Welcome to fall semester 2025! Below is some EdTech news you can use! 

Brightspace 

Our team of instructional designers has been busy over the summer creating videos based on questions that we have been asked frequently in consultations and workshops. The series includes videos on tasks that instructors need to do at the beginning of a semester such as how to Copy Content from One Course to Another within Brightspace and Make a Course Active. Our videos are super short and show the Hunter Brightspace environment. They are posted on our Videos Tutorials page.  

A new tool became available in April to professors who wish to import final grades directly from Brightspace into CUNYfirst. The Grade Passback tool can simplify the final grade submission process and minimize errors caused by manual entry. The tool requires that the Hunter grade schema with a letter grade is selected, it only imports from the “Final Calculated Grade” column, and it has limited functionality for merged courses. Professors can use the training video, FAQ document or User Guide to learn how to use it and reach out to the LMS admin team for questions. 

Instructors cannot merge courses in Brightspace directly. Please send your request to merge courses to the LMS admin team at lms@hunter.cuny.edu.

Please remember that we will no longer have access to Blackboard after December 2025. Most of the courses that you have taught in recent years have been migrated to Brightspace and can be found under the tab of Converted courses. If you still have course content that you wish to move manually, you can learn the process through the How to Export a Course from Blackboard and How to Import a Course into Brightspace videos. 

Hypothesis 

Professors who are using the social annotation tool Hypothesis might be happy to learn that in addition to taking notes and commenting on text from web pages and PDF files, students can also annotate transcripts of most YouTube videos now.  

VoiceThread 

A new feature of VoiceThread is stacked assignments or assignments that build on previous assignments. For example, you might want students to create a VoiceThread as an assignment and then ask other students in the class to offer feedback by posting comments. This kind of assignment would put more focus on process, collaboration and revision. Two other new useful features of VoiceThread include being able to show all the comments made in one a VoiceThread at once regardless of the specific slide they were originally created on (“one-conversation”) and to decide when you want students to see the student gallery: before they submit, after they’ve submitted, or only after you’ve graded them. 

Padlet 

Over the summer, Padlet migrated our Hunter Padlet accounts from huntercollege68.padlet.org to padlet.com. They hoped that consolidating all our accounts on padlet.com would make it a more seamless experience. We can now log into our accounts through padlet.com using the same email and password that we were using before. We will find all the padlets that we have created before.  

Some additional information offered by Padlet: 

• To find your school account, click on your account name in the upper right of padlet.com, and then click on your school name. More info on navigating between accounts. 

• Existing links to padlets on padlet.org will redirect to padlet.com . 

• If you go to the old padlet.org site, you will see a banner redirecting back to padlet.com. Old padlets will still be visible on padlet.org, but frozen so they can no longer be edited. 

Top Hat 

News related to Top Hat includes integration with Brightspace and Guest mode. Faculty and students can now access Top Hat through Brightspace and use the student engagement tools at no cost. This might be a great way to encourage in-class participation through polls and low-stakes assessments! 

The new Guest Mode feature allows presenters to engage small or large audiences without needing participants to log-in. This is a very useful tool for interactive conferences, workshops, and spontaneous, anonymous student engagement moments! 

How to get help 

The instructional designers at the Center for Online Learning endeavor to find technical solutions to your pedagogical problems. A list of tools supported by Hunter and links to resources can be found on our Tools page. If you have questions about any of the features mentioned above or would like to explore how they might be useful in your class, please contact us through edtech@hunter.cuny.edu. You are also welcome to book an appointment with us or attend one of our online office hours.