Brightspace Guides
Course Setup
Setting up your live course
This guide explains the steps for preparing and copying your content into your live Brightspace course.
Changing the Course Banner and Text
This guide provides instructions for customizing the course banner image and text, which can make your course easier to recognize at a glance and can help distinguish between multiple sections of the same course.
Gradebook
Setting up the Gradebook
Whether you are setting up a new gradebook in Brightspace or reorganizing a migrated gradebook, this is one of the most crucial steps to take when creating your Brightspace course.
Cleaning a Migrated Gradebook
Clean up your migrated Brightspace gradebook by removing duplicate or unlinked grade items, organizing categories, and ensuring accurate grade calculations. This guide walks you through the essential post-migration cleanup steps to create a clear, student-friendly gradebook.
Creating a Weighted Gradebook
Need to build a weighted gradebook in Brightspace? This guide explains how to configure a weighted grading system, organize categories and grade items, and avoid common setup mistakes so your gradebook matches your syllabus.
Releasing Final Grades to Students
This guide provides step-by-step instructions for reviewing gradebook settings and making final grades visible to students in Brightspace. You may find it especially helpful when students can see individual grades but cannot see their overall course grades.
Quizzes
Student Review of Quiz Results
This guide walks you through the settings for displaying quiz scores, student responses, correct answers, and feedback. You’ll also learn how to control when results become available so students can review their performance at the appropriate time.
Quiz Question Converter
To import questions in bulk to the Quiz Question Library, you must use a specially formatted CSV file. This D2L community page has instructions and two conversion tools for turning a Word document into a readable CSV file.
Discussions
Designing and Facilitating Online Discussions
This guide explains the why before the how. You’ll find best practices grounded in sound pedagogy, along with step-by-step instructions for setting up, managing, and grading discussions in Brightspace.
Groups
Faculty Guide: Using Groups and Sections in Brightspace
This faculty guide is a practical resource for using Groups and Sections in Brightspace, combining instructional best practices with step-by-step directions for setting them up and managing them. Faculty may find it especially helpful when planning group projects, discussions, peer review, or other collaborative activities—or when managing students in a crosslisted/merged or large-enrollment course.
Attendance
Using the Attendance tool in Brightspace
This guide explains the steps for creating schemes and registers. Plus, how to record attendance in the tool and move that to the gradebook. You’ll also find steps for adding a view of attendance for students.
Brightspace Advanced Training – Recordings
Video Tools
Brightspace offers multiple video tools to transform your content and boost engagement. This recorded webinar breaks down three options — Kaltura Media, Video Note, and YouTube.
Discover how faculty and students can use each tool, what makes them unique, and which one is best suited for the job. Whether you want to record instructional content, leave video feedback, or facilitate video discussions, there’s a tool that can do it.
Release Conditions
This session introduces you to Release Conditions in Brightspace and shows how they can help you control when and how students access content. Designed for those new to this feature, this recorded session walks you through the basics step by step: What release conditions are, where to find them, and how to set them up.
Intelligent Agents
From gentle nudges and reminders to encouragement and celebration messages, Intelligent Agents allow you to extend your teaching presence while reducing workload through automation.
In this recorded session, you’ll learn what Intelligent Agents are, see practical examples of how they can be used to keep students engaged and explore simple strategies to support student success- without overwhelming you.
Brightspace Frequently Asked Questions
The Brightspace F.A.Q. page is designed to provide quick, easy-to-understand answers to the most common questions faculty might have about Brightspace, from migration to navigation to managing courses.
Brightspace FAQSetting up your live course in Brightspace
There are currently four types of courses in your Brightspace LMS:
- Your sandbox. This is a protected space for you to test ideas and create materials. It will never be a live course. You can copy materials from here into a live course.
- Brightspace Training Resources. You are a student in this course. It contains guidance on using the LMS.
- Migrated courses. This is material imported from Blackboard courses, labeled with old CRNs. Here, you can organize, edit, and delete materials, which can then be moved to a live course as a whole or in parts.
- Live course shells. These are currently empty courses with future CRNs. The content here is what students will see and interact with when the semester begins. You need to move content into these courses.
Learn more about course types and setting up your live course in Brightspace.
Brightspace Faculty Trainers
A group of dedicated instructors from across campus who are here to help you navigate Brightspace with confidence. In partnership with CETAL, faculty trainers support colleagues through training, consultation, and hands-on guidance during our transition to Brightspace. Each trainer brings practical insights from their own teaching experience and is here to help you succeed.
Meet Your Faculty TrainersLearn About Brightspace
D2L Brightspace is a comprehensive learning management system that is modern and easy to use for faculty, staff, and students. It offers new capabilities to support teaching and learning across different modalities, supports growth in online learning, provides advanced analytics that contribute to student success, and lays a foundation for engaging learning experiences that facilitate Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) in online courses. Brightspace is celebrated for its modern design, intuitive tools, and innovative teaching features.
Notable strengths:
- Content Creation Flexibility: Rich HTML editor with extensive template options
- Accessibility Excellence: Built-in accessibility checker that helps ensure all materials meet standards
- Intelligent Agents: Automated communications based on customizable triggers
- Plain Language: Navigation, settings, and in-tool support is all written in plain language
More resources:
Brightspace 101: Building Better Learning Experiences (Video)
Bright Ideas: Getting Started with Brightspace (Video)
Brightspace Self-Paced Training (Website)
Brightspace Guided Training (Website)
The Brightspace Timeline: How We Got Here
The Teaching Technology Advisory Committee (TTAC)—made up of faculty from every college, Torreyson Library, and the Graduate School, along with staff from IT and the Office of Accessibility Resources—led a year-long, faculty-driven review of major LMS platforms. After testing, demonstrations, and campus feedback, D2L Brightspace was chosen for its modern design, intuitive tools, and innovative teaching features. The complete timeline is available on the LMS Review website.
LMS Review Website