With the Grades tool set up, you can now begin creating the actual assessments students will interact with. Like the Grades tool, the tools for creating Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes & Exams can be found in the Assessments link on the Navbar.
Brightspace has three main activity / assessment tools: Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes/Exams. Between the three of them, you should be able to implement most activities you would do in a face-to-face classroom. The table below will help you narrow down which tool might be the best choice for what you are trying to accomplish.
In general, the Assignments Tool is best for essays, papers, and student group projects. Pretty much anything where the student must upload a file for you to grade. The Discussions Tool is best for activities which require peer interaction, such as group discussions, critiques, etc. They can also be adjusted to for submitting papers, as long as your intention is for students to see each others work. Finally the Quiz / Exam Tool can be used for fixed-response questions (miltiple-choice, true/false, etc.) as well as essay questions.
TIP
Students see the same links in the Assessments menu that you do. They check their grades from the Grades tool. Going to any of the other tools will present them with a list of all the activities in the course of that type. Thus, it is not necessary for you to create a module containing all of your assignments. Instead, sequence them as described in the Sequence Course Assessments into Modules section.
Brightspace allows you to set dates in many different places and all of them have some impact on what students can and can’t see in the course. Below is a guide to each type of date and what it does.
Don't forget to set the Time field on your dates!
When setting a date, Brightspace automatically uses the current time in the Time field. So even if you set a module to start on the correct day, if the time is set to, for example, 4:00 pm, students will still not be able to access items in that module until after 4:00 pm has passed!
Tip:
Use the Manage Dates tool under Course Admin to change all the dates you've set with just a few clicks.
Assignments allow you to collect text, videos, files, etc. for you to evaluate and grade.
Here you'll find detailed, step-by-step, written instructions, as well as short video tutorials on how to create an assignment. You can also watch these and other Brightspace Guide videos in full screen on our Kaltura channel.
Select Assignments from the Assessments link on the course Navbar.
When the Assignments tool appears, click the New Assignment button.
When the New Assignment page appears, Enter a name for the assignment that corresponds to an assignment in your syllabus.
Enter Instructions for your assignment.
Enter a Grade Out Of. This is the maximum amount of points the assignment is worth.
If you want to create an assignment that does not have a graded point value, simply ignore this field.
When setting a point value, the default setting will be In Grade Book and Brightspace will automatically be create a new Grade Item for this assignment. But, we recommend you have your Grade Items set up in the Grades tool for each assessment prior to creating assignments. Important: To link this assignment to a grade item already created in yout Grade Book, click the In Grade Book button. Then select Edit or Link Existing to connect this assignment to a Grade Item you previously created.
If you want to create an assignment that has a point value but does not count toward students' final grade, for example a draft or practice assignment, select Not In Grade Book.
(Optional) Set a Due Date.
Click the Submission & Completion panel to select a Submission Type for the assignment. See the Assignment Submission Types section for a description of each. The default is File Submission.
Set any options in the Availability Dates & Conditions or Evaluation & Feedback panels that suit your needs.
Special Access options for students with accommodations from the DSC are under Availability Dates & Conditions.
TurnItIn (plagiarism checking ) and Rubric options are under Evaluation & Feedback.
New assignments are hidden from students by default. Click the Visibility button to make the assignment visible to students.
Click Save and Close to return to the main Assignments Tool page.
See the Add Previously Created Course Assessments section for instructions on adding this assignment to a module in the Content tool.
Tip:
You can go back and change most of the settings for an Assignment by clicking the Assessments menu and selecting Assignments. Once the Assignments page appears, click the Action Button (little down-facing arrow next to the grade item) next to an assignment and select Edit Assignment.
On the navbar, click Assessments and select Assignments.
Click the Action Button (little down-facing arrow next to the grade item) next to the Assignment’s name.
Click Delete Assignment from the menu that appears.
Did you accidentally delete an assignment and need it back? Follow these steps to retrieve it.
On the navbar, click Assessments and select Assignments.
Click the More Actions button.
Select Event Log from the menu that appears. The Event Log page will appear.
Click the Restore button next to the assignment you wish to recover.
Brightspace has built-in integration with TurnItIn, a plagiarism detection service. Enable it by perform the following steps when creating or editing an Assignment.
Click the Evaluation & Feedback panel.
