Workshops & Professional Learning

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EdTech & TCDC Events Calendar

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Given the changes in educational technologies, EdTech is committed to supporting Langara’s faculty and instructional staff with their ongoing professional learning. If you would like to subscribe to information about workshop offerings, or if you have an idea for a workshop you would like us to offer, please send us an email at edtech@langara.ca.

When requesting a workshop, please provide workshop information, your full name, department, email, phone number, and your availability.

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EdTech Professional Learning Workshops & Topics

(Click on the topics below to expand.)

Communications Series

  • Brightspace – Discussions
    Engaging Your Students with Discussions
    Looking for ideas to keep your students engaged in your Brightspace course? Wondering how to leverage discussion groups for meaningful learning and team building in your classes? In this session, we will explore strategies for keeping students involved in online learning and share ideas of how to maximize learning in discussion groups. 
  • Brightspace – Checklists, Completion Tracking & Work To Do
    Empower Students to Succeed through Checklists, Completion Tracking, and Work To Do

    Brightspace Checklists allow instructors to organize learning activities in one place. Deadlines, activities, and course materials can be directly linked to tasks in a checklist so students can find everything they need in one central location. Creating a checklist is a quick way to reduce learners’ confusion and foster student success. Completion Tracking and the Work To Do widget are other useful features that allow learners to monitor their progress in a course. During this session, there will be a demo, a Q&A, and an opportunity to create a checklist, enable completion tracking and Work To Do. 
  • Brightspace – Intelligent Agents
    Automate Student Communications using Intelligent Agents

    Adding automation to your course through the use of intelligent agents is one way to boost interaction with your learners without requiring more work and effort. Intelligent agents are customizable messages automatically emailed to your students when they fulfill a particular task. Some examples include: students not logging in for extended periods of time, email reminders about upcoming and/or missed deadlines, students who have viewed (or not viewed) specific modules or topics, or providing immediate feedback after the completion of a quiz. Come and find out how to set up intelligent agents in your course. 
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Assignments Series

  • Brightspace Basics
    New to Brightspace?

    This workshop is designed to introduce new users of Brightspace to the basics of creating a course in and teaching with Langara’s learning management system. After introducing instructors to the full range of Brightspace tools, the facilitator will answer questions and troubleshoot issues. 
  • Brightspace – Assignments
    Improve Student Satisfaction and Understanding through Audio and Video Assignment Feedback

    Research suggests that using recorded audio or video is a highly effective alternative to written feedback on student assignments. Join us as we discuss what forms recorded feedback can take, why it can increase student understanding and satisfaction, as well as instructor efficiency, and how to use some of EdTech’s supported tools to record and share feedback. This workshop will mostly focus on feedback tools accessible within Brightspace, although other options will be touched upon.
  • Brightspace – Gradebook
    Setting Up Your Gradebook

    Learn how easy it is to set up your grade book using Brightspace’s powerful and flexible grades tool. Find out how to create and edit grade book items, enter grades, share them with your students, and set up final grade calculations. You do not need to know or learn any complicated formulas. Brightspace does it all for you. Please bring along a sample of a current course grading scheme. 
  • Brightspace – Rubrics
    Join us for this hands-on session and turn your assignment evaluative criteria (aka your rubric) into a Brightspace rubric. We’ll start off with a brief demonstration of how Brightspace rubrics work and then get to work in smaller groups assisting you in translating yours from paper to digital. We will also provide some templates if you would prefer not to start from scratch. 
  • Turnitin – Using Turnitin to Support Students’ Understanding of Plagiarism and Citation Use
    Turnitin is an originality checking and text-matching software. It is designed to educate students on appropriate citation and reference techniques to prevent plagiarism. However, Turnitin also has some potential ethical and privacy concerns connected to its use. This workshop will cover when and why you might want to use Turnitin, what the privacy concerns are, how to enable it in Brightspace assignments and customize the various settings, and how to interpret the similarity reports. 
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Collaboration Series

