Brightspace How-to Documents
Additionally, if you are having difficulties using any of the course tools, you can get help from D2L. This help is available 24/7 via Email and Live Chat. You will find links for Email Support and Live Chat Support in the Help menu on the NavBar (inside of Brightspace). You must be logged into Brightspace to access the Email and Live Chat Support links.
Want more information?
Visit our #KeepTeachingXULA wiki resource
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Brightspace Tip #147: March Continuous Delivery Updates
D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.
Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.
Here are a few updates in the March 2020/20.20.3 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Announcements – Display author information
To provide more information to users, Announcements now supports displaying author information (name and timestamp) on new and edited announcements.
If a user has the new permission, when the user creates or edits an announcement, a new Show Author Information check box displays in the New/Edit Announcement page, allowing them to choose if they want author information to display.
Users reading the announcement may see some or all of the following author information:
- the original author
- the original date and time of the announcement
- the author who edited the announcement
- the date and time of the edit
2) Groups – Set exact time learners can self-enroll
When setting up groups that allow learners to self-enroll, instructors can now add an exact time when enrollment opens, and an exact time when self-enrollment expires. Previously, instructors could only set the date when enrollment opened or expired.
3) Quick Eval – Support for anonymous marking
Assignments created with the Hide student names during assessment option selected now display in Quick Eval’s Submission view with learner names and profile images hidden. Instructors using anonymous marking can access Quick Eval with confidence that it supports their anonymous marking needs.
4) Rubrics – Confirmation message for partially unevaluated rubrics
To prevent publishing partially unevaluated rubrics, the publishing workflow in the new Rubrics grading experience now includes a confirmation message that warns users when the rubric is not fully evaluated. Instructors have the option to continue publishing, or cancel. Warning messages appear when publishing a rubric for an individual student and when bulk publishing rubrics. Users attempting to publish an incomplete rubric evaluation must now click Publish to complete the workflow.
5) Rubrics – Improved accessibility in Rubric grading
In Rubrics, when using keyboard navigation to tab to a row of selectable cells, there is now a focus indicator to help orient users on the page.
6) Rubrics – Overall Score levels calculated after rubric criteria completion
In the new Rubrics grading experience, the Overall Score level is now only calculated after all the criteria in the rubric have been assessed. This change optimizes rubric performance by eliminating the calculation of incomplete Overall Score levels until the rubric evaluation is completed, and improves the grading experience for instructors and rubric evaluators.
If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the March Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform March 2020/20.20.3 Release Notes.
Additionally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about current, past, and to preview upcoming continuous delivery updates.
Want more information?
View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
#KeepTeachingXULA wiki resource
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Brightspace Tip #146: Test/Quiz Question Generator
Do you want your students to take a quiz or test online? Do you have a test that you normally administer on paper and you don’t want to retype all the questions into Brightspace. Learning and Teaching Services at Algonquin College developed a Test/Quiz Question Generator that provides an easy way of creating a collection of questions that can be imported into Brightspace.
Quiz questions have to be in a special format in order to be imported into Brightspace. The Test/Quiz Question Generator allows you to reformat your questions and it will create a CSV file that can be imported into Brightspace. Refer to this question types and formatting guide for information on how to format your questions.
If you want to save time creating tests and quizzes by not having to retype test questions into Brightspace, try the Test/Quiz Question Generator.
ICYMI, follow this link to watch a recording of our Back to Basics: Tests and Quizzes workshop.
Want more information?
Test/Quiz Question Generator
Question types and formatting guide (for the Test/Quiz Question Generator)
Quizzes, Surveys, and Question Libraries
#KeepTeachingXULA wiki resource
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Brightspace Tip #145: Virtual Class Meetings
Virtual classrooms and virtual office hours are a great way to keep teaching and learning during a disruption.
Instructors have two options for virtual meetings that are integrated into our Brightspace system. One option is the Brightspace Virtual Classroom and the other option is Zoom Web Conferencing. Instructors should choose whichever tool will meet their needs. To help you choose, I've provided an explanation of these two systems.
Brightspace Virtual Classroom
We have the free version of the Brightspace Virtual Classroom tool. Not all features of this tool is available in the free version. Refer to this Brightspace Virtual Classroom features chart to see if this tool will meet your needs.
IMPORTANT CHANGE TO BRIGHTSPACE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM:
New as of April 2020, limits for the maximum number of participants, session duration, and session recording availability are being adjusted. Here is an overview of the new limits, compared to the previous limits.
| New limit in Free version (in effect April 2020) |
Previous limit in Free version | |
| Maximum # of participants | 50 | 100 |
| Session recording availability | 14 days | 4 months |
| Session duration | 60 minutes | 90 minutes |
Refer to this Virtual Classroom Knowledge Base for more information on this web conferencing tool.
