Faculty must adhere to the minimum standards for appropriate, efficient, and secure BigSky use for all courses, in compliance with Benilde’s guidelines. For additional information and complete details, refer to this document.
While these are the minimum requirements, faculty are encouraged to explore and maximize BigSky's other features. CET regularly recognizes top BigSky users, including those who meet and exceed these standards.
General Guidelines
- Ensure content materials are inclusive, unbiased, and culturally sensitive.
- Confirm that all links are free from inappropriate content and unnecessary advertisements.
- Organize modules and materials into folders according to weekly or topic coverage.
- Include the following sections to guide your students: Introduction and Learning Outcomes, Relevant Information, and How-To Links.
- Write clear and thorough instructions to minimize uncertainty and misinterpretation, providing examples whenever possible to demonstrate desired results.
- Keep all coursework within the platform to safeguard important user data.
- Provide only legitimate sources of information and properly cite references and content assets. Verify that resources are up-to-date and relevant, with a maximum age of 5 years, from trustworthy authors and verified organizations.
- Ensure every student can participate and engage online by sharing easily accessible course materials and offering content in various formats to support our diverse students.
- Maintain concise and clear communication using provided multimedia tools.
- Confirm that multimedia technology delivers a clear, safe, efficient, and engaging online learning experience.
BigSky Usage
News tool
Post announcements for your students.
- Place the link to the first synchronous session in the News before the session starts.
- Ensure headlines are clear and direct.
- Always set end dates to minimize clutter and help students focus on current, relevant announcements.
- Remind your students to enable their email notifications.
- Encourage your students to download the Brightspace Pulse App.
Course Content page
Introduce yourself, upload the syllabus, and post lessons.
- Upload the course syllabus in the Overview.
- Use bookmarks to highlight important course content.
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Start the course with Module 0 in the Table of Contents, containing the following information:
- Self-introduction through video, presentation, or text.
- House rules for you and your students, including a code of ethics, standards, data privacy, and intellectual property regulations.
- The Table of Contents should list modules with learning resources and prepared activities, such as dropboxes, discussions, and quizzes. Post Dropbox links where applicable.
- Include release conditions in every instruction per module and activity, if applicable, to guide students to completion.
Dropbox folder
Create assignments.
- Place instructions in the designated field.
- Set due dates to encourage students to meet deadlines.
- Provide text, audio, or video feedback for each activity.
- Assignments should be submitted in dropboxes, and scores should be entered in the designated field.
Grades Setup Wizard tool
Align the grading system with the Benilde grading scheme.
- If using grading tools other than BigSky Grading (e.g., Excel or Google Sheets), provide clear instructions for computation, feedback, and other details to students in Module 0.
- Benilde follows a zero-based grading policy for all assessments.
- A passing mark in any assessment activity is 70%.
- Grade computation follows the Benilde Scheme of grading.