Connect in Brightspace

To create a signature for Brightspace communications, watch this video:

Or follow these steps:

1. Select the envelope icon at the top of your Brightspace screen
2. Click "Email"
   
3. Choose "Settings"
   
4. Type out your signature
5. Hit "Save"
   

Communications from Brightspace will be sent directly to the recipient's @stonybrook.edu email address. Replies to an email will also be copied to the sender's @stonybrook.edu address. You can send email from the Classlist or the Email tool in Brightspace

In this article, you will learn how to

• Email from Classlist (option 1)
• Send Messages from the Email Tool (option 2)

How is this different from Blackboard?

How can students receive notifications for course updates?

Alternatively, you can get a list of student email addresses in SOLAR 

Option 1: Email from Classlist

Following these instructions ensures that all students receive an email.  

1. In Course Admin, click Classlist:
   
2. Near the top, select the Email Classlist button.
   *Be sure to use Email Classlist and not the Email button below that.  Using the Email Classlist ensures all students (especially in large classes >200 receive the email).  The Email button below that only sends messages to students listed on that page.
   
3. At the bottom of the Email Classlist page, click Send Email.
   
4. Select all or some of the students and then click Email.
   
5. Type your message and click the Send button
   

Please note that this option will place the message recipients in the BCC field by default.

Option 2: Send Messages from the Email Tool

This option is only recommended to email individual, or small groups of students. To email a large class of students, use the Email Classlist button described in Option 1 above. 

1. While in your course, select the envelope icon at the top of your screen
2. Click Email
   
3. Select the Address Book button
   
4. Choose the students you wish to email
5. Select the To, Cc, or Bcc buttons to add them to the corresponding fields
6. Select the Add Recipients button
   
7. Type your message to the students
8. Click the Send button
   

How is this different from Blackboard?

Brightspace's emailing system functions the same way that Blackboard's did with an added benefit: Brightspace also has a sent button in the email tool, which allows you to view any email you sent from Brightspace. To access this, follow these steps:

1. Select the envelope icon at the top of the screen
2. Click Email
   
3. Choose the Sent Mail button
   

How can students receive notifications for course updates?

To learn how students can receive notifications for course updates, check out this article!

In Brightspace, you have the ability to create private groups with restricted discussion areas where learners are able to keep a journal.  These journals are only viewable to each individual student, and the instructors of the course.

Creating Journal Areas

1. Go into the Course Admin menu
2. Select Groups
   
3. Select New Category
   
4. Enter in a Category Name (and optionally a description)
5. For Enrollment Type, select Single user, member-specific groups
   
6. Under Additional Options, select Set up discussion areas
7. Under Forum, use the drop down selector to choose a forum you would like to assign this journal to, or select New Forum to create a new forum.  The forum will be present in the Discussions area of your course.
8. Then select Create new topic
9. Select Save.  Once selected, your groups will be created in the background (this process may take a few minutes). 
   
10. You will then be prompted to create a restricted topic.  This topic will be the journal area where your students can type in their own personal journals.
11. When creating a topic, you can choose to either Create one topic per group or Create one topic with threads separated by group. 
    

Each option does the following:

• Create one topic per group (not recommended if you plan on grading journals): This will create a topic for each student in the discussion forum.  These topics will only be viewable to each individual student, and the instructor. 
  
• Create one topic with threads separated by group (recommended if you plan on grading journals): This will make one topic in the discussion forum.  Students can add a thread to the topic that will only be viewable to themselves, and the instructor. 
  

Setting Up Journals as Graded Items

To make your students journals into a graded item, follow the steps in this article. Please note that if you want to grade journals, it's recommended that your journal topic be set up to Create one topic with threads separated by group.

The Intelligent Agent tool allows instructors to set up criteria to create a report of students who completed or did not complete an action within the course. Once the instructor sets up the criteria, s/he can enable automatic emails to students who meet the criteria or just use the report.

