CourseLink Documentation & Support

Instructors: CourseLink Tools

The information on this page is intended for instructors using a CourseLink course site.

Announcements

What is the Announcements tool?

The Announcement tool enables you to create news items that help communicate course updates, changes, and new information to your users quickly and effectively. Since Course Home is the first page that users often see when they log in or access their courses, the Announcement widget is a good area for displaying important information.

Announcement items appear in the Announcement widget, but CourseLink users can also receive instant notifications about postings through email and SMS (text messages). Please note that students do have the ability to turn off their announcement notifications as well as block them from specific course sites.

Accessing the Announcements Tool

The announcements tool is available via a widget on the default course home page of a CourseLink site. The options can be accessed from the widget using the context menu (down-facing arrow) to the right of the title.

 

It can also be accessed via the Course Admin link from a course navigation bar by following the steps below:

  1. Access the course site

  2. Select Course Admin on the navigation bar

  3. Select Announcements (if the tools are sorted by category, Announcements will appear under the Communication heading)

 

Using the Announcements tool

For the most up-to-date information on how to use the Announcement widget, please see the the following links on the Brightspace help documentation site.

View Related Tutorial Videos
 

When and why is it a good idea to use the Announcements tool?

The announcements tool is a great way to communicate and engage with students outside of class time.

That said, it is important to remember that students will only see an announcement if they access your course site or if they have opted to receive notifications via email or text, so it is best not to rely on the tool for any communication that all students should receive in a timely fashion. For communications such as that, it would be best to email the entire class via the Classlist tool.

Be careful not to over-use the announcements tool. Students accounts in CourseLink are set to receive email notifications for new announcements from all their course sites by default. If you are posting multiple announcements several times a day, students may become frustrated by the volume of emails and block your course site from their notifications reducing the likelihood that they will see your announcement.

Reminders

Throughout the semester it can be beneficial to post announcements concerning important dates such as assignment due dates, lab times, meeting locations for excursions, etc.

EncouragemenT and Directed Study

An announcement can be a great way to let the class know when you are impressed by their work. Similarly if after grading an assignment or seeing the results of a quiz you notice that the majority of the class is struggling with a specific concept or theory, an announcement can be a great way to direct students to supplemental materials to reinforce those concepts.

Making Connections with Relevant Current Events

In some disciplines current events can often intersect nicely with course materials and provide students with a real world example of how the material they are studying can be applied in real world situation. Creating an announcement to provide some context as well as a link to a news article or video can be a great way to engage students and encourage critical thinking.

Tutorial Videos

Announcements FAQs

Related Resources and Programming

Coming soon!

 

Related Tools

  • Turnitin

  • Grades

  • Rubrics

  • Groups

  • Content

 

Need More Help?

If you're still having trouble, please contact the CourseLink Support team for assistance.

Contact CourseLink Support
 
 
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Dropbox

What is the Dropbox tool?

Students use the Dropbox tool to upload and submit assignments to the Dropbox submission folders in CourseLink, eliminating the need to mail, fax, or email their work to instructors.

Instructors use the Dropbox tool to see students’ submission times, download Dropbox submission folders to their computer, view submissions on the Evaluate Submission page, associate Dropbox submission folders to grade items/rubrics, and return submissions with grades and feedback.

In the Folder Submissions area, instructors can view students' submissions and submission dates, eliminating the need to collect assignments and making it easy to track when files were submitted.

Instructors can create categories to group and organize assignment submission folders. They can also restrict access to assignment submission folders by date and time, group membership, or use special access permissions.

Accessing the Dropbox Tool

The Dropbox tool is one of the links found on the default navigation bar of your CourseLink course site and can be accessed directly from that link.

Location of the Dropbox link on a face-to-face course site

For Distance Education (DE) courses, the link appears under the drop-down menu of the Tools link on the navigation bar (provided that the course is using Dropbox).

Location of the Dropbox link on a DE course site

 

New Experience Using the Dropbox

The main panel on the left allows instructors to add a name, score out of, due date, instructions, and attachments.

The panel on the right allows instructors to organizes more advanced options. This includes start and end dates, rubrics, annotation tools, and Turnitin. When these options are collapsed, summary text provides details about which settings are active and subtle hints that aid in the discovery of additional settings. 

The new experience automatically syncs the Dropbox assignments including the name and score to the gradebook. If you create grade items in advance, support for selecting existing grades and categories is also available.

