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One of the questions on the survey asked participants to share features or things they wished that Brightspace did. We found that many of these features were things that Brightspace already does. The items below cover the most frequently asked questions about Brightspace features. They are grouped by Brightspace feature or tool.
QuickEval makes grading workflows easier to manage as it brings anything in the course that needs to be graded (i.e. assignment, quiz, or discussion) into one place. Watch a short video that walks you through the following things in QuickEval:
How to use filters and sort by date submitted
How to grade and publish grades
Brightspace allows you to download student work in bulk and then upload it in bulk to provide feedback. Learn more about bulk downloading/uploading with both written and video instructions.
Learn more about building and grading assignments.
If you have a folder on your desktop of files that you want to bring into your course, select all of the files and then drag them on to the module where you want them to live. In this short video, you'll see a demo of this.
There are two ways to move content from one module to another listed below. You can also see a demo of both options in this short video.
Go to the item you want to move, click the carrot/arrow icon to the right of it, click Move To, and select the module you want the item to move to.
Find the item you want to move, click on the dots to the left of it, and drag the item to the module you want to move it to.
We have a few tips for navigating Brightspace effectively:
Use the search box in Content and encourage your students to use it.
Use the breadcrumb navigation that shows up on the top left of the screen when you click into a module/submodule to go back a page.
Don't build too many layers of submodules! While this is more of a building tip, it makes it so much easier to navigate your course when you don't have too many nested submodules.
Release dates refer to the "hard" dates in the system that are used to control student access to content. The following tools have release dates:
Content: A Start date on a module will show students the title of the module, but they cannot click on it to view the contents until the Start Date. If you don't want students to see the title of the module, Hide it instead. End Dates on Content should be used sparingly because the whole module will go hidden to students after the End Date.
Our Brightspace Building page has more information on building best practices and navigating Brightspace.
Setting up discussions by groups allows for more engaging discussions among smaller groups of students. Learn about setting up a group discussion.
To create a place for your students to post a journal-type assignment that only you and the student can see, set up a group based on single-user member specific enrollment. Once you have your groups set up, you'll follow the instructions above in Q1 and choose the Restrict topic and separate threads option.
In addition to posting to Brightspace, announcements also automatically go out via email to those in the course. If students report that they don't get your announcements as emails, it is likely because they have disabled notifications. This video shows how to check your notification settings.
Learn more about creating announcements with start dates.
The announcements tool will send an email to students when the announcement is released. Alternatively, you can also send an email to a single student, group of students, or all students.
Utilize announcements or emails to communicate with students in Brightspace.
Read through these instructions or watch a short video that show you how to course copy.
Read or watch the instructions on this page walk you through how to do a full or partial course copy. The process starts out the same, but splits when it allows you to choose between copying a whole course vs. copying just elements. Brightspace gives you a lot of flexibility in copying just pieces of a course.
Read through the instructions below or watch this short video for a demo.
Go to Students & Grades, click on Grades
From the Enter Grades page, go to a student's name and click the carrot/arrow icon to the right
Click Preview and a new window will open to show you how that student will see their grade book.
Read through the instructions below or watch this short video for a demo.
The QuickEval tool allows you to view by submission (typically by individual user) or by activity. If you view by submission, you can then sort by Submission Date if you click on the words "Submission Date."
You can also use the Filters (in the top right of the page to the left of the Search bar) to hone in on a specific assignment or assignments.
Read through the instructions below or watch this short video for a demo.
You might see a final grade and wonder how the system calculated it. One way to see that is to go to the individual's grade book. To do that:
Go to Students & Grades and click on Grades
Scroll down and click on a student's name
A new page will load
Scroll down and you can see how each individual assignment contributes towards the final grade
While there are markup and feedback tools in Brightspace, some folks prefer to download a submission to their iPad or computer, mark it up, then upload it back to the students. You can also do a bulk download of all assignments as a zip file.
We generally recommend folks use QuickEval to evaluate students. However, some folks prefer to be able to see a list of all students and be able to click into their submissions. To access:
Go to Students & Grades and click on Grades
Go to the Assignment you want to assess
Click the carrot/arrow icon to the right of the assignment name
Click Enter Grades
From there, you'll be taken to a new page where you'll see a place to enter in grades, feedback, and access each student's submission
You can also set grades in bulk from here
Make your changes and then click Save and Close
Brightspace uses a system called schemes to be able to set up the display of grades. Schemes can be set up as letter grades, percentages, scores, etc. Create a new scheme that aligns with your grading policy.
