On this page, you can search frequently asked questions about Brightspace.  To open the answer to your question, simply click on the question text or the 鈥�+鈥� in the top right corner of the accordion.

Your new semester鈥檚 classes have been created, and they are active and set to start on the first day of classes鈥揵ut perhaps you are interested in opening your class earlier for students, to acclimatize to your course structure or expectations.  You can adjust the opening date to reflect that practice, following a couple of easy steps:

  1. On the 91桃色 Home Page, where you see your course tiles, in the desired course, hover in the top right corner until you see 3-dots appear.
  2. Click on those 3 dots and select Course Offering Information from the menu.
  3. This will take you to the Course Offering Information page within the course itself (also accessible in the Course Admin panel).  From here you will scroll down to the Start Date section.  You can update the date and time that the course opens from here鈥揳s long as the course is 鈥楢ctive鈥�, it will open for access when this date is set.  Note: if the box is 鈥榰nchecked鈥� with no start date, the course will be accessible right away.

Note: do not uncheck the active box, as this will look to the student as if their course has disappeared (or that they are no longer enrolled).  If you have any questions about how your start dates appear to students, please give CTL a call.

Brightspace allows users to opt-out of receiving emails. If you want your student to receive an email when you make an announcement you will need to prompt them to select to receive emails on announcements in their Notifications in their Mini-Bar. If they do not select to receive announcement emails they will not see them until they either log in to Brightspace, where they will be alerted of messages with an orange dot above the Notification bell, which (when clicked), will open access to Announcements across all of their classes鈥搊r enter your class, to view your announcement on your course home.

You have several options for where to grade student work.

  1. Quick Eval (recommended)
    • Quick Eval offers instructions a single location to view all learner submission that are awaiting evaluation. Submissions made to Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussion are displayed in a sortable list and can be selected to take you directly to their assessment page.
    • Instructors can sort, filter, and search submission to prioritize their evaluation work. Sorting can be done using the first or last name of the learner, Activity Name, Course Name, and Submission date. Filtering can be done using one or more of the following categories: Activity Name, Course Name, and Submission Date.
    • When accessing Quick Eval from a specific course, the list of activities to evaluated is pre-filtered to only show items from that course.
    • Note: When Accessing Quick Eval from the 91桃色 home page NavBar will allow you to view submissions from all available courses.
  2. The Grades Tool
    • The Grades tool is a good tool to record grades for assessments that you observed, were handed in, in person, or to adjust for revisions. The ENTER Grades panel in the Grades tool allows instructions to see, enter, and modify the grades for students in the course in one of two ways:
      • The Standard view, by grade item. You can click on the assessment icon individually, or open the assessment panel for that item to grade multiple or all students at one time.
      • The Spreadsheet view, which enables modification of grades for all students and all assignments on one page; however, this view will not allow for text-based feedback.
      • Or, by syncing your grade book using the import via CSV, you can export your grade book, manipulate grade data in Excel and import back into the grades tool, to sync
  3. In the Assessment Tool(i.e.: Assignments, Discussion, Quizzes)
    • FINISH THIS ONE UP

If you are planning on reusing many of the same materials and assignments, it is probably going to be far more time efficient to course copy and then make the adjustments that are needed, such as due dates, swapping out a couple of the assignments, or changing some of the learning materials.

A grade scheme is a tool in D2L that translates numeric grades into meaningful levels of achievement. Rather than just showing a raw score or percentage, a grade scheme organizes performance into defined ranges, each with its own symbol, which could be a letter (A, B, C), a descriptive label (Excellent, Proficient, Developing), or a numeric value. For example, you might set up a scheme where 90-100% displays as “A,” 80-89% as “B,” and so on, giving students a clearer picture of how their score maps to overall performance.
In D2L, the Schemes tab is where you’ll find two types of schemes available to you. Organizational schemes are created and maintained by your administration and are available across the institution. Custom schemes can be created and edited by instructors for use within a specific course, which is helpful when a course has unique grading needs that don’t match the standard institutional options.

As for whether you need one, the answer depends on how you want grades to appear to students and how your course is structured. If your course uses a straightforward percentage or points-based approach and your institution’s default display meets your needs, you may not need to apply a custom scheme at all. However, a grade scheme becomes valuable when you want students to see letter grades alongside their percentages, when you’re using competency or mastery-based grading with descriptive levels, or when your syllabus specifies a grading scale that differs from the D2L default. 91桃色ing a scheme ensures consistency between what’s written in your syllabus and what students see in the gradebook, which reduces confusion and grade-related questions.
If you’re unsure, a good starting point is to check whether your institution has already published an organizational scheme that fits your course. If it does, applying it is typically just a matter of selecting it in your grade settings. If not, and your grading approach is more nuanced, building a custom scheme is worth the small upfront investment.

