Have you taught your course in Brightspace before and just need a quick refresher on all the things you need to do to prepare for a new term? You've come to the right place! The tips below will ensure your semester starts off smooth and your students are happy!
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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).
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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.
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Make sure the assignment, quiz, discussion, etc. points or weights listed in your syllabus match what's in the Grades tool!
If you don’t have a syllabus, use the USM Syllabus Template as a base to start from.
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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.
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Our friends at USM libraries can help you get electronically reserved library materials into your course.
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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.
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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.
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Do you have a co-instructor? If you do, here are instructions on how to add them to your course.
Important: Neither faculty, nor Learning Designers 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.
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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.
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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:
In your course, click on Course Admin in the Navbar
Select Course Offering Information
Scroll down and check "Course is active"
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.
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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.
Broken links? Suggestions for improvements or additions? Email caihelp@maine.edu.
