Each threat of tropical storms, heavy rains, and street flooding in our area should be a reminder that course delivery is vulnerable to unplanned events. Potential interruptions to class activities include but are not limited to natural disasters, widespread illness, acts of violence, planned or unexpected construction-related closures, severe weather conditions, and medical emergencies.
Here are a few things you can do in Brightspace to help you prepare should the need arise.
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.
The Assignments tool is an efficient way to manage and collect your student's individual and group assignments digitally. Students use the Assignments tool to upload and submit assignments directly in Brightspace, eliminating the need to mail, fax, or email their work to instructors. On paper submissions, and observed in person assignments are also available and do not require file submissions to be made in Brightspace.
Did you know that you can quickly create new assignments from existing assignments using the Copy Assignment and the Copy to Other Courses options?
The Copy Assignment feature copies all settings of an existing assignment except the associated grade item and Turnitin settings.
Example of the Copy Assignment and Copy to Other Courses options as they appear in the drop-down menu for existing assignments
Instructors who teach multiple courses can Copy Assignments to Other Courses. To copy assignments to another course, you must be enrolled in both the source and destination course with a role having the permission Assignments > Copy to Other Courses in order to copy from source to destination.
Instructors can copy the following assignment attributes to the new destination:
Assignment folder and its properties, including instructions, assignment category, and visibility
Assignment properties including description and category
Attachments like direct file attachments, uploaded from Google Workspace or OneDrive, and audio and video files
Grade item and grade category
Availability dates
Submission and completion information, including the Optional Grade item and the course scheme if used.
Rubric(s) associated with the assignment. When copying an assignment that uses a shared rubric, instead of linking a copied assignment to a shared rubric, the rubric is also copied. The copied assignment links to the copied rubric. If an assignment uses a rubric that is archived, the rubric is copied and retains its archived state in the destination course.
The following attributes are NOT copied:
Instruction Quicklinks and attachment resources created with the Attach link to existing activity action
Instruction images added using Insert Image that were saved to course files
Availability release conditions and special access settings
Submission and completion information, including group assignment designation
Evaluation and Feedback information including Turnitin associations, competency, and outcome associations
Content topic associations (for example, if the assignment is linked from content)
Note: In some cases, references to links and images that are not copied may result in broken links.
Follow these steps to do it.
To copy an existing assignment, you should:
On the NavBar, click Activities and then click Assignments.
From the drop-down menu of the assignment you want to copy, click Copy Assignment.
The copied assignment opens in edit mode. Update the name, score, due date, instructions and other settings of the copied assignment.
After reviewing all the details, click Save and Close to go back to the Assignments page.
To copy an assignment to another course, you should:
On the NavBar, click Activities and then click Assignments.
From the drop-down menu of the assignment you want to copy, click Copy to Other Courses.
Click to select the rubrics and/or grade items if you want those items copied with the assignment.
In the Choose Destinations area, search by keyword or semester to find the destination courses for the assignment.
Click to select the destination course(s) for the assignment. Note: By default, the maximum number of courses you can select is 10.
Expand the Destination course to set the assignment location and visibility.
Click Next and you will be taken to the progress page.
NOTE: The progress page indicates the status of each destination course and any issues. If you navigate away from the progress page, a minibar notification in Brightspace indicates when the assignment has been copied to all the destination courses. You can click the notification to open the progress page to review the status and logged issues.
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.
Learners sometimes have a hard time keeping track of what they need to get done. They may need to hop in and out of several courses to determine if there are upcoming assignments or projects with due dates in the near future (or even in the past!). The “Work To Do” widget helps by providing learners with a summary of assigned learning activities from all their courses that are overdue or have an upcoming due date.
The Work To Do widget is designed for learners and it displays all their overdue and upcoming learning activities across courses or within a course. This widget can help learners to keep track of assignments and activities that are due.
All quizzes, assignments, checklists, etc., with due or end dates in the near future or past appear in one place on the learner’s My homepage in the “Work To Do” widget. Overdue work appears at the top of the list, and upcoming items appear below.
