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  4. D2L Brightspace

Brightspace Course Import and Search Techniques

Updated
Watermark Support

This feature allows the CES Administrator to select and import courses as well as student and instructor enrollments directly into your Course Evaluations & Surveys course evaluation projects.


Course and Enrollment Import

NOTE

The Data Integration needs to be configured before you can import courses and enrollments from Brightspace into Course Evaluations & Surveys.

To access the import screen, navigate to the Courses tab of the project and select Data Import Brightspace.




Re-Sync Courses and Clear Synced Courses

Re-Sync Courses

This option allows you to refresh the data source to create a searchable list of Brightspace courses to import your courses and enrollments.

Note: Re-syncing courses does NOT make any changes to the data in your LMS.  IMPORTANT NOTE: Courses have to be Active in Brightspace at the time the Resync Courses is performed or they will not show up in the search to be imported into CES when the sync completes.


When to use Re-Sync Courses:
  1. If courses have never been synced before (new integration)
  2. If courses have been added to Brightspace since the last re-sync that you wish to import
  3. After clicking Clear Synced Courses (see below)

After clicking Re-Sync Courses, you will be presented with a dialogue box that will give you the option to re-sync specific courses or those within given Brightspace terms. You do not have to select any option here if you wish to sync all courses in your Brightspace.

Completion time for your courses re-sync will be based on the size of the sync. You can check the status of your course re-sync via the Notifications widget on the Home page of Course Evaluations & Surveys and also receive an email.

Note: Although courses may appear in the search during the sync, it is recommended that you wait until the sync completes before importing courses.



Once the Re-Sync Courses completes, the timestamp will populate to advise you of the last time courses were re-synced.



Clear Synced Courses



Institutions who change course information in the LMS, such as deleting courses or building new course sections for new terms, should utilize the Clear Synced Courses feature to keep the data source aligned with their recent changes.

The Clear Synced Courses function allows you to clear your previously synced courses from the searchable list (I.e. your data source).

Note: clearing synced courses will NOT affect any courses already imported into the project. Once you clear your synced courses, you will need to select Course Re-Sync before importing.


Searching Courses

Once your courses have been re-synced, you are ready to import your courses into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.  IMPORTANT NOTE: Courses have to be Active in Brightspace at the time the Resync Courses is performed before they will show up in the search to be imported into CES.  If you are not able to find specific courses in the search, check their status in Brightspace to ensure they are Active.

To access the import screen, navigate to the Courses tab of the project and select Data Import Brightspace.



  1. Search Brightspace Courses: Use available filter options to search for the desired courses to import.

    1. Department: Select to search within a specific department
    2. Semester: Select to search within a specific semester
    3. Courses With: Choose to search for courses with start/end dates populated within Brightspace. Default option is to search for courses with any dates, this will include courses in Brightspace with no start/end dates populated. Additional options here include courses with both start and end dates populated within Brightspace, courses with start dates, courses with end dates and courses with no start and end dates populated within Brightspace.
    4. Filter Options
      1. Title: Search by course title.
      2. Code: Search by course code.
      3. Unique ID: Search by Course Unique ID.
      4. Operands: Contains, Equals, Starts With, Not Contains.
      5. Text Field: Insert text string in which you are searching (i.e. title, code, unique ID).
    5. More Options
      1. Click More Options to filter by additional course criteria.
      2. You can also paste specific Brightspace course code, title, or unique ID's into the large textbox, one per line, up to 2,000 lines and click Search.
  2. Search: Once you have chosen your search criteria, click Search
  3. Select Courses: From the search output, select the courses you want included in your transfer into your Project.

    Note: The Select All option selects courses found on the search results page. To increase the number of records per page, click the drop down at the bottom of the search output.



  4. Select Users to Import: These are the enrollments in the selected courses, which by default, are students and instructors.
    1. Convert Instructors to Survey Respondents/Student Role: This option allows you to convert those users assigned the instructor role in Brightspace to the student role in Course Evaluations & Surveys, allowing instructors to take a survey as a respondent.

      Note: If you only want to bring over the instructors as students, deselect Transfer Students.
  5. Create Unique Course Evaluations & Surveys Course Sections for each Instructor (optional): Using this feature will automatically create separate course evaluation sections within Course Evaluations & Surveys for each instructor enrolled within the selected Brightspace courses.
    1. Important Note: If selected, students within courses with more than one instructor enrolled will be asked to take the entire survey multiple times, for each instructor/course section. This will negate the team-taught courses functionality within Course Evaluations & Surveys. Please see more on Team-taught Courses Configuration prior to selecting this option: Team-Taught Courses Configuration.
  6. Add Instructor to Course Title (optional): Add the instructor's name to the course title of the course section.
  7. Generate Course-Level Dates Based on Brightspace Course Dates (optional): With this feature, you can automatically generate course-level survey dates within the Course Evaluations & Surveys project that control when surveys for specific courses will start and end, based on the Brightspace course start/end dates within Brightspace. There is also an option to manually enter the course-level survey start/end dates for the courses selected in the import. Options for generating course-level dates within the Brightspace data import include:
    1. Generating course-level survey start/end dates based off number of days before/after the course start/end date in Brightspace.
    2. Generating course-level survey start/end dates based off percentage of course completion in Brightspace.

      Note: Both course start and end dates must be provided within Brightspace for this functionality.
    3. Manually inputting course-level survey start/end dates for courses selected in import.
    4. Additionally, you can setup course-level report access dates for administrators and instructors based off number of days before/after the course start/end date in Brightspace.
    5. Note: This is an optional step, if you do not setup anything in this step, Course Evaluations & Surveys will use the project-level dates setup in the Course Evaluations & Surveys project to drive the survey start and end dates for all courses within the project.
  8. Import Options:
    1. Data Import Name (Optional): Give your transfer a name to help reference it in the automated confirmation email that is sent to you when the transfer is completed. Click on embedded links within the content of the email to access imported course detail.
    2. Import Data (button): Click Import Data and all selected course, student, and/or instructor information will be transferred into your Course Evaluations & Surveys Project. Once the import has been completed you will see the status of the import on the Notifications widget on the Home page of Course Evaluations & Surveys.
  9. View Imported Courses: Click on the courses tab to refresh and view the courses imported into the project.

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