All Purchase College students, faculty, and staff can take advantage of the excellent support available from the SUNY Online Help Desk.

 

The SUNY Online Help Desk should be your first point of contact to get help with all aspects of the Brightspace learning management system (LMS). The SUNY Online Help Desk is staffed with experts who can assist with:

• Creating course content (e.g. assignments, quizzes, discussions forums, attendance, etc.)
• Answering questions pertaining to course delivery (e.g. navigating discussions, grading assignments, adjusting release settings, working with the grade book, etc.)

You can contact the SUNY Online Help Desk during their extensive service hours, including evenings and weekends. Updated hours are posted to their website and available at the “SUNY Online Support Services” widget in Brightspace.

• Main Website for the SUNY Online Help Desk
• SUNY Online Help Desk phone number for Brightspace assistance: 1-844-673-6786

Brightspace Grade Book Default Updates

The current default Brightspace Grade Book Settings for Fall 2023 courses are as follows:

• Grading System = Points
• Grade Calculation of Ungraded Items = Treat ungraded items as zeroes. This setting assigns a value of zero (0) as the points received for all ungraded items.

Faculty can change these defaults if they would like to use a Weighted grading system and/or not treat ungraded items as zeroes.

 

To make adjustments on course-by-course basis:

• navigate to the desired course > click on “Grades” in the course Navbar > click on “Setup Wizard” to review the existing Grade Book settings.
• Click on the “Settings” gear icon on the right side of the page
• Click on the “Calculation options” tab
• Make your changes and click on the “Save” button

SUNY has decided to change these default settings on all newly-created courses going forward. Beginning with the Winter 2024 term, Brightspace Grade Book defaults will be:

• Grading System = Weighted
• Grade Calculation of Ungraded Items = Drop Ungraded Items (i.e. exclude ungraded items from the grade book calculation)

For more information about grading systems types in Brightspace, please see Weighted, points, and formula grading systems (Brightspace).