Adding or deleting content
In Brightspace you structure your course via Content: here you create a welcome page (Overview) and you organize the course programme in (sub)modules that you fill with important course information like the course syllabus, media files or documents, links to webpages or Brightspace activities like discussions or quizzes. You can create an accessible course and you will help students navigate through course material with ease.
Click on Content in the navbar of your course. Via the menu on the left side of your screen you can navigate to:
Overview/General (welcome page):This is the page where students land on when they navigate firstly to the content page. Use this page to: Welcome students with a personal message, let students know the course content, planning and subject material, give an explanation of the coherence of different (sub)modules, other general information like contact information.
Table of Contents: the total content of your course is shown through a table of content format of a list of (sub)modules (files) and topics (contents of the course). Structure the course and make a logical layout for every course week, with its course materials. You can upload files from your computer, like webpages or activities such as quizzes or assignments.
What is the structure of the content?
A Unit can contain Lessons and Topics if you click on the arrow on the left side, with Lessons the content of the week that it is taught can be placed here, Topics contain the types of content of the course.
You can move units around to change the order. You simply drag the unit by the dots on the left side.
You can add existing content or create new content.
At Create New and Add Existing you can create new content or add existing content. By clicking on the white sliding button on the left side of the Display Area, you can enable “Visible” if you want students to be able to see the content.
The three dots on the right shows you a menu with multiple options:
Edit the selected item, view Release Conditions, Reorder the content items, Delete the selected content item.
How do you add Units, Lessons and Topics?
Add a new unit by clicking New Unit on the top of the table of contents as demonstrated before. Within a unit, you can also add Lessons. Go to the Display Area, click on Create New and click on New Lesson.
Within Units and Lessons, you can add different kinds of content. By clicking “Create New”, you can create a Page, WebLink, Assignment, Discussion, Quiz, and as soon as you click on More and, Self Assesment and make Surveys. In Page you can add text, pictures and files all together. In WebLink you can post a link to a website. At Assignment you can post a task for the students to submit. At Discussion you can start a (graded) group discussion. At Quiz you can add a (graded) test. At Self Assesment you can post an assignment for students to practice. At Checklist you can post a checklist that students can use to check off to dos from. At Surveys you can create a poll.
To add previously created content to your unit or lesson, use the Add Existing button. This shows several options as shown below.
To quickly add Powerpoint slides, PDF Files or Word files to your content area, use the Drag and drop or browse functionality. It is possible to select multiple files at once, but Brightspace will create 1 topic page per file. Brightspace will convert the previewed file to a pdf. If you want students to download the original file type, they can use the cloud icon with an arrow at the top of the page. For instructors, this feature is found by clicking on the three dots and selecting download.
You can add other files as well. Most options have a dedicated page on our website, which can be found through the search function.
When adding a document to a Lesson, you can not add a description. This is only possible when adding a document to a Unit. When adding a document to Brightspace, it is not possible to view the extension (.pdf/.word/etc.), the student will see only a preview. When the student downloads the document, the whole document will become visible. When you want to upload a new version of a document, you need to delete the old version and upload the new one. You can not replace the document with the new version. Documents are not automatically visible to the students: do not forget to adjust the visibility.
How do you delete content?
There are 2 delete options:
‘Remove the module and all nested modules and topics from Content but keep all associated files and activities in the course’: choose this option if you still want to reuse the content elsewhere.
‘Permanantly delete and remove all nested modules, topics and all associated files and activities from the course.’: choose this option if you no longer need the file, it will be permanently deleted.
