Thoughtful course design in the Learning Management System, in our case Brightspace, can ensure a smooth student experience and empower student learning. While we may be tempted to think that this is key to student success only for online courses, as per the guidance in the OLC’s Online Scorecard Quality Checklist, the design and management of one’s Brightspace course for in-person classes is just as important.
The initial investment of time and effort to create a well organized and detailed Brightspace course site may feel like a heavy lift each semester, but the payoff can be seen when students ask less questions about where to find course materials, grades, due dates, and other issues. One of the ways to make this workload more sustainable, particularly for recurring courses, is through the use of template sites.
In Brightspace, you can create a Practice site for each of your recurring courses to serve as a shell for the components you otherwise find yourself recreating each semester you teach. Content units, gradebook settings, assignments, announcements, and more can be built and cleanly copied to your official course site each semester. While you can certainly copy all of your materials from a previous semester’s official course site, the benefit of a template practice site is that you can copy without the worry of accidentally copying semester specific changes, like one-off announcements, that you would not like in your new course.
A template site can also serve as a space to engage in reflective teaching, providing you with the opportunity to review the components at the end of each term to determine what elements continue to support the learning outcomes of your course and which elements could benefit from a redesign.
To create a practice site in Brightspace, log in to NYU Brightspace and scroll down until you see the My Practice Sites widget on the right hand column.
Scroll down in the widget until you see the Create New Practice Site button. Click the Create New Practice Site button once.
Your new practice site will be created automatically, so if you do not see the site immediately, refresh the page and scroll down to the My Practice Sites widget on the right hand column.
Click the name of your practice site to open the practice site course homepage. We are always happy to support you as you make course design decisions. Use the Liaison Finder to find your department’s educational technology specialist to set up a consultation.