Brightspace: Explore Course Admin Settings and Tools

This setting allows you to set the default behavior when adding availability dates to activities (e.g., Assignments, Discussions).

You can change "Course Image" (the image that appears on your Course Homepage Banner and on your Course Thumbnail on the Brightspace landing page). To add an image, under "Course Image", click "Browse."

Otherwise, this page mostly contains technical information related to your course (e.g., course offering name, course offering code, etc) that you will not be able to edit.

You can create a new course homepage (which is the landing page for your course).

Widgets are items/applications that appear on our course homepage (e.g., Visual Table of Contents, Calendar, Announcements, etc). You have the ability to move, edit, remove, or add widgets to your course homepage.

Display all upcoming events to learners in one spot. Post events such as project due dates, office hours, in-class events, and more to the calendar.

A tool to post & organize course content, including documents, images, media files, URL links, and existing course activities (Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions).

You can add release conditions, grade items, and learning objectives to topics to ensure users navigate through course materials while fulfilling specific course requirements and learning expectations. You can also monitor class and user progress as learners work through course content.

This is a course design tool that allows you to visualize and review your entire course at once.

Learn More about Course Builder

Using the Course Builder tool

This tool provides task-based direction and assistance for your course design. Go to "Course Admin", click "Course Design Accelerator" and follow the on-screen instructions.

Allows you to provide answers to a list of common questions that your students might have.

Allows you to provide students with definitions. Go to "Course Admin", click "Glossary", and follow the on-screen instructions.

This allows you to copy content from another Brightspace course, allows to import a Blackboard directly into Brightspace, or export your Brightspace course.

The Instructional Design Wizard helps you create a course blueprint by providing a step-by-step process for items, like defining course learning objectives, incorporating assessment activities, identifying appropriate instructional methods and activities, etc...

Go to "Course Admin", click "Instructional Design Wizard" and follow the on-screen instructions.

This is used in conjunction with the "Instructional Design Wizard". Go to "Course Admin", click "Learning Activity Library", and follow the on-screen instructions.

The Learning Activity Library allows you to view, activate or deactivate, and add to the activity descriptions used within the "Instructional Design Wizard".

This tool is used in conjunction with the "User Links" widget on your course homepage.

If you add the "User Link" widget on your course homepage, then you can share links with your students on the widget by using the Links tool.

View, bulk edit, and bulk offset the date availability and set the calendar status of course items in your course, including content modules, assignments, quizzes, discussion forums, etc...

Learn More about Manage Dates

Using the Manage Dates tool

It is file management system for your course. You can visually see all of the files in your course.

You can create registers to track attendance for activities within your organization or course. You can track attendance for any number of activities and customize your registers to suit your needs.

Note: The attendance score is not automatically created in a the Gradebook. You will need to create Attendance column in the Gradebook.

Attendance Tool

Create & Manage Attendance Registers

Create & Manage Attendance Sessions

This tracks your learners' overall progress as a course and individually.

Class Progress Overview

Using the Class Progress Tool

This is a full list of the participants (e.g. students, teaching assistants) in your course.

Video: Overview of the Classlist tool (1 minute)

Visual Tour of the Classlist tool

Organize students into small groups in your Brightspace course. You can then restrict discussion topics, content modules, graded items (e.g. Assignments) or other parts of a course site to a specific group so that it is only visible to its members.

Learn More about Groups

Video: Define Groups

Using the Groups tool

(Note: Sections are automatically created by Brightspace and Banner. Please disregard where it talks about "Sections" in the documentation.)

Seating charts provide a visual representation of your classroom seating arrangement. You can activate and deactivate seats to mimic the physical layout of your class and assign learners permanent spots in the chart.

You can use the Assignments tool to create and edit assignments, see users’ submission times, view submissions on the Evaluate Submission page, associate assignments to rubrics and competencies, and return submissions with grades and feedback.

Used to highlight important or required assignments, readings, or other items students need to complete.

Widgets are items/applications that appear on our course homepage (e.g. Visual Table of Contents, Calendar, Announcements etc...). You have the ability to move, edit, remove, or add widgets to your course homepage.

Quick Eval offers evaluators a single location to view all learner submissions, including assignments, quizzes, and discussions, and offers robust filtering and sorting capabilities to easily access and grade all submissions.

Build quizzes using varying question types. Create quizzes that randomly select questions from a question pool or that shuffle the order of questions.

Use the Rubrics tool to create rubrics easily and efficiently within a course. You can associate rubrics with assessments and grade items; and during assessment, rubrics can standardize the evaluation of learner work and facilitate the ability to provide feedback.

Self assessments are a formative assessment tool that can provide learners with immediate feedback on their responses to a series of questions. Assessments can be taken multiple times.

Students’ answers are not saved and cannot be reviewed. Students can see the answer feedback immediately after answering the question and the overall feedback after completing the self-assessment.

Gather anonymous or non-anonymous opinions and information from your class. Unlike quizzes, survey questions do not require right or wrong answers and can include Likert-style rating questions.

Announcements allow you to post important course information to students directly in Brightspace. Students see announcements when they log into Brightspace and access the course.

You can set up forums and topics for users to ask questions, discuss course content and assignments, and work together in assigned groups and sections.

Intelligent Agents send an automated email when instructor-defined criteria are met.

For example, instructors can email students who have not logged in recently, whose grades have fallen below a certain level, or who have viewed (or not viewed) specific topics in Content.

The Insights Dashboard contains reporting for Engagement, Learner Engagement, and Assessment Quality.