Page Comparison

Brightspace does not include a dedicated sign-up tool for appointments or events (e.g. office hours or presentation timeslots).

Below is an evolving list of options that can be used to address this need. This includes repurposing Brightspace Groups self-enrollment Groups within Brightspace.

Brightspace Groups

Brightspace offers a self-enrollment group type which can be used to provide students the ability for students to do things like form their own groups for a project, select a discussion topic in which they will enroll and participate, or to choose a timeslot for a presentation.

Creating Groups is not complicated, although renaming them based on project topics or timeslots can become laborious. Once in place, an instructor needs only needs to direct students to the Groups tool through Course Tools on the navbar, where students then have the ability to join and leave groups.

Learn more about Groups here.

Microsoft Office365 files

One of the easier methods of facilitating a sign-up process is making use of the Office365 applications such as Word or Excel.

Instructors can create a file and set the permissions to be sharable with their class. Then, instructors can post the link to the document in the Content area, Announcements, or Discussions of their course site.

Etherpads

Etherpads are similar to editable text documents, except they lack many of the functionalities that a text document offers. They can be embedded into the Content area through the Add Existing button. More information about embedding an Etherpad can be found here

Learn more about embedding external objects and files.

Once embedded, Etherpads are available to all students in the class and everyone members of a site and anyone can make live edits.

Microsoft Bookings

Bookings is dedicated to handling appointments and, while it has a steep learning curve, is one of the more powerful office hour management tools around. Bookings is available to all Brock users through Office365, synchronizes with the Outlook calendar, and can launch Teams meetings.

Learn about all of the features and Microsoft’s own instructions for Bookings and appointment scheduling.

With Bookings, you can:

• Configure time-slots for days, times, durations, etc. and create a shareable landing page to promote all options.

• Create links to individual appointments or upcoming availability and share these in Brightspace Content items or Announcements.

Bookings demo video for a specific use case in COMM.

Microsoft Teams sites

Instructors that make use of a Teams site may find that hosting sign-up materials on the Teams site instead of on Brightspace could to be beneficial. Microsoft Office documents that are created from the Files area of a Teams site automatically grant everyone in the Teams site access to them, which means instructors an instructor wouldn’t have to configure sharing permissions.

Additionally, instructors who host office hours could benefit from creating a separate channel for office hours, channels where students can post in the chat to create a queue.

Click here to provision Instructors can generate a Teams site for your course

from an official course roster using this Teams creation self-serve tool. Note that the process may take a few hours.