North Island College Teaching & Learning Supports
 
Fall 2022 Term Start Up – Answers to Brightspace Course Access Questions

Fall 2022 Term Start Up – Answers to Brightspace Course Access Questions

Instructors: At this time of year and especially going into a new digital learning environment (Brightspace), there are lots of questions, tickets to the service desk and emails. Here’s hoping this page might help answer some of your questions. If not, please submit a ticket via the NIC Service Desk at https://servicedesk.nic.bc.ca/ and if about Brightspace, Kaltura or BlueJeans – or anything to do with course development and design go to Teaching, Learning and Classroom Support in the service catalog.

I canNOT see my courses on Brightspace?

Answer: If you can log into Brightspace and navigate to the My Courses widget on the left-hand side of the landing page and do not see the courses you should be teaching under the tab for the term – you likely have not been assigned/added as the instructor for those courses yet. It doesn’t mean the courses are not loaded into Brightspace or they are missing – it means you are not seeing them because you have not been added as the “instructor” yet.  When you are enrolled in an instructor role you will see the course. Get in touch with your chair and/or the dean’s office representative who completes the loading sheets and and liaises with the Registrar’s office and ensure your name has been added as the instructor. This may have occurred recently and it may be taking some time to do the change in the system.

 

I canNOT see my courses on Brightspace but I see them in MyNIC Faculty Self-serve?

Answer: If you can log into Brightspace and navigate to the My Courses widget on the left-hand side of the landing page and do not see the courses you should be teaching under the tab for the term -BUT you see your sections and courses listed in MyNIC Faculty Self-Serve area – please submit a https://servicedesk.nic.bc.ca ticket. This means there was a blip in the connection between Colleague (Student Records Office) and Brightspace for a mere second or two when there was synching happening. IT just needs to push the data again and it will update.

 

I am incorrectly listed as an instructor for a course(s)?

Answer: If you are no longer teaching a course or see course shells in Brightspace that are not yours, you need to get in touch with your chair and/or dean’s office representative who liaises with the Registrar’s office and get the change made there. IT and CTLI cannot remove instructors from courses and/or alter the enrolment in a course as it needs to align with the information coming from the Registrar’s office.

 

I need to copy content from one brightspace course to another – how do I do that myself?

Answer: If you have a Brightspace course and you want to copy content (all or some of it) from one course to another you can do this yourself. Follow the directions.

 

 

I want to hide all the sections of a cross-listed course?

Answer: If you see the main section of a course (e.g., XXX- DLS1) and reserved sections of a course (e.g., XXX-DLS1T, XXX-DLS1B) separately appearing in your Brightspace listing along with the cross-listed course (the course that has all the sections listed in parentheses at the end of one course e.g., XXX-DLS1, DLS1T, DLS1B) you should just PIN the cross-listed course and access it via the Pinned tab and ignore the other sections. The main and reserved sections cannot be removed as they are the courses that bring in the enrolments and feed into the cross-listed course. Just ignore them and focus on the cross-listed course. They cannot be hidden or made to disappear.

 

I am a recently hired instructor  – when will I be able to see my courses in brightspace?

Answer: If you are a newly hired instructor you will have to wait until your paperwork has been processed and you are assigned a NIC account and then added as an instructor via the Registrar’s office. This could take a couple of weeks. See flowchart of the process. Until that time you are not able to be added to Brightspace because you require the NIC account to go through an authenticated entry point.

 

I am a recently hired instructor  – How do I get a BlueJeans account to teach online?

Answer: If you are a newly hired instructor and require a BlueJeans account you need to wait until you have a NIC account (email and password) and then complete a service desk request under Teaching, Learning and Classroom Technologies in the service catalog.