Minnesota State Learning Technologies
Have a question or need help with D2L Brightspace? Please contact the Minnesota State Learning Technologies Team:
- From the Contact Us page located on the D2L Knowledge Base (view the how to login instructions PDF), and
- From the Minnesota State IT Services customer portal (login with StarID credentials).
D2L Brightspace Announcements
D2L Brightspace June 2020 (v. 20.20.06) Update:
Effective June 18, 2020, Minnesota State D2L Brightspace Production update to the June 2020 release (version 20.20.06) includes these new and updated features:
- Students: There are no new or updated features that affect students within D2L Brightspace.
- Teachers: You may now opt-in or opt-out of the new assignment creation experience when creating or editing assignments.
- Teachers: When annotating a student's assignment submission, you will see renamed options from the Pen toolbar: Drawing (previously Pen), Freeform Highlight (previously Highlighter), and Text Highlighter (previously Highlighter). The annotations function the same way.
- Teachers: The My Courses and Updates widgets now display unevaluated assignment submissions rather than unread file submissions. This change aligns the widget with the Assignments page and the Quick Eval to notify you of unevaluated submissions.
- Students: Use YourStarID@go.minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.
- Faculty and Staff: Use YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.
- View the PDF for how to login instructions.
D2L Brightspace Historical Upgrades:
- View the PDF document for Major features in D2L Brightspace 2020 Upgrades.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact the Minnesota State Learning Technologies team.
D2L Knowledge Base for Faculty, Staff, and enrolled Students
The Learning Technologies Team offers a D2L Knowledge Base for the Minnesota State D2L community, including students, faculty, trainers, administrators, and other support staff. A variety of knowledge articles are available including, commonly asked questions, how-to processes, and best practices within D2L Brightspace. The knowledge articles are searchable within SharePoint, providing users with on-demand support 24x7.
The D2L Knowledge Base is available to faculty, staff, and enrolled students at all Minnesota State schools. Navigate to the D2L Support SharePoint site (https://mnscu.sharepoint.com/sites/D2Lsupport).
Use the following username format to log into the D2L Support SharePoint site:
- Students: Use YourStarID@go.minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.
- Faculty and Staff: Use YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.
- View the PDF for how to login instructions.
D2L Knowledge for Other Users
For users who do not have StarID credentials, you can view select Knowledge Articles (e.g. FAQs) at our D2L Knowledge public page.
Questions?
If you have questions, please contact the Minnesota State Learning Technologies team.
Requests or questions about using D2L Brightspace
For requests or questions about D2L Brightspace, please contact the Learning Technologies Team:
- From the Contact Us page located on the D2L Knowledge Base (view the how to login instructions PDF), or
- From the Minnesota State IT Services customer portal (login with StarID credentials). Additional instructions are listed below.
For escalation of D2L Brightspace technical questions, please contact the Minnesota State Learning Technologies team.
Minnesota State IT Service Desk
Minnesota State provides a IT Services customer portal (https://servicedesk.minnstate.edu) for Minnesota State students, faculty, and staff. If immediate assistance is required, please call the IT Service Desk (1-877-466-6728) and provide detailed information to allow our staff to provide efficient support. The IT Service Desk is available during their business hours listed their portal login page.
IT Services customer portal
You can access the the IT Services portal by logging in with their StarID credentials.
After logging in, you can submit a request:
- Navigate to the Submit a New Request/Ticket link on the homepage.
- Enter D2L in the window, and click OK.
- On the search results page, select the role-specific link to submit a request for D2L Brightspace:
- Faculty or Campus Staff: click Request Assistance - Faculty or Staff.
- Students: click Request Assistance - Student.
- Complete the required fields (highlighted in red).
- When reading, click Submit.
- After submitting your request, a prompt window will provide your Request ID number. Please provide this number when referring to your request.
- You can view your submitted request from the View My Submitted Requests/Tickets link on the homepage.
A variety of training is offered or coordinated by the Minnesota State system office for D2L Brightspace users, including faculty, trainers, campus site admins, and other technical support staff. Training is provided in a variety of venues, including, but not limited to: printed documentation, on-demand recorded videos, webinars, and hands-on face-to-face workshops.
