Communicate in Brightspace
There are multiple ways to communicate with your students in Brightspace and you should pick the way that matches your intention.
The most common way, and preferred way, of communication is through an announcement, posted on the front page of your course.
Below you will find a quick summary of the different ways to communicate with your students in Brightspace.
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It is important to communicate regularly with all students enrolled in your course. Maybe a reminder is needed, or an update about new materials that were posted, or perhaps informing students about a project that is now ready for them. Announcements are the perfect way to do this in Brightspace.
To create an announcement:
- Go to the home page of your course and expand the drop-down menu by clicking on the grey arrow next to Announcements; select New Announcement.
Alternatively, you can go to Course Admin, click on Announcements and then select New Announcement.
- Start your announcement with a Headline. This is similar to the subject line of an email.
- If you want the author information to be visible in the announcement, enable the Display Author Information option. Users reading the announcement may see some or all of the following author information:
- the original author
- the original date and time the announcement was published
- the author who edited the announcement
- the date and time of the edit
- Write the announcement in the Content field. You can format the content by using the editing options at the top of the Content text field. Click on the link icon to create links in your announcements to websites or specific areas in your course.
- The start and end dates for Announcements can be adjusted. If you set the start date for the current time, the announcement will appear immediately. After the end date, the announcement will not available anymore. Use these settings for announcements that are only applicable for a specific period.
- You can also attach files to announcements. Make sure not to attach files that are too large to send via email, or else they might not reach your students. If you need to share very large files, rather upload them to your course and link to them in the announcement by using the option Insert Quicklink.
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- You can also set up your Announcement with Release conditions. These make your Announcement visible only for students who, for example, are in specific groups or have attained a certain grade for an assignment. An example for using Release conditions is: when a student completes an assignment, they will receive an announcement about the next section of the course. More information on release conditions can be found here.
- You can pin an announcement to the top of the page so that it remains visible at the top for you and your students.
- You can also save your announcement as a Draft and then come back to Publish it when you're ready. Draft announcements are not visible to students.
- By default, all announcements become visible to all the students enrolled in your course once it is published. This is the preferred way to communicate with your students. A copy of the announcement will remain in your course, until you delete it. Students can also receive their announcements via the Pulse app. Most students make use of the app, so they will receive your communication instantly.
- Notice the “X” next to each announcement on the Home Page. You can click on these to hide them. If you want to view the hidden announcements again, click on the Announcements, just below the course banner. All the available announcements for that course will be displayed there.
- To put an announcement back on the Home page, select the announcement by ticking the checkbox, click on the More actions button, and select Restore.
- You can also personalize the announcements and descriptions by addressing your messages to {FirstName} and/or {LastName}:
“Hi {FirstName} {LastName}” results in “Hi John Smith” (for example).
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If you want to post the same Announcement in multiple courses, you can use the Copy Announcement tool.
- Under Course Admin > Announcements, click on the arrow next to the announcement you want to copy and click Copy to Other Courses.
- Search for and select the course you want to copy the Announcement to. You can select up to 10 courses. Select Publish Announcement on Copy if you want the announcement to be published directly on the destination course(s) the announcement is copied to. If you do not select this option, the copied announcement will be a draft version in the destination course(s).
- Click Next and Copy to confirm. The Announcement has now been copied to the desired courses.
To copy Announcements to other courses you need to have the a role with permission to “Create/edit/delete Announcements” in both, source and destination, courses. More information about Roles and Permissions can be found on this page.
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The second way of communication is to send an email. Please note however, that by sending an email from Brightspace, it does not mean the students receive it and read it in the time frame that you hope them to do so. We recommend that you reserve the use of e-mail for situations where you need to communicate a change of venue or cancellation of a lecture or postponement of an assignment.
There are other ways that you can use email effectively in your course, for example in the assignment section. It is possible to e-mail students with no submissions or, while grading an assignment it is also possible to e-mail a student or a group of students directly.
For more information of how to communicate using email, please visit this link.
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Another way to communicate with your students is via a discussion board. Create a discussion forum for the entire course, on your course website. Here students can ask general questions to each other, but also to yourself and the TAs (teaching assistants).
If you use a lot of group work in your course you can also create a discussion board for each group. On this forum, students can communicate amongst themselves, share files and if you have a coach leading the group, that coach can participate in that discussion board and in file-sharing as well.
If you are a coach, you can email the students in your group directly from the groups tool and e-mail multiple groups that you are responsible for. This way you can target the section of the class that is relevant for you.
Since January 2024 the Chat tool within Brightspace has been removed. Content topics which are Chat-based have not been removed, but chats are no longer accessible.
Need support?
Get in touch with us! We are happy to help.
- Teaching-Support@tudelft.nl
- +31 (0)15 27 84 333