Brightspace Day May 15

Brightspace Day is May 15

Are you teaching a course this summer or fall? Are you a course lead updating your dev site? Are you on staff and need to know the basics? All faculty and staff are invited to join us for Brightspace Day on Thursday, May 15th. The OFDIT Team will facilitate a day of activities to learn more about Brightspace. The day will start with in-person sessions (10am-Noon) and then afternoon virtual sessions (2pm-4pm). Participants can explore, get trained, or work in their courses alongside the OFDIT team for guidance and support. Whether you’re in-person or virtual, it’s a great opportunity to log in, explore, and ask us anything. See you on May 15!

Full Details and Link to Register

Brightspace at CUNY SPS

Brightspace is the CUNY-wide learning management system (LMS) developed by D2L. Brightspace offers a suite of tools that facilitate course management, content delivery, assessment, and analytics. CUNY SPS has used Brightspace as its LMS since June 2024 with the Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology (OFDIT) managing and administering the system. By the end of 2025, all courses at CUNY SPS will take place in Brightspace.

The information and links provided below are intended primarily for CUNY SPS faculty teaching in Brightspace. On this page you’ll find:

Brightspace Support

Brightspace Office Hours

The OFDIT team offers Brightspace support hours throughout the semester. Between Monday, January 13th to Friday, May 30th, faculty and staff can drop by to ask us anything about Brightspace to prepare their course sites.

Office Hours Schedule (all times EST):

  • Monday – 12PM – 1PM
  • Tuesday – 6PM – 7PM
  • Wednesday – 1PM – 2PM
  • Thursday – 10AM – 11AM

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Dedicated Toll-Free Number

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.

Teaching Guides

The OFDIT team has prepared a wide collection of Teaching Guides to help you design and teach your Brightspace course(s). New guides are added regularly, so make sure to keep checking the site for updates.

Email Support

Email your Brightspace questions to FacultySupport@sps.cuny.edu. The OFDIT Team monitors this email and can direct your question to the best team member to answer it.

Brightspace Community Knowledge Base

The Brightspace Community is an extensive resource that SPS Faculty are encouraged to explore. This resource can also be accessed by clicking the “Brightspace Help” in the upper left corner of the top navigation bar in Brightspace.

Brightspace Faculty/Staff Training

OFDIT-led Training Sessions for Faculty and Staff

The OFDIT team has designed a series of virtual training sessions, offered via Zoom, to support and enhance teaching at CUNY SPS. Sessions include strategies for managing content availability and visibility in Brightspace as well as navigating the grade book and grading.  A session to understand how Ally supports making your course accessible is available along with other topics.  See the Faculty Hub site to register.

CUNY Workshops

Live workshops during both day and evening sessions are offered on preparing to teach in Brightspace and working with migrated courses. These sessions provide opportunities to ask questions regarding specific LMS needs. Workshops are delivered in different modules; Getting Started in Brightspace, ABCs of Content, Engaging Learners, Assessing Learning, Quizzes, and Gradebook.

See Full Workshop Listing

Brightspace Essentials

Brightspace Essentials is your first step in mastering the basics. It’s set up as a series of 10 self-paced mini-lessons crafted to equip you with the fundamental skills for using the Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS). Each mini-lesson contains one 15-minute lesson, which makes for a terrific launching point for your Brightspace explorations.

Brightspace Essentials

Brightspace Basics

Brightspace Basics is a self-paced course designed to help CUNY SPS Faculty learn how to navigate the platform and optimize the teaching experience. Built inside the Brightspace platform, faculty must enroll to gain access to Brightspace Basics. After logging into the platform, look for the “Discover” menu item on the home page navbar. Next, select from the list of courses, or search for “Brightspace Basics for SPS Faculty.” Once you find and enter the course, you can submit an enrollment request. Please see these detailed enrollment instructions.

Brightspace Support for Students

All new students receive some training in New Student Orientation (NSO) on how to use Brightspace. Faculty that wish to share Brightspace resources with their students may find the list below helpful.

Help Menu on the Top Navigation Bar

In Brightspace students can find a list of helpful links on the top navigation bar. These include:

Contact Information

The Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology (OFDIT) manages and administers the Brightspace system for CUNY SPS.  Faculty may contact OFDIT by email to FacultySupport@sps.cuny.edu. The OFDIT Team monitors this email and can direct your question to the best team member to answer it.