Administrator Documentation

Set up Portfolio

Brightspace Portfolio requires you to set required roles and permissions, configuration variables, and turn on required tools to ensure both instructors and learners can access and use the tool appropriately.

Turn on Brightspace Portfolio

To allow access to Brightspace Portfolio in your entire organization, turn on the tool.

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Tip: You can restrict access to Brightspace Portfolio for specific course offerings. Navigate to the course you want restrict access to, select Course Admin > Tool Status and disable Portfolio. The course no longer appears under the learner’s list of courses in Portfolio. Due to caching, this change may take time to propagate.

To turn on Brightspace Portfolio

From the Admin Tools menu, select Organization Tools.
Switch the Portfolio toggle to On.

Set the region for Brightspace Portfolio

To use Brightspace Portfolio, the d2l.Tools.Folio.Endpoint variable must be configured to indicate where Brightspace should look for the Portfolio application, and the region in which the application resides. All configuration variables for Brightspace Portfolio are automatically set up with the same AWS region used by your Brightspace instance in the d2l.System.Aws.Region configuration variable, unless you manually overwrite the region.

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Note: If you intend to change the region, you can update the configuration setting in the Config Variable Browser tool under Tools > Folio.

To set the region for Portfolio

From the Admin Tools menu, select Organization Related > Config Variable Browser.
Navigate to Tools > Folio.
Click Endpoint.
Click Add Value and add the variable value.
Click Save.

Set role permissions to use Brightspace Portfolio

To ensure Brightspace Portfolio is set up correctly, you must ensure that learners and instructors are assigned role permissions from the Users tool, User Profile, User Information Privacy, and Portfolio.

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Important: To use Brightspace Portfolio, users with the instructor role must appear in the Classlist tool. From Roles and Permissions, select the instructor role and choose Edit Settings from the context menu. Under Classlist Display Options, enable the Display users enrolled as this role in classlist option.

Navigate to Admin Tools > Roles and Permissions to get started.

The following table lists all required role permissions to set up and use Brightspace Portfolio:

Role and Permission	Notes
Learner Portfolio > Student Portfolio Access	This permission allows learners to view the Portfolio tool. Must be set for the Organization org type.
Learner Portfolio > Add Own Assignment to Portfolio	Allows a learner to add their submitted assignment to their portfolio.
Instructor Portfolio > Can Access the Portfolio Instructor View	This permission allows instructors to view the Portfolio tool. Must have for Course Offerings and More org type. If you assign this role permission to administrators, they appear as an instructor if they have cascading permissions.
Instructor Portfolio > Can Add Assignment Submissions to Portfolio	This permission allows instructors to add assignment submissions from the Assignments tool to Portfolio as evidence.
Administrator Portfolio > Can Add Portfolio Tags	This permission allows the category tag administrator assign categories to evidence collected by learners, instructors, and administrators. This must be set for the Organization org type.
Instructor Rubrics > See Rubrics	This permission allows instructors to asses a rubric attached to Portfolio evidence. This must be set at the org level.
Instructor User Information Privacy> See First Names	Must be set for Organization and Course Offerings and More org types.
Instructor User Information Privacy>See Last Names	Must be set for Organization and Course Offerings and More org types.
Instructor User Information Privacy>See Usernames	Must be set for Course Offerings and More org type.
Instructor User Information Privacy>See Org Defined IDs	Must be set for Course Offerings and More org type.
Instructor User Information Privacy>See Email Addresses	Must be set for Course Offering and More org type.
Instructor User Information Privacy>See Middle Names	Must be set for Course Offering and More org type.
Learner User Profile > View Other User's Profiles	This permissions allows learners to view other users' profiles and display images.
Instructor Users > View User Enrollments	This permission allows instructors to view the learners enrolled in the course. This must be set for Course Offerings and More org type.
Instructor Users > Search for {role}	This permission allows instructors to search for the learners in their classes. The {role} variable indicates the set of roles assigned to the learners enrolled in the course. This must be set for Course Offerings and More org type.

Note:

To review all Portfolio permissions, refer to the Portfolio permissions topic.
To review all User Information Privacy permissions, refer to the User Information Privacy permissions topic.
To review all User Profile permissions, refer to the User Profile permissions topic.
To review all Users permissions, refer to the User Management permissions topic.

Using Brightspace Parent & Guardian with Portfolio

If you intend to use Brightspace Parent & Guardian to share evidence, it must be configured and turned on in Brightspace under Organization Tools > Brightspace Parent & Guardian.

Choose a workflow for how submitted evidence is managed

By using configuration variables, you can choose a workflow for how submitted evidence is managed in Brightspace Portfolio. The following workflow you choose depends on your type of organization (K-12, higher education, or corporate) and the level of control you want to grant to learners and instructors.

Evidence approval by instructors

In this workflow, instructors must approve each piece of submitted evidence before it appears in each learner's portfolio. This workflow is ideal for young learners in a K-12 learning environment where they may need more guidance and supervision on evidence collection.

To enable this workflow, turn off the d2l.Tools.Folio.LearnerControlsEvidenceSharing configuration variable. This configuration variable is off by default.

Evidence sharing with instructors

In this workflow, learners collect evidence and choose when to share it with instructors for assessment. This workflow is ideal for learners in a higher education learning environment where they may have work in progress that is not ready to share with instructors. For instructors, this allows them to only see evidence that is carefully curated by the learner for review, feedback, and assessment.

To enable this workflow, turn on the d2l.Tools.Folio.LearnerControlsEvidenceSharing configuration variable.

Evidence not linked to a course

In this workflow, learners collect evidence and choose not to link it to a course. This workflow is ideal for older learners in a higher education or corporate learning environment, as they may not be enrolled in courses, but still need to collect evidence of learning in an independent location where assessment by an instructor is unnecessary. For example, extracurricular activities, internships, or independent learning/research.

To enable this workflow, turn on the d2l.Tools.Folio.EvidenceOutsideOfCourses configuration variable.

Verify that courses are active

Any course or class that you want to set up with Brightspace Portfolio must be active. If you attempt to set up Brightspace Portfolio in a course that is deactivated, Brightspace Portfolio may not work as expected.

Important: If the d2l.Security.BypassDateCheck configuration variable is turned on, course start and end dates are ignored. This setting is useful when you want learners to have early access to courses or continued access after courses end. In Brightspace, courses outside of their start and end dates appear with other active courses in the My Courses widget; however, they display as grayed out (inactive). In Brightspace Portfolio, courses outside of their start and end dates appear with other active courses, with no difference in how they display. Even though a course may not have started yet, learners have early access to the course portfolio. However, if a course has ended, the course and any evidence remain in the list of active courses and list of evidence for the learner's portfolio. In addition, current instructors do not see archived portfolios belonging to learners. If turning on the d2l.Security.BypassDateCheck configuration variable is beneficial to your organization, you can archive a course portfolio by editing the course offering information and turning off the Course is active checkbox.

To ensure the course is active

From the Admin Tools menu, click Course Management.
Search for the course offering name and click to select the course.
On the navbar, click Course Admin > Course Offering Information.
Ensure the Course is Active check box is selected.

Add a Portfolio link to the navbar

In Brightspace, instructors can manage Portfolio from a link on the navbar.

Note: Learners can access Portfolio from their username on the navbar > My Portfolio. This link is always visible and cannot be disabled. To add a Portfolio link for learners on the navbar, use the custom link option: Add Links > Create Custom Link

To add a Portfolio link to the navbar

From the Admin Tools menu, select Navigation and Themes.
Click the navbar where you want to add the Brightspace Portfolio link.
In the Links section, click Add Links.
Select Portfolio and save the navbar.