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About praising good performance
About praising good performance
Praise is a useful communication tool for learning. By giving positive feedback, teachers can tell learners what actions and kinds of behavior are valued in class, and which ones should be sustained. However, it should be used wisely and should not be given without intention. Instead, focus on providing awards as a means to support good practices and inspire more students to do the same. Here are some tips on using praise and awards according to Carol Dweck, proponent of the “growth mindset”:
Praise the process and effort, not the person. Avoid awards that say “smartest person”, or “most loyal”, as this is centered on personal attributes. Instead, refocus the praise on their effort, on the process that they took to achieve the outcome. We suggest awards such as “accepts challenges”, “never gave up”, and “practices thoughtfully”. This communicates that success is reached through hardwork, and not because of a personal attribute or trait.
Praise immediately. Timing is crucial, because the goal is to let the student reflect on the reason why they were praised. If given after a long period of time, the student might only associate the award as a token or achievement, but not as a means to encourage the behavior and effort involved.
Praise specific qualities. When the award or praise is too general or vague, it does not provide information to the student what they did well. Indicate particular actions or behaviors in the award, to make it more meaningful.
Creating awards
Creating awards
Brightspace offers an opportunity for teachers to create and give out awards to their students. You can use these to acknowledge their perfect score in quizzes or simply as feedback to their overall engagement and performance at class. Although Awards do not contribute directly to passing the Course, receiving them can empower students.
Two kinds of Awards are available, (1) Badges and (2) Certificates.
Choose the Course
On the navigation bar, click Awards.
Go to the Course Awards tab.
Click Add Award to Course. If you have an existing Course Award, you can edit it here.
Click Create Award. From here, you will be asked to enter a name and description. You also have the option to set the Award to either be a Badge or a Certificate.
Set up your Award.
Availability. It can either be available to all of your Courses, or available to other award creators and their courses award managers, and
Expiry. It can be set to Never or on a specific date. Some awards that you can set to never expire are badges for perfect attendance or certificates for passing Courses.
You can also add an image or an icon to your Award! Either click From Existing Library to use icons saved in Brightspace, or click Upload New Icon. There are websites in which you can get icons for free such as flaticon and nounproject.
While when you are working on a Certificate, an option to either choose From Existing Library or Upload New Template in PDF format will be available.
Input the Issuer Name, Issuer URL and Issuer Contact which should be a valid email address to complete the Award Creation.
Click Save. This Award is now available to be given out manually.
Giving out awards
Giving out awards
Created Awards can either be released to your students after fulfilling a set criteria or manually.
Here’s how to give out Awards manually.
Go to Classlist Awards.
From here select the students you want to issue an Award to.
Then click the Issue button.
A pop up window will appear on which you’ll see all the available awards in your Course. Select the award and include a message!
Click the Issue button.
In giving out Awards with Release Conditions, make sure first that you’ve done the steps from Creating Awards. Then you’re set for these next steps
Access the award in the Course Awards tab from the Awards page.
Click Edit properties.
From here, you can add credits or points. This is optional.
Under Release Conditions, click Create.
The idea of Release Conditions in BrightSpace and creating them are the same across the entire learning environment. Release Conditions allow you to set up requirements before they receive the Awards. Release Conditions are In the pop up window, 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 certain content before receiving a Perfect Attendance Badge, choose Content -> Visited content topic. The options that you’ll see here will depend on the contents that you entered in your Course.
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 receiving the Award.
When you are done editing, click Save.
Your students will receive an email notification about the Award.
Brightspace Guides: DURING Classes
Brightspace Guides: DURING Classes
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