Academic Resource Center

Brightspace Overview

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When you log into your learning environment, you’ll see the landing page and main menu items. Here, you have access to your user profile, notifications and email messages, as well as announcements and upcoming events when you scroll down. To find your courses, click the block icon to “Select a Course.”

You’ll see your courses listed in the drop-down menu. You also have the ability to “pin” these courses to the top of this menu if you are enrolled in multiple courses. You can flip between courses from this menu at any time.

When you click into your course, you will see the course home page with links to the course menu and tools. You’ll also see announcements from your instructor. And you’ll see flip files for each course module – simply click the “Overview” button on the flip tile to see an overview description for that module. On this page, you can also view calendar items for upcoming deadlines.

Now let's click on “Course Menu” and go to the “Learning Modules” link to get started.

The Learning Modules page shows the table of contents with access to all of the course modules on the left. The numbers indicate the number of items within each module that you have remaining. The bookmarks button allows you to review content that you have bookmarked for a later time. 

When you click on the “Overview” button, you’ll see the Course Outcomes along with additional overview information related to your course. Familiarize yourself with this list, because when you successfully complete your course, you should be able to master these outcomes.

Clicking on the “Start Here” menu will bring you to a list of important resources, like your course syllabus, assignment guidelines and rubrics.

Be sure to review your course syllabus in detail. This document contains the course description and learning outcomes, required textbook and learning resource materials, grading information and assignment point break-downs, and your weekly assignment schedule so that you can stay on top of your work. You’ll also find important academic policy information in your syllabus. 

After reviewing these items, click into Module One to dive further into your course. You’ll see all of your assignments for the week: a Module Overview with learning objectives, the reading and resources, the weekly discussion board, and any activities or quizzes.

As you move through the course content, you’ll see that you can bookmark items to refer to later, and you can use the forward and back icons to move from item to item in the table of contents. Your user progress will update as you review content and allow you to pick up exactly where you left off the next time you access your course.

Feel free to reach out to your academic advisor or your instructor if you have any questions.

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