Starting a New Semester with Brightspace

Brightspace Content is Getting Upgraded

Beginning with the Fall 2027 semester, Brightspace courses will begin using the New Content Experience by default. Additionally, Instructors now have the ability to enable or disable the New Content Experience in their own courses ahead of the change in Fall 2027. For more information about this transition, see our New Content Experience Transition page.

When starting a new semester in Brightspace, there are a few things instructors and course builders always have to do. This page is designed to be a starting point of guides on common steps to start a new course in Brightspace. For a more detailed list of resources, check out our On-Demand Resources for Instructors and our Brightspace Frequently Asked Questions.

Accessing Your Course

Getting Instructor access to Brightspace courses

All for-credit courses are automatically created in Brightspace. Instructors are automatically added once they are officially listed as an Instructor of Record (IOR) in YES. If you don't have access to your course, be sure to search for your course in to make sure you are listed as the IOR. If you are not, your department will need to coordinate with the University Registrar's Office for that to be updated. If you are listed as the IOR in YES and still do not have access to the Brightspace course, contact the Brightspace Support team for more help.听
How do I find my courses for this semester?

Once you are logged into Brightspace, you will see courses displayed on your homepage. By default, courses under the All tab are listed in order of your most recent access. There are also tabs above your courses for each semester/category that your courses are listed under (eg 鈥� 2026 Fall, 2027 Spring, Sandbox Courses, etc). Lastly, anyone can use the Select a Course menu to search for any courses they have access to.听
For more information on this, please refer to our online guide聽on this topic.听
Adding TAs to Brightspace

Instructors and Brightspace Support personnel are not able to add TA鈥檚 to current or future courses. Per聽this policy, TAs聽must聽be added to courses by the Office of the University Registrar. To learn more about the TA roles the URO can allocate, visit聽聽to find and submit the聽Instructor Assistant Request Form.听
For information about how other users can be added to your course, refer to our guide on adding users to a course.

Setting Up Your Course

Copying content from another course

Brightspace offers two methods for copying content from previous courses. Instructors and other course builders can copy all components of the course, which is useful if the course requires all files, assessments, and configurations. They can also transfer pieces of the course from other Brightspace courses. As long as you are the instructor for both courses, this is a simple process you can do yourself.
For a step-by-step guide on each process, refer to our guide here.听
Customizing a course homepage
Instructors and other course builders can customize the homepage of a course to better suit the learning environment they want to facilitate. Adding widgets like a Visual Table of Contents or a Teacher Profile can help welcome students into the course and provide a more engaging course page.
Here are some guides we have that are useful when customizing your course homepage.
Making a course available to Students

When for-credit courses are automatically generated, they are set to inactive by default. This means that only those with Instructor or similar access can see it on their dashboard. When Instructors are ready for students to view their course, they will need to make their course active by going to the聽Course Offering Information聽page and selecting the聽Make course active聽option. For more information on this, along with screenshots, please refer to聽our detailed online guide聽on this topic.

Communicating with your class

Announcements

Posting Announcements to your Brightspace course can be a good way to communicate with students with messages they see whenever they visit your course page. When you post an announcement, you can also select to email it to all of your students outside of Brightspace in case of an important update like a classroom change or an assignment reminder. For more information about how to post announcements, review our online guide on this topic.
Emailing your entire class or individual students

There are times when Instructors may want to email their class without the need of posting an Announcement on the course homepage. In those cases, Instructors can use the Classlist page of their course to easily email everyone in the course. Instructors can also select individual students from the classlist to email. For detailed steps and screenshots of how to email students through the Brightspace Classlist, refer to our guide here.

Building and Uploading Course Content

Deciding how your Content page should look
Instructors have two options for how they want their Content page to display. The Classic Content view has been in use since Brightspace was first adopted in 2017 and offers a familiar and well known interface. The New Content Experience is a more modern and user-friendly interface for instructors and students alike. While instructors will always have final say on what Content experience their course uses, 汤头条 will switch to the New Content Experience as the default for new courses starting in Fall 2027.听
Here are some resources on how to control what experience your course's Content page.
Managing course materials and organizing Content
As the Content page is the most used tool in any Brightspace course, it's important for Instructors and course builders to take time to set up and organize this page to fit the needs of their specific course. Here are some links to guides on common tasks in the Content page.
For a complete list a guides and resources related to Content, refer to the Content section of our On-Demand Resources for Instructors.听

Creating Activities and Assessments

Assignments
Assignments in Brightspace allow students to submit work, either individually or as a group, and receive feedback from their Instructor. Below are some of our most used guides related to the Assignments tool in Brightspace.
For a full list of guides on Assignments, visit the Assignments section of our On-Demand Resources for Instructors.听
Quizzes
Whether called quizzes, tests, exams, or even ungraded practice activities, the Quizzes tool in Brightspace provides students with an interactive evaluation experience within Brightspace. Additionally, because all question types except the Written Response type can be auto-graded, Quizzes also allows a quick turnaround for grading quizzes and assessments. Here are the most used guides we have on Quizzes.
For a full list of other resources on Brightspace Quizzes, visit the Quizzes, Surveys, and Self-Assessments section of our On-Demand Resources for Instructors.
Discussions
Discussion forums and topics in Brightspace can be a valuable tool to allow students to interact with either other, discuss course material, and share resources with either within Brightspace. Here are three guides to get you started with setting up Discussions in your course.听
For a full list of resources about Discussions in Brightspace, refer to our Groups and Discussions section of our On-Demand Resources for Instructors.听
Grades and Grading
The Grades tool in Brightspace provides a great way for instructors to mange their gradebook directly within Brightspace. While some course gradebooks can be very complicated and may need one-on-one support, here are a few guides that covers the basics of setting up a gradebook and managing grades in Brightspace.听
For a larger list of resources related to Grading, visit our Grades & Rubrics section of our On-Demand Resources for Instructors.听

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