Examples of criteria that can be set up include, but are not limited to the following:

• Login Activity: If the student has or has not logged into Brightspace
• Course Activity: If the student has or has not accessed the course
• Assignments: If a student has or has not submitted an assignment
• Discussions: If a student has, or has not posted to a discussion topic
• Quizzes: If a student has achieved a specific score, if they have completed a quiz attempt, or if they haven't completed a quiz attempt
• Content: If a student has completed, not completed, viewed, or did not view a content topic
• Grades: If a student received a specific score on a grade item or if they haven't completed a graded item

Access the Intelligent Agents tool

1. Go to Course Admin from the Navbar
2. Select Intelligent Agents

Creating an Agent

1. Select New Agent
2. Type in your Agent Name and optionally add a description
   
3. Optional - Select or add a Category for this agent. (Categories allow you to sort your intelligent agents.)
   
4. Decide if you would like to enable the agent once created by selecting the "Agent is enabled" checkbox. If you don't want this enabled, leave the checkbox unselected.
5. Decide the schedule for the agent, your options are:

• One-Time Run
• Hourly
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Annually
  

6. Choose if you would like this agent to apply to all within the class, or to users with specified roles (e.g., Learners, Undergraduate TAs, Graduate TAs, etc.)
   
7. Choose what criteria you would like to identify, options include:

• Login Activity: If the user has or has not logged into Brightspace during the last set amount of days
• Course Activity: If the user has or has not accessed your course during the last set amount of days
• Release Conditions: Identify if a student did or did not complete a specific action within your course. Options include but are not limited to discussions, assignments, quizzes, content, and grades.
  

8. Decide if you would like to take action only the first time the criteria is satisfied for the user, or every time it is satisfied. 
   
9. Decide if you would like to send an automated email for those who meet the set criteria.

• To make sure student(s) who met the criteria receives the email, in the To, Cc, or Bcc field, type in the replacement string {InitiatingUser}. (This will be replaced with students' email addresses.)
• Include the name of your course in the subject field so students recognize where the email is coming from. You can either type the name of the course or use the replacement string {OrgUnitName} to have it automatically appear.
• Type out the message that the student will see in the body of the email when they meet the set criteria.
• Decide if you would like to add an attachment to the email
  
  
  

Please note! If you do not want to send a message to students, and you instead would like to notify yourself that a student has met the criteria of your agent, you can enter your own email address.

10. Select Save and Close
    

Once your agents are created, in the intelligent agent menu, you can view your agents, the results of it's last run, the last run date, and the next run date. By clicking on the results of the last run, you can view the students who met the criteria of the run. 

You can also decide if you would like to enable, disable, delete, or bulk update your agents.

And you can edit categories or select More Actions to restore deleted agents, or export a .csv file containing the results of agents that were previously run. 

By selecting Settings, you can view the Name that emails come from and you can also view the Reply-To address for responses. By default, Name that email comes from will be Stony Brook's Brightspace and the default Reply-To address is noreply@stonybrook.edu, however these can be customized. 

Note, Name that emails come from cannot be set to your personal email address due to how spam filters operate. However, the Reply-To address can be a personal email address.

To create an Announcement in Brightspace, follow the steps below:

1. When in your course, go to the Course Admin menu and select Announcements
   
   
   
2. Select the New Announcement button
   
3. Type your Headline and Content for your Announcement
   
4. Choose a Start Date and Time. You have the option to show this start date to students.
5. Optionally, you can choose an End Date and Time. Once this date and time happens,  your announcement will no longer be available to students.
6. If you would like to add an attachment to your Announcement, you can do the following:

• Upload a file from your computer or Google Drive
• Record Audio to attach to the Announcement
• Record yourself on Video to attach to the Announcement

7. If you would like to have your announcement sent after certain conditions have been met by your students, then you can create a release condition for your Announcement
8. Select Publish
   

In Brightspace, you can link directly to your course content - including Announcements- directly from Brightspace communications. Send these directly from the Classlist tool to easily reach your whole class.

