Release conditions help you create structured and personalized learning paths in your course. The following best practices support consistent behavior, reduce confusion for learners, and help ensure that conditions work as intended.
Before you begin
Before you add release conditions, it is important to prepare your course so that conditions behave predictably and support a clear learning path for your learners.
Set up conditions before learners access the course
Create your course materials and set up release conditions before the course opens to learners. This gives you time to review the logic of your conditions and helps you avoid circular, contradictory, or unnecessary conditions.
Adding new conditions after learners have already accessed materials can cause confusion if items become unavailable or change visibility. Because conditions do not reset automatically, learners might also meet conditions before the associated content is ready.
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Important: Whenever possible, finalize your course structure and release conditions before learners can access the course. This reduces the risk of content appearing or disappearing unexpectedly.
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Best practices for reliable release conditions
Applying consistent practices when creating release conditions helps ensure that your conditions are logical, achievable, and easy for you and your learners to understand.
Use only the conditions you need
Each condition you add increases the amount of processing the system must perform. Use only the conditions you truly need to keep page load times reasonable and reduce complexity.
For example, if learners must read a content topic before taking a quiz, and must take the quiz before submitting an assignment, you only need to add the quiz attempt condition to the assignment. There is no need to also add the content view condition to the assignment, because that access path is already implied.
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Note: Simple condition logic is easier to maintain and easier to troubleshoot if learners cannot see expected content.
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Avoid circular references
Avoid creating loops in your release conditions so that learners always have a clear and achievable path to access required materials.
A circular reference happens when conditions depend on each other in a loop so that neither condition can be satisfied first.
For example, a content topic that requires an assignment submission, paired with an assignment that requires viewing that same topic, creates a loop that learners cannot resolve. The result is that learners cannot access either item.
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Important: Review chains of conditions carefully. If one item requires another item that also depends on the first, learners will not be able to meet the conditions.
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Avoid impossible conditions
Ensure that all conditions you create can realistically be met by learners based on how your course elements are configured.
Impossible conditions are conditions that learners cannot meet based on the way your course is configured.
For example, requiring a score above 100 percent on a grade item is impossible unless the item is set to Can Exceed. If a condition cannot be met, any associated content or tools will remain inaccessible to learners.
Avoid contradictory conditions
Check that no pair of conditions conflicts with one another so that learners always have a single, achievable path forward.
Contradictory conditions occur when two or more conditions cancel each other out.
For example, requiring learners to score greater than 49.9 percent and less than 50 percent on the same grade item at the same time makes the related content permanently unavailable. No learner can meet both conditions at once.
Using release conditions to support learning
Release conditions can help you create a more personalized and structured learning experience by tailoring access to content based on learner progress and needs.
Personalize content based on performance
You can tailor support for learners by releasing additional content based on their performance. For example, you can release remediation resources to learners who score below a certain threshold or release enrichment activities to learners who exceed expectations.
This approach allows you to better support individual learner needs without creating separate course offerings.
Release content in stages
Sequential release conditions help guide learners through course material at an appropriate pace and reduce the amount of information presented at one time.
To guide learners through course material at an appropriate pace, you can attach release conditions to modules or topics so that new content appears only after earlier content has been viewed or completed.
Release content based on enrollment date
Use enrollment date-based release conditions when your course allows learners to join at different times, so each learner receives a consistent experience.
In courses with rolling enrollment, release conditions can make content available relative to a learner's enrollment date. This allows each learner to see the same sequence of content regardless of when they join the course.
Customize content for specific groups
Group specific release conditions help you provide targeted instructions, activities, or resources for different cohorts or project teams within the same course.
If your course uses group projects or differentiated tasks, you can create group specific content and release it only to members of those groups.
Tools that work well with release conditions
Certain Brightspace tools pair well with release conditions and can help you structure learning tasks, monitor progress, and automate reminders.
Use checklists to organize activities
Checklists can help learners track their progress through weekly tasks or larger projects. You can use release conditions so that new content, announcements, or activities become available once learners complete items in a checklist.
Use intelligent agents to monitor progress
Intelligent agents can use release conditions to identify learners who have not completed required tasks, making it easier to provide timely reminders or offer support.
For example, you can create an agent that sends a reminder to learners who have not attempted a quiz or submitted an assignment after a certain date.
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Note: The NOT operator in intelligent agents can help you identify learners who have not met a condition, such as not viewing a topic or not achieving a minimum score.
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Validate your setup
After configuring release conditions, review the learner experience to ensure the learning path is clear and the correct content is available at the correct time.
Test using View as Learner
Use View as Learner to verify that conditions behave as expected.
- Confirm that content appears when conditions are met.
- Confirm that content stays hidden when conditions are not met.
- Check that the learning path is clear and that learners do not see unexpected gaps.
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Note: If content does not appear when expected, recheck the condition type, target item, and any related grade or completion settings.
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Example release condition scenarios
The following examples illustrate how different release condition setups behave and how they can support your course design goals.
Scenario: Release follow up content based on quiz performance
This scenario illustrates how to release new content only after a learner meets a required performance threshold.
