlight or differentiate content.

Learn more about accessible colour in the Langara Accessibility Handbook

Accessibility Checker

Brightspace includes a built-in accessibility checker. The checker appears on the second row of the editor toolbar.

  1. Select More Actions to reveal the second row of the toolbar
  2. Select Accessibility Checker

The accessibility checker will note colour contrast issues and offer solutions to improve the contrast of your content. The Accessibility Checker cannot determine if colour is used to convey meaning.

Watch for more posts in the Brightspace Accessibility in Five series coming soon, including:

  1. Link Text
  2. Colour
  3. Headings
  4. Tables
  5. Text Equivalents
  6. Bonus: Accessible Uploads

Brightspace Accessibility in Five, 1: Link Text

Luke McKnight

Brightspace plus accessibility logo

Brightspace is an exceptionally accessible platform. Using Brightspace for your course content, documents, and media is an excellent way to provide equitable, inclusive access to learning material.

Take advantage of Brightspace’s built-in tools and the Accessibility Checker to ensure what you share is accessible. Accessible content is inclusive, democratic, and maximizes learner independence.

In the first of this five-part series, we will learn about adding link text to your Brightspace content.

Link Text

Link text should provide a clear description of the destination, independent of the surrounding text.

Students that with a visual impairement may use screen reader software that allows them to navigate by links. Descriptive link text helps orient and guide them to resources. A list of “click here”, “click here”, “Read more”, etc. is not going to provide users with any meaningful information. Pasting raw URLs in Brightspace should also be avoided as, for example, heading “https://iweb.langara.ca/edtech/blog” is jarring and not a useful indicator of what that link would lead to.

Additionally, sighted users can easily spot or relocate a link when it has a clear text description. As well, all users benefit from quality link text to understand why they would want to click on the link.

Effective link text should be:

  • Descriptive
    • Describe the destination
  • Concise
    • Try to limit link text to a few words
  • Unique
    • If two links on a page go to the same destination, they should have the same link text, otherwise ensure all link text is unique
  • Visually distinct
    • Links should be visually distinct from surrounding text. In Brightspace, stick with default formatting (blue underlined text) for links.

To Link Text in Brightspace

  1. Highlight the text to be linked and select Add/Edit Link
  2. The highlighted text will appear in the Title field. Paste the URL in the Link field and select Create.

Find more information about link text in the Langara Accessibility Handbook and read more about adding hyperlinks in Brightspace.

Accessibility Checker

Brightspace includes a built-in accessibility checker. The checker appears on the second row of the editor toolbar.

  1. Select More Actions to reveal the second row of the toolbar
  2. Select Accessibility Checker

The accessibility checker will highlight many accessibility issues and offer solutions to correct them.

Watch for more posts in the Brightspace Accessibility in Five series coming soon, including:

  1. Link Text
  2. Colour
  3. Headings
  4. Tables
  5. Text Equivalents
  6. Bonus: Accessible Uploads