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  4. Learning Management Systems
  5. Brightspace User Support
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Instructor Help

Brightspace Logo

 

This document will explain how to make your course available (active) to your learners.

 


Create an account in the  to start learning the basics of Brightspace.

 

Brightspace Course-Building Essentials for Instructors

Brightspace Instructor Training Video Series (D2L provided)

Our comprehensive video series is designed to empower instructors with the essential skills to navigate and utilize the Brightspace Learning Management System effectively. Throughout these videos, you'll learn how to seamlessly navigate the platform, manage course content, create assignments and quizzes, develop rubrics, facilitate discussions, handle grading, and provide meaningful feedback to enhance student learning. Whether you're new to Brightspace or looking to deepen your understanding, this series will guide you through each component to help you maximize your teaching potential. 


Brightspace Instructor Video Series*

*Requires valid UCM login credentials to access

Brightspace Community Guided Training

Create an account in the  to start learning the basics of Brightspace.

Brightspace FAQ

concerning Brightspace

Course Setup and Basic Configuration

This guide will cover the process of exporting courses from both Blackboard Original and Blackboard Ultra. It will then explain how to import those export files into Brightspace.

In this guide, you will learn how to copy your current Brightspace Course to another Brightspace Course Shell.

In this guide, you will learn how to archive your current Brightspace Course.

Instructors can change the name of their Brightspace course. This document will explain how to change how your course appears to students in the UCM Brightspace instance.

This document will explain how to make your course available (active) to your learners.

Please visit the Office of Registrar and Student Records website for information on UCM’s enrollment validation process (EVP). There you can find information on the following:

  • Enrollment Validation Policy
  • Enrollment Validation Schedule
  • EVP Instructions for Faculty and Students
  • Additional information about this process

This document contains instructions for using the built-in EVP checklist in Brightspace. This process does require that you complete the EVP step in MyCentral.

In this guide we will cover how to change the Banner Image for your Brightspace Course. This will cover how to add an image from the Brightspace Image Library, not a custom made banner.

This guide will cover how to add a Custom image to your Brightspace Course Banner.

Creating and Structuring Course Content

Step-by-Step Instructions show how to organize your course content by creating modules and topics.

Creating content directly in Brightspace allows for seamless integration and editing.

This guide will demonstrate how you may enhance your topic pages with formatted text and images.

This guide will identify the various functions available for editing content.

This guide will cover how to add an image to Brightspace modules within a course.

In this walkthrough for how to move uploaded files from one course to another in Panopto here at the University of Central Missouri. Before you start this process, you will want to identify a few things.  First, it’s recommended that you determine the CRN where the video currently resides and the CRN for the course you wish to move the video to.  You only need the last 5 digits of the CRN (Ex: 23456).  Have these numbers handy as you will need to enter these during the next phase of this process. Second, make sure that the course you are moving the video files to has been provisioned. If there is not a Panopto Video section of the course you are moving the files to contact DLII to have that course provisioned.

Step-by-step instructions will show how uploading zipped files allows you to add multiple files efficiently.

Enhancing Content with Media and Interactivity

The Brightspace Editor is a rich text editor for creating and editing content. This guide will indicate and describe the various tools available for formatting text, and inserting multimedia, equations, and other special items.

Brightspace Media Player is a display window that enables you to watch any videos uploaded to Brightspace. It allows you to play video, adjust playback speed, and download videos.

Note: Embedded videos such as YouTube do not use Brightspace Media Player.

Record videos up to 25 minutes long and add them anywhere where Brightspace Editor is available. To help ensure all users can learn without barriers, closed captions can be automatically created.

Student Engagement Tools

This guide teaches you how to use announcements to put clear communication front and center in your course. Announcements are used to share course information, updates, and upcoming activities, introduce yourself and the course, and can be customized to inform students when they have completed (or not completed) an activity or milestone.

Learn how the Activity Feed can act like a social media feed for your course. When added to your course homepage as a widget,  it can serve as a front and center communication hub for you and your students.