Example of the Work To Do widget
Learners will see the “Work To Do” widget on their My Home page as well as their course homepages. The learner will be able to see overdue and upcoming learning activities for each course where the default course homepage is being used.
Example of the Work To Do widget showing no activities due
The Work To Do widget can be seen by users with the role of student. Instructors will see the Work To Do widget when they view the course as a student.
Note: Instructors who have opted to customize their course homepage and want their students to be able to see the Work To Do widget on their customized course homepage, will have to add the widget to the course homepage.
For additional information and frequently asked questions about the Work To Do widget, see the following article in the Brightspace Community: Introducing the Work To Do Widget.
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.
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
Additionally, you can use Brightspace's Interactive Rubrics to increase efficiency. The interactive rubrics allow instructors to establish set criteria for grading assignments. Instructors can attach rubrics to assignment submission folders so that the criteria are visible to students at any time, only after grading has been completed, or not shown to the students at all. The rubrics click-and-score simplicity saves time when grading because rubrics are built into the grading workflow. For more information about rubrics refer to Brightspace Tip #204: Interactive Rubrics.
Follow these steps to do it.
To create an assignment submission folder:
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 Assignment.
Enter a Name for your submission folder.
To evaluate the assignment with a numeric value, enter a Grade Out Of. A grade item with the same name as your assignment is automatically added to your gradebook. Alternatively, you can click on the "In Grade Book" menu item to reveal a drop-down list. Select the "Edit or Link to Existing" option and then navigate to a grade item that is already in your Grade Book.
Set a Due Date.
Enter assignment instructions.
Upload any files, link to any existing activities or external weblinks, attach any files from Google Drive or OneDrive, and record and/or upload any audio or video notes.
Expand Availability Dates & Conditions and do the following:
Use Manage Special Access to enable the assignment to be available only to a select group of users or to add individualized due dates for certain users.
Expand Submission & Completion and do the following:
For the Assignment Type, specify if this is an Individual Assignment or Group Assignment.
Select an existing category to align your assignment to or click New category to create a category.
Select a Submission Type:
For File submissions, set the number of Files Allowed Per Submission and the Submissions rules.
For Text submissions, set the Submission rules.
For On paper submissions, set Marked as completed to one of the available options: Manually by learners, Automatically on evaluation, or Automatically on due date.
For Observed in person assignments, set Marked as completed to one of the available options: Manually by learners, Automatically on evaluation, or Automatically on due date.
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.
Notifications enable you to customize what methods you want to use to receive notifications, such as email, as well as what events will trigger notifications.
Students can control how they receive information about course activity through their notification preferences. They can customize which actions in Brightspace will trigger a notification.
The Notification tool allows users to:
Subscribe to a summary of activity for each course and receive a daily email.
Specify your preferred email address for instant notifications and announcements.
Receive instant notifications about course activity, such as edited content, new discussion posts, assignments, grades, course announcements and upcoming quizzes.
Instructors can help their students to keep up with their coursework by encouraging them to setup their notification preferences. Additionally, there is a Getting Started for Learners Video Playlist that students should watch to get familiar with Brightspace.
Follow these steps to do it.
To customize notification preferences, users should:
From your Personal Menu (located in the Minibar), select Notifications.
Select the email address to which notifications will be sent.
Select the course activities for which you would like to receive notifications.
Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.
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.
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 some of the updates in the August 2024/20.24.8 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Assignments – Assessment workflows enhanced and available in all environments
Advanced Assessments help instructors and administrators to better manage courses with large class sizes and multiple evaluators, delegate and manage evaluator workflows, and reduce bias in marking.
Advanced Assessments allows instructors to:
Assign multiple evaluators to evaluate a single assignment submission when creating or editing assignments.
Choose which evaluators can publish grades for the assignment from the Assignment tool by setting them as publishers.
Match evaluators to learners.