  • Brightspace – Groups: Getting Your Students Set Up to Collaborate
    Join us to learn various uses for “groups” within Brightspace, how to set them up for discussions and assignments, and how to adjust enrollment and other settings after they’ve been created.  
    With the Brightspace Groups tool, you can get your students working together. Although Brightspace Groups is not hard to use once you understand the settings, it can be intimidating to set up the first time you try. This workshop will attempt to demystify the process and increase your confidence setting up group activities. We will cover group creation options (manual, random, group size/number, etc.), how to create and later edit associated discussions and assignments, and how to manually enroll students in groups and/or adjust the enrollment later. We’ll also cover how to create groups of 1 for students to keep an online journal within Brightspace.
  • By the end of this workshop, you should be able to: 
    • Explain the value of online discussions 
    • List the 3 components of effective discussions 
    • Incorporate universal design for learning (UDL) in your discussions 
    • Develop a Discussion Lesson Plan / Journey 
    • Create a discussion in Brightspace 
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Quiz Series

  • Brightspace – Quizzes 1: Level Up with the Question Library
    Join us to learn how to maximize your use of the Question Library and take your Brightspace quizzes to the next level.
    • Topics covered in this workshop include 
    • Steps for getting started 
    • About the Question Library 
    • Organizing questions with Sections 
    • Adding images/video to a section for use with a set of questions 
    • Moving questions around 
    • Adding questions 
    • Demystifying the basic question types 
    • Copying questions into the QL from an existing quiz
  • Brightspace – Quizzes 2: Building a Quiz
    Note: It is recommended that participants have already attended Quizzes 1: Level Up with the Question Library – or gone through the asynchronous materials for Level Up – before taking this workshop.
    This workshop covers all the basics of creating a quiz. Participants will learn about quiz properties (adding and editing questions, editing values, pagination, instructions, optional advanced properties), restrictions (availability, time limits, release conditions, special access), assessment settings (auto-publish results, link to grade book, attempts), and submission views. We will also cover managing quizzes (hiding, copying, deleting, reordering, bulk editing) and previewing. We will discuss the pros and cons of adding a quiz to a module/submodule in Content, as well as adding links to quizzes in HTML files and announcements. If time allows, we will cover grading of quizzes.
  • Brightspace – Quizzes 3: Improving the Academic Integrity of Online Quizzes
    Online quizzes can be beneficial for the learning process, but higher stakes online assessments can have unique challenges when it comes to academic misconduct. This workshop will start with a discussion on what conditions make it more likely that students will “cheat” and how to ameliorate them, will then demonstrate the features within Brightspace Quizzes that can reduce students’ opportunity to “cheat”, and will finish up with some tips on adjusting and constructing questions that are less vulnerable to academic misconduct (even multiple choice and other auto-graded questions). 
  • Brightspace – Quizzes 4: Learning Lab for Advanced Quiz Functions
    This workshop is for instructors who are comfortable with the basic functionality of Brightspace Quizzes and are interested in learning about advanced features. This is an interactive session where participants will bring a device and engage in hands-on learning. Possible topics include: 
    1. submission views (prescheduling feedback views for students)
    2. allowing students to retake incorrect questions
    3. fixing and regrading incorrectly keyed questions
    4. dropping the lowest score for a group of quizzes
    5. making a question a bonus and the associated gradebook options
    6. regular expressions/Regex (expanding the range of acceptable answers for typed questions that are auto-graded)
    7. quiz reports/statistics
    8. setting up questions for video answers using a web recorder
    9. sharing quizzes/sections/individual questions with and importing from a Learning Object Repository (LOR)
    10. incorporating EquatIO for both question setup and student answers.
      Note: it is not always possible to cover all topics in this workshop, but attendees will be polled as to which topics are of most interest, and asynchronous materials are made available for any topics that aren’t covered.
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Digital Media Series

Langara’s Digital Media Creator programme (DMC) is designed to help faculty and staff experiment with new ways of discovering, digesting and conveying ideas using digital media. The purpose behind it is twofold:

  1. to help you become confident users and creators of engaging multimodal content (images, text, audio, video) in your teaching
  2. maximize the opportunities for your students to demonstrate multiple means of action and expression – a key principle of universal design for learning (UDL)

Modules offered in any one semester may include some or all of the following. To achieve the DMC Certificate/Digital Badge you must complete a minimum of four modules, one of which must be Module 1: Create/Share/Engage – Introduction to Digital Media Creator. Modules may be taken in any order after the completion of Module 1.

