The new curricular units for 20/21 will be available on Brightspace to staff from 13th July. Students will access units one week prior to the start of Semester 1, for the majority of programmes this will be 14th September*.
To help staff prepare for the coming academic year FLIE will be supporting Faculties with online sessions throughout June and July.
In addition, from 13th July weekly reports will be made available for Faculties to support unit preparation activities on Brightspace and to ensure staff are assigned to the units they need.
*Reports will also be provided to show the specific dates that students will have access to new units on Brightspace per programme.
Brightspace updates
Unit activation
Units will now be set to Active by default which will mean that units for Semester 1/2/3 will be visible to students from one week prior to the start of Semester 1. This will reassure students that they have access to what they need to begin the year and reduce the significant amount of queries generated in previous years regarding missing units.
Units should have their Unit Information & Organisation content areas populated along with a welcome or holding announcement prior to 14th September. Learning materials should be hidden whilst being developed and then made available or date released for the delivery of the unit.
Homepage and unit homepage updates
Some new updates will be applied to the Brightspace homepage and unit homepages to help organise units by academic year and show updates on recent activity.
New Quiz tool question to allow file uploads
This feature had been requested a number of times over the last few months so we’re pleased to say it will be available from August 2020. Although fairly simple, this will make the quiz tool a lot more flexible.
Support/guidance information
Further guidance on using Brightspace can be found in the Brightspace Staff Resources area.
If you need help supporting your students remotely, see our Guidance for conducting teaching and learning remotely using Brightspace.
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