Getting Started with Brightspace
This self-enrolling and go-at-your-own-pace training was built by CTL for 91桃色 faculty, specifically. In this training, you will be able to experience Brightspace as a student, as you learn to teach in Brightspace, with 3 different pathways.
: This course is provided by the D2L Brightspace Community and uses the Brightspace platform with the New Content Experience.
Book an Appointment: You can schedule individual Brightspace course-building appointments with CTL Instructional Designers.
Semester Ready in Brightspace: Follow our five-step process for getting your courses ready in Brightspace.
Brightspace FAQs: Read the frequently asked questions faculty have about Brightspace.
What do 91桃色 faculty like about Brightspace?
Brightspace鈥檚 compatibility with our own academic structures and initiatives
Excellent mobile and device flexibility, mobile adaptability for faculty/grading and student use through app OR browser
Communication ease and personalized feedback features
The ability to link content, assessments, rubrics and individual test questions to Outcomes
Easy to use student engagement data and analytics dashboard
The ability to customize for our campus needs and features like student Portfolio and resource repository
Brightspace Documentation
User Manuals from Brightspace
- (for students)
User Guides from CTL
Student engagement in Brightspace
At the heart of student engagement is you, the instructor, building relationships between students and content (as well as being the first line of student support). Hybrid and online courses are dependent on the LMS to supplement and build up some of the social presence and social learning theory that we incorporate into our face-to-face courses. Let鈥檚 take a look at how you can leverage some of Brightspace鈥檚 student engagement tools:
- display on the course home page, and you can decide which announcements are displayed for a given time.
- , allow you to create groups of related discussion topics, while the themselves are where students and faculty will post. When your Discussion boards are migrated from Blackboard, they will display in one forum. You can even create a between instructor and student (an assignment feature Brightspace does not have)
- Get personal! allow instructors to insert a student鈥檚 name, a course name, and more at the beginning of an announcement, from within course assignments, and as email headers鈥搕o make large group communications feel personal.
- Set up and use to gamify learning and let students share skills attainment in their profiles.
- Set up in the course, in content modules, or from the NavBar to connect with students or connect students with each other at structured times in the semester!
Top 8 Student-Requested Features
The following list represents tools and strategies that 91桃色 students have identified as being very beneficial to their learning:
- Use the Announcements tool to post weekly to-dos and due dates.
- Use content modules, to keep folders of content and tasks altogether, so that students see their progress bars.
- When creating new assignments, discussions, and activities, don鈥檛 forget to add a Due Date, to auto-populate the calendar, and send reminders to students.
- Embed Youtube and Kaltura videos right into your content modules, for smooth viewing experiences.
- Faculty use Brightspace tools in different ways鈥揷reate a short class tour video to let students know how YOU will use it.
- Place quick access links to assignments, discussions, and quizzes/tests in the modules with that week鈥檚/unit鈥檚 learning content.
- Consider using the Checklist tool at the beginning or end of a module, if you have a lot of diverse tasks.
- Set up the ability to 鈥�manually check completion鈥� on non-required content, so that students can control the progress bar.