  • Digital Media Creator Module 1: Create/Share/Engage – Introduction to Digital Media Creator
    In this introductory first session of the Digital Media Creator (DMC) series we explore how digital media (images, audio and video) can help students work through difficult concepts and increase student engagement. We’ll also provide an overview of digital media content creation and remix culture and the key elements of UDL and digital accessibility. Attendees will get a chance to test drive our learning and reflection platform, PebblePad and learn how to share a variety of content types in Brightspace.
    All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have registered for this prerequisite workshop ahead of participating in other DMC workshops.
  • Digital Media Creator Module 2: Visual Storytelling (Sketchnoting, Storyboarding)
    Whether you’d like to incorporate sketch-noting (visual notetaking) into your class, visual content into your Brightspace course online or into a print handout, this session will provide you with an introduction to make the most of visual content in your teaching. Through examples and hands-on exercises, facilitators will guide you in getting started with sketch-noting and incorporating visuals into your classroom materials.  All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have registered for this prerequisite workshop Introduction to Digital Media Creator ahead of participating in other DMC workshops.
  • Digital Media Creator Module 3: Effective Slide Design
    Aimed at non-designers, this session gives practical tips on creating effective presentation slides that are grounded in research on multimedia learning and good design principles. Spark your creativity with slide designs that go beyond bullet-points, engage your learners with polls and other interactive content, ensure your slides are accessible and inclusive, and consider some alternatives to using Powerpoint for your presentations.
    All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have completed the prerequisite, Introduction to Digital Media Creator module, before participating in this session.
  • Digital Media Creator Module 4: Incorporating Podcasting into your Teaching
    In this session we will look at what podcasting is, why it has become a popular technology in education and what you need to get started as a podcaster. We will cover four important stages: planning, producing, editing and sharing. There will be an opportunity for you to create a trailer for a podcast during the session so please come with ideas and please bring a laptop to the session.
    All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have completed the prerequisite, Introduction to Digital Media Creator module, before participating in this session.
  • Digital Media Creator Module 5: Screencasting for Instructors: Create engaging videos by capturing your computer screen
    A screencast is a narrated video recording of your computer screen. Screencasting has myriad uses and benefits to teaching and learning including course introductions, flipped classrooms, interactive video quizzes and student presentations. Included in this session is what makes for good screencasts, what hardware and software you need to create one and how to share them with your students.
    All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have completed the prerequisite, Introduction to Digital Media Creator module, before participating in this session.
  • Digital Media Creator Module 6: Exploring Artificial Intelligence and Creativity (Sandbox Session)
    Bring your laptop, your interest in artificial intelligence and your ideas for this sandbox session on getting started with generative AI tools (for text, audio, image and video generation). In this final session of the Digital Media Creator series, you’ll get a chance to try out some new tools to create content for your course and/or creative projects. Be prepared to dream up, produce, and share your final AI generated creations!
  • Lightboard
    Introducing the Lightboard

    Join us in the EdTech Studio to learn how to use the lightboard to bring the intimacy of the classroom to your online offerings.
  • Studio Tour
    Introduction to the EdTech Studio
    Email edtech@langara.ca to book a time to tour the EdTech Studio, located on the 2nd floor of C Building, North Tower. Come meet our Technical Media Producer and Advisor (Multimedia), who will introduce you to our state-of-the-art EdTech Studio, dedicated to helping you improve your audio and video offerings.
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Learning Labs

