Faculty Brightspace Resources

Brightspace by Desire2Learn (D2L) is an Internet-based Learning Management System (LMS) teaching and learning environment. It organizes course materials and assignments, facilitates communication and collaboration with faculty and other students, provides online testing and course assessment tools, along with many other features to aid in classroom instruction. All faculty have access to the same eLearning community as students.

 

When you access Brightspace for the first time on your computer, it is recommended that you run a (Brightspace Compatibility Test) to ensure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements. The System Check link may be found on the on the Brightspace login page. The system check ensures that you have the proper core plug-ins, a supported web browser, proper browser settings, and appropriate display settings. If you fail a component of the system check, you will receive an error message explaining why you failed and what actions to take to meet the requirements.

You need to allow pop-ups in your browser, toolbar, and security software on the Brightspace domain. This is tested in the System Check. In addition to the System Check items, you will have a much better Brightspace experience if you add the server web address to your trusted sites in your browser.

Accessing Your Courses

When you login to your Brightspace account, you will see a My Courses widget in which your courses are listed. These courses are grouped on tabs according to the roles in which you are assigned in them. If you have access to a large number of courses, you may see a search box in the My Courses widget instead of a list of courses. In this case, just type part of the course name in the search box to access a course. Neither instructors nor students are removed from Brightspace courses once they have been added. If a new instructor is assigned, that instructor will be added once the next Brightspace bulk import is run. If you are no longer the instructor of a course, you may remove yourself from the Class list just as you would remove another student.

Faculty Training Resources

Brightspace Learning Environment, v 10.4

D2L provides two forms of end-user documentation: 1) Quick Start Guides, and 2) User Guides.

The Quick Start guides provide quick, easy to find information and instructions on the most common features of most tools - in a short guide that is just a few pages long. The User Guides are a more complete and detailed user guide, or manual, providing information on all of the features of each tool. For instance, the Quick Start Guide for Course Content is only 3 pages, yet the User Guide for Course Content is 42 pages long.

Getting Started Guide
Quick Start Guides User Guides
Faculty D2L Quick Reference Faculty_D2L_QuickGuide
D2L Quick Guide for Instructors
Faculty_Guide_Calendar_iCal.pdf
Faculty_Guide_Calendar_GMail.pdf
Faculty_Guide_Flag_Copy.pdf
Fac_Guide_GradebookTips.pdf
Fac_Guide_LinkingExternalContent.pdf
Fac_Guide_Merging.pdf

Just-in-Time Training

Syracuse University

Critical Incidents in College Teaching

The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon

Solve a Teaching Problem
Design and Teach a Course
Technology for Education
Principles of Teaching and Learning

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

Professional Development Modules
Topics include Online Teaching, Critical Thinking, Reading Comprehension and Foreign Language Teaching Methods

iTunes U & YouTube

USG Faculty Development Series Archives

Archived sessions of the Office of Faculty Development's Faculty Development Series are available for viewing by selecting the session title or the video thumbnail image on this page. Faculty Development Series are available for download from these and previous years at USG iTunesU. Archived sessions may be previewed at USG iTunesU and full sessions are available in both video and audio format.

Academic Year 2014-2015

 

Presenting Learning to the Public: Using Word Press as Assessment Tool

USG Faculty Development Resources

 

USG Faculty and Professional Development Organizations

USG Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are instructional materials that are freely available for use, reuse, remixing, adapting, and sharing. A wide variety of free, high quality instructional content is available including stand-alone resources that can be mixed and combined to form larger instructional modules or full courses.

What Does Open Mean?
Open educational resources are usually licensed with Creative Commons licenses that grant users specific rights for reuse, remixing, and distributing content.

Where to Find OER?
The following OER projects provide a starting point for access to a wide range of open instructional resources and further information about finding and using OER.

OER Commons
A network for teaching and learning materials providing a single point of access through which educators and learners can search across collections to access over 24,000 items.

Wikimedia Commons
A database of 10,292,996 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.

Search by Creative Commons
Convenient access to a variety of resources offering openly licensed materials.

Khan Academy
Over 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises and assessments covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history.

Wiki Educator
A website that provides free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use.

MIT OpenCourseware
A free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.

OpenCourseWare Consortium
A free and open digital publication of high quality university?level educational materials organized as courses.

Merlot
A free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy.

The Orange Grove
A online library of openly available instructional resources for Florida's educators.

OER Handbook for Educators - Find
A chapter in the book, OER Handbook for Educators, with links to a variety of OER sites and repositories.

Free to Learn
An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials.

USG Links

Learning Opportunities within the University System of Georgia

Approved Blended and Complete Distance Degree Programs
University System of Georgia colleges and universities offer over 100 programs, available from a variety of USG Institutions, where at least 50 percent of a degree is available via distance learning technologies [online, video conferencing (GSAMS), video cassette, telecourse, satellite]. Includes collaborative eCore, WebMBA & WebBSIT programs. Programs generally follow a semester-based institution calendar.


We're here to help

Contact us with your questions, concerns or suggestions by e-mail at eLearning@savannahstate.edu or 912-358-4161, or come by our office at in the Colston Administration Building on the SSU campus.