Getting Started with D2L Brightspace
D2L Brightspace offers a flexible and customizable platform that can adapt to your online classroom’s needs. For a brief overview of the look and feel of the D2L environment please review the following video:
General Quick Guides
Whether getting started with your first course shell, a new course prep, or updating a course, these guides will assist you in ensuring a smooth transition in D2L.
-
the D2L Quick How 2’s provides a collection of quick steps to accomplish commonly used tasks in D2L
-
the Brightspace Community Get Started list identifies fundamental steps to getting started on building and managing your course with linked resources
D2L Brightspace provides the following collection of helpful, useful, and up-to-date resources to support faculty in using D2L:
-
the Higher Education Instructor Knowledge Base is a searchable repository of step guides and videos for D2L course shell elements
-
the Brightspace Tutorials YouTube channel provides a collection of quality, short, subject-specific videos produced by D2L exclusively for Instructors
-
the Brightspace Community page provides access to open discussions and the latest updates on D2L
D2L Brightspace is compatible a variety of publishers. Current 1.3 LTI integrations available with APSU can be found in the Content area as External Learning Tools. For directions on how to integrate an existing publisher with your course, please use the links provided:
If you are interested in working with a publisher that is not currently available in our instance in D2L, please reach out to our department and we will gladly look into the integration options.
D2L live course shells are automatically populated within our instance 60 days prior to the start of a given semester based on the instructor assignment(s) and student enrollment(s) that appear in Banner.
If you or another faculty member need access to a live course shell as an Instructor for co-teaching purposes, you will need to work with your department’s admin to ensure that they are listed as an instructor of record in Banner. If a student needs access to a live course shell, they will need to make sure they are registered for the course.
For all other instances where someone might need access to a live course shell (i.e. a TA, SLA Student, Course Evaluator, Librarian, etc.) or sandbox, you can request to add them by submitting a course access management request to the Distance Education Support Desk.
D2L Brightspace offers ePortfolio, a personal portfolio tool for storing, organizing, reflecting on, and sharing items that represent a student’s learning and help demonstrate mastery in certain areas.
For Instructors, student cultivated evidence that has been shared can be used for review, feedback, and assessment purposes. This workflow is ideal in a higher education learning environment where:
-
students have work in progress that is not ready to be shared
-
the activity is not directly associated with a course, such as extracurricular activities, internships, or independent learning/research.
For more information on how to use ePortfolio, please review the resources provided below.
Instructor Documentation
- Using Brightspace ePortfolio for Higher Education
- ePortfolio Reflections
- Importing Course Items as Artifacts
Videos Resources
The Distance Education Department offers the following options to stay up-to-date on the latest in D2L and online learning:
-
the Distance Education Updates page highlights the latest updates on all our tools and important dates for D2L
-
the TechBytes webinar series is available to all faculty to attend or watch, as archived videos from previous sessions are available on our page
-
the D2L Announcements widget on your home page provides the latest updates and notification from administrators
Need Help?
The Distance Education Support Desk is the designated APSU support branch exclusively for D2L-related issues.
For 24/7 technical support provided by D2L, simply click the chat icon located on the bottom, right-hand side of your screen when logged into D2L to access the Virtual Assistant.