Kaltura links often appear broken in Brightspace after a course migration because they are not simple URLs, they are tied to a specific course context and media ownership. When a course is copied, Brightspace may carry over the visible link or embedded player, but the underlying connection to the Kaltura media (such as the media ID or permissions tied to the original course) does not transfer properly. As a result, the link may point to a video that no longer exists in that context or that the new course cannot access, leading to errors like blank players or authorization issues.

To fix broken Kaltura links, the most reliable approach is to remove the broken item and reinsert the video using Brightspace鈥檚 Insert Stuff 鈫� Kaltura (My Media) option, which re-establishes the correct connection between the course and the media. You can also use Existing Activities 鈫� Kaltura Media and choose the correct video. Unfortunately, there is no consistent bulk-fix option, so each link typically needs to be updated manually. Copying old embed codes or URLs usually does not work, since the issue is related to course context rather than the link itself.

The Question Library is a central repository that stores and archives questions which you can reuse within a course. You can create multiple sections within the Question Library to organize your questions by type and topic, making it easier for you to find questions for your quizzes, surveys, and self-assessments. You can also use this to create a pool of questions and have quizzes pull from a limited number of that set.

It is not required to create a question library to create a quiz, as you can just create the questions within the quiz page itself. However, as a best practice for storage, organization, and easy access, we recommend that you add your quizzes to a Question Library. You can consolidate questions from already created Quizzes, Surveys, and Self Assessments tools by importing them back into the Question Library.

Yes, it is possible to track attendance in several ways in Brightspace. All Brightspace shells come with a “Class Progress” tool in the “Course Resources” section of the toolbar at the top. This will allow you to see assignments completed by students, the percentage of assignments completed, as well as most recent login to the course on Brightspace.

There is also an “Attendance” tool in the “Course Resources” section of the toolbar. Here, you can create an area to record attendance for lectures or other class events. You would need to create an attendance register manually in this section, and enter the attendance manually, but this provides an are where you and students can both view marked attendance. This could be helpful to track lecture attendance for in-person or Zoom meetings.

There are a few reasons why this might be happening. The most common reason students cannot see their quiz grades in Brightspace is that the quiz results have not been released. By default, Brightspace allows instructors to grade attempts without automatically making those scores visible to students. If the quiz is set to keep results hidden, students will not see their grade, feedback, or correct answers until you explicitly publish them.

To fix this, go to the quiz, open Assessment 鈫� Quizzes 鈫� select the quiz 鈫� Grade, and ensure all attempts are marked as Published. Then check the Evaluation & Feedback settings for the quiz and confirm that a results view is set up to display scores (and feedback, if desired) either immediately or after submission. If grades are connected to the gradebook, also verify that the grade item is not hidden. Once results are published and visibility settings are correct, students should be able to see their quiz grades.

Yes, both instructors and students can sync a Brightsace calendar with their Google calendar. To sync your calendars, enable calendar feeds in Brightspace, copy the subscription URL, and add it to Google Calendar via the “From URL” option. This provides a live link, ensuring updates to assignments or events in Brightspace automatically populate in your Google Calendar within up to 12 hours. 

Yes, Brightspace does have a plagiarism checker called Turnitin. o turn on Turnitin in Brightspace, go to Assignments, create a new assignment (or edit an existing one), and scroll to the Evaluation & Feedback section. Click Manage Turnitin, then check Enable Similarity Report for this folder and select any additional options you want, such as allowing students to view their reports or enabling online grading. Save your Turnitin settings, then save and close the assignment to apply the changes.

Similarity Report lets you monitor Assignment submissions and identify potential cases of plagiarism by automatically comparing submissions to an online database of original content an giving you a percentage score for how closely the submission in your class matches content from other sources. You can then view Similarity Reports which highlight key areas, show a breakdown of matching sources, and provide direct links to the matching content.

One important note is that a high similarity score does not, in itself, mean that the student’s submission was plagiarized. For instance, if several students pull the same quote from the same reading that was assigned in class, this will raise the similarity score of those submissions, but does not necessarily indicate that any plagiarism was committed.

Yes, you can print your quiz questions. To do this, go to the NavBar at the top of the screen and find the “Assessments” drop down. Click on the “Quizzes” option, and this will bring you to a screen with all of the quizzes created in the course. Find the quiz you want to print, and click on the arrow next to the name of the quiz you want to print. In this dropdown, you will see a “Print” option. This will take you to a screen where you can choose what to include in the print out on the right hand side of the screen, and there is a preview on the left half.