D2L Brightspace Course Navigation

About the Navigation Change (May 2025)

The D2L Course Navigation Bar will be updated on May 10, 2025.

Metro State University will update the D2L course navigation bar to align with system standards recommended by the Minnesota State System Office Learning Environment Committee. This will create consistency across institutions for an improved student and instructor experience.

All institutions are set to have this navigation in place by the second week of August. Fall semester will have a new login method, so we are employing the new navigation to normalize the navigation before we introduce the login change. The login change should not be overly complicated. We are moving to the Microsoft login for D2L Brightspace, Kaltura MediaSpace, and Zoom. This will bring Multi-Factor Authentication to the learning environment.

The New Common Navigation layout (Students and Faculty)

The five most popular tools (Content, Discussions, Assignments, Quizzes, and Grades) are now on the main navigation bar for easier access. Less-used tools are moved into an alphabetical "Other Tools" dropdown menu, simplifying course navigation.

D2L Navigation; Other Tools dropdown activated showing the following tools: Attendance, Awards, Calendar, Class Progress, Classlist, Groups, Media Library, Namecoach, and Surveys

The New Course Tools dropdown (Course Instructor only)

Feedback from faculty unions highlighted the most-used/requested faculty-only tools, and they are placed under Course Tools dropdown:

D2L Navigation focusing on Course Tools which includes Course Admin, Intelligent Agents, Manage Files, and Quick Eval.

Additional Resources (behind M365 login)

Faculty Resources

Student Resources (behind M365 login)

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Related Articles (2)

Faculty: Sometimes having a list helps students understand the content and assignments and how to tackle them. D2L Brightspace has a simple to use tool called Checklist for such a task.
ALL: This article describes the D2L Brightspace class progress tool for faculty and students and how to access it, and provides links to documentation that goes into greater detail.