Faculty Checklist for NYU Brightspace Course Site Set-Up

Follow these recommended steps to prepare your NYU Brightspace course site for the upcoming semester. If you need information on specific policies or guidelines, contact your Educational Technology Support contacts for school-specific resources (NYU login required).

Once a course is scheduled in NYU Albert and a primary instructor is assigned, a corresponding NYU Brightspace course site needs to be created. Depending on where you teach at NYU, this step is completed either by an administrator or by the instructor. If you need to create your own site, see NYU Brightspace: Creating your course site (Instructors).

If you’d like to reuse content from a previous site in either NYU Classes or NYU Brightspace, you can use the “import/copy components” feature in your new course site to import those materials. You may already have access to past NYU Classes course content in NYU Brightspace through a “reference site.”

For more details on the process as it relates to NYU Classes, see Reusing NYU Classes Course Content in NYU Brightspace. For information on copying content from NYU Brightspace “practice” or live course sites, see NYU Brightspace: Copy, import, or export components.

Create “units” to organize your course materials sequentially for students. Units can contain content such as lessons (a folder structure), HTML documents (pages), weblinks, files from your computer, and activities such as assignments, discussions, and quizzes. If you already have a content unit structure in your new course site (typically from copying content as outlined above), review and edit those units as needed. For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: New Content Experience.

If you are reusing content from a previous site, you’ll likely need to replace older syllabus information. For information on how to add your syllabus, see NYU Brightspace: Add a syllabus.

Use the “Grades” tool to centralize assessment and evaluation for your course. We recommend completing the “Setup Wizard” and creating all grade categories (where applicable) and grade items before creating assignments. For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: Setting Up the Gradebook.

Create groups to share content with specific students. This is useful for group assignments, projects, and discussions. For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: Groups.

Use the Quizzes tool to create quizzes with various question types (true or false, multiple-choice, fill in the blank, and so on). For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: Quizzes. Use the Assignments tool to create and manage course assignments. For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: Assignments.

A discussion forum provides a space for students to discuss various topics asynchronously, outside of the classroom. For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: Discussions.

You may want (or need) to use other tools in your course site, such as NYU Zoom and/or integrations with other third-party technologies. A full list of available integrations can be found in NYU Brightspace: Integrations & Pilots.

Note: make sure to check your NYU Zoom License to maintain your active user status. For instructions, see NYU Zoom: Checking Your License Status.

The classlist tool in your course site contains a directory of names, emails, and group settings for quick access for all participants in your course. Students are automatically enrolled in your course site from Albert. If you have a TA, you can give them access by following instructions on adding an existing user in NYU Brightspace: Classlist.

View your course as a student and make changes to your content as required before making it “active” to students. For instructions, see NYU Brightspace: View as Student. Note that there are limitations to the “student view” feature, and it can be helpful for checking that items are visible to students as well as how they might navigate a course site.

Use the “Manage Dates” feature to review the dates (start, end, due) associated with items in your course site.  Here’s how: NYU Brightspace: Manage Dates.

You can see your current site's active/inactive status on the homepage, along with instructions on how to make it active (visible to students). Read more in NYU Brightspace: Activate and deactivate a course offering.

Post an announcement before the first day of class to greet your students and to guide them on where to begin and what to expect on the first day of class. Make sure your site is active so that students receive an email notification. For information on how to create announcements, see NYU Brightspace: Announcements.