Department Sites

Specific undergraduate student categories (e.g. 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

If you wish to be added/make changes to a department site, please reach out to the department site’s contact.

Making use of a Department Site

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

Announcements

Announcements are best used to communicate pertinent or time-sensitive information to all students in a department. While Announcements do generate emails notifications by default, Notification settings are user-based and students may have disabled disable them.

See our detailed article Announcements to learn more about how to use Announcements.

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.

See the section 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 home page (which includes things like the Instructor Profile widget) for sites like these.

Release Conditions

Each Department Site will contain at least two sections. One features all students in the entire department, while the others are separated by year (first year students, for example, are thus in both sections).

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.

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