The minibar
When logging in to Brightspace, you will first reach the homepage. In the top right corner, you will find a basic menu called the minibar.
- Check out your course list here (Course Selector). You can search for a course, select them, and pin them to your home page.
- Subscription alerts: you can choose to receive notifications when someone replies to posts in Discussions. Click the speech cloud icon to view these replies. You can recognize a new notification by the orange dot appearing next to the icon.
- Update alerts: you will be notified when a teacher adds new content, announcements, grades or deadlines to one of your courses. Click the bell icon to view these items. New notifications are marked with an orange dot.
- By clicking your own profile picture or name, you will be taken to your profile, notifications, and other account settings.
Your personal home page
When you enter Brightspace, your personal homepage appears. Each and every personal homepage has the same layout, regardless of whether you are a teacher or student.
- Here you will see an overview of the twelve courses you have last accessed. Brightspace will automatically display twelve courses, even if you have pinned fewer than twelve.
- For some courses you will see icons with a number in an orange square. These icons represent Activities ((Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes). The number in the orange square shows how many unread items you have within that activity.
- Click on the name of the course to open it.
- Click on View All Courses to see all courses.
- In the menu above the courses you can see different tabs with layouts: All courses, courses you have pinned, courses that continue your whole study and the courses separated in academic years.
- Under Open Courses you will find courses that have been made centrally available to students for the purpose of self-study. You will not find courses for regular education here. Courses you have registered for via OSIRIS can be found on the homepage or at the Course Selector in the minibar at the top of Brightspace.
- The Announcements section displays system messages regarding subjects such as maintenance being done to web lectures (no messages from enrolled courses will appear here). You can delete (and archive) an announcement by clicking the X in the top right corner. Click Announcements or Show All Announcements to see all announcements, both active and archived (dismissed) announcements.
- In your personal Calendar, activities and events from courses will appear. Upcoming events shows these events in a list. Click Calendar to open the calendar.
Do you want to return to the homepage? Clicking the Radboud University logo in the upper left corner of the screen will always take you right back.
Course Home
You can open a course by:
- Clicking a course on the homepage. The Course Home will appear.
- Find the course you need in the Course Selector. The Course Home will appear.
To return to the Course Home from a different page, click Course Home in the navbar or the course name at the top of the screen.
The navigation menu of a course is the same for all courses at the Radboud University, and generally called the navbar. From here, you can go to the following places:
- Content: this is where you can find the materials for each course (per week, for instance: week 1, week 2, etc.; or per theme, for instance: Introduction, History, Politics, etc.)
- Activities: this is where you can find all Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, and Checklists in one place. Kaltura is also located in this menu, which is the Radboud University's video platform.
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Administration: this is the administrative part of a course. Among other things, this is where you can find the classlist of the course, manage your group memberships, view your grades, display your personal RU time table or view the course prospectus.
The remaining two menu options (Portfolio and Help) are accessible from any Brightspace page: - Portfolio Portflow: the Radboud University has access to the Portflow feature in Brightspace. The different faculties of Radboud University have their own policies regarding the use of this feature. If your discipline requires the use of a Portflow portfolio, you will receive separate instruction on how to use it.
- Help: the Help button takes you to a variety of manuals and instructions. Be sure to check out www.ru.nl/currentstudents/ for further assistance.
- The Course Banner displays the current course title. The banner makes it easy to recognize and find a particular course.
- The Announcements section displays messages that are specific to the course you are in. You can also opt in to email notifications for new announcements, which you can set per course.
- The Calendar shows events pertaining to the course, such as meetings, deadlines for assignments, and materials to prepare for class.
- Bookmarks are useful to quickly find important items you have marked elsewhere. Bookmarked items will also appear on the Course Home page.