Brightspace: What's New

In Blackboard, the Discussion looks like this:

Blackboard Discussion Board Structures

• Discussion Board: Top-level course-wide tool

• Forums: Exist within a discussion board and are usually used for individual assignments. i.e.  Week 1 forum, Chapter three forum, etc. There can be as many forums as you need.

• Threads: Exist within forums and can be created by students to reply to the prompt for the forum or by instructors if you're using discussion boards for groups. 

In Brightspace, the Discussion structure is below. The main difference is the addition of topics. For most people, you'll create a Forum as the main place for your course discussions and then Topics become the equivalent of Blackboard threads. 

Brightspace Discussion Board Structures

• Discussions: Top-level course-wide tool

• Forums exist within the discussions tool and have to be created first.  Forums could represent units, weeks, top-level subjects, etc. but for most people, the forum is going to be the main place for all course discussions. Forums are not gradable.

• Topics are the second level in the discussion board setup. Topics could represent specific prompts or questions. Topics are gradable.

• Threads are the bottom level of the discussion board setup and usually represent the responses to the prompts from Topics

Find additional help with Discussion Boards in Brightspace here. 

The major difference between Blackboard and Brightspace in groups are the options around the types of groups. In Blackboard, the options are:

• single group or group set

  • Self-Enroll (students can select to join a group)

  • Random Enroll (instructor can set the number of students or the number of groups, the system will manually assign)

  • Manual Enroll (instructor sets the number of groups and then assigns students to a group

In Brightspace, the options are: 

1. 1. # of Groups - No Auto Enrollment: creates the requested number of groups and allows you to add students to it.
      This option is the same as the Blackboard group set and manual enroll.

   2. # of Groups: set the number of requested groups and then choose to randomize users in groups or assign users based on their order in the classist.
      This option is the same as the Blackboard group set and random enroll

   3. Groups of #: set the number of users for each group and choose to randomize users in groups or assign users based on their order in the classlist.
      This option is similar to the Blackboard group set and random enroll option, but is also based on their order in the classlist.

   4. Groups of # - Self Enrollment: set the number of users per group and users can self enroll into the group. You can also set the self enrollment start and end date and choose what to do with students who don't enroll into a group.
      This option is similar to the Blackboard group set and self enroll option, but gives additional settings around dates/enrollments and is set based on how many students are in each group 

   5. # of Groups - Self Enrollment: set the number of groups and users can self enroll into the group. You can also set the self enrollment start and end date and choose what to do with students who don't enroll into a group.
      This option is similar to the Blackboard group set and self enroll option, but gives additional settings around dates/enrollments and is set based on how many groups in the class.

   6. # of Groups, Capacity of # - Self Enrollment: set the number of users per group and the number of groups. This will allow you to control how many students self enroll into each group. You can also set the self enrollment start and end date and choose what to do with students who don't enroll into a group.
      This option is similar to the Blackboard group set and self enroll option, but allows for additional settings to control the number of students in each group and the dates around enrollment

   7. Single user, member-specific groups: sets up individual groups for each student.
      This option is similar to the Blackboard single group option, but allows for the creation of individual groups for each student. 

Learn more about Brightspace groups. 

The QuickEval tool in Brightspace is very similar to the Needs Grading tool in Blackboard. Both tools populate new items that need to be graded. The main difference is that the QuickEval tool will allow you to see more statistics and information about submissions and course activity. Learn more about QuickEval on the Brightspace Assignments page. 

Brightspace doesn't have tools that directly align with the blog or journal tool in Blackboard. But, you can utilize Brightspace groups and discussions to set up a group discussion (i.e. Blackboard blog) or utilize Brightspace assignments to set up a discussion between instructor and students.

Group Discussions

For group discussions, follow the instructions on the discussion documentation page. 

Individual Journals

For 1:1 discussions between instructor and student: we recommend using the Assignments Tool using one of the following approaches: 

Assignment Tool With Multiple Submissions Allowed

Pros:

• Students and instructors can see all submissions to the journal

• Ability to provide one grade for all journal posts during the class (single grade book item/column)

Cons:

• Feedback is all in one place and can accidentally be overridden

• Giving grades to individual submissions can be confusing

• If your prompts for the journal change, you would have to update/change the instructions to include the prompts 

Assignment Tool For Each Journal Prompt

Pros:

• Each journal can be graded/given feedback separately

• The prompt for each journal can be associated with each assignment

Cons:

• If you have weekly journals/a lot of journals, this could add multiple columns to your grade book

• Each submission is separate and isn't easily viewable from one assignment to the next

In Blackboard the most commonly used content block to build is Item. In Brightspace, the equivalent of Item is File. To add a new file, go to Upload/Create on a module page and then select Create a File. From there, you can build right within the text box, or use the document templates to format your text. You can learn more about building in Brightspace here. 

In Blackboard, there is the content area whereas in Brightspace there is the content module. The equivalent of Content folders in Blackboard that sit inside a content area is a content sub-module that sits inside a content module). The equivalent of a Blackboard content item which sits inside a content area or folder is a content topic which sits inside a module or submodule.