D2L Brightspace

D2L Brightspace is Minnesota State's learning management system (LMS), available to all students and employees. Brightspace course shells are created for every section of every course. Instructors can use their Brightspace courses to provide students with online access to class materials and activities. Brightspace can be used to support any course, regardless of delivery mode. Use your StarID credentials to sign in.

What's Brightspace?

D2L Brightspace is a learning management system (LMS), an integrated suite of web-based tools that helps instructors deliver online resources and activities to their students, who can access them anytime via a web browser or the D2L Brightspace Pulse app on their phones. At WSU, this tool is often called D2L. Technically, that's the company name, and Brightspace is the name of the product. WSU migrated to Brightspace from another LMS in January 2007. Today, most WSU instructors use Brightspace to support their courses each semester. WSU creates a Brightspace starter course or course shell for every section of every class offered every term. Class rosters are automatically loaded into every course shell and updated automatically based on official student records in our Integrated Student Record System (ISRS). Course shells are available as soon as the course is loaded into ISRS, typically several months before the start of the upcoming term. Using Brightspace, instructors can:

Publish course materials such as handouts, readings, links to external web resources, and multimedia in a well-organized table of contents available to students online through their web browsers on any of their networked devices.
Communicate with their students using built-in email, chat, announcement, and discussion tools.
Moderate online discussion forums that allow their students to interact with one another around course-related topics.
Provide feedback to their students using the built-in grade book, gather and comment on written assignments using online drop boxes, and deliver various high-stakes (e.g., exams) and low-stakes (e.g., practice quizzes, surveys) assessments online.
Monitor other student performance indicators (e.g., whether or not a student has accessed a particular activity or resource) and intervene as needed.
Copy course content and activities to other course shells and share them with other instructors.
Decide to integrate all or some of these features into their courses, many of which can be used immediately with little to no customization.

Get started

Learn more

Self-guided online learning

WSU Technology Knowledge Base

This WSU Technology Knowledge Base wiki contains over 200 articles for instructors and students, with updated, detailed information about Brightspace features and functions. A list of all Brightspace articles

Minnesota State D2L Support Site

The Minnesota State Learning Technologies team maintains Brightspace documentation for all students, faculty, and staff in their D2L Support Site. You must be signed in using your StarID credentials to access this site.

D2L Brightspace Community Site

D2L maintains a corporate Brightspace Community site that includes documentation and video tutorials. You do not need to register to access this information.

In-person support

Instructors

Contact TLT. Instructors can contact WSU Teaching, Learning, and Technology Services (TLT) with any questions about using Brightspace to support your courses. Send an email (tlt@winona.edu), call 507-457-5240 Option 3, stop by Maxwell Hall 130 or the Digital Learning Commons desk on the first floor of the Darrell W. Krueger Library, or join the TLT open virtual office in Zoom during core hours. You must be signed in to your Zoom client using your StarID to join the TLT Zoom office.
Contact the Minnesota State IT Service Desk. For problems that TLT can't solve, you can always request Brightspace assistance from the Minnesota State IT Service Desk. We recommend contacting TLT first. You must be signed in using your StarID credentials to submit a support request.

Students

Contact the DLC: WSU students can contact the Digital Learning Commons (DLC) with any questions about using Brightspace to engage in your courses. Send an email (dlc@winona.edu), call 507-457-5240 Option 3, stop by the Digital Learning Commons desk in the Darrell W. Krueger Library, or join the DLC open virtual office in Zoom during core hours. You must be signed in to your Zoom client using your StarID to join the DLC Zoom office.
Contact the Minnesota State IT Service Desk. For problems that the DLC can't solve, you can always request Brightspace assistance from the Minnesota State IT Service Desk. We recommend contacting the DLC first. You must be signed in using your StarID credentials to submit a support request.

External links

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