Brightspace can do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to keeping a course organized, especially when teaching and learning need to shift quickly due to disruptions. This page highlights some of the key tools that help students keep on track:
- Calendar (with due dates) - Gives students a “big picture” view of course deadlines and activities.
- Completion Tracking – Shows instructors and students what has been completed and what is still ahead.
- Checklists – Breaks larger tasks into manageable steps and can help scaffold the weeks or activities.
Brightspace Calendar Tool
The Calendar tool allows instructors to create and manage both recurring and one-time course events. It is integrated with other Brightspace tools, so due dates from assignments, quizzes, discussions, and content items (such as readings) can automatically appear in the Course Calendar.
For students, the Calendar tool is often the main place they go to see what is due and when. They can also access the calendars of all UVM courses in which they are currently enrolled. To do so, they just need to select the "Show All Calendars" option from the calendar dropdown menu. Students can spot event conflicts across courses more easily, notice deadline/exam-heavy periods in advance, and thus, plan ahead.
This UVM Knowledge Base Article on Calendar explains the options.
Completion Tracking
Completion Tracking is a setting that "tracks" students’ visits to parts of your course. When enabled, Brightspace displays visual indicators next to content items to reflect completion status.
Instructors can enable Completion Tracking for individual items, modules, or the entire course. It can be set up in two ways:
- Automatic – Items are marked complete when a student views them.
- Manual – Students mark items as complete after finishing them.
This UVM Knowledge Base on Completion Tracking explains the settings.