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I usually get a lot of questions from faculty related to setting up their Brightspace courses. In the spirit of starting the semester with less stress, I offer the following infographic with course design suggestions to reduce your course setup and management stress: Accessible PDF version of Course Design Zen infographic. Want more information? Course ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #287: Course Design Suggestions"

Faculty can request to have two or more of their courses combined into a single course. Combining courses can be useful when you are teaching multiple sections of the same course or when you are teaching a course that is cross-listed. Merging courses allows you to have all the students in a single Brightspace course ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #286: Merging Courses"

As you prepare to teach this spring, now is a good time to get started setting up your Brightspace courses. Our Information Technology Center (ITC) has created the spring courses in Brightspace. NOTE: You should see your spring courses in the My Courses widget. The July Continuous Delivery Updates implemented the updated My Courses Widget ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #285: Setup Your Spring Courses"

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 ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #284: December Continuous Delivery Updates"

As we approach the end of the semester there are a few things you can do in Brightspace to wrap up for the semester. Release final course grades Unlike other grade items and categories in the Grade Book, final grades are not available to students by default. Final grades must be released. If you did ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #283: End-of-Semester Tasks"

Brightspace calculates final grades for each student based on the grading system and the students' grades that are entered into the Grade Book. If the instructor wants more control over the final grades, perhaps to adjust the final grade for a student that is on the cusp of a higher grade, then adjusted final grades ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #282: Grade Book – Adjust Final Grades"

Unlike other grade items and categories in the Grade Book, final grades are not available to students by default. Final grades must be released. When setting up the Grade Book, the instructor can choose to automatically release final grades so that the students can see their final grade throughout the semester. If you did not ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #281: Grade Book – Release Final Grades"

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 ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #280: November Continuous Delivery Updates"

Instructors can create surveys in Brightspace and use the statistics tools to monitor current course trends, seek opinions, and assess user satisfaction. Surveys are an excellent way to solicit feedback from learners regarding any aspect of a course. You can gather anonymous or non-anonymous opinions and information from users. Unlike Quizzes, survey questions do not ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #279: Get Feedback from your Students"

The Discussions tool has a new @mentions feature. Within the Discussion tool, users can now tag other users within the same course using @mentions. Tagged users are notified by alerts in the Minibar directing them to the thread in which they were tagged. Additionally, users can edit their notification settings and opt to receive email ...continue reading "Brightspace Tip #278: Discussions – @mentions"