Choose from two multi-evaluator workflows: One Shared Evaluation (Co-Marking) or Multiple Individual Evaluations.
Prior to the release of Advanced Assessments, there was no ability to create and evaluate delegated co-mark or multi-evaluate assignments.
In the May 2024/20.24.5 release, Advanced Assessment features were released to test, development, and staging (non-production) environments.
With this release, Advanced Assessment workflows for Assignments are available in all production environments of Brightspace. New features that are added to Advanced Assessments with the August release include:
Turnitin integrations
Accessibility improvements, including assistive technologies for keyboard-only users
D6901 (Restrict Teaching Assistant to Publish The Assignment Grade)
D142 (Multiple Graders in Dropbox)
D6977 (Assignments Role Permissions: Separate See/View from Submit)
D6654 (Auditor to view submissions of Assignments)
2) Assignments – Email status message no longer displayed after an assignment submission
With this release, the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message is no longer displayed for learners in the Email Status field after they submit an assignment. However, when a learner submits an assignment, an email as a receipt of the submission is still sent to them.
The Review Assignment Submission page with the Email Status field.The Review Assignment Submission page without the Email Status field.
Previously, even if a confirmation email was not sent to a learner, they also received the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message in the Email Status field on their Submission History page.
3) Discussions – Reading View improvements
To improve the user experience for learners, this release introduces several updates to the learner Reading View in Discussions. These improvements include the following:
The Start New Thread button is duplicated at the bottom of the page when viewing a topic, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top of the page.
The Add Attachments section is opened by default when creating a new post or new topic. Previously learners had to open the section manually to add attachments.
The Add Attachments section is wider on screen when learners create a new thread.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D8141 (Add a second Start a New Thread button to the bottom all threads)
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 Pulse is a mobile app that can help learners stay connected and on track with their Brightspace courses. It provides one easy view of course calendars, readings, assignments, evaluations, grades, and announcement items. The app can help learners make better decisions about how to handle their workload, when to submit assignments, and when to prepare for tests. Real-time alerts can let learners know when classes are canceled, class is meeting in an alternate location, or new grades are available. The schedule view and weekly visualization enables learners to quickly at a glance view what is due today, this week, and upcoming across all their courses.
While the Brightspace Pulse app is designed for the learner, instructors can benefit too.
While the Brightspace Pulse app is designed for the learner, instructors can benefit too. When instructors enter due dates or end dates for assignments and activities the information is populated in the Pulse app enabling learners to stay connected and on track. Thus, instructors can spend less time reminding and more time teaching.
Instructors can make their courses Pulse friendly by including due dates or end dates for assignments and activities. When instructors do not enter due dates or end dates, no associated information is available in the Pulse app.
The Pulse app is great for helping students stay on track in face-to-face classes as well. Instructors can set up their face-to-face assignments and activities as events in the Brightspace course calendar. Students will get those date feeds in the Brightspace Pulse app.
Help keep students on track for success in all their courses by including a due date or end date for assignments and activities.
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.
Instructors can use the Manage Dates tool to view, edit in bulk, and bulk offset date availability from one central location. You can also set the calendar status of all content topics and modules, discussion topics and forums, assignment submissions folders, grades categories and items, announcement items, quizzes, checklists, and surveys in their course in the Manage Dates tool.
Course objects display in a grid that you can sort by any of the column headings. You can also use the Type column to sort the Manage Dates page based on the tool-specific order and use advanced filter options to work with smaller sets of objects. If you filter your course objects, any bulk changes you make apply only to the filtered results. This enables you to update multiple availability dates based on specific criteria.
In addition to managing dates, you can open each course object in a new window by clicking on its name. This launches the object's edit page where you can edit additional properties for that object without leaving the Manage Dates tool.
The Manage Dates tool can be very useful after a course copy. For example, if you copied content from one course into another course, you can use the Manage Dates tool to easily adjust dates after the course copy. Additionally, if you've entered dates on items in your course and later need to adjust dates in bulk, try using the Manage Dates tool.
Follow these steps to do it.
