Request and set up your course shells for Fall 2025
If it's your first time teaching at TMU, or you've *just* been hired, and you're not sure what to do first, please visit our Before you get started with Brightspace page to find out what needs to happen before you can get started.
If you have taught before at TMU, consider referring to our Getting Started guide, or our guide for reusing course materials.
Once you can see your course sections in MyServiceHub (this can take a few days after you're officially hired), it's time to request your course shells. You will fill out the course shell request form once for each class you're teaching (ie. if you are teaching 3 classes, you must fill out the form 3 times).
Once you have your course shells, make sure to:
- Check the Classlist, to ensure your students are appearing. If you didn't select the course section when you filled out the shell request form, you may need to add the course section now.
- If you have a TA, once their contract has started, make sure to add them.
- (Optional) Request/set up any other educational technology you plan to use.
- Upload your course outline to the Content section of your course shell. Make sure you have updated your course outline to include pertinent info about the technology you're using in your course.
- Create your grade items, then assignments, quizzes or discussion boards, if you'll be using those tools.
- Consider posting an announcement to welcome your students, and set up expectations for the first class (ie. purchase the text, read a document, etc).
- When you're ready for students to access your course materials, you need to make each course shell "active".
On this website, you can find step-by-step instructions to do most tasks in Brightspace. But if you get stuck, just email courses@torontomu.ca, and our team will do our best to help. Keep in mind that we receive a lot of queries around the start of term, so it may take a day or two for us to respond.