Note: To select the existing Grades column in the Dropbox, you must enter a score in the Score Out Of text field.

Instructors are temporarily able to opt in and out of the new experience based on preference.

Screen Shot 2020-07-17 at 4.50.19 PM.png

Important Note for Instructors Using the Multi-Evaluator Tool

If you choose to enable multiple evaluators and aggregate results, please ensure that all assigned evaluators complete their assessments for each submission. The aggregated result will only calculate once every evaluator has submitted their evaluation — a single completed evaluation will not generate the final aggregated score.

Using the Dropbox tool?

For the most up-to-date information on how to setup a Dropbox folder, please follow the links below to the Brightspace Help documentation site.

“Please note that the documentation on the Brightspace Help site refers to the Dropbox tool as Assignments, however CourseLink still uses the original name of the tool (Dropbox). They are the same tool.”
— CourseLink Support
View Related Tutorial Videos
 

When and why is it a good idea to use the Dropbox tool?

The Dropbox tool is a great way to collect student assignments online. There are many advantages to using Dropbox for assignment collection, including:

Access Control and Submission Tracking

The ability to restrict access via start, end, and due dates

Grading and Assessment

Each Dropbox folder will allow a TA or instructor to assign a grade to a students work either as a simple score, or when a rubric is attached, a score as well as the completed rubric will be available to the student once published. That grade and the corresponding feedback will automatically transfer to the student’s corresponding grade item when published.

When working with group submissions, all members

Integration with Turnitin

Similarity checking and digital markup

Providing Feedback

When grading student submissions to a Dropbox folder, an instructor or TA will be able to leave feedback via text, file attachments, audio recording, or video recording. This feedback becomes available to the student as soon as their grade is published via the Dropbox and the corresponding grade item (if linked).

Restricted Files

These are the file types that are restricted from being submitted to the dropbox.

Tutorial Videos

Dropbox FAQs

 

Need More Help?

If you're still having trouble, please contact the CourseLink Support team for assistance.

Contact CourseLink Support
 
 
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Discussions

What is the Discussions Tool?

Use the Discussions tool in your course to encourage students to share thoughts on course material with their peers. You can set up forums and topics for students to ask questions, discuss course content and assignments, and work together in assigned groups.

Accessing the Discussions Tool

The Discussions tool is one of the links found on the default navigation bar of your CourseLink course site and can be accessed directly from that link.

Location of the discussions link on a face-to-face course site

For Distance Education (DE) courses, the link appears under the drop-down menu of the Tools link on the navigation bar (provided that the course is using Dropbox).

If you are using a custom navigation bar and the Discussions link has been removed, you may re-add it. For more information on that process, please see our Navigation Bar page.

New Discussions Experience: Creating an open topic

The default setting for a topic is “open”.

Although the message under Group and Section Restrictions says, “Only selected groups or sections can view this topic”, as long as you don’t restrict the topics to specific groups, it will remain open for all students. This is a somewhat confusing message.

Location of Manage Restrictions button highlighted on the discussion topic settings.

You can verify that the discussion topics are open to all students by reviewing the Group and Section Restrictions and confirming that “Restrict topic” is selected (confusing language) and none of the options below are selected.

The Group and Section Restrictions for a discussion topic. The select who will see this topic area is highlighted and none of the options are selected.

Create a Group Discussion:

To connect groups to a discussion topic in CourseLink, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Discussions in the navbar.

  2. Create a Discussion Forum:

    • If you don’t already have a forum, click "New Forum" and give it a title (e.g., "Group Discussions").

    • Save the forum.

  3. Create a Discussion Topic:

    • Within the forum, click "New Topic."

    • Choose the forum you just created.

    • Enter a Title and Description for the topic.

  4. Restrict to Groups:

    • Under "Availability Dates & Conditions" click on “Manage Restrictions” under "Group or Section Topic."

    • Select “Restrict topic and separate the threads” as users in the selected groups/sections can view this topic but will only see threads from their group/section.

    • From the dropdown menu, choose the Group Category you created earlier.

  5. Set Additional Options:

    • Configure settings like availability dates, grading, and assessment options as needed.

    • Click "Save and Close."

 
 
 
View Related Tutorial Videos

Tutorial Videos

Discussion Tool FAQs

Need More Help?

If you're still having trouble, please contact the CourseLink Support team for assistance.

Contact CourseLink Support
 
 
Back to CourseLink Tools
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