Navigating Brightspace Courses
This chapter will explore the anatomy of a Brightspace course to help you get your find and use important areas of your course.
Embedded Files
A Typical Course
A Typical Course
If your course is a book, then the Homepage is the cover and your materials housed within the Content tool, are the pages. When you enter a course, you will see the Homepage in addition to the Minibar and Navbar, which appear no matter where you are in Brightspace. The Homepage itself has three panels on it, called widgets. Below you will find a description of each of them and the other major elements in Brightspace. You and your students can “open the book” to read the course’s materials by either clicking the Content link in the Navbar, or on one of the Module tiles in the Course Modules widget.
The Minibar and Navbar are used for getting around Brightspace and providing notifications. They will be explored in detail in the next section.
The Homepage is the “cover” of your course and displays information through several widgets.
The Announcements widget displays the most recent announcements posted in the course
The Course Modules widget shows a tile for each of the top-level modules in the Content tool.
The Calendar widget displays upcoming dates for items in your course which have Start, End and Due dates attached to them.
The Minibar and Navbar
The Minibar and Navbar
Getting around Brightspace usually involves the Minibar and Navbar. The top half with the USM logo and name of the course is the Minibar, and the dark blue strip below that is the Navbar. Below you will find an illustration with descriptions of all the links and controls found there.
Course Home: Takes you to the front homepage of the current course you are viewing.
Content: The content tool is the core of your course. This is where you will create links to content and activities, and where students will go to move sequentially through your course.
Course Resources: This menu contains tools that provide information to instructors and students about the course, such as Announcements and the Course Calendar.
Assessments: This menu contains activities the student interacts with in the course for a grade. The Brightspace Grades Tool (Gradebook) can be found here.
Tools: This menu contains links to helpful tools such as Groups, Kaltura's My Media tool, and Zoom.
Help: The help menu displays resources and documentation about Brightspace, as well as campus-specific resources about student and faculty services.
Course Admin: This button is only seen by instructors in a course. This will take you to the full list of behind-the-scenes tools instructors have at their disposal in Brightspace. Students do not see this link.
System Home Button: This button will take you back to the University of Maine System Brightspace homepage.
USM Logo: Clicking the USM logo will take you back to the University of Southern Maine Brightspace homepage.
Course Title: This tells you where you are in Brightspace. It will always display the name of whatever course you are currently looking at. Clicking the course title will take you back the course's homepage.
Course Select Button (aka, "The Waffle"): Clicking this brings up a list of all the courses you are either a student or instructor in. If you have a lot, you can filter the list by trying in the search field located in the panel. Clicking the "pin" icons next to a course will make it always appear at the top of the list.
Message Alert Button: This button shows you any instant messages or emails sent to you through Brightspace.
Subscription Alerts Button: This button will give you quick access to updates on discussion forums that you have subscribed to.
Update Alerts Button: The update alerts button displays information on course due dates, submitted assignments and grades.
Your Profile: Clicking your name brings up a menu that allows you to set your preferences for receiving notifications about your course, and customizing your Brightspace user profile. For instructors, this is also where the "View as Learner" tool is located.
The Cog: If you have access to any Admin tools, they will be located here.
Common Elements
Common Elements
There are a number of commonly used icons, buttons, and indicators used in Brightspace. Here is a list of the most common ones and what they mean or do.
Action Buttons
Action Buttons
Action Buttons, which looks like a little down arrow or chevon as seen in the image to the right, are found throughout Brightspace. They can usually be found to the right of the title of something. Clicking an Action Button will display a menu of options. This is where you will go to Edit something, such as an assessment, you previously created.
Get Help Buttons
Get Help Buttons
Many of the options in Brightspace have Get Help Buttons next to them. They appear as a grey circle with a white question mark inside. Clicking one will display a pop-up message with more info describing that option.
Visibility Icons
Visibility Icons
Many items in Brightspace have a button/indicator which tells you whether or not your students can see that item. Items with a crossed-out eye are hidden, and those with an eye icon, or no visibility icon, are visible. In the Content tool, you can click the visibility icon to change the item from visible to hidden, and vice-versa.
