• Information about how the classroom and online components of the class will be balanced and coordinated
• Recommendations for formality and language expectations for student writing in bSpace
• Requirements for how often students should check the bSpace site, participate in discussions, etc.

• Previewing: Use the Announcements tool to get students to start thinking about upcoming class topics and activities.
  
  
  • List resources that students may want to explore before the next class
  • Create ungraded “mini activities” which students can easily complete before class
  
  
• Expectations & Encouragement: Use the Announcements tool to inform students at certain points in the semester where you expect them to be in the course, with regards to assignments, activities, and research. This is also an opportunity to motivate by offering words of encouragement on work they have done and participation in the site (or words of warning if expectations are not being met!).

• Students can email each other to coordinate group work

• Instructors can send a note to all GSIs to communicate schedules, grading policies, etc.

• GSIs can post Announcements to their section
• Participation in discussion Forums can be limited to students in a particular section
• Filter the Gradebook to view grades according to section. GSIs only have permission to enter scores for students in their own section.
• Display files and folders to students in a your section via Resources
• Create and post an Assignment specific to your section

• Discussions : One of the most common ways to use the Forums tool is to create discussions which focus on a topic created either by the teacher or a student. A topic can be anything you want to center a discussion around, such as “Week 1 Reading,” “Should limits be placed on federal funding for stem cell research?” or “Questions before the final exam.”

  Tips

  • Set clear guidelines on the level of formality and type of language expected in discussions

  • Encourage participation in discussions by awarding points for posts

  • Allow students to create some topics and facilitate discussions

  
  
• Peer review : The Forums tool can be a very powerful tool for facilitating peer review of assignments. Students can post completed assignments which can be reviewed by the class and, if enabled by the instructor, commented on. The asynchronous nature of the Forums tool allows students more time to organize their thoughts when commenting. The absence of face-to-face interaction can encourage students to participate in an activity which might normally cause reservations – but be careful, as this can also embolden students to be overly critical or rude.

  Tips

  • Give students guidance concerning what kind of feedback they should be giving, what they should focus on, what is unacceptable, etc.

  • Give students partners or small groups for peer review. Everyone in the class can read all the posts, but only partners or group members can actually post comments. This can assure everyone receives adequate feedback.

  
  
• Role plays: The Forums tool can allow students to participate in role plays in which students assume a variety of roles and discuss a topic from their unique point of view. For example, in an economics class discussing rent control, the topic could be “Is rent control a good thing?” and the roles could be Apartment Owner, Long-time Renter, New Renter, and Homeowner.

  Tips

  • For a more informed discussion, allow students to do research on their roles well beforehand

  • In addition to assigned roles, give students specific points they should cover

  • Consider creating a pre-assigned sequence for students to contribute to the discussion

  
  
• Summaries: The Forums tool can be used by individual students or groups to summarize specific class readings, activities, research, and/or discussions. Each student or group can be responsible for a specific topic, forming a comprehensive summary when put together. This is a great way to synthesize information, reinforce class material, and encourage analysis.

  Tips

  • If the summaries are to be presented in groups, have each group elect a “leader” to write the summary (after discussing the summary as a group). This leadership roll can rotate to give everyone in the group an opportunity to contribute.

  • Once all the summaries have been posted, the instructor can select one or two for more in-depth discussion.

  • Individuals/groups can pose specific questions after their summaries. The instructor can require that each student in the class answer at least 1 summary question.

  
  
• FAQs: Students can create discussion-based FAQs before exams by asking and answering each other's questions. The instructor and GSIs can review and “approve” the answers.
  
  
• “Water Cooler” Area: A “Water Cooler” area is a discussion area which encourages free-form, informal conversations on any topic, either related or unrelated to the class. This provides students with an opportunity to get to know each other and form personal connections, which can increase motivation and comfort with collaborative activities

• Students can email each other to coordinate group work

• Instructors can send a note to all GSIs to communicate schedules, grading policies, etc.

• Moderated vs. Unmoderated Chats: Depending on the goal of a chat session, you will need to consider whether you would like it to be moderated or unmoderated. Moderated chats can be overseen by the instructor, GSIs, or even the students themselves. Moderated chats can be much more focused on a specific topic or activity than unmoderated chats, which tend to be better for more free-form, informal discussions.

  Tips

  • Because chats occur in real time, it is essential to give students specific instructions and time to prepare beforehand. This also includes publicizing rules and expectations for the chat beforehand. This will result in much more well thought-out and well-behaved discussion.

