Accommodations in Brightspace

Brightspace offers three easy ways to implement accessibility accommodations for multiple students in a course site, they are as follows:

Making use of the Manage Special Access function in assessment editors
Applying one accommodation across all quizzes through Classlist
Setting bulk accommodations through the course Grades area

The following methods will be discussed below, as well as some of the options they offer for accommodations.

Manage Special Access

Special Access can be granted to students who require extra time, revised due dates, etc. to complete assignments. Instructors use special access options to comply with accessibility accommodations. The special access function itself can be found in different places based on the type of assessment, more information on each is below:

Special Access has two main functions:

It can be used to grant students special accommodations for an assessment.
It can be used to allow only certain students access to an assessment.

Assignments and Quizzes

Special Access can be found in the same location in both Assignments and Quizzes.

Edit an assignment or quiz by either clicking New or clicking the drop-down arrow next to an existing assessment and clicking Edit.
Click the Availability Dates and Conditions sub-menu in the top-right of the editor to open it.
Scroll down to find Special Access near the bottom of the sub-menu.
Click Manage Special Access to open the Special Access section.

Assignments

Special Access in assignments allows instructors to give students different due dates for the assessment to accommodate extra time. There is not a way to increase the submission count for certain students, so CPI recommends that if the instructor is predicting many students will want to submit multiple times, they should open the entire assignment for multiple submissions.

Quizzes

Special Access in Quizzes allows instructors to change the following:

due date and quiz availability
timing for quizzes
number of attempts

Surveys

When editing a Survey, Special Access can be found in the Restrictions tab at the top of the editor.

Edit a survey by either clicking New or clicking the drop-down arrow next to an existing survey and clicking Edit.
Click the Restrictions tab at the top of the editor.
Scroll down to the bottom of Restrictions and select Add Users to Special Access.

Special Access in Surveys allows instructors to give students different due dates for the survey to accommodate extra time.

Self-Assessments and Discussions

Self-Assessments

Self-Assessments do not give the option to assign Special Access. This is because self-assessments cannot have any sort of restriction placed upon them besides being visible or not to students. As such, there is no need to put Special Access on them.

Discussions

Discussions do not have Special Access. Instructors will need to reopen a forum/topic for all students if a student needs to post after the end date.

Accommodations in Classlist

If instructors know that they will have to apply a time-specific accommodation for multiple quizzes for a specific student, they have the option to go into the course Classlist and automatically set a student’s accommodations there. At this time, the only accommodation that can be set in this manner is the time limit for quizzes.

Go to Classlist.
Click the drop-down arrow next to the student who will be receiving a timing accommodation.
Select Edit Accommodations.
Select Modify Time Limit and then either choose to apply a multiplier, or set the given extra time for every quiz the student accesses. The multiplier is useful if the student is always granted 1.5x the amount of time as per their accommodations, but instructors can use the extra time box to be more specific.
Click Save. The timing accommodations will now be applied for every quiz the student takes.

Grade Exemptions

Instructors may encounter situations where they need to exempt students from certain assignments. While Brightspace does not allow instructors to tailor final grade weight calculations between students, it does allow instructors to exempt students from assessments. If the assessment the student is being exempted from goes toward their final grade, Brightspace will instead calculate their final grade out of the weight remaining (i.e. If a student is exempt from an assignment worth 10% of their final grade, Brightspace calculates their final grade based on the remaining 90%).

Go to Grades.
Select the Enter Grades tab at the top of the Grades area.
Scroll down and search for the student to exempt from an assessment.
Click the drop-down arrow next to the student’s name, and select Bulk edit exemptions.
Select whichever assessments the student is being exempt from, then click the Save button.

Grouping Students with Accommodations

Instructors may attempt to streamline the accommodations process by placing students with the same accommodations into a Brightspace group, and then just selecting that group when editing Special Access.

This process is not recommended.

There is no way in Brightspace to hide students from seeing other members of a group they are a part of. In this sense, students will be able to see who they share accommodations with, which violates their right to privacy in this matter.

Should instructors desire strongly to implement this form of accommodating, please reach out to cpi@brocku.ca to discuss.

Related Articles

Accessibility in Brightspace