Zoom Web Conferencing
Zoom is a web-based video conferencing tool with a local, desktop client and a mobile app that allows users to meet online, with or without video. Zoom users can choose to record sessions, collaborate on projects, and share or annotate on one another's screens, all with one easy-to-use platform. Zoom is integrated into our Brightspace system and is Xavier’s alternative to the Brightspace Virtual Classroom tool.
The Professional Training team at Zoom will be hosting a 45 minute Zoom Meetings for Education Webinar on Monday, March 16th. The webinar starts at 9 am central time. It will focus on the following topics:
- How to download the Zoom applications and join a Zoom meeting
- How to schedule a meeting and send out invitations
- Overview of In-meeting controls and Virtual Classroom tools
You can register for the Zoom Meetings for Education webinar at this link.
Additionally, here’s a list of Zoom resources that you may find helpful:
- How to activate and access your Zoom account
- Where can I find the Zoom link in Brightspace?
- Schedule a Zoom meeting in Brightspace*
- Zoom 101: In Meeting Controls (Basic)
- Zoom Help Center
- Comprehensive Guide to Educating through Zoom
- Tips and Tricks for Educators Using Zoom for Virtual Meetings
- Tips to Secure Your Zoom Meetings
- Tips to deter Zoom-bombers
*NOTE: This document was created by another institution. Steps #1 and #2 are not applicable to our configuration. The information in the remainder of the document is applicable to how Zoom works in our integration.
Want more information?
#KeepTeachingXULA wiki resource
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Image credit: "wocintech (microsoft) - 76" by #WOCinTech Chat is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Brightspace Tip #144: Put Contents Online in Case of an Unplanned Event
If you are teaching a face-to-face class, you may be thinking about how can you put some of your course materials online in a hurry in case of an unplanned event. The Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University developed a resource with suggestions on how you can go about putting some of your course content online when you are in a hurry. The resource includes some Brightspace specific examples to give you ideas on how to move some of your course components online.
We have a series of Brightspace workshops planned over the next few weeks. Visit our events page to sign up for an upcoming Brightspace workshop.
Want more information?
Put Contents Online in Case of an Unplanned Event
Check out our Instructional Continuity Wiki
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Image credit: "wocintech stock - 69" by #WOCinTech Chat licensed under CC BY 2.0
Tips to Improve Online Discussions
A common assignment given in an online class is for students to participate in a discussion forum. Most discussion forums are setup so that students are asked to respond to a prompt and reply to posts from their classmates. Do you want to setup your online discussion forums to encourage substantive discussions among your students?
In a recent Inside Higher Ed blog post, Dr. Steven Mintz (Senior Adviser to the President of Hunter College for Student Success and Strategic Initiatives) writes,
We don’t simply want our students to respond to a question, but, rather to engage with the course material and take part in a genuine dialogue.
In his blog post, he goes on to give strategies for better ways to embed dialogue and interaction into asynchronous online classes. The strategies he suggests are:
Provide Better Prompts – Prompts that involve higher-order thinking skills and require the students to apply, analyze, compare and contrast, critique, evaluate, explain, infer, predict, propose, solve, and synthesize.
Ask Students to Do Something – Ask students to solve a problem, analyze a case study, take part in a debate, adopt a role or relate the topic to a current event.
Raise the Stakes – Ask students to rate individual posts. Nothing focuses the online student’s mind better than a sense that their writing is being evaluated anonymously by their classmates. You can also raise the stakes by limiting the number of students who participate in each discussion and asking the rest of the class to provide feedback on the discussion as a whole (not on individual postings).
Reimagine How Online Conversations Are Displayed – Help students better visualize the discussion by displaying networks of comments or use word clouds to underscore the key issues that have arisen.
Adopt a Different Model – Perhaps it’s a mistake to transpose a mode of communication that works well in face-to-face, synchronous or one-on-one contexts into the asynchronous realm. There are other ways to create a sense of community, promote collaboration and elicit meaningful ideas and debate.
If this has piqued your interest, you should read Dr. Mintz's, Beyond the Discussion Board, blog post.
ICYMI, read my Improve Online Discussions Using ABCs blog post for suggestions on giving feedback that impacts student performance.
If you are new to using discussions in Brightspace, you can find how-to resources for discussion forums on our blog.
Brightspace Tip #143: Annotate Assignment Submissions
Instructors can provide feedback directly in submitted assignments using the Annotations tool. Previously the only option for annotating assignments was by using the Assignment Grader app on your mobile device.
