Turn on Brightspace Portfolio
To allow access to Brightspace Portfolio in your entire organization, turn on the tool.
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.
- 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 the 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 the Brightspace instance in the d2l.System.Aws.Region configuration variable, unless you manually overwrite the region.
If you intend to change the region, you can update the configuration setting in the Config Variable Browser tool under Tools > Folio.
- 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 Brightspace Portfolio permissions
D2L recommends you use caution when changing the roles and permissions for the Portfolio tool. Editing a permission propagates the change to everyone who currently has the affected role or permission.
Learners need the following permissions:
- If your organization has the User Profile tool enabled, the User Profile must have View Other Users' Profiles for the Organization org type. This permission lets learners view other users' profiles with correctly displayed images.
- Portfolio must have Student Portfolio Access for the Organization org type. This permission lets learners view the Portfolio tool in the Brightspace.
Instructors need the following permissions:
- Users must have View User Enrollments for Course Offerings and More org type. This permission lets instructors view the learners enrolled in the class.
- Users must have Search for {role} for Course Offerings and More org type. This permission lets instructors search for the learners in their classes. The {role} variable indicates the set of roles assigned to the learners enrolled in the course.
- Portfolio must have Can Access the Portfolio Instructor View for Course Offerings and More org type. This permission lets the instructor view the Portfolio tool in the Brightspace. Note that if you provide this permission to Administrators, they appear as an instructor if they have cascading permissions.
- If your organization has the User Profile tool enabled, the User Profile must have View other Users' Profiles in order to properly display images.
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.
- To assess a rubric attached to evidence, instructors must have the See Rubrics permission at the org level.
The instructor must have the following permissions in User Information Privacy to see user information:
- See First Names for Organization and Course Offerings and More org types.
- See Last Names for Organization and Course Offerings and More org types.
- See Usernames for Course Offerings and More org type.
- See Org Defined IDs for Course Offerings and More org type.
- See Email Addresses for Course Offering and More org type.
- See Middle Names for Course Offering and More org type.
Users who are administrators of the category tags need the following permissions:
- Portfolio must have Can Add Portfolio Tags for the Organization org type. This permission lets the category tag administrator assign categories to evidence collected by learners, instructors, and administrators.
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.
- 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.
Note: To add a Portfolio link for learners on the navbar, use the custom link option: Add Links > Create Custom Link.