D2L Brightspace Videos for Instructors
From Minnesota State:
Academic and Student Affairs has an events calendar that brings together faculty development opportunities to a single location. Join us for the webinars and short courses offered throughout the year.
Training Webinars are available on the D2L IMS SharePoint site, including Annotations in Assignments and Intelligent Agents. Faculty, trainers, administrators, and support staff can log into the D2L IMS SharePoint site using YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password. View how to login instructions.
From D2L's YouTube Channel:
- Basic Navigation: Navigation - Overview - Instructor* (2 mins).
- Common Course Setup Tasks for Instructors* (10 min. playlist)
*These videos were developed by D2L for different Brightspace versions, features, tools, and workflow that may not be part of Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation.
D2L Brightspace Videos for Learners (i.e. Students)
From D2L's YouTube Channel:
**These videos were developed by D2L for different Brightspace versions, features, tools, and workflow that may not be part of Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation.
D2L Brightspace Monthly Update Schedule
Continuous delivery updates for D2L Brightspace are implemented on a monthly basis, typically on the third Thursday of the month. Typically no downtime is required for the monthly software updates. If downtime is required, users will be notified in advance.
These dates are scheduled by D2L. Any changes to this schedule (such as delays in receiving the monthly update) will be updated here and communicated to campuses. Note that on occasion D2L will also deploy hotfixes between monthly updates.
D2L Brightspace Monthly Update Schedule
| Prod Update | Version* |
| November 21, 2019 | 20.19.11 |
| December 19, 2019 | 20.19.12 |
|
January 16, 2020 January 17, 2020 |
20.20.01 |
|
February 20, 2020 February 19, 2020 |
20.20.02 |
| March 19, 2020 | 20.20.03 |
| April 16, 2020 | 20.20.04 |
| May 21, 2020 | 20.20.05 |
| June 18, 2020 | 20.20.06 |
| July 16, 2020 | 20.20.07 |
| August 20, 2020 | 20.20.08 |
| September 17, 2020 | 20.20.09 |
| October 15, 2020 | 20.20.10 |
| November 19, 2020 | 20.20.11 |
| December 17, 2020 | 20.20.12 |
*Note: D2L's product versioning number for Brightspace monthly updates. The base number, 20.20, represents the year and .01 represents the month, which will increment with each monthly release.
Minnesota State D2L Reported Issues
Reported issues within D2L Brightspace is available from the D2L IMS SharePoint site. A Known Issues document is provided by D2L at each software version release. The list is updated by the Minnesota State Learning Technologies Team when new issues are discovered and reported by our Minnesota State D2L Community.
Faculty, trainers, administrators, and support staff can access the site to view the Known Issues document. When prompted to login to the site, use YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password to log. View the PDF for how to login instructions.
Our learning management system provider, D2L, is based in Ontario, Canada. D2L hosts a free community website that is available to D2L Brightspace clients, including faculty, administrators, and technical support staff.
Visit or login to the D2L Community.
The Community Site Features
- Community Updates
- Best Practices
- Documentation
- Future Directions
- Share
- Discussions
Join the Community
To enroll in the D2L Community, click the Become a Member button on the Community login page. Provide your name, institution and email address.
The community is available to instructors, administrators, and other support staff (trainers, instructional designers, etc.), but not students. A D2L staff member will confirm your affiliation with a Minnesota State school and you will be provided with a username and password to access the community site.
Best of All It's Free!
Take advantage of the Community site for up-to-date information about D2L, and opportunities to connect with other D2L Brightspace users world-wide.
D2L Brightspace Contract and Software Licenses
A number of software applications can be used to build course materials that can be used in D2L Brightspace. Some examples include LodeStar Learning and Respondus Quiz Generator. Software applications that are licensed for Minnesota State schools is provided at System-wide Academic and Student Affairs Educational Innovations (https://www.minnstate.edu/system/asa/innovations/index.html).
For administration of the D2L Brightspace software license and academic issues within the Minnesota State colleges and universities, please contact the System Director for Educational Technology and Development.
