Leaving the Inbox Behind

A Better Way to Reach Students in Brightspace

No more “lost” emails; no more Brightspace email confusion… I picked up a game-changing trick for better student-instructor communication, tested in my fall CIS course. This new approach keeps communications organized by course within Brightspace, compartmentalizing questions and answers within the course shell. Notifications make responses quicker, while attachments and embedded content remain intact within their threads. Best of all, students become more self-sufficient with course content front and center.

Overview & Motivation

- Thanks to Ultimate Medical Academy at D2L Fusion in Toronto.
- Teaching radically different courses (CIS & FBM); needed to compartmentalize responses.
- Goal: organize, simplify, reduce cognitive load for me and the student.

Structure

Used private discussion topics as an alternative to email for organized, course-specific questions and answers.
Subscribed to entire batch of forums/topics to get email alerts as needed.
Provided clear student contact instructions in the following locations:
- - Syllabus,
  - Start Here,
  - Module 1,
  - Discussion Board,
  - Announcements,
  - Weekly and Introductory Videos
Replied to initial emailed questions with “the answer is in your private discussion board”

What Class looks like (click here)

One Student's Board (CLICK HERE)

sample USE: password distribution (Click Here)

sample: interactive student session (Click Here)

Outcomes & Student Engagement

Organized Communication: Course-specific boards created structured responses, no “lost” emails, permanent well-organized answers.
All course content is within the course. Audits, grade appeals, looking up passwords or technical instructions, referring back to week 1 answers ... all preserved. No instructor intervention necessary.
Self-Service Learning: encouraged students to review discussion threads (and syllabus and modules and…) before asking, reducing simple or redundant questions.
Ability to use "Insert Stuff" and "Insert Quicklink" in responses instead of retyping / reattaching instructions or looking up page numbers / URLs.
Empowerment in problem-solving – students follow up with additional content for ongoing threads. Multiple students had ongoing, weeks-long conversations that continued correctly and chronologically.
One student told me point-blank, they were going to email to ask for an extension. By the time they cracked their laptop open, loaded Brightspace, got into the course - they just finished the assignment. I'm counting that as a win!

Evaluation & Cautions

Students need time to adapt (1-3 weeks, some longer). Brightspace notifications help if students use them.
Discussion boards can feel impersonal and public: students needed several reminders that these boards were private.
On one instance when Brightspace went down, had to email all students. Ugh. Students started emailing again...
Active and engaged students enjoyed the fact that questions and answers were right inside the course. Semi-active students didn't like it as much and preferred to fire off one-sentence emails from their phone. I'm okay with that.
Use the "add topics" discussion board function to quickly send a message to all students.

Conclusions & Recommendations

Essential to stay responsive in this modality; subscribing for email alerts can help.
Students needed time to warm up to the system – it was new to them.
Strong potential for campus-wide implementation.
- - Consistency
  - Efficiency
  - Organization / Structure
  - Student self-reliance
  - Avoid Brightspace email replies & “lost” emails
  - Archiving handled by IT

Instructions

Downloadable instructions for setting up one discussion board per student in D2L Brightspace to the right. Click on the pop-out button to download a copy.

Overview

Create a group for each student (and have Brightspace automatically add new groups when new students are added)
Create a Discussion Forum for the private topics - just once
Create a Discussion Topic for each group (and have Brightspace automatically add new topics when new students are added)

Leaving The Inbox Behind Addendum.pdf

Video Instructions

Google Sites

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