Video Demo

1. Sign into your course in Brightspace
2. In the nav bar, select Course Admin (if you don't see Course Admin, select More and then Course Admin)
   
3. Select Classlist
4. Select the checkbox near the top left of the Classlist to select everyone, or individually check the box(es) next to the people you would like to email; Then, select Email
   
5. A new message opens in a new window with the select recipients' Brightspace email addresses in the BCC field.
6. Fill in the Subject (when emailing from a class, the Subject will have the prefix of your course name (e.g., ENG 101 >)
7. Type the body of the message, and wherever you want a link to content from your course (e.g., an announcement, assignment, content), select the text and click the link icon ? in the toolbar at the top (don't select the "floating" link icon as it doesn't have the same options as the link icon in the toolbar)
   
8. Click on the type of content you want to add (e.g., Announcements, Assignments, Calendar, Checklist, Content, Discussions) , navigate to the specific item, and select it to create the link as default
   
   1. OR click the pencil icon to change how the link works (change the link Title and/or Target--open in-- Whole Window; Same Frame; or the default, New Window)
      
9. When your email is done, click Send

When a Brightspace Course's Course Offerings Information has a start date and that start date is in the future, users in the course will not get notifications when changes are made to the course prior to that date. That means if the instructor creates an announcement before the course's start date, students will not get an email about that announcement. The same applies to end dates: If the course has an end date, any changes made to the course or announcement created in it after that end date will not send notifications.

If, as an instructor, you want to communicate with students before the set start date or after the end on a Brightspace Course, either change/remove the start/end date or use the Classlist tool to email everyone currently enrolled in the course.

Contents

• Understand what students see when a course is active but a start/end date
• Instructors: See if your course has a start or end date and change/remove it

How an Active Course with a Future Start Date Looks to Students

When a course is active but has a future start date, students will see the course in their Brightspace Home Page My Courses, but it will be grayed out, so they cannot click into the class.

Also, if an instructor emails the classlist a link to content in the course, students will not be able to access the content:

Tip: If a course is inactive, the course will not show in students' Brightspace Home Page My Courses. 

Instructors: See If a Course Has a Start Date and Change/Remove it

Instructors: You can check if your course has a start date in Course Offerings Information:

1. When in your course, in the Navbar at the top, click Course Admin (or click More and then Course Admin) and select Course Offering Information
   
   
2. Scroll down to Start Date and End Date. If ☑︎Course start date is checked, your course's start date is the date in the box. If ☑︎Course end date is checked, your course's end date is the date in the box. 
   Changes made or announcements added to the course before the start date will not send notifications; changes made or announcements added to the course after the end date will not send notifications either.
3. To remove a start or end date, uncheck the ⃞ Course start date and/or ⃞ Course end date box(es) or change the start/end date(s)
4. At the bottom of the page, click Save, and then you can safely navigate away from the page

Discussion Order

Discussion Forums:

When creating Discussions, your Discussion Forum must be created first. Discussion Forums allow instructors to organize their Discussion Topics however the instructor wishes. For example, an instructor could organize their Forums by each week or unit of the course. Instructors are also able to add descriptions to Forums for students to reference as well. 

Forums are able to be copied from one course to another. 

Discussion Topics

Discussion Topics are assigned to Discussion Forums. Topics should be used by instructors to add in questions/instructions for students to reply to. Simply add a title to your topic and provide instructions in it's description. 

If you would like to associate your Discussion to your Grades, it must be done through the Discussion Topic. For more information on linking your Discussion Topics to Grades, check out this article. 

Topics are able to be copied from one course to another. 

Discussion Threads

Discussion Threads are used to reply to Discussion Topics. When a student clicks on the title to a Discussion Topic, they will see a button where they can start a new Thread to reply to the Topic. 

Please note! Instructors are also able to create Threads, however these Threads are not able to be linked to Grades. Only Discussion Topics can link directly to the Grade Book.

When evaluating your student's work, you can grade the Thread they submitted, and you can also respond to their thread directly by clicking on it's title to continue the conversation. 

Because  Discussion Threads are used to reply to Topics, they will not copy from one course to the other. 

As of May 18th, 2023, we have transitioned to the New Discussion Experience in Brightspace. This new experience has changed the appearance of the Discussion creation area to be uniform with the area to create an Assignment. While this Discussion creation area may look different, this new experience will not effect the following:

• Discussion Settings
• Replying to Discussions
• Grading Discussions
• Creating Forums from the main Discussion menu. 

Overview:

What Has Changed?

• The Design
• Creating a Forum in a Discussion Topic
• Creating a Grade Item
• Categorizing a Grade Item
• Linking a Topic to an Existing Grade Item
• Hiding Discussion Topics

What has Moved?

What Has Changed?

