Department Sites

Specific undergraduate student categories (for example, all first year students in a concentration) can be enrolled into non-academic (project) Brightspace sites. This is useful for populating department-specific sites or spaces where students receive announcements, updates, and view information beyond an email thread.

The enrollment of students into these sites is automatic and synced to official registrar records, so any student associated with a department will be automatically added to the department site.

Existing Department Sites

Making use of a Department Site

Below are some recommended tools and ideas for making the most of department sites. Contact edtech@brocku.ca with any questions or concerns.

Announcements

Announcements are best used to communicate pertinent or time-sensitive information to students in a site. While Announcements do generate email notifications by default, Notification Settings are user-based and students may have disabled them.

See the detailed article on Announcements to learn more.

Content

The Content area can be used to post relevant department information for students. Events, opportunities, advisor contacts, and learning objectives are some examples of what can go in the Content area.

View the documentation on Content creation and management for full details.

Homepage

The course site Homepage options that emphasize Content and Announcements may be more appropriate than the default homepage (which includes things like the Multi-Profile Widget) for department sites.

Release Conditions

Each department site will contain at least two sections. One features all first year students in the entire department, while the other features all of the remaining students in the department (e.g., year 2, 3, 4, 5 students).

Just about anything created in a site (including Content items, Announcements, and Surveys) can be restricted to any of the component sections by use of Release Conditions.

Release Conditions are customizable if/then statements, which will make available certain content only to students who meet the criteria. For example, an Announcement could be created and shared only with first year students: the criteria would be “if the student is in the year one section then [send announcement, reveal content item, etc.]”

Consult the article on Release Conditions to learn more.

Muting Notifications

Staff and instructors may wish to be added to their department site, however, they may not want the emails and announcements that come with being a member of the site. Fortunately, Brightspace users can mute certain sites, meaning they will not receive email notifications from that particular site.

Select the profile icon in the top-right of Brightspace, then select Notifications.

Open

Scroll to the bottom of the Notifications area to find Exclude Some Courses. Select Manage Course Exclusions to add sites to the list.