  • Chat sessions with more than 5 students can get confusing and disorganized quickly. Try to organize chat sessions for smaller groups of students, scheduled at different times. Since chats in bSpace are logged, groups can view each other's sessions after they have occurred.

• Virtual Office Hours: The Chat Room tool can be used by an instructor or GSIs to hold virtual office hours to provide additional support to students. Since all chat sessions in bSpace are logged, other students can benefit from questions asked in previous sessions.

  Tip

  • Put virtual office hours next to regular office hours in your site's Site Info area, which will appear under Worksite Information on the sites Home area
• Virtual “Water Cooler:” Just as times can be arranged for virtual office hours, daily or weekly times can also be arranged for students to get together and talk in a free-form, informal environment. This is an opportunity for students to talk about the class, ask each other questions, and form personal connections, which can increase motivation and comfort with collaborative activities.

Assignment information can also be posted without requiring that the assignment be submitted online.

Tips

• If you require students to submit their assignments using the text box (as opposed to as an attachment), suggest that they compose their submission in Word and copy/paste it into bSpace. This will prevent them from being timed out of bSpace.

• As you review and comment on students submissions, click the Save button. Once you have commented on submissions for the entire class, click the “Release Grades” link to reveal comments to all your students.

Instructors can opt to upload multiple files at once, manage files that have already been posted, and organize materials into folders. Files and folders can be organized and displayed in the order of instructor preference. Also, you can show or hide an item at any time, and set a start and/or end time for its availability. Resources can also be set up to allow for section-specific access.

As with the Announcements tool, instructors can notify students via email that new course materials have been added to the site. We recommend that you do this only for unusually important items.

• Organization: While the way in which you organize course materials in is not an activity itself, it can have a direct affect on learning. Well organized resources make it easier for students to find what they need when they need it, while disorganized resources can quickly cause frustration and loss of motivation. Consider the following ideas for keeping your bSpace Resources area effective:
  

  • Clearly name folders and files. “Lectures” and “Images” are much better folder names than “Documents” and “Additional materials.”
  • Add dates to folder and file names. For example, “1. Lecture – Native Flora (Week 02/05),” “2. Lecture – Native Fauna (Week 02/12)” Remember that you can release or hide any resource item at a date and time you select.
  • Don't clutter the Resources area with unnecessary files.
  • As you add or delete resources consider reordering them in easy to find sets.
  • If possible, provide different types of materials, such as images, video clips, and sound. bSpace is an opportunity to accommodate different learning styles.
  
  
• WebQuests: A WebQuest is “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet” (Bernie Dodge, “ Some Thoughts About WebQuests ,” 1995). Folders in Resources can be filled with numbered web links, giving students a path through various resources.

  Tips

  • Be sure to provide specific instructions and detailed expectations for students, including questions to answer and/or what to include in a report.
  • WebQuests can be both group activities and solo efforts. Experiment with both!

Section Info : The Section Info tool provides a way for instructors to efficiently manage sections of a class.

Sections created with the Section Info tool automatically appear in the Gradebook , making it easier for instructors and GSIs to grade the specific students for whom they are responsible.

• Discussions by Section : Create different categories in the Forums tool based on the sections you create in Section Info . For example, if you have created the sections “Section 1 – GSI: Johnson,” “Section 2 – GSI: Roberts,” “Section 3 – GSI: Yamaguchi,” you could create the discussion categories “Section 1 – Weekly Reading Discussions,” “Section 2 – Weekly Reading Discussions,” “Section 3 – Weekly Reading Discussions”

  And set the permissions so that students only see their own section topics.

NOTE: ETS does not support the use of the Quiz & Survey tool for high-stakes testing. Do not use it to administer midterms or final exams.

UC Berkeley podcasts ( http://webcast.berkeley.edu ) also have RSS feeds which can be added to course sites with the News tool.

• Collaborative Bibliographies : Groups can work together to build a collective list of sources. Anyone can add new entries and edit existing entries.

• Collaborative Knowledge Base : Groups can work together to collect and organize information for a project before writing a paper.

• Peer Review : Peers can review and edit each others' work and use the wiki's text formatting features to make comments and show where changes were made. For example: "When I was young, I used to visit a hobby shop near my home. But However, I never bought anything - I would only look through the shops shop's window and conceptualize imagine (I think "imagine" is a much better word here than "conceptualize.") buying things.”