It’s been a successful fall semester so far, with students, faculty and staff returning to campus “fully present” with in-person learning. Over the summer, the Academic Technologies team was busy completing several updates to learning technology tools to help ease the transition for faculty as they return to the classroom, but who also need to stay flexible to accommodate students who might have to miss class due to illness. In addition to updating tools, the Academic Technologies team has also expanded its training offerings and improved documentation to support both faculty and students using tools like Canvas, Panopto, and Gradescope.

New Canvas Features

• Faculty and students can now personalize their Canvas display name and pronouns.
• The SpeedGrader Comment Library in Canvas allows faculty to save comments to a library and reuse them efficiently and consistently across both students and assignments when providing feedback.
• Faculty now have the Student Annotation assignment type option when creating an assignment.

New Panopto Features

• Updated statistics for videos and folders in Panopto enables customized analytics for videos.
• New video management features including the ability to restrict seeking the first time a video is watched ensures viewers do not skip over important content.
• Professional Closed Captioning Integration is now available as a paid service option. This option is ideal for people who need a high level of accuracy guaranteed in transcribing video.

Gradescope

Gradescope is the new application integrated into Canvas that supports the use of bubble sheets for grading. Gradescope is the replacement for Scantron services, including the machine previously located in  40 Richards Hall.

• Faculty on the Boston campus canfollow the new process for using bubble sheets.
• Want to learn more about using Gradescope? View the On Demand training about creating Gradescope Bubble Sheet Assignments.

Updated VoiceThread Assignments

• Instructors have full access to new VoiceThread assignment features launched Summer 2021, as well as supportive training material  

Blackboard Retirement is Complete

• On June 30, 2021, the Blackboard LMS was officially retired from use at Northeastern. Although Blackboard is no longer available, rest assured, content remains archived.

Academic Technology Tools Training

And finally, don’t forget to take advantage of free training sessions offered by the Northeastern Academic Technologies team. New training sessions, both on demand and in person, have been added to the ITS Training offerings. These are free to all Northeastern-affiliated faculty and staff.

Academic Technologies strives to continually update and refresh offered trainings on a regular basis to help empower instructors to use technology to improve learning outcomes for students.

• Creating Accessible Courses in Canvas On Demand training
• Using Gradescope Bubble Sheet Assignments On Demand training
• Introduction to Canvas for faculty Live Virtual training
• Strategies and Tools for Teaching Large Classes workshop series (an AT/CATLR collaboration)
• The Canvas training portal is also available as a free resource for faculty.