To edit dates in bulk:
Get into the course you want to change the dates of course objects.
On the NavBar (of the course you want to change dates in), click Course Admin.
Click Manage Dates.
Select the check box of the items for which you want to bulk edit dates.
Click Bulk Edit Dates.
In the Bulk Edit Dates dialog box, update the due dates and availability dates.
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.
There are a some situations where you may want to copy components of a Brightspace course OR copy an entire Brightspace course into another one. For example,
You have a course from a previous semester and you would like to copy the course contents into your empty course shell for the current semester.
You have a Master Course Shell that you input content into and would like to copy the course contents into your empty course shell for the current semester.
You are teaching multiple sections of a course, you created all the content in one Brightspace course section and want to copy the content into the other sections.
You created content in one course (e.g. rubrics, discussions, quizzes, etc.) and would like to copy that specific content from one Brightspace course into another.
Copying an entire Brightspace course OR copying components of a Brightspace course into another Brightspace course is not hard. As long as you are the instructor for both courses, it is a simple process you can do.
Notes About Copying Between Courses
Here are some things to consider when copying a course or copying components of a course.
Overwriting and Duplicating Items
In general, course components already in the destination course will not be affected by copying course components. The only course component that can be overwritten is a course file, i.e., HTML pages that have been created in the course site or files that have been uploaded to it. A course file is overwritten if one of the files being copied into the course has the same name as an existing file.
If copying components from the same source multiple times, be careful not to copy the same items more than once, or this will create duplicates that may be visible to users in the course.
Student Data
Student data is not copied from one course to another; only the course structures are copied. For example, if a Discussion topic is copied, only the prompt and discussion settings are copied, not the individual student posts.
Links and Associations between Components
If copying linked or associated components, e.g., files attached to an Assignment Submission folder or the HTML files for pages that have been created, all of the related components must be copied at the same time. To do this, be sure to select the "Include Associated Content" checkbox when it appears. As long as that box is checked, all associated components are copied and the links between them are retained.
Copying VoiceThreads
We have integrated VoiceThread using LTI 1.3 with deep linking, that means that your VoiceThread activities will copy automatically when the course is copied in Brightspace. Review this VT Course Copying FAQ for some important things to know about how VoiceThread course copying works.
Respondus LockDown Browser (RLDB) Settings
Copied courses that have tests/exams with RLDB enabled require instructors to access the Respondus LockDown Browser Dashboard once after the copy to update the RLDB settings in the destination course. This has to be done before students will be able to take exams that require RLDB.
Turnitin-enabled Assignments
When you copy course components from one course to another, confirm that all settings are configured for the Turnitin-enabled assignments in the destination course.
Turnitin PeerMark Assignments
Our Turnitin integration does not support copying of PeerMark Assignments. You will have to recreate your PeerMark assignments in the destination course.
Follow these steps to do it.
If you want to copy an entire Brightspace course OR copy components from a Brightspace course into another course, you should:
Get into the course you want the content copied into (i.e., the target course).
In the NavBar (of the course you want the content copied to), click on "Course Admin".
Click on the "Import/Export/Copy Components" link.
Click on the "Copy Components from another Org Unit" radio button.
In the Course to Copy option, click the "Search for Offering" button.
Click on the magnifying glass in the "Search for" field OR enter the name of the course you want to copy from (i.e., the source course) in the search field.
Click on the radio button to the right of the course you want to copy content from and then click on "Add Selected".
Verify your selections are correct before proceeding.
At the bottom on the browser window you will click on either "Copy all Components" OR "Select Components" and follow the prompts.
Important:
Double-check to make sure that you are in the course you want the content copied into AND that you have selected the correct course you want to copy content from. There is no way to reverse the copy process once the wrong course is selected and the copy request is submitted.
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: image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
I usually get a lot of questions from faculty related to setting up their Brightspace courses. In the spirit of starting the academic year with less stress, I offer the following infographic with course design suggestions to reduce your course setup and management stress:
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.
