Online Learning

Skills assessment for OIO

The Skills Assessment

Completing the D2L Brightspace Skills Assessment is a prerequisite for enrolling in the BEARS course. The goal is to ensure that every PCC online instructor has a basic level of skill in using Brightspace for teaching.

The Skills Assessment takes one hour and occurs in real-time, either face-to-face in a lab at the Sylvania campus or face-to-face in Zoom. Online Learning will reach out to OIO participants to schedule the Skills Assessment.

What will instructors be asked to demonstrate during the skills assessment?

Instructors will be asked to demonstrate a subset of tasks that are covered in the CUBS course. Here is a list of all tasks from the CUBS course:

HTML pages in D2L:
  • Modify an existing HTML page by adding text to headings and paragraphs, and by swapping out an existing image with a new one and adding descriptive (or “alt”) text to the new image.
  • Create a new module in Content and add a new HTML page to it.
  • Create a new HTML page based on an HTML page template, with correct styling and hierarchy of H1 and H2 headings followed by paragraph text, which contains a formatted list and an accessible hyperlink. Also, add an image to the page, add descriptive (or “alt”) text to the image, and move the image on the page.
Announcements in D2L:
  • Update the text in an announcement.
  • Modify Publish/Draft settings and dates to control how an announcement shows up for students
  • Un-check the “Always show start date” announcement setting
  • Use the announcement for its intended purpose (to refresh the course homepage weekly, for example)
  • Create a new announcement
  • In a new announcement’s headline, welcome a student by name
  • Populate the Content field in an announcement with accessible text and images
  • Use Publish/Draft settings and dates to control how an announcement shows up for students
Create a D2L assignment, from scratch, that has:
  • A succinct but apt and informative name
  • Clear and specific instructions
  • A grade item that is associated with the assignment
  • A start date, due date, and end date
  • A submission type that matches your instructional situation
  • The right number of submissions for your instructional situation
  • The affordance to grade the assignment anonymously
Discussions in D2L:
  • Distinguish between a discussion forum and a discussion topic
  • Put a topic into the right forum
  • Create (or modify) a description of (or instructions for) your discussion topic that are clear and comprehensive, and set a problem for students to solve that requires discussion
  • Edit hyperlinks in a discussion description so they take students to the intended webpage
  • Create a grade-item for your discussion topic, with a correct association in Grades
  • Distinguish between availability and locking settings, and use the setting that will allow students to interact with the discussion in the way you intend
  • Furnish dates and times that will allow students to interact with the discussion when you want them to
  • Add a setting so students “must start a thread before they can read and reply to other threads”
  • Allow students to rate each others’ posts, using a five-star rating scheme
Quizzes in D2L:
  • Edit existing quiz questions (and answers)
  • Create new quiz questions (with answers) that are both automatically and manually graded (know which question types have which behaviors)
  • Assign values (or weights) to quiz questions, and ensure the values interact correctly with the grade item
  • Create a grade item (for the quiz) whose points match the points listed on the syllabus
  • Set availability dates for a quiz so it is made available and unavailable to students on a specific date and time, and also has a due-date that students can see in the Calendar widget
  • Allow students to see the quiz grade as soon as they submit the quiz, and also make sure the grade appears immediately in Grades
  • Allow students to take a quiz more than once, with the average of the grades going into the grade book
  • When students submit a quiz, they will see each question answered incorrectly but NOT the correct answer
Surveys in D2L:
  • Modify questions within an existing survey
  • Change the availability dates assigned to an existing survey
  • Create a new survey with a meaningful name
  • Set up a survey so it collects anonymous responses
  • Create and add a Likert-scale item with the correct format
  • Create and add an open-ended question
  • Make a survey available to students during a specified period
  • Display the survey availability dates in the Calendar widget on the course homepage
Content in D2L:
  • Edit text on an existing HTML page in Content
  • Edit text on the Overview page
  • Add an existing HTML page to a Content module
  • Add an existing activity (assignment, quiz, discussion, or survey) to a Content module
  • Create a new Content module
  • Move a topic within a Content module and also from one module to another
  • Move a Content module to another position within the Table of Contents
Grades in D2L:
  • Modify an existing grade item by changing the visibility of the grade item and the points value of the grade item
  • Create a new grade item, in either a learning activity or in Grades, and associate it with a learning activity
  • Verify that a grade item is associated with the right learning activity
  • Exclude a grade item from the final grade calculation
  • Use the “long” name and the “short” name of a grade item in the appropriate contexts
  • Name a grade item so students know the week, the type of learning activity, and the description of the learning activity
  • Re-order grade items in Grades
  • Explain how to find the “grades set-up wizard” and explain what it does
Course Admin in D2L:
  • Copy a course (or selected parts of a course) from one D2L course shell to another
  • Explain the teaching-shell creation process prior to the start of each term at PCC
  • Change course offering dates (and times)
  • Run a bulk offset of dates from one term to the next term
  • Add a widget to or remove a widget from the course homepage
  • Add a link to or remove a link from the navbar

That’s everything! Remember that if you invested a lot of time to learn D2L on your own, then you can use the CUBS course as a brief refresher prior to taking the Skills Assessment.