Goal: Learners can access a follow up content topic only if they score at least 80 percent on the "Module 1 Quiz".
Setup:
- Condition type: Grade value on a grade item
- Target grade item: Module 1 Quiz
- Condition: Score is greater than or equal to 80 percent
Behavior:
- If a learner scores 80 percent or higher, the condition is met and the topic becomes visible.
- If the score is below 80 percent, the topic remains hidden.
- If the grade is updated later, the condition does not re evaluate automatically unless the learner is removed from the course and re added.
Scenario: Show a reminder when a topic is not completed
This scenario demonstrates how you can keep a reminder visible until a learner completes a required piece of content.
Goal: Display a reminder topic to learners who have not completed the "Introduction to Project Management" content topic.
Setup:
- Condition type: Content - Not completed content topic
- Target content topic: Introduction to Project Management
Behavior:
- If the learner has not completed the topic, the reminder message is visible.
- Once the learner completes the topic, the reminder message becomes hidden.
- If the completion is undone later, the condition does not re evaluate and remains in its last evaluated state.
Add release conditions to a Brightspace asset
Release conditions allow you to control when learners can see specific items in your course. You can use them to require learners to complete a task, achieve a score, or reach a milestone before they move on to the next activity.
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Important: Plan your release conditions before learners access the course. Once a learner meets a condition, the condition is considered met for that learner and cannot be reset unless the learner is removed and re-added to the course, group, or section.
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Before setting up release conditions, make sure the activities and content you want to control are already created. You will attach release conditions to existing items rather than creating them at the same time.
Your role must also have permission to edit the tool where you want to use conditions, such as Assignments, Content, Discussions, or Quizzes.
Step 1. Open the item you want to restrict
To set up a release condition, first open the item that you want to control access to.
- To restrict a content topic, go to Content, open the module, and click the topic’s menu, then click Edit or Edit Properties In-place.
- To restrict an assignment, go to Assignments and click the assignment name to edit it.
- To restrict a discussion topic, go to Discussions, click the topic menu, and click Edit Topic.
- To restrict a quiz, go to Quizzes, click the quiz name, and edit the settings.
- To restrict an announcement, checklist, or other supported item, open the editor for that item.
Step 2: Find the release conditions area
The location of the release conditions area varies slightly by tool, but it is usually in the same general place as availability and visibility settings.
- In many tools, expand the Availability Dates & Conditions section to find Release Conditions.
- In older workflows, look for a Restrictions tab and scroll to the Release Conditions section.
Step 3: Choose to create or attach a condition
When you open the release conditions section, you can either create a new condition or reuse an existing one.
- Click Create and Attach to set up a new release condition that applies to this item.
- Click Attach Existing to reuse a condition that you already created for another item.
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Note: If you want more than one course item to unlock when the same requirement is met, create the condition once and then use Attach Existing on the other items.
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Step 4: Select the condition type
When you create a new condition, you must choose the type of release condition. The condition type determines what learner action or result is required.
Common examples include:
- Content – learner must view or complete a specific content topic.
- Assignments – learner must submit to a specific assignment or receive feedback.
- Discussions – learner must author a post in a topic.
- Quizzes – learner must attempt a quiz or achieve a specific score.
- Grades – learner must achieve a particular grade on a grade item.
- Checklists – learner must complete all items or a specific item on a checklist.
- Classlist – learner must be enrolled in a specific group, section, or org unit.
Step 5: Configure the condition details
After you choose a condition type, you must tell the system exactly what to check.
- Select the specific item, such as the quiz, discussion topic, grade item, or content topic.
- For grade based conditions, select the comparison type, such as greater than, less than, or greater than or equal to, and enter the required value.
- For checklist and discussion conditions, specify how many items or posts are required.
When you finish, click Create or Attach to add the condition to the item.
Step 6: Review and combine conditions
After you add a release condition, it appears in a list on the item.
- Use Remove to delete a condition that you no longer want to apply.
- Use Add Another Condition if learners must meet more than one requirement before they can access the item.
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Important: If you attach more than one release condition to the same item, learners must meet all of the listed conditions. Release conditions use AND logic, not OR logic.
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Step 7: Save and test the learner experience
When the release conditions are configured, save the item and test what learners will see.
- Click Save and Close (or a similar option) to apply the changes.
- Use View as Learner to verify that the item becomes visible only after the condition is met.
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Note: If content does not appear when you expect it to, check that the condition type, target item, and values (such as grades or completion settings) match the way the course is set up.
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Use release conditions with Intelligent Agents
You can also use release conditions to drive Intelligent Agents that monitor learner progress and send automated messages.
- Create or edit an Intelligent Agent from Admin Tools > Intelligent Agents.
- In the Criteria area, add release conditions that describe the scenario you want to monitor, such as not submitting an assignment or scoring below a threshold.
- Configure the email message and schedule, then save and enable the agent.
Intelligent Agents do not control whether content is visible. Instead, they use release conditions to identify which learners should receive notifications or reminders.