Efficiency – Two-minute Tech Tips

Tip #14: Use Intelligent Agents in D2L Brightspace

Intelligent agents are a quick way to automate some types of emails to students. Some emails need to be personally written and sent to students, but not all of them. If you are looking for a way to remind students about missing assignments or discussion posts, congratulate them for doing well on a quiz, or ask them to look at the feedback you left them on D2L, intelligent agents might be for you. Intelligent agents use a customized email template and {strings} to personalize it for each student. D2L checks for specific criteria that you set (similar to release conditions)…

March 13, 2023D2L, Efficiency, organization, StudentsAutomation, Intelligent Agents, Work smarter not harder

Audio Dictation Efficiency

Tip #9: Dictate text instead of typing

Dictating text is up to 7x faster than typing. The average person types around 40 words per minute. I'm slower than average. I enjoy giving students written feedback on projects and responding to each student individually on their introductions. The problem is that it's time-consuming, even if you're fast at typing. The average person talks at a rate of about 120-150 words per minute. I tend to be a fast talker, so I tried dictating all my responses to students instead of typing them on a keyboard. It was way quicker and saved me a couple of hours of typing.…

January 16, 2023Audio, Dictation, EfficiencyDictate, Microphone, Texting, Typing