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Brightspace New Content Experience

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The clean look of NCE helps emphasise key content. Images and textual enhancements complement information design and amplify the visual appeal of material for students. I was so impressed that now I have applied it across my modules.
Crystal Fulton, IS40530: Information & Reference Services Professor Crystal Fulton School of Information & Communication Studies

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What is the New Content Experience (NCE) in Brightspace?

The New Content Experience (NCE) is a refreshed presentation of learning content in Brightspace. Designed to streamline content creation, enhance collaboration, and create engaging and accessible learning experiences for faculty and students.

In keeping with our strategic objectives to advance digitally supported learning and the increasing demand for innovative teaching tools, UCD will begin the phased implementation of the New Content Experience in Brightspace in 2024/25 ahead of a full roll out in the 2025/26 academic year. This move reflects our commitment to staying ahead of the latest advancements in educational technology and providing faculty members with the resources to enhance their teaching practices.

While the New Content Experience looks different to our current content experience, you will still be able to utilise most of the current features available in Brightspace, however some trial and error may be required in order to get this to work for you and IT Services are here to assist you should you run into any issues. 

Assessible activites NCE

What is happening?

Phased Implementation in 2024/25:
UCD began the phased implementation of the New Content Experience in Brightspace in September 2024.  Undergraduate Stage 1 modules along with Graduate modules  are encouraged to adopt the New Content Experience within the academic year 2024/25.  A full roll out is planned for the 2025/26 academic year.  Support and training is available now to support the early adoption of the New Content Experience. 

This move reflects our commitment to staying ahead of the latest advancements in educational technology and providing faculty members with the resources to enhance their teaching practices.

Figure 1: New Assessable Activities View

Benefits of the Brightspace New Content Experience

  1. User-Friendly Interface: The New Content Experience offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface, making content creation and navigation easier for both instructors and learners.
  2. Clear learning pathways: The New Content Experience is designed to assist faculty in scaffolding the learning journey, thereby enhancing student engagement and accessibility. By structuring the learning process through clear pathways and signposting, it enables a more logical progression through learning materials.
  3. Clean Minimalist Design: With a minimalist design and simplified content structure, the New Content Experience provides a clutter-free environment, enhancing focus on learning material and ease of use for users.
  4. A Brand New Assessable Activities View: The Assessable Activities View provides a comprehensive overview to assignments, quizzes, and discussions, allowing both instructors and learners to track requirements, completion status, feedback, and grades within the “My Learning” area in Brightspace. 
  5. Efficient Evaluation Process: Instructors can efficiently evaluate and review draft grades directly within the Assessable Activities View, streamlining the grading process and providing timely feedback to learners, fostering a more dynamic and interactive learning environment."
  6. Taking Advantage of New Features & Developments: By transitioning to the New Content Experience, faculty can take advantage of system developments, as all new features and updates will be implemented within the New Content Experience, ensuring access to the latest advancements in  educational technology
New Content Experience 2

How do I get involved?

Module Coordinators in teaching modules have the capacity to enable the New Content Experience (NCE).  Once enabled, all instructors and students will be able to use the NCE within the module.

To enable the New Content Experience, go to 'My Learning' within your module, Module Coordinators will see a down arrow tab in the top right corner of the screen.  Here you can enable or disable the NCE via this dropdown.

Figure 2:  Screenshot showing the pull down tab to toggle the New Content Experience off and on.

Enhancements to the NCE

Enhancements delivered in December 2024

Up to 5 nested levels are possible in the NCE
(Please note the UCD VLE standards recommend as few nested levels as possible).

Table of contents search - users of the NCE are able to search the table of contents and see results from their table of contents titles and descriptions in the same manner as they currently can within the Classic Content Experience.

Manual completion of content topics - Instructors can configure topics in the NCE to allow students to manually tick topics as completed.

Further feature enhancements expected in Spring 2025

  1. Drag and drop - The ability to move units, lessons and topics to a different depth while in the My learning area.
  2. Content items - Descriptions to display in NCE

UCD NCE Module Content Readiness Widget

The New Content Experience Module Content Readiness Widget is visible to instructors on the home pages of teaching modules.  The widget analyses the content in the module and displays pre-existing module content from the Classic content experience that needs to be reviewed in order to display in the New Content Experience - making the review of module content quicker and easier for all instructors.

Adopt the NCE for Spring 2024/25 modules

Instructors can adopt the NCE for Spring 2024/25 modules

Spring 24/25 module shells are available now. 
Module coordinators can enable the New Content Experience now.  See below for a link to book an instructor training session on Moving to the Brightspace New Content Experience

Support and Training

Short training sessions for instructors will be scheduled as part of our Brightspace training training programme for instructors focusing on getting your content ready for the New Content Experience

IT Services are offering bookable 1:1 online support appointments for instructors who want to become early adopters of the New Content Experience.  These sessions are intended to help instructors who may need focused time to resolve any final issues with organising their content into the New Content Experience. 