  • Learning Lab: Brightspace Discussions
    Looking for ways to improve the discussions in your Brightspace courses? In this session, we will explore strategies to create discussions that are engaging, allow for authentic participation, and support learning. Participants will practice writing discussion prompts and creating discussions. Also, we will go over the discussion features with a focus on the changes of ‘New Experience’.
    After participating in this lab, participants should be able to:
    • Create discussion topics in Brightspace
    • Distinguish between the Classic and the New Experience features of Brightspace Discussions
    • Write discussion prompts that encourage more authentic student participation and support learning
    • Incorporate multi-modal responses in your discussion forums
    • Grade students’ discussions
    • This lab is a participatory session. We encourage you to bring your current discussion prompts and/or a copy of your course learning outcomes. Participants must bring a laptop or a tablet.
  • Learning Lab: Brightspace HTML Templates
    What are the benefits of using HTML templates? Templates improve the look and feel of courses and can help you organize your content more meaningfully by adding page elements. HTML templates are designed to meet Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility standards (WCAG). Templates include formatting styles, such as heading levels and paragraphs, that help create content that is accessible for assistive technologies.
    Langara’s Brightspace HTML templates can be used to create engaging and interactive content layouts within a D2L Brightspace course. Templates include both text layout pages, such as introduction and conclusion layouts, and dynamic pages with interactive elements, such as accordions and tabs.
    After participating in this lab, participants should be able to:
    • Use the Brightspace HTML editor.
    • Explain the benefits of using the HTML templates.
    • Apply the templates to a new Brightspace HTML page.
    • Apply the latest version of the template to an existing Brightspace HTML page.
    • Mix and match HTML elements, such as image placement, accordions, callouts, tables, and tabs, from the various templates.
      This lab is a participatory session. EdTech Advisor and Specialists will be on hand to answer questions and provide advice. We encourage you to bring existing Brightspace course content. Participants must bring a laptop or a tablet.
  • Learning Lab: Create an Accessible Word Document
    Making sure your documents are accessible supports people with disabilities who use assistive technologies. It also makes the document more usable for everyone. In this hands-on session, we’ll review the most common accessibility issues that should be addressed when creating your documents and get you started creating an accessible Word document.
    After participating in this lab, participants should be able to:
    • Employ plain language.
    • Select styles that improve legibility of text.
    • Structure a document.
    • Create accessible hyperlinks and tables.
    • Add alternative text to visual content.
    • Use the built-in accessibility checker.
      This lab is a participatory session. EdTech Advisor and Specialists will be on hand to answer questions and provide advice. We encourage you to bring a document you’d like to improve.
      Participants must bring a laptop or a tablet.
  • Learning Lab: Adding Closed Captions to a Video in Brightspace
    There are many reasons to add closed captions to video. Most important, it improves access to and understanding of your video content.
    • Approximately 20 percent of Americans report some degree of hearing loss. Closed captions allow those with hearing loss to follow along and not miss out on the nuances of the audio part of a video. YouTube does have an automatic captioning (speech recognition) feature, but those automatically generated captions are usually riddled with errors so are arguably worse than no captions at all. For some examples of bad automatic closed captions, search YouTube for “caption fail”.
    • Closed captions can help those who may not be fluent in the language in which the audio is presented.
    • Closed captions can help those learning how to read.
    • Closed captions allow viewers to follow along with a video in a noisy environment, or when the sound is muted.
      Luckily it is easy to add and edit closed captions in Brightspace using MediaSpace, the college’s media hosting and streaming service.
      After participating in this lab, participants should be able to:
    • Upload a video to MediaSpace.
    • Add closed captions to a video.
    • Use the MediaSpace captions editor.
    • Use the OneDrive captioning tool.
    • Embed a video in a Brightspace course file.
      This lab is a participatory session. EdTech Advisor and Specialists will be on hand to answer questions and provide advice. We encourage you to bring an uncaptioned video file.
      Participants must bring a laptop or a tablet.
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All EdTech Workshops

  • Brightspace Basics
    New to Brightspace?

    Join us to learn the basics of creating a course in and teaching with Langara’s learning management system, Brightspace. In this workshop we will preview key Brightspace tools, answer questions, and troubleshoot issues.
  • Brightspace – Assignments
    Improve Student Satisfaction and Understanding through Audio and Video Assignment Feedback

    Research suggests that using recorded audio or video is a highly effective alternative to written feedback on student assignments. Join us as we discuss what forms recorded feedback can take, why it can increase student understanding and satisfaction, as well as instructor efficiency, and how to use some of EdTech’s supported tools to record and share feedback. This workshop will mostly focus on feedback tools accessible within Brightspace, although other options will be touched upon.
  • Brightspace – Checklists, Completion Tracking & Work To Do
    Empower Students to Succeed through Checklists, Completion Tracking, and Work To Do