This guide will show you how to manage discussions in your course. Discussions allow you to give your students the ability to share knowledge and experiences with one another and to apply what they have learned in your course. They also serve as a valuable assessment tool for you as an instructor.

This guide will show how Brightspace tracks student interaction with content and how to access a summary of their progress.

This guide will show you how to harness the capabilities of Brightspace Intelligent Agents (IAs). IAs can monitor course activity, automatically act upon learner-based criteria in your course, and send targeted alerts to you and your learners. This document will describe what IAs are and how you can manage them in your courses.

This guide will provide an overview of how to email students and instructors via the Brightspace classlist.

Content Access and Availability Settings

The Manage Dates tool helps you adjust dates for course content efficiently. This guide will demonstrate the basics for filtering by tool, adjusting the start, end, and due dates, and offsetting dates.

These step-by-step instructions show how to set availability dates (Timed Release of Content) to control when students can access specific content.

This guide provides step-by-step Instructions demonstrating how release conditions allow you to control content availability based on student actions.

In Brightspace, when a student unenrolls from your course, they are removed from your classlist.  However, you can still find any content the student has completed through the withdrawal date and identify when they last accessed your course.

As an Instructor, you can find and enroll Librarians, Peer Mentors, or Teaching Assistants in your course. If you are manually adding a user, please make sure you understand the .  For example, you do not want to add a learner to your course in one of these roles.  A learner can only be added via the Banner feed.  Adding a learner as a Peer Mentor, Teaching Assistant, or Librarian will not allow a learner to submit coursework or be included in the Gradebook.

Assessment and Quizzes

Provide more efficient, timely, and meaningful grading and feedback. Create and edit assignments, see submission details, view submissions, associate assignments to rubrics and competencies, and return submissions with grades and feedback. On paper and observed in person assignment formats are also available.


  • This document will provide all the basics to how to create a Rubric for your Brightspace Course.

  • This guide will show the learner how to create and fill in information for an Assignment in Brightspace.

  • You can also customize what type of assignment you are creating, and what file types you will accept from learners submitting their assignments.

  • This guide will walk the learner through how to add new release conditions to assignments that they create in Brightspace.

  • You can Manage Special Access for your assignment. This enables you to make your assignments available only to a select group of users or to add individualized due dates for certain users that may need accommodations.

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

The Create a quiz page has a fully immersive page layout. This layout is consistent with other areas of Brightspace including Quizzes, Content, and Lessons, where you can create and configure a quiz.


  • The learner will be guided through how to create a Quiz in Brightspace.

  • This will guide the learner in how to edit Quiz Questions of created Quizzes in Brightspace.

  • This guide will walk the learner through how to set up the Conditions of Availability, Time Limit, Quiz Display, Attempts, and Results in a Quiz in Brightspace

  • In this guide the learner will see how to change Quiz Visibility per quiz or in bulk.

  • In this guide the learner will see how to preview a Quiz they have just finished creating.

Gradebook

The Setup Wizard is where you configure the structure and grading system before entering any grades. This ensures consistency and clarity for both instructors and students.

This document will show you how to make your Final Calculated Grade Available to students.

Follow this guide to learn how to create categories and items in a clear, organized way in the gradebook.

Follow this guide to learn how to input grades quickly and accurately in the gradebook.

Follow this guide to learn how to apply grading schemes that map raw scores to letter grades or descriptive levels.

Brightspace Related Forms

Forms for requesting temporary LMS accounts for new faculty, merging course sections, adding users to courses, and retrieving archived course content for instructors or administrators.

Request to Merge Sections in Brightspace

A course merge combines two (or more) course sections into one course section. For example, an undergraduate and graduate course may be merged together, or multiple sections of the same course may be merged into one section. 
 
Manual course merge is NOT available in Brightspace. Instructors do not have the ability to enroll users that are not enrolled in a particular section into a different section.  

All course merge requests need to be made prior to any student work being done in a section.

