Faculty members are encouraged to designate a Learning Assistant in their Brightspace course to help support the instructor and students.

If your Learning Assistant does not show up using the steps below, please ask them to review their “Account Check” widget (located on your Purchase College Brightspace main page, right above the “My Courses” widget) to make sure that Purchase is set as their primary campus affiliation. If Purchase is not their primary campus affiliation, they will need to request that information be updated by contacting the SUNY Online Help Desk.

If they still do not show up, please create a work order with the CTS Helpdesk or the SUNY Online Help Desk.

Please note that the TLTC cannot address Brightspace user account issues.

To add a Learning Assistant, Non-Editing Instructor, Co-Instructor, or Grader to your Brightspace course:

• from your course Navbar, click on Course Management > Roster
• click on the chevron next to the “Add Participants” button > select “Add existing users”
• under the “Add Existing Users” heading, search for your learning assistant / course librarian / non-editing instructor by last name and click on the magnifying glass icon to run the search
• scroll down to the search results and check the box associated with your learning assistant , course librarian, or non-editing instructor; to the right, choose from the following available roles:
  • PUR - Instructor (Non-Cascading)
  • PUR - Course Librarian (Non-Cascading) - to request a course librarian be added to your course, please contact Kim Detterbeck, Coordinator of Instruction.
  • PUR - Instructor Copy Only (Non-Cascading)
  • PUR - Learning Assistant (Non-Cascading)
  • PUR - Grader (Non-Cascading)
  • PUR - Non-Editing Instructor (Non-Cascading)
• click on the “Enroll selected users” button to add the selected individual at the Learning Assistant (or Grader, Non-Editing Instructor, or Instructor Copy Only) role to your Brightspace course

Please do not manually enroll users at the PUR - Student (Non-Cascading) role if they are officially registered for your course. This will break the connection with the student information system (Banner/MyHeliotrope). Please let the integration between systems handle official course enrollments in Brightspace.

Learning Assistants can:

• upload files to the course,
• manage course calendar,
• set up student groups,
• send out course announcements,
• manage course attendance,
• add assignments, and
• create question banks and quizzes.

Learning Assistants cannot grade assignments or view the course Grade Book.

Graders can do all of the tasks that Learning Assistants can do as well as grade assignments and access the Grade Book.

Note that all users assigned at the the Learning Assistant & Grader roles can:

• access “inactive” courses
• access past courses
• access future courses

Link to this FAQ: How do I add a learning assistant to my Brightspace course?