    Brightspace Checklists allow instructors to organize learning activities in one place. Deadlines, activities, and course materials can be directly linked to tasks in a checklist so students can find everything they need in one central location. Creating a checklist is a quick way to reduce learners’ confusion and foster student success. Completion Tracking and the Work To Do widget are other useful features that allow learners to monitor their progress in a course. During this session, there will be a demo, a Q&A, and an opportunity to create a checklist, enable completion tracking and Work To Do.
  • Brightspace – Discussions
    Engaging Your Students with Discussions
    Looking for ideas to keep your students engaged in your Brightspace course? Wondering how to leverage discussion groups for meaningful learning and team building in your classes? In this session, we will explore strategies for keeping students involved in online learning and share ideas of how to maximize learning in discussion groups.By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:
    • Explain the value of online discussions
    • List the 3 components of effective discussions
    • Incorporate universal design for learning (UDL) in your discussions
    • Develop a Discussion Lesson Plan / Journey
    • Create a discussion in Brightspace
  • Brightspace – Gradebook
    Setting Up Your Gradebook

    Learn how easy it is to set up your grade book using Brightspace’s powerful and flexible grades tool. Find out how to create and edit grade book items, enter grades, share them with your students, and set up final grade calculations. You do not need to know or learn any complicated formulas. Brightspace does it all for you. Please bring along a sample of a current course grading scheme.
  • Brightspace – Groups
    Getting Your Students Set Up to Collaborate
    Join us to learn various uses for “groups” within Brightspace, how to set them up for discussions and assignments, and how to adjust enrollment and other settings after they’ve been created. With the Brightspace Groups tool, you can get your students working together. Although Brightspace Groups is not hard to use once you understand the settings, it can be intimidating to set up the first time you try. This workshop will attempt to demystify the process and increase your confidence setting up group activities. We will cover group creation options (manual, random, group size/number, etc.), how to create and later edit associated discussions and assignments, and how to manually enroll students in groups and/or adjust the enrollment later. We’ll also cover how to create groups of 1 for students to keep an online journal within Brightspace.
  • Brightspace – Intelligent Agents
    Automate Student Communications using Intelligent Agents
    Adding automation to your course through the use of intelligent agents is one way to boost interaction with your learners without requiring more work and effort. Intelligent agents are customizable messages automatically emailed to your students when they fulfill a particular task. Some examples include: students not logging in for extended periods of time, email reminders about upcoming and/or missed deadlines, students who have viewed (or not viewed) specific modules or topics, or providing immediate feedback after the completion of a quiz. Come and find out how to set up intelligent agents in your course.By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:
    • Explain what intelligent agents are and how they work
    • Describe when to use intelligent agents
    • Create, test, edit, and modify intelligent agents in Brightspace
    • Personalize intelligent agents using replacement strings
    • Review past intelligent agent activities
  • Brightspace – Learning Object Respositories (LOR)
    Opportunities for Sharing: Using the Learning Object Repository to Share Course Materials
    Sharing materials within Brightspace can be done easily by using the Learning Object Repository (LOR) within Brightspace. Repositories can be setup within departments to share important departmental information within courses or repositories can also be created at the course level so that instructors can easily share materials between sections. Join this workshop to learn how to publish and copy materials from the LOR.
  • Brightspace – Quizzes 1: Level Up with the Question Library
    • Join us to learn how to maximize your use of the Question Library and take your Brightspace quizzes to the next level. 
    • Topics covered in this workshop include 
    • Steps for getting started 
    • About the Question Library 
    • Organizing questions with Sections 
    • Adding images/video to a section for use with a set of questions 
    • Moving questions around 
    • Adding questions 
    • Demystifying the basic question types 
    • Copying questions into the QL from an existing quiz
  • Brightspace – Quizzes 2: Building a Quiz
    Note: It is recommended that participants have already attended Quizzes 2: Level Up Your Brightspace Game (on the Question Library) – or gone through the asynchronous materials for Level Up – before taking this workshop.
    This workshop covers all the basics of creating a quiz. Participants will learn about quiz properties (adding and editing questions, editing values, pagination, instructions, optional advanced properties), restrictions (availability, time limits, release conditions, special access), assessment settings (auto-publish results, link to grade book, attempts), and submission views. We will also cover managing quizzes (hiding, copying, deleting, reordering, bulk editing) and previewing. We will discuss the pros and cons of adding a quiz to a module/submodule in Content, as well as adding links to quizzes in HTML files and announcements. If time allows, we will cover grading of quizzes.
  • Brightspace – Quizzes 3: Improving the Academic Integrity of Online Quizzes
    Online quizzes can be beneficial for the learning process, but higher stakes online assessments can have unique challenges when it comes to academic misconduct. This workshop will start with a discussion on what conditions make it more likely that students will “cheat” and how to ameliorate them, will then demonstrate the features within Brightspace Quizzes that can reduce students’ opportunity to “cheat”, and will finish up with some tips on adjusting and constructing questions that are less vulnerable to academic misconduct (even multiple choice and other auto-graded questions). 
  • Brightspace – Rubrics
    Join us for this hands-on session and turn your assignment evaluative criteria (aka your rubric) into a Brightspace rubric. We’ll start off with a brief demonstration of how Brightspace rubrics work and then get to work in smaller groups assisting you in translating yours from paper to digital. We will also provide some templates if you would prefer not to start from scratch.
  • Digital Media Production
    Digital Media Creator Program (DMC) 