Features available in the Annotations Toolbar are:
- Text Highlighting
- Freehand Drawing
- Text Annotation
- Note Annotation
The ability to annotate on assignment submissions will assist instructors in providing valuable feedback to students.
Instructors will see the Annotations toolbar within the Assignments Evaluation Submission screen.
NOTE: The following file types are supported by the Annotations tool:
- .doc
- .docx
- .rtf
- .odt
- .ppt
- .pps
- .pptx
- .ppsx
- .odp
- .xls
- .xlsx
- .txt
- .jpg
- .jpeg
- .png
- .tif
- .tiff
- .gif (once converted to a PDF, only the first frame of the .gif displays)
Students have to submit their assignments in one of the supported file types in order for the instructor to use the built-in Annotations tool.
ICYMI, read my blog post on how you can simplify assignment collection by using the Assignments tool.
Want More Information?
Instructor Annotations for Brightspace Assignments (pdf)
Using Annotations for Instructor Feedback (video)
Add Feedback and Evaluations to Assignments
Simply Assignment Collection
Assignments Tool Training Recap
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Continuous Delivery release notes
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Brightspace Tip #142: Simplify Assignment Collection
Use the Assignments tool to help you set and manage deadlines, unclutter your inbox, and save trees.
The Assignments tool is an efficient way to manage and collect your student's individual and group assignments digitally. Brightspace's Assignments Tool allows instructors to create a secure location for students to submit class assignments.
The Assignments tool allows instructors to set up a place for students to submit their assignments digitally, with the ability to:
- Control the window for submission
- Facilitate individual submissions or group submissions (provided the groups have been set up using the Groups tool first)
- Collect and assess submissions (with a connection to the Grades tool, if needed)
- Enable plagiarism detection through Turnitin
Follow these steps to do it.
To create an assignment submission folder using the old assignment creation experience:
- On the NavBar (of the course you want to create a submission folder), click Activities and then choose Assignments from the drop-down menu.
- Click New Submission Folder.
- Enter a Name for your submission folder.
- Select a Folder Type.
- Do any of the following:
- Select a Category or click New Category to organize your assignment submission folders.
- Select a Grade Item, or click New Grade Item.
- To assign a score, enter a value in the Out Of field.
- To associate a rubric to the folder, click Add Rubric, or Create Rubric in New Window.
- Enter instructions in the Instructions field.
- Add attachments in the Attached Files area.
- Expand Show Submission Options and select the appropriate settings.
- Enter your email address in the Notification Email field to receive an email message when a new submission is uploaded to this folder.
- Choose the option to hide student names during assessment, if appropriate.
- Click Save.
Follow these instructions if you are using the New Assignment Creation Experience.
Note: You can add the Turnitin plagiarism detection feature to the assignment submission folder using the options in the Turnitin tab. Follow these instructions to enable Turnitin for the assignment submission folder.
Want More Information?
Assignments:
- Assignments Tool Quick Reference Guide (pdf)
- Create an assignment
- View assignment submissions
- Evaluate assignment submissions
- Annotate assignment submissions
- Email students who haven't submitted an assignment
- Allow special access for assignments
- Assignments FAQ
- How to submit Assignments video [1:59]
- Learner FAQ - Assignments
- Learner FAQ - Assignment - Errors
Turnitin:
- Assignments and Turnitin
- Enable Turnitin Feedback Studio® for assignments
- Turnitin Feedback Studio - Instructor
- Quick Tips for Mastering Feedback Studio
- Turnitin Feedback Studio - Student
- Students - View your Turnitin assignment feedback
Assignments Tool Training Recap
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Continuous Delivery release notes
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Brightspace Tip #141: Grade Book and College Readiness
The #1 Brightspace complaint we hear from students is that faculty don't post their grades online. When students don’t receive meaningful and timely feedback about their coursework, they are unable to make the necessary adjustments to improve their performance.
Last semester's "Grade Book and College Readiness" training session focused on 1) why using the Grade Book to provide students with their standing in the course is important and 2) how to setup and enter grades in the Grade Book.
