Table of contents  

1. The Minibar 
2. The Personal Homepage 
3. The Course Homepage 
4. The Navigation Bar 
5. Course Example

The Minibar  

At the top of your screen, you will see this bar: 

1. Utrecht University Logo: View the Personal Homepage. 
2. Course Selector: View the courses you are enrolled in. You can pin courses to your homepage here. If you are enrolled in many courses, you can use the search function. 
3. Message Alerts: View incoming emails or send an email by clicking the ‘Email’ button.
4. Subscription Alerts: View notifications from discussion forums you are subscribed to if an orange notification dot is present. You can also choose whether to receive notifications for discussion forum activities. 
5. Update Alerts: View notifications about newly uploaded files and assignments. If you see an orange dot, click the bell icon to view the updates. 
6. Profile picture/Name: View and modify your account settings. 
7. Admin Tools: Access your media library.

The Personal Homepage 

After logging in, you will see your personal homepage. All widgets on this page can be hidden or displayed by clicking the arrow next to the name of the widget. Then, click ‘Expand this widget’ to show its content or ‘Collapse this widget’ to hide its content. 

1. My Courses: You can view an overview of up to 12 courses. 
   Note: Brightspace automatically fills the homepage with up to 12 courses, even if you haven’t pinned 12 courses. 
   
   • Some course display icons with numbers in orange. These icons represent activities (Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes), and the number indicates how many unread items there are in the activity.  
   • Click on the name of the course you want to open or click ‘View All Courses’ to see all the courses you are enrolled in.  
2. Announcements: All the latest announcements are displayed here. 
3. Quick Eval: Provides an overview of assignments that can be submitted in the future. 
4. Calendar: Displays activities from all your courses. Click ‘Upcoming Events’ to see a list of activities. Click ‘Calendar’ to open the full calendar. 

The Course Homepage  

Navigating to a Course:  

• Click on a course from your Personal Homepage or select a course via the Course Selector. 

The Navigation Bar  

The navigation bar is the same for all courses: 

1. Course Home: Go back to the Course Homepage. 
2. Content: Here you can find the course material, organized into modules.  
3. Grades: View your grades for each assignment within the course.  
4. Tools: From here, you can navigate to:  
   • Assignments 
   • Quizzes
   • Discussions 
   • Rubrics 
5. Course Management: From here, you can navigate to:  
   • Classlist 
   • Groups 
   • Class Progress 
6. Help: From here, you can navigate to:  
   • Brightspace Help 
   • Manuals 
   • Support page

Course example

1. Course Name: Next to the Utrecht University logo, you will see the name of the course. 
2. Course Banner: Below the navigation bar, the course name is usually displayed again, but this space may also contain a personalized message (as shown above). 
3. Announcements: View the specific notifications for this course. You can adjust the settings to receive an email whenever new announcements are posted. 
4. Content Overview: Easily navigate tot the correct module. Keep in mind that the completion percentage only indicates how much content you have viewed. Reaching 100% does not necessarily mean you have completed that part of the course. 
5. Calendar: View course activities such as deadlines and meetings.