    Langara’s Digital Media Creator programme (DMC) is designed to help faculty and staff experiment with new ways of discovering, digesting and conveying ideas using digital media. The purpose behind it is twofold: (a) to help you become confident users and creators of engaging multimodal content (images, text, audio, video) in your teaching, and (b) maximize the opportunities for your students to demonstrate multiple means of action and expression – a key principle of universal design for learning (UDL). Module offerings change every semester.
    • Digital Media Creator Module 1: Create/Share/Engage – Introduction to Digital Media Creator
      In this introductory first session of the Digital Media Creator (DMC) series we explore how digital media (images, audio and video) can help students work through difficult concepts and increase student engagement. We’ll also provide an overview of digital media content creation and remix culture and the key elements of UDL and digital accessibility. Attendees will get a chance to test drive our learning and reflection platform, PebblePad and learn how to share a variety of content types in Brightspace.
      All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have registered for this prerequisite workshop ahead of participating in other DMC workshops.
    • Digital Media Creator Module 2: Visual Storytelling (Sketchnoting, Storyboarding)
      Whether you’d like to incorporate sketch-noting (visual notetaking) into your class, visual content into your Brightspace course online or into a print handout, this session will provide you with an introduction to make the most of visual content in your teaching. Through examples and hands-on exercises, facilitators will guide you in getting started with sketch-noting and incorporating visuals into your classroom materials.  All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have registered for this prerequisite workshop Introduction to Digital Media Creator ahead of participating in other DMC workshops.
    • Digital Media Creator Module 3: Effective Slide Design
      Aimed at non-designers, this session gives practical tips on creating effective presentation slides that are grounded in research on multimedia learning and good design principles. Spark your creativity with slide designs that go beyond bullet-points, engage your learners with polls and other interactive content, ensure your slides are accessible and inclusive, and consider some alternatives to using Powerpoint for your presentations.
      All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have completed the prerequisite, Introduction to Digital Media Creator module, before participating in this session.
    • Digital Media Creator Module 4: Incorporating Podcasting into your Teaching
      In this session we will look at what podcasting is, why it has become a popular technology in education and what you need to get started as a podcaster. We will cover four important stages: planning, producing, editing and sharing. There will be an opportunity for you to create a trailer for a podcast during the session so please come with ideas and please bring a laptop to the session.
      All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have completed the prerequisite, Introduction to Digital Media Creator module, before participating in this session.
    • Digital Media Creator Module 5: Screencasting for Instructors: Create engaging videos by capturing your computer screen
      A screencast is a narrated video recording of your computer screen. Screencasting has myriad uses and benefits to teaching and learning including course introductions, flipped classrooms, interactive video quizzes and student presentations. Included in this session is what makes for good screencasts, what hardware and software you need to create one and how to share them with your students.
      All Digital Media Creator series attendees must have completed the prerequisite, Introduction to Digital Media Creator module, before participating in this session.
    • Digital Media Creator Module 6: Exploring Artificial Intelligence and Creativity (Sandbox Session)
      Bring your laptop, your interest in artificial intelligence and your ideas for this sandbox session on getting started with generative AI tools (for text, audio, image and video generation). In this final session of the Digital Media Creator series, you’ll get a chance to try out some new tools to create content for your course and/or creative projects. Be prepared to dream up, produce, and share your final AI generated creations!
    • Lightboard
      Introducing the Lightboard