The Design

When creating a Discussion, the creation area will now resemble how it appears when creating an Assignment in Brightspace. The old experience had various tabs at the top of the screen that would allow instructors to customize their Discussions; these have now moved to the right of the screen in the new experience and they are given new titles.

Creating a Forum in a Discussion Topic

In the old experience, when creating a Discussion Topic you had to either assign the topic to an existing forum, or create a new forum in the Discussion creation area. In the new experience, by default, a forum will be created automatically. This forum will have the same name as the topic. 

To assign a topic to a specific forum, select the Change Forum link, then choose to either Create a Forum or Choose an Existing Forum to assign the topic to a forum that was already created.

Creating a Grade Item

In the old experience, when creating a topic, you would have to go to the Assessment tab and either link the Discussion to an existing grade item, or click a link to create a new grade item. In the new experience, this works differently. Instead of going to a separate tab, you will have access to a box that says Grade Out Of from the main topic creation area.

This area will allow you to type a value to score a discussion topic out of. Once a number is typed, it will automatically create a grade item for this discussion in Grades. Please note that this grade item will not be categorized. If you have a weighted gradebook, you will not be able to set the weight of the grade item from here, this must be done in Grades. 

Categorizing a Grade Item

To assign a Grade Item you created from the Discussion Topic creation area to a Grade Category, select the button that says In Grade Book, and then choose Edit or Link to Existing.

Once clicked, make sure you have the option Create and Link to a New Grade Item selected, and then you can then click a button titled Choose Grade Category.

Once selected, you can choose the applicable category to assign this grade item to. 

Linking a Topic to an Existing Grade Item

In the new Discussion experience, if you would like to link your topic to an existing Grade Item, you can do so by selecting the In Grade Book button, and then choose Edit or Link to Existing. 

Once clicked, you can choose the option titled Link to an Existing Grade Item. Then choose the drop down selector to find the grade item you wish to link the topic to. 

Hiding Discussion Topics

When creating or editing a topic, you are now able to hide the topic from learners at the bottom of the screen by selecting the eye icon.

What Has Moved?

All customization options that existed in the old Discussion experience still exist in the new one. These features have been moved to three new areas in the topic creation screen:

• Availability Dates & Conditions
• Post & Completion
• Evaluation & Feedback

Availability Dates & Conditions

In the Availability Dates & Conditions section, you can find the following:

• The option to include the start or end dates for a Discussion Topic
• Release Conditions
• Group and Section Restrictions for the Topic

These options were previously available in the restrictions tab of the old experience.

Post & Completion

In the Post & Completion section, you can find the following options:

• Default participation (default discussion setting)
• Allow learners to hide their name from other learners (previously titled: allow anonymous posts)
• Learners must start a thread before they can view or reply to other threads
• Posts must be approved before they display in the topic

These options were previously available in the properties tab in the old experience.

Evaluation & Feedback

In the Evaluation & Feedback section, you can find the following options which were located in several different areas of the old experience:

• Adding a rubric (formally in the assessment tab)
• Allow evaluation of individual posts (formally in the assessment tab)
• Mange learning objectives (formally in the objectives tab)
• Allow learners to rate posts (formally found in the properties tab)

In Brightspace, instructors have the ability to create groups to facilitate collaboration among their students. Once groups are created, instructors can use the groups for various purposes. Examples include assignments, discussions, and file sharing among group members.

Instructors can

• Create and populate their groups in Brightspace

OR

• Create a spreadsheet of which students go in which groups for our Admins to populate the groups

Instructor Create and Populate Groups

The Groups Tool/Basic Settings

1. From the Navbar, select Course Admin

2. Choose the Groups tool from the Course Admin menu

3. Select the New Category button in the Manage Groups menu
4. Type in the Category Name for your group. You can also optionally type in a description of this group below the Category Name.
5. Choose the Enrollment Type, see below for each option:

