How do you set up Release Conditions? 

In Brightspace, you can set ‘Release Conditions’ for most items. Release Conditions allow you to add conditions to content or assignments, making them available to students only after meeting the required conditions. 

Release conditions must always be linked to an assignment. For example, if the availability of Assignment B depends on the grade of Assignment A, the release condition should be added to Assignment B. Once a release condition is created, it can be reused within the course and will be available in the drop-down menu when adding a release condition. 

Make sure to communicate clearly with your students that they are responsible for the availability of certain materials to prevent misunderstandings about the course. 

This guide includes instructions for the following items: 

• Assignments
• Content
• Discussions
• Grades

Assignments

Example: 

• The student must first complete Assignment A before Assignment B becomes available. 

Create a new assignment by navigating to ‘Assignments’ via ‘Tools’ in the right course.Then click on ‘New Assignment’.Fill in all the specifications and expand the ‘Availability Dates & Conditions’ menu. Under the Release Conditions section, click ‘Add Release Condition’.Click on ‘Create New’ and select the type of condition you want to add from the drop-down menu.For the example where a student must submit Assignment A before Assignment B becomes available, select ‘Submission to folder’. Under the Condition Details section, choose the assignment that needs to be submitted (in this case, Assignment A) before the current assignment (Assignment B) becomes available.

Content 

Release conditions can be added to content in 2 ways.
Example: 

• The student must succesfully complete the week 1 quiz before they can access the week 2 materials. 

In the first method, you add the release condition while creating a new item in the course. Navigate to ‘Content’ within the right course and create the new item in the content unit. Click ‘Create New’.Select the type of content you want to add. In this example, we are adding a page with course materials, so we click on ‘Page’.Fill in all the specifications and add the course materials. Then follow the same steps as with Assignments: click on ‘Availability Dates & Conditions’, then click on ‘Add Release Condition’ and ‘Create New’.Next select ‘Score on quiz’ under Condition Type. In the Condition Details section, choose the quiz that must be passed, and enter the grade requirements. In the image below, you can find the correct settings for when students need to pass a quiz, as in the example.In the second method, you add release conditions to items that have already been added to content. 

Example: 

• The weekly quiz is only available if the student has opened the course materials. 

Navigate to ‘Content’ in the appropriate course and select the item to which you want to add release conditions. In this case, we want to make the week 1 quiz available only after the student has opened the week 1 course materials, so click on the quiz in the left-hand menu. Once you have opened this item, you will see the following page. Click on the three dots in the top right corner.A drop-down menu will appear with ’View Release Conditions’ as the second option, click on that.A pop-up will appear showing an overview of the release conditions, but since none have been set yet, click ’Create.’From here, you will enter the familiar pop-up window. In this case, we want the students to have viewed a content item, so scroll down under Condition Type to select ’Completed content topic.’ In the Condition Details section, select the item that the students need to have viewed (in this case the week 1 course materials). 

While creating or editing week 1 content, options are available (on the right-hand side of the page) for when the item is considered completed. If you don’t change anything here, an item will automatically be marked as completed once the student has opened it. If you want the student to manually mark the item as completed, you can select that option in the drop-down menu.

Discussions 

Example: 

• A student must first make three posts before they can respond to other students. 

Within the appropriate course, navigate to ‘Discussions’ via ‘Tools.’When creating a new forum, first enter a title. Then, you can click on ‘Restrictions.’If you scroll down, you will find a selection called Release Conditions, where you can click on ‘Attach Existing’ to add an existing release condition. Alternatively click on ‘Create and Attach’ to create a new release condition.

Grades 

Navigate to ‘Grades’ within the appropriate course via the navigation bar, then click on ‘Manage Grades.’ Here, you can create a new grade item or category. For example, let’s create a grade item, click on ‘New’ and then select ‘Item’.When creating a new grade item or category, you will see the option ’Restrictions’ after giving the category or item a name, click on it. Then you can enter the dates from when the grades will be available to the student. Below that, you can add existing or new Release Conditions, as you are already familiar with. Add the rest of the properties to your item or category and click ’Save and Close.’