Tips, Tricks & Caveats; Publishers Resources and The Four Hour Work Week, Jim Drake – Lake Superior College. Presentation at the Brightspace Minnesota Connection at Normandale Community College on April 14, 2016

1. Tips, Tricks, and Caveats
-Integrating
D2L with Your Publisher’s
Resources
Or,
incorporating the Four Hour Work Week
paradigm into your workflow
Jim Drake, MBA, Lake Superior College, Duluth, MN.

2. "The 4-Hour Work Week“, by Tim Ferriss; interested in applying the same
principles of efficiency to your D2L/BrightSpace course(s)?
Objectives and Goals: Take advantage of your textbook publisher's resources
by incorporating the available tools (External Learning Tools) into your
courses' D2L/BrightSpace environment to:
• increase student retention of course content
• incorporate rich media/interactive assignments into lessons (4HrWW concept)
• incorporate e-textbook access for online student availability
• utilize detailed student reporting (4HrWW concept)
• utilize detailed assignment analysis (4HrWW concept)
• interface with the D2L components/grade book (4HrWW concept)
24/15/2016 jim.drake@lsc.edu

3. The Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss
• A Fallacy, but with some useable/manageable
suggestions for time management
• Control / manage work-flow
• Outsource non-core competencies – publisher’s resources
• Do not treat e-mail like it is instant messaging
• Do not answer your phone; respond with an e-mail
• Limit meetings – ask for agenda
34/15/2016 jim.drake@lsc.edu

4. Tips
• Stay connected with your students
• Give specific instructions
• Make your instructions obvious
• Repeat your instructions often
• New paradigms exist for the Millennial Generation
• Always connected
• Screen related
• Google or I–phone based
• Limit access to publisher’s web site for first connection
• Guide/enforce initial site log-in; be tenacious with this
• Publisher’s site: 14 day guest access at beginning of semester
44/15/2016 jim.drake@lsc.edu

5. Tricks
• Send them BACK to D2L
• 60:40:: Publisher’s exercises: D2L
• Use common language for each assignment set (4HrWW concept)
• Set up a common verbiage page in Word
• Change chapter for each week’s assignments
• Do not use dates in your assignments
• Create a semester specific Course Calendar
• Use the Publisher’s web site and D2L’s Drop Box to define your due
dates
54/15/2016 jim.drake@lsc.edu

6. Caveats
• Students may have a tendency to NOT return to D2L from the
publisher’s web site
• Students may have a tendency to NOT check their e-mail
• You may need to justify your existence in a D2L/Publisher’s
resource environment; become a “curator of digital content”
for your D2L experience
• 60:40:: Publisher’s exercises: D2L
• Use a “weighted” gradebook
• Share this with your students
64/15/2016 jim.drake@lsc.edu