Quick Start for Established Courses

Find your upcoming semester’s course shell(s)

Look in the left-hand column of USM’s Brightspace landing page for your courses. Contact help@maine.edu if you can’t find them. Once you've found them, be sure to Pin them so they appear at the top of you courses list (and unpin any old courses you aren't actively working with).

Copy course content from the previous semester’s shell

If you have material from a previous semester, use the Copying Courses instructions to use that material again! You will have the option to copy "Copy All Components" to copy the whole course, or "Select Components" to only import some components and offset dates. Note: Student data does not get copied, only faculty created content. 

Update your syllabus with all current course information & replace the old one in Brightspace

• Make sure the assignment, quiz, discussion, etc. points or weights listed in your syllabus match what's in the Grades tool!

• How to add a syllabus to Brightspace

• Updating an old syllabus in Brightspace

• If you don’t have a syllabus, use the USM Syllabus Template as a base to start from.

Update all course dates, due dates, date restrictions, etc. 

If you did not offset dates when you copied components over to your new course, you can do this very quickly using the Manage Dates tool, which is found on the Course Admin page. 

• Here is a demonstration of how the Manage Dates tool works from D2L.

• Brightspace has many places you can set dates for various things and they don't always function the way you would expect. See Dates and How They Work for a handy table of the various Date settings in Brightspace and what their effects are.

• Don't forget to set the Time field on your dates! Brightspace automatically sets the Time field to the current time. 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.

Set up your E-Reserves (Ares)

Our friends at USM libraries can help you get electronically reserved library materials into your course.  

Test your course to make sure everything works

Every course has a special "Preview Learner" enrolled in it that allows you to test out your course as if you were a student. You can see the way your course looks to students and even submit assignments to make sure assignment, quiz and grading workflows work as you intended. Be sure to check your course videos, web links, and any third-party add-ons to Brightspace, like Ares Course Reserves, GoReact, and publisher integrations. Here are instructions on how to use the Preview Learner account.

Remove outdated Announcements 

When you copy a course, old announcements from the term you last taught your course are copied too. Unless you planned to re-use them, you can clean out the old announcements with these instructions.

Enroll other instructors, TAs, etc. into course

Do you have a co-instructor? If you do,  here are instructions on how to add them to your course. 

Important: Neither you, nor CTEL have the ability to add students, including Teaching Assistants (TAs) to a course in Brightspace. Students must enroll in the course via the Office of Student Registration. Faculty can contact the registrar's office to enroll TAs. They will then be automatically added to your course in Brightspace shortly after.

Enable Special Access for students receiving accommodations through the Disability Services Center

Brightspace has the ability to give specific students different time limits and due-dates for assignments and quizzes or exams. There are two ways of doing this depending upon the situation:

• Setting up a student's special time limits for all Quizzes/Exams in the course.

• Setting up a student's special time limits for a Single quiz or exam.

• Finally, you can also configure Special Access rules for students who need them under the Availability Dates & Conditions tab shown when you edit an Assignment or Discussion.

Make Your Course Active!

This is perhaps the most important step of all! Students can't see your course until you've set it to Active status. To do this:

1. In your course, click on Course Admin in the Navbar

2. Select Course Offering Information

3. Scroll down and check "Course is active"

4. Click the blue Save button at bottom of the screen

Don't wait until the last minute to do this. Students will be looking for your course before the semester starts and they will get anxious if they don't see your course. We recommend making courses active two-weeks prior to the start of the course. You can hide all the individual parts you don't want them to see until you are ready, but please make sure to have your Gradebook and Assignments in place before making the course active.

Send a Welcome Announcement

You can post announcements to your students via the Announcements tool. Announcements are displayed on your course's landing page and are also emailed to the students enrolled in your course.

• Important: Brightspace does not send an announcement via email if your course has not been set to Active (see Step 9)!

• If you created your welcome announcement before making your course active, you can force Brightspace to send it out again via email by editing the announcement, selecting the Major Edit checkbox, and saving the announcement.

• Read more about the Announcements tool.