Brightspace
Brightspace is the Course Management System used by the University for instruction and course organization. Brightspace provides a number of tools, options, features, etc. that instructors can use to customize courses and experiences for students.
Check out the What's New page for Brightspace updates
How To Access Brightspace
Go to https://my.sjf.edu/
Login with your Fisher credentials
Select Employees
Select LaunchPad
Look for Brightspace
For Faculty
Brightspace has a YouTube playlist to help faculty get up and running.
Not sure where to start? The Blackboard to Brightspace Course Migration page has information on what things to look for when reviewing your courses for the first time in Brightspace.
Pre-Semester Prep: helpful guide for common tasks to prepare your course for the semester.
Adding Users To A Brightspace Course and Brightspace User Types
Brightspace Assignments: Organizing, creating, and grading assignments.
Attendance Tracking: Using the built-in attendance tracking tool within Brightspace.
Brightspace Basics: Default course view, customizing course navigation, managing users, and content areas. This documentation is offered in step-by-step written instructions.
Brightspace Building: steps to building content in Brightspace including the content page, building modules, and setting dates/restrictions.
Brightspace Discussion Boards: set up, engage, and grade discussion conversations on Brightspace.
Brightspace Grade Book: Building, categorizing, and organizing grades to calculate course grades. This documentation is offered in step-by-step written instructions.
Brightspace Groups: set up groups for students to work in and create group assignments.
Brightspace Outcomes: evaluate students based on the Fisher Outcomes as well as program or school-specific outcomes.
Brightspace Rubrics: evaluate students based on pre-determined criteria.
Brightspace Quizzes: creation, setup, and settings available for quizzing students.
Other tools:
Intelligent Agents: this tool will help you create automated messages that you can send to your students.
Video Note: record up to 30 min of video content and post it to announcements, content, assignments, etc.
Release Conditions: find the uses and types of conditions and then how to build them.
Explore the Brightspace FAQs page for common questions we receive from faculty about how to use Brightspace most effectively.
For Students
Getting Started: this page will show you an overview of the Brightspace homepage, Brightspace courses, submitting assignments, submitting discussion threads, and checking your grades.
Changing personal settings: i.e. profile photo, notifications, and account settings
Additional Support
There are a number of tools that integrate with Brightspace. Find resources and support by clicking on the links below:
Google Drive: Google Drive documents can be uploaded in the following areas: Content, Discussions, Assignments, Email, and Announcements
Blackboard to Brightspace Migration Updates
Key Dates
Faculty & Staff Access to the System - January 4, 2023
Request Creation of Sandbox Course - January 4, 2023
Summer 2023 Courses Created - January 9, 2023
Workshops & Open Lab Sessions - Starting January 2023
Fall 2023 Courses Created - April 2023
Content Migration
Two-Phase Bulk Migration:
Stage 1: Bulk Migration courses between Fall 2019 - Fall 2022 (past 10 semesters) - Begins January 2023
Stage 2: Bulk Migration of Spring 2023 courses - Begins May 2023 (immediately after the semester ends, completed by May 31, 2023).
Individual Course Migration - Begins January 2023
Individual faculty request individual courses (prior to fall 2019) to migrate - export/import option
Student Data Archival
Two-Phase Student Data Archival:
Stage 1: Bulk archive all student data from all courses on Blackboard (Fall 2016 - Fall 2022) - Begins January 2023
Stage 2: Bulk archive of all student data from all Spring 2023 courses - Begins May 2023 (immediately after the semester ends, completed by May 31, 2023).
Important! - This is not migrated to Brightspace, but will be available via another platform if student data needs to be retrieved. Will have access to this data from May 2023 - May 2024. Data that is needed must be pulled from Blackboard prior to May 15, 2023. This archival is in place as a backup for any data that was not captured prior to that date.
Incomplete Grades - Spring 2023
Spring 23 grades are due 5/8/23 and incomplete grades are due 6/16/23 (after Blackboard is no longer available). Any faculty giving an incomplete to a student in the spring 23 semester must download all necessary course materials and student work by May 8th in order to support the student through the incomplete process outside of any course management system. Email and Google Drive may be helpful tools in this situation.