On occasion you will teach a course and have a student withdraw
from it. This is not a big deal since
there could be many reasons for this happening.
However, when the Dean needs you to report the students grades from work
prior to the withdrawal, it then becomes a big deal. How can you view their grades and participation
when this happens?
Luckily, in Brightspace, viewing the grades from a student
who has withdrawn from the class is no big deal.
There are four simple steps:
From inside your class, select the Roster option.Fortunately, at SUNY Schenectady, that is
right on the menu. (The Roster can also be found in the Course Admin under
Course Tools.)
Select the Enrollment Statistics button
Scroll down to the bottom and a list of
withdrawn students is displayed.
Click the chevron next to the student in
question to view their information.
Please note that you will need grade items for grades. Likewise, the attendance
is from the Brightspace Attendance feature. Your college may use a different
system for tracking.
These four easy steps will give you access to their grades
and information.
Since the Lockdown the use of videoconferencing can no
longer be denied as a key part of online education. Whether you are teaching a synchronous
course, a hybrid, holding virtual office hours, or providing a sense of
community with an optional introduction in an asynchronous session, you will
need to select a video conferencing tool the suits your needs. But which one?
Collaborate in Blackboard and Bongos Virtual Classroom in
Brightspace are free and are conveniently embedded inside the LMS. However, not
everything that is free, such as the flu, is good. Both of these free
applications refuse to provide automatic captioning. They do ‘claim’ to have captions provided you
arrange for a transcriptionist to transcribe them in real-time. Free and not
toxic at all!
But why should I care if I do not have any deaf students? First, in many cases you are not aware of all
of your students’ disabilities. One in ten college students report having a
disability and this should not be ignored.
Second, The American Disabilities Act
requires organizations to provide accessible online content and missing
captions is frequently cited in ADA lawsuits. Don’t be that guy - meet WCAG standards.
Captions expand your audience and increase their engagement often in unexpected
ways. In 2022 50% of US
citizens surveyed stated they use captions ‘most of the time’. The study also revealed that 70% of members
of Gen Z (ages 11-25) frequently use subtitles. They are a growing demographic
of students, and they will expect captioning.
Luckily, you can easily provide captioning in video conferences by using MS
Teams. When you enter a meeting, you
merely select the “more’ feature on the menu – its symbol is three dots. Go to “Language and Speech” and select “Turn
On Live Captions”. Now you have live captions. You could also do this by
selecting “Accessibility” and turning on the Captioning tab. This is an individual feature, so all your
students can access it and use it privately.
A similar feature exists in Zoom.
Live captioning also helps you be more inclusive by
assisting ELL students or offering translations for non-English speakers. MS Teams, as well as Zoom
(with the Wordly App add-on), not only offer real-time captioning, but language
translation. Once the captioning is on
in Teams, select the three dots on the top right corner of the captions
bar. This will offer the following
options:
1.Change
the spoken language. This is handy
when your class is not in English.
2.Translate
the captioning language. Yes, this feature can translate your session into
more than 30 languages. This helps level the bar for ELL students who may have
difficulty understanding their second or third language in the online
environment.
The translation tool is not as good as an interpreter. For
example, ‘Warming the cockles of your heart’ does not mean to “heating the
mollusks inside your cardiac organ”. However, the translation feature is a
handy tool when you need something. It is effectively an electronic dictionary/translator
to assist your students.
Remember, not all instructional technology is the same, and
this definitely applies to video conferencing applications. Choose one that has auto-captioning and
translations. It is not only more
inclusive and accessible but demonstrates your commitment to being so.
Amin, F. M., & Sundari, H. (2020). EFL students’
preferences on digital platforms during emergency remote teaching: Video
conference, LMS, or messenger application? Studies in English Language and
Education, 7(2), 362-378.
Patil S & Davies P. (2014) Use of Google
Translate in medical communication: evaluation of accuracy BMJ 2014; 349:
g 7392 doi:10.1136/bmj.g7392
Kaliyadan F, & Gopinath Pillai S. (2010)The use of google language tools as
an interpretation aid in cross-cultural doctor-patient interaction: a pilot
study. Inform Prim Care 18:141-3.