• # of Groups - No Auto Enrollments: Selecting this option creates a specified number of groups, for which you can add any number of users using the Enroll Users page
• Groups of #: Selecting this option creates the minimum number of groups needed to place users in groups of a specified maximum size. If this option is selected, you have the ability to decide if you would like to auto enroll users into groups, or randomize users in groups.
• # of Groups: Selecting this option creates a specified number of groups. If this option is selected, you have the ability to decide if you would like to auto enroll users into groups, or randomize users in groups.
• Groups of # - Self Enrollment: Selecting this option creates the minimum number of groups needed to accommodate users in groups of a specified maximum size automatically. Users choose the group they want to enroll in from the Groups page.
• # of Groups - Self Enrollment: Selecting this option creates a specified number of groups, which users enroll in from the Groups page.
• # of Groups, Capacity of # - Self Enrollment: Selecting this option creates a specified number of groups with a specified number of enrollments per group. Users choose the group they want to enroll in from the Groups page.
• Single user, member specific groups: Using this option creates a group with a single user where the first name and last name of the learner is the name of the group. When a new learner is enrolled in the course, a group is automatically created for them. 

6. Depending on which Enrollment Type you chose, you will be prompted to type in either the Number of Groups, or Number of Users (or both).
7. Optionally, you can type a Group Prefix which will name your groups something specific. IE: A prefix that says "Discussion Group" will make groups that say "Discussion Group 1", "Discussion Group 2", etc. 

8. Select Save to finish

Advanced Settings

Depending on which Enrollment Type you selected, you have access to the following advanced settings:

If you chose # of Groups - No Auto Enrollments or Single User, Member-Specific Groups

• You have the option available to you to make category and group descriptions visible to group members.

If you chose Groups of # or # of Groups

You are able to:

• Auto-enroll new users into groups
• Randomize existing users in groups
• Make category and group descriptions visible to group members

If you chose any Self Enrollment options

You are able to:

• Set start dates to allow students to begin self enrolling
• Set expiration dates that students have to enroll by
• Allocate unenrolled users after self enrollment expiration date (auto enroll users to did not enroll by the expiration date)

Additional Options

When creating or editing your groups, you can do any of the following:

• Set up discussion areas. This allows instructors to create a new discussion topic, or link to an existing discussion topic, making it a group discussion directly from the groups tool.
• Set up lockers. Lockers allow group members to share files with each other within the groups tool. These files are only available to those enrolled in the group, and the instructor.
• Set up assignments. This allows you to create an assignment for the group to complete directly from the groups tool. 

Locating Groups

Once your groups have been created, you can view them in the Manage Groups menu. Here you can see a table with the following information:

• The name of each group
• The amount of members in each group (clicking on this number will show the individual students assigned to the group)
• The amount of assignments assigned to each group (clicking on this number will show the names of each group assignment)
• The amount of discussions assigned to each group (clicking on this number will show the names of each group discussion)
• A link to each groups locker (clicking on the link that says Group Files will show the files uploaded to the locker by each team member)

Populate Groups by Spreadsheet

I. Create the groups

1. In your course Navbar, select Course Admin (or select More and then Course Admin), select Groups and select New Category
2. For Category name, type whatever name will help you know the group category
3. For Enrollment type, select # of Groups - No Auto Enrollment
4. For Number of Groups select whatever number of groups you need
5. For Restrict Enrollment to select No restrictions
6. For Group Prefix, choose what you want each group name to begin with (e.g., Subgroup)
7. click Save
   

II. Find the Group Code

1. Click on the first group within the category (e.g., Subgroup 1) to see edit view for the group
2. Find the Group Code field - write down/copy out the Group Code
   For example, for Subgroup_6937_1, '6937' is the org unit ID for the course; Groups IDs therefore follow a pattern, in this case:
   Subgroup_6937_1
   Subgroup_6937_2
   Subgroup_6937_3
   Subgroup_6937_4
   ...
   
3. Keep the noted Group ID -you'll need it for the spreadsheet (you don't need to copy every one out as they follow the above pattern)

III Create csv file

1. Create a csv file with 5 columns (no headings) for
   Enroll, NetID, Stony Brook ID (aka OrgDefined ID), Learner, GroupID
2. Be sure the list is only Learners (no Instructors or Teaching Assistants, for example)
3. In the column for GroupID, paste in the group name using the GroupID format described above (e.g., subgroup_6769_1, subgroup_6769_2, subgroup_6769_3,)
   It'll look something like this:
   
4. Save the file as a .csv file
5. Create a help ticket requesting we populate your groups and attach the csv. Be sure to specify which course the groups are in