If necessary, scroll down and click the Manage TurnItIn button. A pop-up box will appear.
Click the Enable Originality Check for this folder check box.
If you want to allow students to see their Originality Check score, select the Allow learners to see Turnitin similarity scores in their submission folder checkbox.
This option is initially grayed-out but becomes available once you perform Step 3.
Click the Save button on the Manage TurnItIn pop-up.
Click the Assignment's Save or Save and Close button.
Important: If students have already submitted work to this assignment, see the section below, "Post-Hoc Plagiarism Checking."
For more information on using and interpreting TurnItIn's reports, please see TurnItIn's support documentation.
Follow these steps to view TurnItIn Originality Reports on work your students have submitted,
On the navbar, click Assessments and select Assignments.
Click the name of the Assignment you wish to check.
Find the student submission you wish to check and click the percentage button shown in the TurnItIn Similarity column. The Originality Report will appear in a new web browser tab.
For more information on using and interpreting TurnItIn's reports, please see TurnItIn's support documentation.
If you have enabled TurnItIn on an assignment that students have already submitted work to, you will need to perform the following steps to have them scanned by TurnItIn:
On the navbar, click Assessments and select Assignments.
Click the name of the Assignment you wish to check.
Click the Submit to TurnItIn button next to each student submission you want to have checked for plagiarism. (The button looks like a green arrow pointing toward a open-top box)
For more information on using and interpreting TurnItIn's reports, please see TurnItIn's support documentation.
Brightspace lets you choose from four different types of assignments. Click the headings below to see a definition of each.
File Submission
Students upload a file, such as a Microsoft Word or PDF file to complete the assignment. This is the most commonly used.
Text Submission
Students write a response directly in Brightspace to complete the assignment using the Brightspace Editor. They have access to the same tools you have, so their submissions can include text, images, video, audio, and hyperlinks.
On Paper Submission
This type of submission allows you to receive student submissions in person (on paper) and still provide a grade through Brightspace. Students are not able to submit anything to this type of assignment, but they can still receive feedback and a grade from you. You also have the option of uploading the paper assignment back to the student when you provide their feedback and grade.
Observed In Person
Similarly to On Paper Submission, this type does not allow students to submit anything through Brightspace. If students make a presentation in class but are not submitting anything, this submission type would allow you to assign a grade and provide feedback through Brightspace.
Use the Discussions tool in your course to encourage students to share thoughts on course material with their peers. Discussions are organized into Forums, which can contain multiple Topics. You and your students create Threads inside topics which consist of an initial Post and Replies. In most cases, courses only need a single forum to house all of a course’s topics, however if you rely heavily on discussions in your course, it may make sense to have multiple forums.
Forums are just containers for one or more Discussion Topics. They are represented in the Discussions Tool by large black headings. Forums cannot have grades attached to them. Forums containing no Topics are invisible to students.
Topics, or Discussion Topics can be graded or non-graded. This is where you and your students will post. Discussion Topics must be contained within a Forum and are represented in the Discussions Tool by large, bold, blue text.
Select Discussions from the Assessments link on the course Navbar.
When the Discussions page appears, click the New button and select New Forum.
Enter a Title for your new forum.
Enter a Description for your new forum.
In the Options section, select any of the checkboxes that suit your needs. All topics created under this forum will have these same options.
Click Save and Close to return to the main Discussions page, or Save and Add Topic if you want to start creating a new topic right away. If you click the latter, you can start at Step 3 in the next section.
Select Discussions from the Assessments link on the course Navbar.
When the Discussions page appears, click the New button and select New Topic.
When the New Topic page appears, enter a Title for the topic
Enter a Description. This is likely where you would want to enter a prompt or question for students to reply to.
Select any other Options that fit your needs.
Click the Assessment tab. If you skip this and the following steps, you will not be able to grade this topic!
Select the corresponding Grade Item you previously created for this discussion, or click New Grade Item.
Enter a Score Out Of if using Points-Based grading. If using Weighted Percentage-Based grading, choose a Category, enter the Maximum Points, and enter the Weight.
a) If you created a New Grade Item for this discussion topic, just use the point value you used when creating it. This is the maximum amount of points the discussion is worth.
b) If you want to distribute points to individual posts, rather than by topic, select Allow assessment of individual posts and then select Sum of Post Scores from the Calculation drop-down beneath it.
