New Student D2L Brightspace Quick Start
New Student D2L Brightspace Quick Start
Welcome to Southern Illinois University Carbondale! The following is a walkthrough on how to access and use D2L Brightspace, the learning management system (LMS). You will learn how to manage, view, and navigate through D2L Brightspace.
What is D2L Brightspace?
D2L Brightspace is our learning platform, where you'll find your course materials, assignments, tests/quizzes, and discussions. You may be familiar with platforms like Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams Classroom, Moodel, Canvas, or Blackboard. Brightspace is similar in function but different in design. Brightspace is designed to make your academic experience smoother by keeping everything you need for your classes in one accessible place. It is open 24/7, right from your computer or mobile device.
Getting to D2L Brightspace?
You’ll first want to log into your D2L Brightspace account through Chrome, Edge, or Firefox.
D2L Brightspace Student LoginGetting Started!
Once logged into D2L Brightspace, you’ll need to get used to navigating the Brightspace home screen. The home screen is where you can find all the important information you’ll need.
Finding My Courses
Next, you’ll want to get comfortable with finding your courses.
How to Pin a Course
- Scroll to the bottom of your D2L Brightspace homepage.
- Select View All Courses.
- You can narrow the list by typing part of the course name in the search box at the top of the resulting screen.
- Hover over the course you want and select the icon of 3 dots that appears.
- Select Pin to pin the course to your homepage.
- The pinned course should always appear on your D2L Brightspace homepage under Pinned. Select the X at the top-right of the screen to return to your homepage.
- On the homepage under My Courses, be sure that Pinned is selected and not All.
Navigating D2L Brightspace Navbar
Navigating the D2L Brightspace menu is a very important skill to know; understanding the D2L Brightspace interface can help your experience. Below is a video to introduce you to the D2L Brightspace menu.
Finding Announcements
The announcements from your professors can be found under the course home page.
Navigating Course Home
The Course home is similar to the “my home” tab only the course will only have announcements specific to that course.
Add a Profile Picture to D2L Brightspace
- Click your name in the top right corner of the screen.
- Click Profile from the menu.
- Click the Upload or Change Picture button under the picture thumbnail.
- Select My Computer from the pop-up window.
- Follow the steps to upload an image.
- Click the Add button. Your new profile picture will appear in the thumbnail.
- Click the Save and Close button at the bottom of the page to save the picture to your profile.
Navigating Content
The Content tab is where you can find your syllabus, attachments and much more.
Finding Course Tools
Under the resources tab you can view content, media library, calendar, checklist, portfolio, FAQs, Glossary, Links, Locker.
Uploading Assignments
You can find how to upload assignments in the following video.
Tracking Assignments & Instructor Notes
In order to track your assignments you need to turn the assignment.
You can view the instructors notes on the same page.
Finding Assignments
When an assignment is assigned you can view it one of two ways. First, navigate to the assessment tab and click assignments. Secondly, you can click content then assignments. Assignments very from professor to professor.
Tracking My Grades
In the assessment drop down click grades.
Taking A Test or Quiz
Under the assessment tab click the drop down then click quizzes.
Discussions
This one also uses the old content experience at first but once inside the discussion forum it is the same.
Getting 24/7 Help
On the main D2L Brightspace menu, in the bottom right of your screen, click the speech bubble. This will help you at any time of day with whatever you need.