Navigate Brightspace – Teaching & Learning Support (2024)

Once logged into Brightspace, the Home page will open.

It might appear different to what is shown here, but you will essentially have the same elements. Notice that your name is displayed on the right-hand at the top of the page.

When you click on your name, a dropdown menu will open. Here, you can change your profile or account settings. We suggest you upload a photo of yourself. This tiny photo is visible across the site and helps to personalize it a bit for students. We recommend you don’t fill in your contact information or other personal information, as it will be shared across the site.

In the account settings, you can change the number and percentage format of Brightspace. This way, you can change how Brightspace displays numbers for you (e.g. ten thousand can be shown as 10000, 10,000 or 10.000, depending on preference)

You can search for courses you are enrolled in by using the Course Selector (the 9 square icon on the navigation bar). You can pin the courses you’re enrolled in, so that they appear always on top.

Click on these icons to access the built-in email, instant messaging features and notifications.

Your students will see an orange dot appearing on the notifications icon whenever new content isavailable in a course, a new announcement is posted, when grades are released, and so on.

The email feature is available, but should not be used as a replacement for your TU Delft email. There are some limitations to this email system, which we describe in our other videos related to communication. We recommend though, that you use the Announcements tool to communicate with your students in the course.

Below the TU Delft icon, you will find the navigation bar. Here you will find links to the following:

• My Home– to take you back to the Home Page
• My Timetable– where you can see the schedule of various courses
• MyTUDelft– Study information system for study results and registration for exams, courses and minors.
• Catalog– to view courses available for enrolling
• Resources– links to Collegerama; My Kaltura Media and Software Download
• Help– link to this website and tips for how to use Brightspace

Click through each of these to orientate yourself.

To the right, you will see the following icons:

• Course Menu(which looks like a waffle) – where you find your list of courses
• Update Alerts– used for email and instant messaging.
• Subscription alerts– shows students when there’s a new post in a forum, topic, or thread that you’ve subscribed to in instant notifications.
• Notifications(there will be an orange dot indicating new, unread notifications)
• Profile picture, with your name next to it.

Click on your name to expand the settings menu. Here you can:

• Set up your profile
• Change notification settings
• Change account settings
• Progress
• Log out of Brightspace

Read how to find Courses in the Course Menu, and how the My Courses and the My Pinned Courses widgets work.

Finding your Courses

1. Use thegrid-icon (9 small squares) to go to theCourse menuand quickly switch between one course and another course.
2. You can search for any course in Brightspace with the course code or course name. Only courses to which you are the course manager/instructor/tutor/student will be visible to you.
3. Pin and unpinyour most used Courses at the Course menu by clicking thepushpin-icon at the rights side of a course.This way you can switch from one to the other Course faster.
4. Click onAdvanced Searchto search on yourRolein the course, theSemester,Facultyand courseStatus.

My Courses

Via theMy Courseswidget on the homepage you can find all courses that you are enrolled in. Click on the theTU Delft logoin the top-left to go to the homepage.

• Use theTabsin widget to navigate to any course you would like to access.
• On the course cards,Unread-icons indicate if there are anyunread DiscussionsorUngraded Quizzes/Assignments.
  
• ToPinCourses simply click the3-dotsin the top right corner of a Course, and clickPin.
• Now the Course is accessible in theCourse Menuand the announcements in that course show up in theMy Pinned Courseswidget on the homepage.
• If you do not see a Course listed, you can use theView All Courseslink at the bottom of the widget. In the pop-up that opens you canSearchfor courses andSortthe courses in differently.

My Pinned Courses

In theMy Pinned Courseswidget, the last announcement of a pinned course is shown. If a course has multiple announcements, the latest one will be visible and a link below will show how many more there are. The first 200 characters of announcements are shown, and you can use theMorelink at the end to navigate to the rest of the announcement. The presence of a picture icon indicates that an announcement contains media, links, or attachments that are not visible in the widget.

You can pin an unlimited amount of courses, but to keep a good overview, we advise only pinning current courses and organizations.
If you wish to change the order in which courses are listed, so that the last pinned course shows as the first one in the list, you can pin/unpin courses until they are in the order you wish.

Let’s look at a typical course page:

Click on theCourse Selectoricon to select a course, and pick one of them.

Courses might be configured slightly differently but there are some common elements.

1. On the Home page of your course you will find a course banner where the name of the course is shown prominently with a background image. This can be easily customized, see thepagewe have on that.
2. TheCourse Homelink, will always bring you to the Home page of the course. It mostly displays announcements and other useful information.
3. Click onContentto access the main part of your course site. It is here that all your course content is placed, and that students will interact with the learning materials. Most of the training material on this website focuses on the Content area.
4. Collaborationis the place they will interact with each other, with activities andassignments,quizzes, and so forth.
5. Lastly, there is aCourse Adminlink. The course admin area contains a list of all the functionalities available to you in Brightspace. Everything that you can add, change, or remove in a course is available here. If you are ever stuck looking for a feature that you know exists in Brightspace, this is the place to find it.

TheCourse Adminarea looks intimidating. A quick tip: use the “Find”function in your browser to search for the word you are looking for. TheCourse Adminarea is also grouped into categories, each one of them with several icons to help you locate what you need.

Click onContentto view the structure of the area where your course material is placed for students.

You will see a course menu on the left-hand side, and the content areas spanning the larger part of the page to the right of the course menu.

1. Add some content to theOverviewsection, giving your students an idea of what the course is about.
2. Below that you will seeBookmarks. Students can bookmark pages by clicking on the bookmark icon, so that they can easily go back to pages which they want to read again.
3. Next is theCourse Schedulewhere dates will be shown that have been made within your course.
4. LastlyisTable of Contentswhere all your course material will be listed in modulesthat give structure to your course.

It is important to make sure that theCourse Informationmodule is updated with the relevant information for your course. This, as well as the previous items mentioned, are standardized throughout all courses and organizations, making it easy for students to find it.

You can structure the rest of your modules in any way you choose – by topic, type or date. ReadHow to create a course structurefor more information.

Now that you know how to access the content area, you can get started. Startadding contentto your course site from here on.