Peer-to-Peer Communication

Students do not have access to the Classlist tool for privacy and safety reasons. This makes facilitating communication between students within Brightspace complicated. This page describes some ways to help students connect with one another.

Export and share the Classlist

Exporting the Classlist is a comprehensive way to share student contact information.

Open

Classlist tool, highlighted is the Print.

1. Go to Classlist select the Print option.

2. On the print page select any of the tabs to filter the user list (i.e., Student, Instructor, TA etc.)

   1. Use the tab Student to get a list of the student accounts only.

3. Select Print on the Print Page and on the confirmation dialogue box.

4. On the PDF viewer page review the Classlist, and change print directions to Save as PDF.

5. Once the PDF is downloaded upload the file to the course for sharing with students

   1. Upload to announcements or on a content page for student access.

Open

PDF view of Brightspace Classlist.

Discussions

Instructors can create a Forum Topic in the Discussion tool to give students the opportunity to offer their contact information to the class directly.

Options to leverage Discussions:

• Instruct students to share their name, and their preferred contact method to the discussion thread

• Instruct students to use Discussions to organize their group projects throughout the term

Please see the Discussions articles below for further instructions.

Forums - Discussions

Topics - Discussions

Instant Messages

Students can use Brightspace’s Instant Messages tool to contact peers in their class. Students will need to first add the peer as a “friend” to begin messaging with them.

1. Navigate to the Instant Messages tool and select the Friends tab

2. Select the Add Friends option, and search the student’s name

   1. Use last name, first name or username (e.g., me14sx) to complete this action

3. Once the peer is added as a friend students can use the messaging tool to connect with one another. Simply select the Message button to begin chatting!

Also if instructors desire to keep student questions on Brightspace, rather than their Brock email account, they can kindly instruct students to follow the steps above and add the instructor’s account as a “friend” on Brightspace.

Chat Tool

Instructors can also leverage Brightspace’s Chat feature to connect students with peers. This tool operates as a generic chatroom for all site participants and can be manually configured for specific groups of students to have their own chat area.

Steps:

• Select Chat tool, then select “New Chat”

• Add parameters for chat Title and Type:

  • General Type: Available to anyone on site, (public chatroom)

  • Personal Type: Chats is restricted, (Private chatroom) to specified users.

• Once the chat is created students can interact in the chatroom.

  • Please note that the chat type cannot be edited post creation.

External Brock tools

Students can also use other tools to connect outside of class time. Both Microsoft Teams and Brock email are our university supported communication tools, and although they do not directly integrate with the LMS they might be the most effective options.

• On Microsoft Teams students can message students in their class, either by searching the name of the student, or by clicking the students' name in a meeting chat or participant’s list to start a conversation. Instructors can request a Teams site for their class through the SDS tool

• On the student’s Brock email account they can search other students' names in the To field when composing a message. As name suggestions will populate, simply select the name of the student you wish to connect with.

  • Please note that all members of the Brock directory are listed, so it is suggested that students know at least the first and last name of the person they’d like to connect with prior to trying this method.