Dear Faculty,

I hope this message finds you enjoying the New Year! I write today with two Brightspace-related announcements.

1. Training

CUNY Online is offering the Brightspace Demo for Faculty three times in January:

Wed., 1/10/24 at 12 PM

Thurs., 1/18/24 at 1 PM

Tues., 1/23/24 at 11 AM

If you are interested, please register here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvcu2qpj0qGNV-Bc4bCJoC9mbeEqizDUPI#/registration

CUNY Online is also offering training on more specific topics starting in February. You can find the full schedule and the registration links here:

https://www.cuny.edu/academics/brightspace-transition/spring-2024-workshops/

Note that our own LMS (formerly Blackboard) Team will also offer training starting this month and throughout the spring and summer.

2. Development Shells and Practice Sites

As a reminder, courses will go live in Brightspace starting in summer 2024. Faculty are encouraged to use development shells and practice sites when preparing courses and trying things out in the environment. There are important differences between the two:

Practice Sites

• Are intended for faculty to learn the platform (we called them sandboxes in Blackboard)
• Do not include John Jay licensed third-party tools
• LMS Team can add faculty as students to these sites
• Content can be copied into live courses, but care must be taken not to include student data (enrollments, submissions, etc.), if others are enrolled into the site
• Can contain student submission examples
• Faculty can self-create practice sites in Brightspace using the Practice Site widget on the Brightspace Homepage

Development Shell

• Intended for developing course content and activities for later use in live courses
• John Jay licensed third-party tools can be used when available
• Shells contain course content and activities only
• There are no student enrollments, nor can you have examples of student submissions
• Must be manually created on a course-by-course basis by the LMS Team

If you would like to enroll faculty as example students in your practice site, please contact the LMS Team (blackboard@jjay.cuny.edu). You will need to provide the names, CUNY logins, and course information.

Best,

Andrew

Andrew H. Sidman
Interim Dean of Academic Programs

Professor of Political Science
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
212-237-8179

“I am a responsible employee”

Visit our Brightspace Transition Website

Visit the Transition Announcements Repository