Ribbon Icon
Ribbon Icon
This is not a button, but rather an indicator of whether or not whatever it is next is a graded item with point value. Note: This does not necessarily mean that item is connected to a Grade Item in the Grades Tool, so it it important to check that this assessment is connected to a Grade Item. See example images below on how to check if you assessment is connected to a Grade Item. Learn more about working with assignments.
Example of graded assessment that is linked to a Grade Item as seen from the assessment editing window.
Example of graded assessment that not linked to a Grade Item as seen from the assessment editing window.
The Content Tool
The Content Tool
The Content tool is where you and your students will be spending most of your time in your course. It’s where all of the text, images, videos, audio, and files for the course are presented. You can reach the Content tool by clicking the link of the same name on the course Navbar. The different elements of the Content tool are described below.
The Search Field will search all of the titles and descriptions of things in the course. It does not search within files, however.
The Syllabus page will display the the first time you enter the Content tool in a course. This is the designated place to enter a description of your course and add your syllabus.
Bookmarks will list any items in the course you have bookmarked. This is primarily useful for students. You cannot make anything display here for students.
Similar to the Calendar widget, the Course Schedule will display all of the start, end and due dates you have set on items in your course.
The Table of Contents displays a listing of all the content in the course modules without descriptions.
This section lists all of the course’s Modules. Think of modules as folders for containing all of the necessary course materials for a single lesson, week, or lecture.
The content view will change to display whatever you have clicked on in the left-hand column of the content tool.
View of a Course Module
View of a Course Module
Modules can contain other modules or Topics (not to be confused with Discussion Topics). Topics are the collective name Brightspace uses for text, media, and assessments in the Content Tool. Clicking the name of a module in the left-hand column of the Content tool will list the topics and modules it contains in the content view.
The Title of the currently selected module can be changed by clicking on it. Next to the title is a menu button to set various options for the current module.
Click this area to set start, end, and due Dates or Restrictions for everything in the module.
Click the Module Description to edit it. It’s a great place to put a summary or list of tasks and objectives.
The Upload/Create button allows you to add new topics (text, media, assessments) to the module.
To add existing files to a module using the Upload / Create button, choose Upload Files > Course Offering Files and search for the files in the available folders.
The Existing Activities allows you to add quizzes, assignments, and discussions you’ve already created in their respective tools to the module.
The Bulk Edit button is a wonderful tool to quickly rearrange, change names, dates and descriptions on all topics in the module.
The Visibility button allows you to set whether or not students can see the module and its contents. The depicted module is currently visible.
The Topic List shows all of the topics in this module. Clicking the blue topic headings will display its respective content. Each topic can also have a description beneath it. Brightspace automatically displays the instructions for assignments, discussions, and quizzes/exams in the topic description. Each topic also has a black, Action button that allows you to select additional options for that topic.
The Brightspace Editor
The Brightspace Editor
The Brightspace Editor is just a text editor, like a stripped-down version of MS Word. It lets you create text content directly in Brightspace, add images, videos, hyperlinks, and other content. Any time you are editing pages, descriptions, assignment instructions, etc, you are using the Brightspace Editor. It also lets you edit the HTML code of whatever you are working with if you wish.
Click the Ellipses button if your Editor doesn’t show all the buttons depicted here.
Set the Format of the typed or highlighted text, such as whether it is a heading, paragraph, etc.
Text Styling (Bold, Italic, Underline, etc)
Text Alignment (left, right, center)
Lists and indentation.
The Insert Stuff button.
The Insert Quicklinks button.
The Insert Image button.
Equations (graphical, chemistry, MathML, and LaTeX )
The Insert Other button (tables, special characters, emoji, etc.)
Font and Font size selector
The Format Painter
Accessibility Checker
Word Count
Preview
Source Code (for editing the HTML of the content)
Undo / Redo buttons
Full Screen Mode
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