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  3. Brightspace – Quick Start for Instructors

Brightspace – Quick Start for Instructors

Find and pin your courses

Pinning courses in Brightspace allows you to access quickly courses important to you. Use the three dots that appear on your desired course tile.

See the UVM Knowledge Base article, Brightspace – Find Your Course. It explains the tabs that separate courses by semester.

Upload your syllabus

You can just drag and drop your syllabus into the Syllabus area in at the top of “Content & Activities.”

See the UVM Knowledge Base article, Brightspace – Content & Activities Syllabus section.

Make your course available to students

In Brightspace terminology, a course is either “Active” or “Inactive.” By default, all courses are inactive, but activating your course so students can see it is simple!

See the UVM Knowledge Base article, Brightspace – Make Your Course Active (Available) for Students.

Add TAs and/or review the Classlist

You no longer need to request this in MyUVM. You can now add TAs immediately from your own class list!

See the UVM Knowledge Base article, Brightspace – Add TAs and Course Builders.

Create an Announcement

It’s simple! See the UVM Knowledge Base article, Brightspace – Announcements.

Add some content

Content can mean a few items or a host of materials and/or links you can add to Content & Activities, e.g. quizzes, assignments, discussions. Either way, they’ll need to be presented and organized within Modules (which are organizational groupings similar to folders) under the Table of Contents. To learn how about adding content to your course, see these UVM Knowledge Base articles:

View your course either as a learner or with a Student-View account

View as Learner: For a quick look at content, you can click on your icon on the upper right of the page and choose “View as Learner.” You can’t take quizzes or interact with the course as a student would in this view.
Make a Student View Account: This type of account will allow you to do activities such as quizzes and give grades to the student view account, as well. See the UVM Knowledge Base article, Brightspace – Student View Account for Instructors.

Learn about assessment tools

Adding assessment tools perhaps is a step or two more complex than a Quick Start Guide should cover, but if you’re interested here are the UVM Knowledge Base Articles to get started:

The CTL conducts workshops on all of these tools. You can find more info about CTL events on this page.

Join the Brightspace Community website

This is a community site for Brightspace users. Create a login with your UVM address and navigate to Higher Ed/Postsecondary to explore this active community and its resources.

Updated on October 29, 2025

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