Sulis to Brightspace tools | University of Limerick

The following table contains a list of the tools in Sulis. It explains their purpose, then directs you to the equivalent of that tool in the new VLE, Brightspace.

Sulis tool	Purpose	Brightspace equivalent tool
Announcements	Allows for the delivery of messages to the entire class, to groups, or to specific sections within the class	Announcements
Assignments	Allows instructors to create, distribute, collect, and grade online assignments.	Assignments
Blogs	Allows students to create private and public blogs. There is no Blog tool available on Brightspace. Workarounds are Discussion Board single groups or Microsoft Sway.	Several potential solutions here Internal tools: For private blogs between student and lecturer: set up groups of one student using the Groups tool, and then use the Discussions. This will create one forum per student which will contain all of their topics and entry dates. See this tutorial on creating private student blogs using Discussions. For collaborative class blogs using the Discussions tool: Vanderbilt have info on this External tools: Microsoft Sway is an excellent alternative to Blogs and free with the MS tools suite. See this What is MS Sway? Guide for Students
Calendar	Allows instructors to post events in a calendar format. Assignments and quiz due dates will automatically pop into the calendar. You can also use the calendar tool to link to a BBB meeting and restrict visibility of that meeting to certain groups.	Calendar.
Drop Box	Creates a folder for each student in the course to enable file sharing between students and teachers, and groups of students. We don’t have drop box on Brightspace. The nearest equivalent is group locker	Group Lockers. Carleton have instructions on this This feature currently has a 50MB limit but we are looking to increase it
Forums	Allows participants to hold class discussions online	Discussions
Groups	Brightspace allows you to set up groups in seven different ways. Groups of 1 can be used for private blogs or access to certs of completion. Students can self enrol in groups, saving you the trouble, or be enrolled in tutorial groups, or BBB webinar groups, or groups of max X members. Late entrants to the course can automatically be added to a group.	Groups
Gradebook	Enter grades; auto calculate grades; define grading schemes etc	Gradebook
Lessons	Allows an instructor to organize resources, activities, and media on a single page. The nearest equivalent to a lesson page on Brightspace is a HTML page.HTML pages on BS are very versatile and well worth the time invested into learning how to make them.	Content Add HTML page
Messages	Send and receive private messages to other members enrolled in the course site. On the Brightspace Navbar choose Communications/Instant Messages	Instant messages (external link)
Overview	Landing page for a course or project site.	Course homepage
Permissions and Roles	Allow users to access certain features of a site, depending on their roles, and on the decisions made by the site owner and the system administrator.	You can add people to your site as ‘Instructor manually added’, as ‘learner’ or as ‘read only’. The latter can be used for an external examiner. External users (non—UL accounts) can be added to the site. See ‘adding users to your Brightspace Course’.
Panopto	You can copy Panopto videos from Sulis into Brightspace.	Video: Copy Panopto videos from Sulis into Brightspace
Podcasts	Allows instructors to distribute audio, video, and PowerPoint files to their students either manually or via a RSS feed	Use of Panopto for podcasting: Podcasting-with-Panopto (1).pdf
Polls	Allows instructors to post multiple choice survey questions on their site	Surveys (external link)
PostEm	upload and distribute a comma-delimited (CSV) spreadsheet to present individual feedback and/or grades to students. Students only see their own individual feedback and/or grades. There is no equivalent to this on BS, but Group Lockers is a workaround.	Group Lockers (share files using group locker) or Grades/assignments feedback section.
Profile	Contains basic user information	Profile
Resources	Allows instructors to share a wide variety of files with their students within a site. The equivalent area for ‘Resources’ tool on BS is in the toolbar Admin/Manage Files area.	Content
Rubrics	Allows instructors to create and share grading rubrics	Rubrics
Section Info	Provides a way for instructors to efficiently manage sections of a class	Groups and group categories
Sign-Up	Allows students to sign up for office hours, meetings, review sessions, and other events in one convenient place	D2L are looking to rollout the Meeting Scheduler tool to UL – updates to follow.
Statistics	Allows instructors to view site usage statistics and user activity events.	Intelligent Agents , visible via NavBar, Admin/Intelligent Agents and Class Progress, visible via NavBar, Admin/Content Reports.
Tests and Quizzes	Allows instructors to create online assessments (i.e., tests, exams, quizzes, and surveys)	Quizzes
Wiki	Allows people to collaboratively author web pages, without the need for advanced web authoring skills	No direct alternative – use of OneNote Example here A lecturer can also set up a file on One Drive, and share with the class. They can then add a link to the One Drive file in BS.