      Join us in the EdTech Studio to learn how to use the lightboard to bring the intimacy of the classroom to your online offerings.
    • Studio Tour
      Introduction to the EdTech Studio
      Email edtech@langara.ca to book a time to tour the EdTech Studio, located on the 2nd floor of C Building, North Tower. Come meet our Technical Media Producer and Advisor (Multimedia), who will introduce you to our state-of-the-art EdTech Studio, dedicated to helping you improve your audio and video offerings.
  • PebblePad – Introduction to PebblePad Platform
    PebblePad is Langara’s learning journey platform. It can support a wide spectrum of teaching and learning activities, ranging from open-ended creative assignments (E.g., ePortfolios) to highly scaffolded learning tasks (E.g., workbooks which guide students to document and/or reflect on their learning). This workshop will give you a brief overview of PebblePad’s capabilities and get you started using the platform.
    • During this workshop you will:
    • Learn how PebblePad differs from Brightspace
    • See some examples of how PebblePad is being used at Langara
    • Activate your account
    • Learn how to navigate around the platform
    • Interact as a ‘student’ with a scaffolded assignment
    • Start using the creative tools
    • By the end of the workshop, you’ll be up and running with the basics.
    • Note: This workshop is interactive. Please bring a device.
  • Polling
    Intro to Polling Tools
    Polling tools are a great way to increase student engagement. They allow instructors to assess student comprehension and solicit feedback, thereby increasing interactivity and giving students a voice. During this workshop, you will have a chance to experience and learn how to set up several free student response systems. We will also discuss low-tech forms of polling.
  • Reading Lists
    Meet the new Reading list: a new way to share resources with your students in Brightspace
    The new Reading List platform allows instructors to share diverse resources (websites, videos, journal articles, books, and more) with students in Brightspace in a seamless way. This 30-minute online session guides instructors through the process of creating a reading list and making it available in Brightspace. Benefits to instructors include easier maintenance of links to resources in Brightspace, indication of suggested or required reading, and request for digitization, etc.
  • Turnitin
    Using Turnitin to Support Students’ Understanding of Plagiarism and Citation Use
    Turnitin is an originality checking and text-matching software. It is designed to educate students on appropriate citation and reference techniques to prevent plagiarism. However, Turnitin also has some potential ethical and privacy concerns connected to its use. This workshop will cover when and why you might want to use Turnitin, what the privacy concerns are, how to enable it in Brightspace assignments and customize the various settings, and how to interpret the similarity reports.
  • Zoom Basics
    Zoom for Novices

    Zoom is a web conferencing tool that allows instructors to teach synchronously online. If you have very little or no experience with Zoom, this workshop is for you. Learn how to access the Zoom web portal (app) and Desktop Client and update Zoom. We will discuss security settings and accessibility features. You will have a chance to navigate the Zoom interface, use the chat feature and white board, and practice screensharing.
  • Zoom Advanced
    Increase Student Engagement with Advanced Zoom Features
    Zoom breakout rooms give online students the opportunity to work in pairs and in groups.  Advanced polls and quizzes offer a variety of question types, including fill-in-the-blank, ranking, and long-answer questions. During this workshop, you will learn how to set up breakout rooms, create different types of questions, and collect students’ answers. Please note that you will need to update your Zoom desktop client to a minimum of 5.8.3 to access these features. You will receive an email reminder and instructions from the workshop facilitator on how to complete this update.
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Interactive Resources

Workshop Hub

Supplementary materials for our online, hybrid, and in-person workshops.

Mini-Courses

Self-directed learning resources.

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