About norms and routines

A fundamental concept of classroom management is “shared responsibility”. Aim for students to own the rules, instead of us teachers simply imposing rules that they do not understand or value. Some tips:

1. Start the school year by co-creating norms and routines. It can be an introductory exercise, where students can propose and decide ways on how they prefer to navigate their digital learning environment .

2. Enforce these norms consistently. During the first few weeks, you might find yourself reminding students to follow these norms. If you honor the norms consistently, you are modeling good behavior for the students as well. Before you know it, your students will also remind their fellow students.

3. Make routines fun. They don’t have to be serious. When done well, routines provide a sense of community and rhythm—it makes the digital learning environment a safe and predictable place. Have check-ins at the beginning of the week, offer consultation sessions during projects, utilize quizzes as formative assessment routines, among others.

Maximize the features of Brightspace and keep a conducive learning environment in the digital space for your students.

Scheduling availability of Assignments

If you want to set availability and due dates for assignments, you can easily achieve it with Brightspace. Doing this will help your students to keep track of their work and manage their time wisely.

First set up the Assignment. Here’s how!

1. Go to the Course and click the Content from the navigation bar.

2. Select the Unit or Lesson in which you want to place your Assignment.

3. From there, click Create New. There will be a pop up window of all the possible Content Types that you can place.

4. Choose Assignment. You can start adding the name and instructions for your Assignment in this part.

Now, you can set the availability!

1. In the Assignment Tab, click the Availability Dates and Conditions tab on the right.

2. Indicate the Start Date.

3. Indicate the End Date.

4. Click Save and Close.

Scheduling availability of Quizzes

If you want to know how to set up your quiz, go to Navigating the Question Editor section. For the quiz questions, go to Adding New Quiz Questions and to Importing questions through a CSV File.

1. In Edit Quiz, go to the Restrictions Tab. Here you can see the options for the Availability.

2. Check the “Has Start Date” checkbox and set the start of availability date and time. You can set it to now by clicking the Now button beside the time.

3. Check the “Has End Date”checkbox and set the end of availability date and time. You can also set it to now by clicking the Now button beside the time.

4. Click Save and Close.

Setting release conditions of Quizzes

The Release Conditions is perfect for creating prerequisites or dependencies from other learning materials inside the Course before your students can access a Quiz. Adding Release Conditions to your Quizzes allows you to restrict students’ access before they fulfill a customized criteria.

First, make sure to create the Quiz. To learn how to do that, go to Navigating the Question Editor section. To add questions, learn from Adding New Quiz Questions and from Importing questions through a CSV File.

Once you have your quiz, go through these steps and set Release Conditions.

1. In the Edit Quiz, go to the Restrictions Tab. Here you can see the options for Release Conditions.

2. Click the Create and Attach button.

3. A pop up window will appear. Check the options in the drop down menu where you can select the condition type. Here, you’ll find all the types of Contents inside a Course.

As an example, if you want to make sure that your student has accessed a specific content before seeing the Quiz, choose Content -> Visited content topic. Or if you want your student to answer a specific assignment first, choose Assignments -> submission to folder. The options that you’ll see here will depend on the contents that you entered in your Course.

4. After selecting the condition type, you’ll find another drop down menu where you will select the specific content in the course to which the condition points.

In our example Content -> Visited content topic, you’ll find in the menu all the specific topics inside the Units and Lessons that you created in the course. Choose the specific content that you want your student to visit prior to gaining visibility of the Quiz. If you choose Assignments -> submission to folder, you’ll see a list of all the assignments inside your Course. Choose the Content that will complete your conditions.