Access Your Courses

Brightspace Courses are created in one of two ways

Registration-linked Course Shells

NIC man­ages course reg­is­tra­tions through a sys­tem called Col­league, which inte­grates direct­ly with Bright­space. This inte­gra­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ates reg­is­tra­tion-linked Bright­space course shells based on offi­cial course enroll­ments. These shells are ini­tial­ly emp­ty but include all enrolled stu­dents and are ready for instruc­tors to add con­tent.

If you are teach­ing mul­ti­ple sec­tions of the same course, these sec­tions are merged into a sin­gle course shell, called a merged-enroll­ment course. It’s impor­tant to build con­tent with­in this merged shell, as it cap­tures all stu­dent reg­is­tra­tions. A sep­a­rate course shell is still auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed for each indi­vid­ual sec­tion via the Col­league inte­gra­tion; to avoid con­fu­sion, instruc­tors should pin the merged enroll­ment course and ignore the sin­gle-sec­tion shells. Once pinned, the course will be found under the Pinned tab in the My Cours­es area on the Bright­space home­page. See Pin Your Course for instruc­tions on pin­ning.

NOTE: Course enroll­ments are updat­ed dai­ly, but it may take up to 24 hours for changes to appear in Bright­space.

Masters, HUBs, Sandboxes and more…

Mas­ter Sand­box cours­es are man­u­al­ly cre­at­ed upon request and offer instruc­tors a space to pre­pare or exper­i­ment in a course with­out any stu­dents enrolled. Each Mas­ter Sand­box is asso­ci­at­ed with a spe­cif­ic course (e.g., ENG-116, MAT-181) and can also serve as a back­up of the live course. Mas­ter Sand­box cours­es may con­tain mul­ti­ple instruc­tors. At the end of each term, instruc­tors should copy con­tent from the live course back into the Mas­ter Sand­box to keep it up to date.

NOTE: Not all cours­es have a Mas­ter Sand­box, as they are cre­at­ed only upon request. If you would like to request a Mas­ter Sand­box, please sub­mit a ser­vice desk tick­et.

HUB cours­es are cre­at­ed to hold com­mon course mate­ri­als, such as course forms, indus­try doc­u­ments, or oth­er resources that need to be shared across mul­ti­ple cours­es and cohorts. Unlike Mas­ter Sand­box cours­es, HUB cours­es are NOT tied to a spe­cif­ic course and they can con­tain mul­ti­ple instruc­tors and man­u­al­ly enrolled stu­dents. They pro­vide a cen­tral loca­tion to access mate­ri­als.

If you would like to request a HUB course or have stu­dents enrolled in a HUB course, please sub­mit a ser­vice desk tick­et.

Per­son­al Sand­box cours­es pro­vide instruc­tors with a pri­vate space to explore and exper­i­ment with Bright­space. They are not tied to any spe­cif­ic course and usu­al­ly only have the instruc­tor who owns the sand­box enrolled. Per­son­al Sand­box­es are ide­al for learn­ing how to use Bright­space tools, test­ing course fea­tures, or try­ing out new con­tent and activ­i­ties in a risk-free envi­ron­ment.

NOTE: Not all instruc­tors have a Per­son­al Sand­box, as they are cre­at­ed only upon request. If you would like to request a Per­son­al Sand­box, please sub­mit a ser­vice desk tick­et.

Self-Enrol Cours­es are cre­at­ed and devel­oped by var­i­ous depart­ments (CTLI, HR, Stu­dent Affairs) and are avail­able in the Dis­cov­er area of Bright­space for self-enroll­ment.

Find Your Course

Instruc­tors will find cours­es list­ed under (1) the Course Selec­tor (waf­fle icon) and (2) in the My Cours­es area on the Bright­space home­page.

Click on the waf­fle icon from any page in Bright­space to see a list of your cours­es and to nav­i­gate to anoth­er course. To nar­row a long list, type the first few let­ters of the course name into the search bar.

Below the Bright­space ban­ner you will find the My Cours­es wid­get. Cours­es are orga­nized by term and by type (i.e., 2026 Fall, Mas­ters, HUBs). For easy access to cours­es you fre­quent, all pinned cours­es can be found under the Pinned tab.

Pin Your Course

To have a course appear in the Pinned sec­tion of your My Cours­es area (or to remove one from this sec­tion) you can use the Course Selec­tor tool or the course tile direct­ly in the My Cours­es area. Pinned cours­es are dis­played in the Course Selec­tor list in the order they were pinned. To change the order, unpin all cours­es and then pin them again in the desired sequence.

  1. Pin from Course Selec­tor — Click the pin icon to the right of the course name in the Course Selec­tor list to tog­gle on or off
  2. Pin from My Cours­es - Click the pin icon shown in the upper right cor­ner of the course tile in the My Cours­es wid­get to tog­gle on or off

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