  • Allow 2-3 business days for this request to be completed.
  • Once merged,  sections cannot be separated without loss of student data.
  • You must provide Course titles and entire CRN(s) to process this merge request.  
  • List the section you want to work out of first (the Parent course), followed by the sections to be merged into it.

Request to Add User in Brightspace Course

Faculty cannot add new users or modify enrollment in their courses in the Brightspace instance . The enrollment in each course is owned by the Banner feed. However, you can request a user be added to your course by completing this form. Please note that we will not manually merge an entire course into another course section. If you wish to move all students to another section, you should complete a Merge Request form. We can add another faculty member or graduate/teaching assistant. Please identify why you wish to grant access to this user in the form below. Contact DLII at dlii@ucmo.edu if you have any questions.

Modifying a Learner Role to Learner-Incomplete

If you have provided a "U" grade to a student, you will need to submit this form to change their role in your Brightspace course from Learner to Learner-Incomplete.  By changing their role in Brightspace, the student will be able to access the course even if it is made "inactive" to other learners.  As the instructor, you will also need to modify any end dates on assignments that the Learner-Incomplete user needs to access.  If you have any questions or need guidance on adjusting dates, please contact DLII at dlii@ucmo.edu. 

 

Brightspace-Connected Tools & Resources

Panopto

Panopto is a video platform that integrates with Brightspace to support educational content creation, sharing, and management. It allows instructors to record lectures, capture screen presentations, and add video content directly into their courses. Panopto also offers tools for editing, closed captioning, and analytics to track student engagement with video materials, providing a flexible solution for enhancing online and hybrid learning environments.

Getting Started with Panopto

Recording and Uploading Content

Managing and Editing Content

Transitioning Content Between Courses

Relinking Copied Video Content

Respondus LockDown Browser

Proctoring software application that UCM instructors have available to them for use in our LMS.

Respondus LockDown Browser Set-up

This guide will walk you through activating Respondus Lockdown Browser for your quizzes, and exams in Brightspace

Honorlock

A software solution for online test proctoring.  UCM has a site license for Honorlock™ which makes it available for all faculty to use within their course.

This guide will walk you through enabling Honorlock for your quizzes, and exams in Brightspace

The Honorlock Knowledge Base provides essential resources for instructors, including getting started guides, best practices for remote proctoring, and detailed instructions for integrating Honorlock with platforms like Blackboard and Brightspace. It also offers troubleshooting tips, and privacy information to ensure smooth and effective use of Honorlock in your courses.

Zoom

Zoom is a virtual meeting application that students and instructors can use for synchronous meetings.  Zoom offers a free account and UCM Zoom Pro licenses are available, on a limited basis, from the Office of Technology.  UCM faculty can request a UCM Pro license by contacting the Office of Technology at 660-543-4357.  A free Zoom account can be created by visiting 

Copyleaks

Copyleaks is an AI-powered plagiarism detection tool that helps educators ensure academic integrity by scanning student submissions for copied or AI-generated content. It seamlessly integrates with Brightspace to provide detailed reports and insights. Watch this to learn more about Copyleaks in Brightspace at UCM. Follow this document on  As of December 2025, instructors can now add to a native Brightspace assignment. For more information, visit the support page.

Infobase Learning

Infobase Learning is an educational content provider offering digital reference materials, streaming videos, e-learning resources, and databases for schools, libraries, and institutions. It provides tools for research, career readiness, and academic support across various subjects. Here is a that will walk you through on how to add Infobase Learning content into your Brightspace Course.

YuJa Panorama

YuJa Panorama is an accessibility tool integrated into Brightspace that automatically converts course content into multiple accessible formats, such as audio, ePub, and tagged PDFs. It also provides real-time accessibility scores and guidance to help instructors improve their materials for all learners. View the  recording or visit the  to learn more.

This guide will walk you through using Yuja Panorama, Brightspace’s integrated accessibility checker, to identify and remediate common accessibility issues in your course.

 
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