How to guides and other support resources are in our Knowledge base.  Instructors can also open support queries at any stage via the IT Support hub.

Getting Started

Timeline Key Dates

  • May 2024

    New Content Experience available to toggle on/off in all staff sandboxes

  • Mid-July 2024

    The 2024/25 academic year module containers will become available in Brightspace

  • July/August 2024

    Targeted Training & support for New Content Experience being rolled out

  • September 2024

    Recommended that all Stage 1 core modules at the undergraduate level and, where feasible, graduate-taught programmes, begin using the New Content Experience

  • January 2025

    NCE is available to all Spring modules

  • 15 July 2025

    25/26 New module shells available

  • 15 August 2025

    NCE becomes the sole content experience in Brightspace

  • 2025/26 academic year

    Full rollout of New Content Experience

Meet Our Project Team

Meet our project team, working together to achieve our goals with expertise.

Profile photo of Catherine Murphy

Catherine Murphy

IT Project Manager – Educational Technology Services

Team Lead

Profile photo of David Kane

David Kane

Project Manager – Educational Technology Services

Team member

Profile photo of Nicola Carrigan

Nicola Carrigan

Senior IT Specialist – Educational Technology Services

Team member

Profile photo of Rachel Hickey

Rachel Hickey

Senior IT Specialist – Educational Technology Services

Team member

Profile photo of Martin Heduan

Martin Heduan

Senior Educational Technologist

Team member

FAQ

You do not need to formally sign up to use the New Content Experience. Module Coordinators can choose to opt in via your module in Brightspace. 
Under the 'My Learning' view within your module you will see a down arrow tab in the top right corner of your screen. When you click on this you will be given a drop down screen offering you the option to turn on or off the new Content Experience.  Once turned on you can turn it off again via the same route.

Please Note: This is only available for Module Coordinators.

In teaching modules, only the Module Coordinator has the capacity to (opens in a new window)turn the New Content Experience on and off.   

Once enabled, all instructors and students will be able to use the New Content Experience within the module. 

In instructor sandboxes, Explore modules and other custom modules, all instructors can turn the New Content Experience on and off.

No, only instructors with the role of Module Coordinator can turn the New Content Experience on and off. 

Yes, there are differences in how content displays, new ways for creating and moving units and content.  After adding content you should check to make sure it displays how you intend it to display. 

Further information on the steps to add content are in this (opens in a new window)knowledge base article and (opens in a new window)more.  

Yes.   Review the (opens in a new window)checklist of key items do check to ensure your content displays well in the NCE and use the New Content Experience Module Content Readiness Widget on the home pages of your teaching modules to review any content that needs attention.

No - the New Content Experience impacts the display of content only in the My Learning area of modules.  Other tools in Brightspace such as assignments, quizzes, and discussions,etc are unaffected.

From December 2024, The new experience supports a maximum of five levels of units and subunits. Top-levels are called Units. The second level sub-units are called Lessons and 3rd level sub units are called Folders. No more sub-units can be created deeper than the level of a folder (Unit>subunit>Folder - content items can be added to any of these three levels). This is consistent with Universal Design Learning (UDL) best practices.

If there are pre-existing units from the Classic Content Experience that are too deep to display an alert message will appear that will be visible only to Module Coordinators.

The missing sub-unit and its content still exist and can be pinpointed by using the NCE module content readiness widget on the module home page.   To move the units up, the sub-unit and its content can be located in the (opens in a new window)Module Builder Tool if you need to move them up a level. You can also use the toggle to revert to the Classic content experience in order  to move the sub-module to a different location. You can then re-enable the New Content Experience.

The UCD VLE Standards units have been added by default into 2024/25 teaching modules

Yes, the New Content Experience is designed for mobile devices.  It is recommended that a full web browser is used with Brightspace on mobile devices.  (opens in a new window)Brightspace Pulse displays are unaffected by which content display tool is in use in modules.

IT Services are offering (opens in a new window)bookable 1:1 online support appointments for instructors who want to become early adopters of the New Content Experience.  

Short training sessions for instructors on using the New Content Experience are also available.  Book here

All our support resources are linked from the project web page: Brightspace New Content Experience - UCD IT Services

Instructors can also open support queries at any stage via the (opens in a new window)IT Support hub

UCD IT Services

Computer Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Contact us via the UCD IT Support Hub: www.ucd.ie/ithelp