Click Save and New and repeat from Step 3 for each of your course discussions, or click Save and Close if you do not need to create any additional discussion topics.
Create a new Topic in the Discussions Tool using the New button.
Add a Title for your new Topic. You can put any discussion prompts in the Description field. If this is topic will be graded, click the Assessment tab.
Select an existing, or create a new Grade Item for the discussion topic if you plan to grade it.
Warning:
Discussion Posts created by you and your students are NOT included when you copy your course from one semester to another! Only Forums and Topics are copied. If you have questions or prompts for your students to answer, put them in the Description field when creating a Topic (See the section above). Doing so will ensure that it gets included when you copy the course to the next semester.
Tip:
You can go back and change most of the settings for a Discussion Topic by clicking the Assessments menu and selecting Discussions. Once the Discussions page appears, click the Action Button next to an discussion topic and select Edit Topic.
On the blue navbar, click Assessments and select Discussions.
On the Discussions List page, click the Action Button (down arrow) next to the name of the Forum or Topic you want to delete and select Delete.
To confirm the deletion, click Yes.
Alternative: If you have multiple Forums and/or Topics to delete, you can click the More Actions button and select Delete.
You can build Quizzes and Exams in Brightspace with questions that grade themselves. (Except for Written Response questions, which require you to check and score.) You can even set questions to give the student various types of feedback depending on the answer they select. If your course has a textbook, chances are the book’s publisher has a test bank you can import into your course’s Question Library to build quizzes and exams that present a random selection of questions to each student.
This section breaks up the process of creating a Quiz or Exam into three main parts:
Setting the Main Options
Submission Views
Adding Questions
Tip:
Do you plan to have a lot of quizzes in your course? You don't have to do these steps for all of them! Just get one set up without the questions using the steps above. Then, from the main Quizzes & Exams page, click the More Actions button and select Copy.
Select Quizzes & Exams from the Assessments link on the course Navbar.
Click the New Quiz button.
Add a Name for the quiz and fill out any of the fields you feel are relevant. The fields will be displayed in this order before or during the quiz:
The Description is shown before the quiz is available.
The Introduction is shown when the quiz starts after being clicked on.
The Header/Footer is shown at the top/bottom of each page of the quiz.
Select any other options that meet your needs on the current page.
Click the Restrictions tab.
Uncheck Hide from Users, unless you do not want students to see the quiz yet.
Set the due date/time so the quiz will populate in Brightspace's built-in calendar for your students.
Click the Assessment tab.
Check the box next to Allow attempt to be set as graded immediately upon completion if you want students to see how they did right after taking the quiz/exam.
Important: If you have Written Response questions (essay questions) that have to be graded manually, do not check this option!
Also Important: If you check this option, you also need to check Allow automatic export to grades in order for scores to go to the grades tool. Otherwise you’ll have to go into each attempt and click Publish.
Select the corresponding Grade Item you previously created for this quiz/exam.
Select any other options on this page that meet your needs and click the Submission Views tab and continue to the next section.
By default, Brightspace does not show students details about the questions they got right or wrong after the quiz is graded. The Submission Views tab allows you to sequence when and what students can see once they finish their exam. The Default View settings assume a conservative stance that protects your quiz/exam questions and only tells the student the score they received on select-response questions (multiple choice, true/false, etc). In addition to the instructions below, here is a video tutorial on Submission Views.
If you only want students to see final quiz scores, you may skip to the last step.
If you are not looking at your quiz/exam's Submission Views tab, see the previous section to navigate there.
Click the blue Default View link. The View Properties page will appear. The options on this screen control what students can see immediately after completing the exam.
To allow students to see correct answers, select Yes and then Show question answers. Otherwise, skip this step.
Choose any additional options you'd like to utilize.
Click the question mark next to the options for a description of what each option will show the students.
Click the Save button at the bottom left of the screen to go back to the main Submission Views page.
Optional: If you want to change what students can see after a certain period of time, click the Add Additional View button.
a. Set the name of this View.
b. Set the Date you want this View's settings to take effect.
c. Select whichever options that conform to your intent. The choices are the same as those found in the Default View properties described in the previous steps.
d. Click the Save button. This will return you to the Submission Views screen.
