Who can do this?
A Brightspace administrator can do this for all courses, or an Instructor can do this for their own courses.
In order for students to access the Echo360 content for a course, an Activity link to the Echo360 external tool must be added to each course.
This is potentially the most complicated part of the process, because there are several different ways to go about it, depending on whether it's the Admin or the Instructor who executes it, whether the link will be to the main section home (the class list) or to individual classes, whether the instructor is exporting Echo360 analytic data into their Brightspace course gradebook, and finally, whether the Echo360 sections already exist for linking or are created as a process of linking through from Brightspace.
The steps below provide instructions for creating a link to the Echo360 external tool in your Brightspace course, and linking to an existing Echo360 section, including steps for enabling gradebook exports to Brightspace from Echo360.
To link a Brightspace course to an Echo360 section
- Navigate to a Brightspace course and add a Module to the course content.
- Add an Existing Activity to the module then select External Learning Tools.
- From the list of Tool Providers, select the Echo360 tool configured for your Brightspace instance.
- The new link automatically appears in the module you created. Click the link to launch the Echo360 linking process.
Echo360 appears in the Brightspace module frame, as shown below. - Use the drop-down boxes to select a Term, Course, and Section in Echo360 to link this Brightspace course to, as shown below.
NOTE that you may only see a Section drop-down list if your administrator has limited your selection options to only those Echo360 sections in which you are already enrolled.
If an Admin performs this step, that user is then enrolled in the Echo360 section as an Instructor; you may wish to unenroll yourself from these sections later.
The Link to the Section Home option is selected by default. This directs users to the main class list of the identified section. See Linking an LMS course to an Echo360 Classroom if you want to create multiple links to different classes in the section. The process is the same as appears here, but you will need to repeat it for each class you want to link. - Click LINK CONTENT.
- Scroll to the bottom of the frame where the Echo360 section appears and add an Assessment entry for the Echo360 link. This adds a column in the Gradebook to receive exported Echo360 student engagement analytics.
- Return to the Course content page with the linked module, and select Edit Properties In-place for the new Echo360 link.
- Check the Open as External Resource checkbox. This allows Echo360 to open in a new tab, providing more viewing space for classes and the media contained therein.
As stated above, instructors may choose to create multiple module/links and link to individual classes within an Echo360 section. Alternately, instructors or admins can create the Echo360 course and/or section through the tool interface, instead of linking to an existing Echo360 section. Note that the user who creates the section this way is automatically assigned as an instructor to the course.
When a student passes through the link from Brightspace into Echo360, they are automatically enrolled into the section as a student. If the student is not yet an Echo360 user, their Echo360 account is automatically created when they pass into Echo360.
Brightspace course instructors are automatically enrolled into the Echo360 section as Instructors, if they are not already enrolled. Instructors may also have their Echo360 account created if it does not already exist when they pass into Echo360 from Brightspace. See also Disabling Automatic Instructor Creation (for LMS users) if this is not appropriate for your institution.
Brightspace Admins who pass into an Echo360 section this way are also enrolled as Instructors into the Echo360 course. See LMS to Echo360 User Role Mappings for additional details.