The colors that show up can be turned off. To do that:
Go to Students & Grades and click on Grades
Click on the word Settings in the top right
Click on Personal Display Settings, scroll down
Uncheck the box for Grade Scheme Color
Click Save
In Brightspace, tools like assignments, quizzes, and discussions have their own tool pages in Brightspace. What that means is that any time you create an assignment, quiz, or discussion, it will live on that tool page. Then, you can build a link to that tool item in Content. With that in mind, if you build a link in Content to an assignment, quiz, or discussion then students will be able to access those items on the module page or via the tool link in Other Course Tools.
Feel free to point students to this helpful page on our documentation site. If that doesn't help, feel free to point students to the OIT Service Desk.
Group assignments in Brightspace expect just one student from each group to submit to the assignment. This means that when an assignment is graded, the same grade will be applied to all students in that group. The option to set an assignment as a group assignment lives under Submission & Completion.
Using groups can help to manage students across larger courses or merged courses. Groups can be used in discussions, assignments, release conditions, etc. You can also use Groups to filter in tools like Assignments and Grades to be able to focus on one group at a time.
Two (or more) sections can be merged together prior to the start of the semester. While this feature provides efficiency for faculty, it may cause a potential violation from the student perspective, as they may not wish their enrollment in a course to be visible to those in another section. In order to mitigate this risk, there is a syllabus statement that you should add to your syllabi for any courses in which you have merged sections in Brightspace.
The Written Response question type allows for students to write an open-ended answer. Since there can multiple correct answers, instructors must manually grade these question types.
In comparison, the Short Answer question type is intended to be computer graded where there are specific short phrases or single words you are looking for.
If you have a lot of Written Response questions, don't auto-publish results. Under Evaluation and Feedback when setting up the quiz, uncheck Auto-publish attempt results immediately upon completion.
There are a few steps to take to ensure that students will see feedback:
When setting up the quiz, go to the right-hand side of the quiz set up window and open Evaluation & Feedback. Then, go to "when published, display to learners that students can see". Below that, you'll want to select the type of questions you want them to see. For instance, if you choose Incorrect questions only, with correct answers then students would see the questions they got wrong with your feedback.
When students complete the quiz and you go in to grade, you'll be able to provide overall feedback and/or feedback on individual questions by clicking on Expand.
In order to see the feedback, students should go to Other Course Tools, click on Quizzes, click on Feedback: On Attempt, and click on the attempt. From there, they should be able to see the feedback. Note: if you set an end date on the quiz, students won't be able to access the quiz this way.
These instructions walk you through how to set up a quiz, add questions, and make it available to students.
After six years, course material will be purged from Brightspace and will no longer be available for access and will not be able to be restored. This is done annually, after the summer session.
The instructor can always choose to perform a Course Copy to transfer any/all materials from a previous course to another course (this does NOT transfer student data). If you do not have another course to import into, a Blueprint Course can be requested.
If an instructor wants to archive student records, the following actions can be made:
In your course, click Grades from the navigation bar.
Click Enter Grades underneath the navigation bar.
Click the Export button.
If you have an Export Grade Items For dropdown, choose All Users and click Apply.
The Key Field should be Both.
Select your desired options under Grade Values.
Under User Details check the First Name, Last Name, and Email checkboxes.
Under Choose Grades to Export, click the top checkbox next to Grade Item to select all.
Click either Export to CSV or the Export to Excel button.
An Export Grades screen will appear with a progress bar. When your file is ready, the bar will read Complete. Once this occurs, click the Download button to save the file.
Go to the Assignments tool in your course shell.
Click on the Submission Folder you wish to download from.
At the bottom of the screen, change the Per Page dropdown to 200 to ensure that all submissions display on one page.
Scroll up to the top of your list of students. Click the top checkbox to select all students.
Click the Download link above the list of students.
A Downloading Files window will pop-up. When the window prompts you that your file is ready to download, click the Download button to save the .zip file to your computer.
You will need to unzip the file on your computer to see the downloaded submission(s).
In your course, click Other Course Tools from the navigation bar. Then click Quizzes.
Locate the Quiz you wish to download from and click the dropdown arrow next to the quiz’s name.
Choose Grade from the menu.
Click either the Export to CSV or the Export to Excel button.
A window will pop-up to produce your file, and it will automatically download to your computer when the window disappears.
To save more details, click on a quiz and then click on Statistics. Each tab can be exported separately (User Stats, Question Stats, Question Details).
Print Discussions
Go to the Discussions tool in your course shell
Click Settings in the upper right, underneath the navigation bar.
Under Default View, change from Reading View to Grid View.
Click Save.
Click on the Discussion Topic you wish to print.
Scroll down to the bottom and change the Per Page to 200.
Above all the posts, click the top checkbox to select all posts.
Click the Print link that is above all the posts.
A window will pop-up. Click the Print button to physically print the posts or save a PDF.
Repeat if you have multiple pages even after changing the per page to 200.