Winter 2023 – ED Tech Digest
The Centre for Academic Excellence is pleased to share another quarterly release of the Ed Tech Digest. The digest is intended to share updates or changes to core technologies used for teaching and learning at Niagara College.
Blackboard Updates
Upcoming Blackboard Course Site and Collaborate Ultra recording archiving dates
As part of the College’s course archiving policy, Blackboard courses and associated Collaborate Ultra recordings with a term end date greater than 395 days old (one year plus 30 days) will be archived on the following dates.
– Courses from term Fall 2021 will be disabled and archived on Jan 16th, 2023.
– Courses from term Winter 2022 will be disabled and archived on May 22nd, 2023.
Archiving ensures that the College complies with the storage space limits defined in its agreement with Blackboard. Future archiving dates can be found on the ITS website along with support resources to help you preserve course information and course recordings.
Summary list of annotations for inline grading
Students’ file attachments submitted through the Assignment submission tool can be annotated inline when grading. With this update, a side panel will now summarize all comments in a list. Selecting a comment will navigate the instructor or student to the location of that comment in the document. This change makes it easier to find all comments and feedback in a student’s submission.
Unified Blackboard App
In the past Blackboard offered two separate mobile apps for accessing course sites: the Blackboard App and the Blackboard Instructor App. The Blackboard App was intended for students and course participants, while the Blackboard Instructor App was required in order to manage courses. With this release, Blackboard has consolidated these offerings into a single app for both instructors and students called Blackboard Learn. The user experience will change based on the user’s role within a course. The Blackboard Learn app is available on the Apple App store and Google Play.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft Teams and Teams Online Meetings
Home page for Class Teams sites
We are excited to shared that Microsoft has introduced a new Home page feature available to all newly created class Teams sites. Home page provides a central location to check the latest announcements, pinned class resources, recently edited class files, and more! To get started, educators simply select the Home page tab in a Teams’ General channel. Teams will pull in any virtual class meetings or files that have already been added. The rest can be customized by selecting Edit (top right corner of the page) before you publish. Add fun images, additional sections, or key information about you and your class. To learn more about setting up your Teams home page, please view this Microsoft resource.
Question and answer (Q&A) feature in Teams Online Meetings
The Q&A feature in a Teams meeting lets you manage questions from meeting participants as an organizer in the meeting. Q&A is best for large or structured meetings—like guest speakers, panel discussions, or webinars —where presenters take questions from participants and answer them in real time. As an organizer, you can choose to have a moderated or unmoderated Q&A. In Q&A settings, you can enable replies, anonymous posts, and more. Responses to questions are threaded in a conversation with the original question. As an organizer, you can assign the role of co-organizer to someone in the meeting, and they can also help screen questions as moderators. To learn more about adding Q&A to your Teams meetings, please view this Microsoft resource.
Microsoft Stream on SharePoint updates
In September 2022, faculty were invited to explore an early access preview of a new version of Microsoft Stream. This new version of Microsoft Stream provided added functionalities for video stored in Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint sites. The current version of Stream will now be known as Microsoft Stream or Stream (Classic) and the new version will be known as Microsoft Stream Preview or Stream (on SharePoint). Since the early preview began, Microsoft has made the following updates to the Stream on SharePoint service:
Embed videos in Blackboard or other web pages
With this update, videos stored in SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive will include embed code for seamless viewing in Blackboard and other HTML friendly webpages. The video player will allow viewers to watch Stream on SharePoint videos on the webpage where it has been embedded and will include accessible options such as closed captioning and transcripts.
On-demand caption and transcript generation for supported languages
If you have edit permission to a video stored in SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive, this feature will allow you to generate closed captions and transcripts for the language spoken in the video. This feature expands on the current English (US) captions and transcripts to also support the following languages/locales: English (Canada), English (India), English (United Kingdom), English (Australia), English (New Zealand), Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Cantonese), German (Germany), Portuguese (Brazil), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Netherlands), Dutch (Belgium), French (France), French (Canada), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), Japanese (Japan), Hindi (India), Italian (Italy), Korean (Korea), Swedish (Sweden), Polish (Poland), Arabic (United Arab Emirates), Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Finnish (Finland), Norwegian (Norway), Russia (Russia).
Edit transcript text directly on the video playback screen
This feature allows you to edit the transcript text of videos stored in SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive directly in the transcript pane. To edit a transcript, you must have edit permission to the video. Transcript editing helps you improve the quality of your transcript by quickly correcting minor mistakes such as misinterpreted acronyms, names, or incorrect punctuation. Changes in the transcript are also reflected in the closed captions. To learn more about editing transcripts for videos stored in SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive, please view this Microsoft support page.
To learn more about accessing specific features that are currently available and what updates are expected from Microsoft, please view the Stream Preview information on the ITS website.
We invite you to evaluate Stream Preview to determine if the current feature set meets your needs. Microsoft is building a migration tool and once it is ready, a retirement date will be set for the current Stream service. Further information on the migration of existing videos to the new platform and the retirement of Stream will be coming in future. For additional support on working with Stream Preview, please contact the Centre for Academic Excellence at [email protected].
Sharing update in Microsoft 365
Upcoming change to the default sharing settings for files stored in OneDrive, Teams, & SharePoint
On December 22, 2022, ITS will be making a change to the default sharing link settings generated when sharing items from Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Team Sites, Microsoft Teams Chats, and SharePoint. The current default sharing link settings are set to “People in NC with the link can edit”. While the current link settings are convenient for sharing items quickly, they also leave the organization open to potential risk for unauthorized access to items shared with these settings. The new default sharing link setting will be changed to “People you choose can view.” This will ensure that the creator of the link specifies the recipients of the link. The recipients of the link will have view access to the shared item and will not be able to edit the item or forward the link to additional recipients. To learn more about how this change might impact your use of Microsoft apps, or should you wish to access additional resources, please view this update posted to the employee portal.
Accessibility
Microsoft Teams: Transcription for 1-on-1 Calls
Transcription captures the text version of your call and saves it for later use. This can now be enabled for 1-on-1 Teams calls via the control bar within the call window.