Course Content & Settings
Building and sharing your material are easily accomplished in Brightspace. Refer to these resources to get started, and connect with OIT if more assistance is needed.
There are many ways to build content within Brightspace. Consider how you want to organize your course material into modules by week, unit, chapter, or topic.
- Copy Course Content to Another Course
- Create Content
- Add a Recorded Lecture
- Using Zoom for Class
- Create or Insert a Video Note
- Verifying Zoom email when using integration in Brightspace
- Create a Master Course to build content without students enrolled
- Visit the PNW Template Course (linked) to copy technical support resources for students
The following publisher content requires a specific role in Brightspace to function: Cengage, GoReact, Macmillan -Tools, Pearson / MyLabs, WebAssign, and Vista Higher Learning / VHL.
When preparing to link this content with your Brightspace course, we recommend reviewing the following resources first and then connecting with OIT for more assistance.
- Explore the External learning Tool Support Course on Brightspace (Course)
- Student/instructor resources
- Publisher customer support contacts
- Request the Instructor LTI Role for Your Course to Add Integration
- Add a Learning Tool Link to Your Course
Refer to the following setting options for a smooth semester
- Establish Account Settings
- Set User Time Zone
- Set Course Availability
- Email Settings (ensure username@purdue.edu is forwarding to username@pnw.edu)
The following resources highlight what areas of your content students are visiting and how long they are spending in a part of your course. Choose to explore overall view rates for specific content, like a video/presentation, or delve into an individual student’s data within your course.
Brightspace easily allows you to add other instructors, TAs, SI/Tutors, etc. to your course. Please note, you CANNOT add “Learners” to your academic courses.
Review the Understanding Roles and their Permissions to ensure you assign the correct role to the user. Refer to this Add/Remove other Users to My Course resource to add, remove, or modify the role for those in your course.
When adding users to a course, they must be up to date with their FERPA certification. This annual federally required training for instructors can be accessed by registering through the WebCert portal. PNW instructors will then see the course display in Brightspace under the “WebCert” tab in the MyCourses widget. For more information on FERPA, please visit the Registrar’s FERPA site.
Brightspace allows you to “role swap” and view your course quickly as a “Learner”. However, we recommend you add a “Demo Student” to your course to permit you the full functionality of what a learner sees and can do in your course by following along with this guide: Add/Use a Demo Student.
Any courses you are assigned to teach in the Class Schedule will be displayed in the Banner/myPNW Portal and in Brightspace. Confirm the courses you are teaching by looking up each course in the Class Schedule. If you cannot see your course in Banner/myPNW, contact your department secretary to be added as the instructor of record from Banner/myPNW.
Brightspace receives registration information from Banner/myPNW. Courses are loaded into Banner/myPNW on the following schedule:
- Spring courses–week before Thanksgiving
- Summer courses–week of Spring Break
- Fall courses–week before Spring Finals week