Author: Matt Lewis (Page 1 of 3)

CUNY has been issued a dedicated toll-free D2L/Brightspace End User Support phone number:

1-888-895-2511

This toll free number is to ensure that all users will get support from trained specialists familiar with CUNY and CUNY-specific integrations across the university.

OFDIT will be offering Brightspace support sessions during Spring Break.

You can join us for:

• Teaching in Brightspace: basics of communication and grading
• Preparing your Course: bring your questions while getting your course ready
• Open Office Hours: ask us anything

Morning, Midday, and Afternoon sessions will be available. See the schedule and registration links here.

Additional sessions will be offered through May if you can’t make Spring Break Camp.

Dear Faculty & Staff,

Welcome to 2024! With the new year, we are delighted to announce the launch of “Brightspace Essentials,” a series of self-paced mini-lessons crafted to equip you with the fundamental skills for using the Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS).

Brightspace Essentials is your first step in mastering the basics. The first few lessons will help you:

• Get familiar with the fundamental navigation and functions of Brightspace
• Create content modules
• Learn about the great features in the Brightspace Editor
• Become familiar with communication tools
• Manage discussions

Start today! Dive into these 15-minute lessons as a launching point for your Brightspace explorations. Please also check out our regularly updated LMS Transition Training page for demos and other resources.

The CUNY LMS Transition Team conducted a live demonstration of the Brightspace learning environment.  All are welcome to view this 55-minute session detailing the following topics:

• Accessibility
• Accessing Brightspace
• Basic Navigation
• The Student Experience
• The Instructor Experience

Viewing Tip: The video player below allows you to watch the entire demo or navigate to specific content sections. To see the table of contents, click the caret icon or click the arrow pointing right .

The message below was sent by Ruru Rusmin to all SPS faculty to highlight key points and provide details for the SPS community:

Dear SPS Community,

Earlier you received the latest LMS Transition update from Executive Vice Chancellor Wendy Hensel. We would like to highlight 5 key points, followed by details that pertain to SPS:

1. The university-wide Brightspace environment is complete; SPS and other Group 1 and 2 schools are working on customizing their local nodes/organizations.
2. Migration of Summer 2023 courses is on track for Dec. 15 completion.
3. All faculty now have access to Brightspace and can create practice course sites.
4. Faculty workshops from Central will begin in January
5. We will be able to customize our college and course navigation menus (navbars)

Ref #2, SPS dev site migration: In addition to the migration of summer 2023 courses (content only), SPS is working with the CUNY team to migrate our dev sites. We plan to migrate our 3-, 7-, and 10-week dev sites in January 2024, and our 15-week dev sites in April 2024. Please note the migration of 3/7/10-week dev sites begins January 15; anything added or changed after January 15 in these Blackboard dev sites will not be captured in their migration to Brightspace.

Ref #3, Brightspace practice sites: Faculty and staff can now access the new LMS at brightspace.cuny.edu. Faculty can create practice sites with two limitations: practice sites may not include SPS-specific tools like VoiceThread, Digication, and Panopto, and faculty cannot enroll students despite the default text in the widget. Staff cannot create practice sites, but are welcome to reach out to us if they would like to set up practice sites for their unit. Student access is scheduled for May 2024.

Ref #4, Training and Support: We encourage SPS faculty and staff to take advantage of common resources such as the Brightspace Resource Course they are automatically enrolled in, the CUNY Brightspace Basics workshop series starting in January, and the Brightspace Community. We are working on our own SPS Brightspace Essentials Mini-Course for Faculty, which will launch in December 2023.

More information and questions: Please visit the CUNY Transition FAQ page as well our own SPS Transition Site. If your question isn’t answered or you would like to contact us, please don’t hesitate to email the SPS Transition team at brightspace@sps.cuny.edu.

Best,
Ruru

—-
Ruru Rusmin
Assistant Dean of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology
CUNY School of Professional Studies
15 Years of Leading Online Education at CUNY