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HI Rogelio,

We recently explored ways to preserve gradebook integrity in Brightspace after a term ends, while still allowing instructors to access past courses for reference or content reuse.

There are two effective approaches:

1. Assign a Modified Role in Past Courses
   By adjusting gradebook-related permissions (such as entering or managing grades) in a custom role, and assigning that role only in past course offerings, instructors can retain access without being able to edit grades. This leverages Brightspace’s ability to scope permissions at the org unit level.
2. Inactivate the Course Offering
   Another option is to inactivate the course itself. This prevents any further interaction with course tools, including gradebook edits, while still allowing administrators to access the course if needed. Instructors can no longer access the course unless it’s reactivated.

For more details on managing permissions, D2L provides a helpful guide here:
🔗 Manage Courses Permissions – Brightspace KB

If anyone has automated role changes or course inactivation based on term completion, I’d love to hear how you’ve approached it!

Thanks,
Raquel

Here are the main issues I've found with NLE:

• instructors may not be aware that the student view is completely different from their view
• "view as student" is not completely accurate and still shows hidden pages to the instructor even though students can't actually see them
• it's too easy for students to miss the description area (which used to be the Launch Unit button but is now just the title of the folder) and some instructors put a lot of content into those descriptions because the pages look the same as regular HTML pages
• if instructors only use the description area and don't add actual content items, then students get an "Oops! this unit is empty" message
• most students using phones just use the Pulse app anyway so the mobile-friendly aspect looks odd when viewing it on a computer screen (and like D2L is incorrectly detecting your computer as a phone)
• no search function
• the biggest drawback is the lack of Ally alternative formats, especially with the new Title II regulations coming into effect in 2026

The NCE has pop-up notifications when new content is released when conditions are met, which is a nice feature that neither classic nor NLE have. NCE seems to have more updates than NLE, and we have to remind instructors that those updates are only for their view and not the students' view. For example, NCE got a new search function this month, but NLE did not.

Hi @Kourtnie.H.217 ,

Thanks for reaching out to the Brightspace Community.

You can use Copy Course Bulk (CCB) to copy a pre-designed module into the Content (or templated course content) of many courses at a time. This process is an additive process, and all new content would be appended to the end of any existing content. This would require that the newly copied module would need to be moved from the bottom of the content list up to the top (or other desired area) by a user with edit capabilities, maybe the instructor?

Also, depending on your institutions method of creating new courses, there may be other ways of accomplishing this. i.e. if your institution uses IPSIS to create new shells, this process can be set to copy a content from an existing course as each new course shell is created. If this is the first action within a course, it will be the first content listed and any future content added would be appended below.

We hope this helps and please reach out if you have further questions.

Hi @Paula.C.2956

Thank you for reaching out to the Brightspace Community team. We appreciate you sharing the details of the issue.

While we have not seen widespread reports of this problem, since it is affecting multiple users, I recommend that you open a support case with us. This will allow our team to investigate the specific courses and users involved in detail and identify any underlying causes.

When submitting the case, please include as much information as possible.

Thank you once again for your patience and for bringing this to our attention.

Best regards,
Bhoomika