In case you missed the training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, you can review these resources:
- Homework that was to be completed before the workshop
- Workshop Recording and Slides
- Resources referenced during the workshop
- Grading Student Work (Vanderbilt CFT Teaching Guide)
- Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT)
- Brightspace Grades Tool
- Grades Tool Quick Reference Guide (pdf)
- Understanding the Grades Tool (video)
- Create a Grading System
- Create a Grade Scheme (video)
- Create a Grade Book Category (video)
- Create a Grade Item (video)
- Bonus Points
- Extra Credit
- Associate an Activity with a Grade Item (video)
- Enter Grades (video)
- Create Grade Exemptions (video)
- Delete Grade Items with Associations (video)
- Troubleshoot Final Grades (video)
- Export Grades (video)
- Adjust Final Grades
- Release Final Grades
- Scenario: Final calculated grade using Weighted system
- Understanding the Final Calculated Grade (pdf)
- Grades FAQ
- Final Grades FAQ
Want more information?
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Continuous Delivery release notes
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Brightspace Tip #140: February Continuous Delivery Updates
D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.
Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.
Here are a few updates in the February 2020/20.20.2 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Assignments - Streamlined access to inline feedback
To streamline access to assignment feedback, learners can now immediately access inline feedback from User Progress, Grades, and Assignments. From these tools, the View Inline Feedback link takes the learner directly to the annotations view (or Turnitin viewer, if that is the tool used to provide feedback). The inline feedback also includes a link to the file for the assignment, so learners know which document contains the feedback. Previously, the View Inline Feedback link took the learner to the Assignment feedback summary page, where they had to click a second link to view the feedback.
2) EXIF data warning appears when uploading images
In some instances, when users upload .jpg files in any file upload area across Brightspace Learning Environment, an EXIF (exchangeable image file) data warning appears informing the user that the file may contain geolocation data.
3) Course Administration - Course Reset
Course Reset is a new tool that enables a course administrator to reset a course back to an empty shell. Course Reset permanently deletes course content, activities, associated files, user grades, user progress records, and interaction data from the course in a single bulk process. Users can optionally choose to include course groups, and/or course widgets, navbars, and homepages as part of the course reset process, or leave them in the course.
The Course Reset process does not affect user enrollments, sections and section enrollment, course associations, course paths associated to the course, user progress in linked SCORM objects, LOR objectsin Brightspace Learning Repository, portfolio objects saved to a users' Portfolio or ePortfolio, ePortfolio sharing groups or forms, email/instant messages sent to or from users in the course, LTI tool provider information, and Activity Feed posts.
Course Reset permanently deletes the course data and it will not appear in any reporting or data sets after the course reset process is complete. After performing a course reset, an Audit Log maintains a record of the course reset action, including the date and time of the course reset, the data that was selected for deletion, the user who performed the course reset, and any errors that occur during the course reset process.
4) Grades – Tab delimited import into Gradebook
Users can now import tab separated value (.tsv) files into Gradebook. Previously, users could only import comma delimited files into Gradebook, which created a usability issue in some international regions.
5) Quick Eval - Course level filtering
When opening Quick Eval within a course, only the list of activities and submissions related to that course display. This helps instructors easily view and evaluate submissions on a course-by-course basis. If an instructor wants to view all submissions across all their courses, they can still use the More Options menu to see the Multi-Course Quick Eval, or open Quick Eval from outside of a course.
6) Quick Eval - Dismiss activities until next submission
Instructors can now remove items from their Quick Eval list until a new submission is received for the activity. The removed activity appears on the Dismissed Activities list and can be restored at any time. Once a new submission arrives to the Quick Eval list, the previously dismissed activity reappears there.
Previously, instructors could only select a specific date or forever when dismissing an activity. This new option provides instructors with an additional option to manage the submissions on their Quick Eval list.
7) Video Note – Automatic Closed Captioning
To improve accessibility, video notes now provide automatic closed captioning for newly created videos and the ability to manually add or update closed captioning for all previously recorded videos. After video processing, users can view closed captions using video player controls.
In addition, users can now download a transcript and the closed caption file associated with a video independent of Video Notes.
Localized closed captioning is available for the following languages:
- US English (en-US)
- British English (en-GB)
- Canadian French (fr-CA)
- German (de-DE)
- Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)
- Korean (ko-KR)
- Italian (it-IT)
- Spanish (es-US)
- Modern Standard Arabic (ar-SA)
- Russian (ru-RU)
- Japanese (ja-JP)
- Turkish (tr-TR)
- Dutch (nl-NL)
- Chinese Mandarin (zh-CN)
Notes:
- Canadian English is not available for closed captioning and defaults to en-US.
- Chinese Traditional (zh-TW) closed captions are not currently available and defaults to zh-CN.
- Mexican Spanish (es-MX) closed captions may not be available and defaults to US Spanish (es-US)
- Swedish closed captions are not available.
If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the February Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform February 2020/20.20.2 Release Notes.
Additionally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about current, past, and to preview upcoming continuous delivery updates.
Want more information?
View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.