The next task is to add questions to the quiz/exam. If you want to do this later, click the Save and Close button. Otherwise, click the Properties tab and continue to the section below.
The Default View controls what happens after a student completes an attempt on a quiz/exam. You can add time-triggered Additional Views to allow them to see what questions they got wrong and/or correct answers after everyone has completed the quiz/exam. Additional Views can also be set to expire after a certain amount of time.
The Default View initially will only show students their score on the quiz/exam.
Importing Pre-Created Questions
The following instructions in Part 3 pertain to creating brand new questions for a quiz. If you have questions already created in a previous quiz/exam, or have a publisher-supplied question bank in .zip format, there are instructions for both these cases after Part 3.
These steps assume you have previously created and configured a quiz or exam. If you have now, please see Parts 1 and 2 first.
Select Quizzes & Exams from the Assessments link on the course Navbar. The Quizzes & Exams Tool will appear.
Click the Action Button next to the quiz or exam you want to add questions to. A popup menu will appear.
Select Edit. The Edit Quiz page will appear.
Click the Add/Edit Questions button which will bring you to the Quiz Question Builder.
Click the Add button, select New Question, and select a question type to create. See the section below for a description of the question types available in Brightspace.
a. To add automatic feedback to a question, while editing it, click Options in the upper right corner.
b. Click Add Feedback and enter your feedback.
Create your question and save it. You will be brought to the question list for this quiz/exam. You may either continue to add questions via the Add button, or go back to the quiz/exam Properties tab by clicking Back to Settings.
Once your quiz/exam has some questions, you can set how many of them appear at a time for students. Leave this field blank to display all questions on one page.
Click the Save and Close button.
Repeat from Step 2 for each of the quizzes or exams in your course.
Warning:
Avoid editing the questions on a quiz or exam when some students have take it and others have not! Set some time aside before administering the quiz/exam to test it using the ~Preview Learner account.
Use the following instructions to import zip file containing quiz or exam questions provided by your textbook publisher or other source.
Navigate to Quizzes & Exams which is found in the Assessments menu of the course Navbar.
Click the Question Library tab.
In the Question Library, click New and select Section from the menu that appears. This will act like a folder to store the questions.
Enter a name for your quiz’s question bank in the Section Title field
Recommended: Click the Hide Section Title from learners button.
Select any other desired options.
Click the Save button.
Make sure the Quiz Section you created is highlighted in the left-hand list of folders/sections and is displayed above New and Import buttons.
Click Import and choose Upload a File.
In the pop-up that appears, click the Browse Files button and select the .zip file you obtained from your textbook publisher or other source.
When you've finished importing question banks, click Done Editing Questions.
Use the following instructions to share questions you've previously created from other quizzes/exams.
Perform Steps 1 through 8 from the section above on importing questions from a .zip package.
Click the Import button and choose Browse Existing Questions.
Click the Source button.
Scroll to the name of the quiz containing the questions you want to store in this Library Section/folder and click the name.
To select all the questions, tick the checkbox at the top of the list, to the left of the # of items, or tick the check-boxes for each question you want to import.
Click the Import button.
When you've finished importing questions, click Done Editing Questions.
Follow the steps in Part 3: Adding Questions through Step 4.
Click the Import button and select Browse Question Library.
Select the questions you wish to include in this quiz/exam and click the Import button.
Tip:
Have exam questions written out in an MS Word file? We've installed a copy of D2L’s Quiz converter in the Self-Paced Brightspace Training. Note, If you have never visited the training before, the previous link will not work. Enroll in the training and then try the first link.
True or False (T/F): create true or false questions
Multiple Choice (M/C): create multiple choice quiz questions.
Multi-Select (M-S): Students select more than one correct answer.
Written Response (WR): Require a response of a paragraph (or more)
Short Answer (SA): Require a response of a word to a few sentences.
Multi-Short Answer (MSA): Require a response of more than one word or sentence
Fill in the Blanks (FIB): create questions with one or more blanks to fill in
Matching (MAT): create equal or unequal lists of items to match to one another
Ordering (ORD): create a question that requires putting steps in order
Arithmetic (2+2): create questions with random numeric variables.
Significant Figures (x10): Students are able to enter their answers in scientific notation.
