Brightspace LeaP is an adaptive learning tool that builds personalized learning paths for learners. When you enable connections to Brightspace LeaP from Brightspace, users can access Brightspace LeaP over a secure (HTTPS) connection.
Brightspace LeaP creates learning paths based on course-specific, standard, or school-specific learning objectives. It uses content taken from the course to teach the objectives, and questions exported from the Question Bank to assess mastery of the objectives. It determines and recommends the most effective content per learning objective, guiding learners through content that adapts to their personal strengths and weaknesses as they interact with the tool. When the course content is copied into a new course shell, the learning path retains the information it has learned about effectively teaching the learners the concepts from the original course.
Note: If you are intending to use D2L LOR content, learners must have appropriate trusts to the LORs so they can access information. Otherwise, the learners receive a Not Authorized message when the material appears in the learning path. Ensure that you verify the trust settings between the LORs and specific org units to which they are associated. If your learning objectives were created in an org unit above the course offering, ensure that the objectives are shared to the course offering so that LeaP can access them.
What types of courses are best suited for LeaP?
- LeaP is most appropriate for fact-based courses, such as geography, history, and science. It does not fully support formula-based (math, statistics) or language-based (creative writing, linguistics) subjects.
- The courses should have well-defined, granular learning objectives (which can be, but are not required to be entered in Brightspace). Course content should have the same granularity as the associated learning objectives, ideally, where each objective has more than one associated content item.
- The quizzes in courses intended for use with LeaP should have many quiz questions.
Note: Courses used with LeaP must be taught in English, French, Spanish, or Brazilian Portuguese only.
What are the main use cases for using LeaP in a course?
LeaP generally performs best when it covers a chapter or a week's worth of material. This results in learning paths that are long enough to be effective, but not so long as to overwhelm learners with information. With that consideration, there are three main use cases for LeaP: flipped content, chapter review, and full adaptive learning.
Flipped Content
In the Flipped Content use case, the Leap path is the first link in a module's content. In this scenario, most of the learner's progress takes place through the learning path; however, the chapter's content remains available in case the learner wants to manually visit a specific topic. In this case, it may be appropriate to use the following settings:
- Diagnostic Test = No. Starting a chapter with a test may be intimidating to learners.
- Number of Questions per Learning Objective = 3. This means learners have mastered a concept when they achieve three correct questions for the learning objective. The value set in this field dictates how many questions appear on the LeaP pre-test and post-test, using the formula:
Number of learning objectives multiplied by the number of questions per learning objective.
Chapter review
In the Chapter review use case, the learning path is the last link in the module's content. In this use case, LeaP enables learners to review the material in the traditional manner and study (remediate) any weak areas of knowledge before taking the end-of-chapter test. This use case is beneficial when learners are expected to read each page of the content. In this case, it may be appropriate to use the following settings:
- Diagnostic Test = Yes. You can test learners on what they learned from the chapter and are then presented with the material they need to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.
- Hide mastered content = Yes. When learners have mastered the learning objectives in the path, no further content appears and a message that indicates their mastery is displayed.
- Number of Questions per Learning Objective = 3. This means learners have mastered a concept when they achieve three correct questions for the learning objective. The value set in this field dictates how many questions appear on the LeaP pre-test and post-test, using the formula Number of learning objectives multiplied by the number of questions per learning objective.
Full Adaptive Learning
In the Full Adaptive Learning use case, all the content in the module is replaced with a LeaP path. In this path, the material is only available to learners using the learning path. The content remains within the module, but it is hidden from learners.
How can I see my learning path from a learner's point of view?
There are three methods:
- Press the Go to Preview button. This method provides a quick way to view the learning path without submitting test results to the Grade book.
- Enroll a test learner in the course. This method provides the added benefit of sending test results to the Grade book. However, the LeaP algorithm starts learning which pages are more or less effective based on the test learner's results, which may skew the path for real learners.
- Copy the course to a new course offering and enroll a test learner. This method requires administrative overhead to create the course, copy the contents into it, and enroll a test learner. Manual path alignments made in the original course do not transfer to the new course after the copy; rather, they must be replicated in the new course offering. However, this method provides the most comprehensive way of seeing the learner experience without affecting LeaP's adaptive learning for the actual course.
Gatekeeping content using LeaP
LeaP does not have a true gating mechanism to ensure that learners master the concepts presented by the learning path before moving on to the next chapter. However, if you are sending the LeaP test results to the Grade book, you can apply release conditions on subsequent chapters of information. In this way, the learner must achieve the prescribed threshold on the LeaP grade item before the they can see the next chapter.
Using LeaP with assistive technology
LeaP has been fully tested with the NVDA and some testing has been done with JAWS.