Catherine Murphy
IT Project Manager – Educational Technology Services
Team Lead
What is the New Content Experience (NCE) in Brightspace?
The New Content Experience (NCE) is a refreshed presentation of learning content in Brightspace. Designed to streamline content creation, enhance collaboration, and create engaging and accessible learning experiences for faculty and students.
While the New Content Experience looks different to our current content experience, IT Services are here to assist you should you run into any issues.
A full roll out of the New Content Experience is happening from 15th July 2025 with all new modules being delivered in the New Content Experience. Further details of what is involved can be found below.
What is happening?
Starting 15th July 2025, the New Content Experience (NCE) in Brightspace will become the default for all newly created modules. Faculty will be able to view and access content in the Classic Content Experience until 15th July 2025. After this date, all modules will transition permanently to the New Content Experience.
Support and training resources are available now to help faculty prepare for and adopt the New Content Experience.
Figure 1: New Assessable Activities View
Benefits of the Brightspace New Content Experience
- User-Friendly Interface: The New Content Experience offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface, making content creation and navigation easier for both instructors and learners.
- Clear learning pathways: The New Content Experience is designed to assist faculty in scaffolding the learning journey, thereby enhancing student engagement and accessibility. By structuring the learning process through clear pathways and signposting, it enables a more logical progression through learning materials.
- Clean Minimalist Design: With a minimalist design and simplified content structure, the New Content Experience provides a clutter-free environment, enhancing focus on learning material and ease of use for users.
- A Brand New Assessable Activities View: The Assessable Activities View provides a comprehensive overview to assignments, quizzes, and discussions, allowing both instructors and learners to track requirements, completion status, feedback, and grades within the “My Learning” area in Brightspace.
- Efficient Evaluation Process: Instructors can efficiently evaluate and review draft grades directly within the Assessable Activities View, streamlining the grading process and providing timely feedback to learners, fostering a more dynamic and interactive learning environment."
- Taking Advantage of New Features & Developments: By transitioning to the New Content Experience, faculty can take advantage of system developments, as all new features and updates will be implemented within the New Content Experience, ensuring access to the latest advancements in educational technology
Support and Training
to help you get your content ready for the New Content Experience in Brightspace, we are offering a range of support options :
- Short training sessions are available as part of our Brightspace training programme. These sessions focus on preparing and organising your content for the New Content Experience
- 1:1 online support appointments can be booked through IT Services. These are ideal for instructors who need dedicated time to resolve specific content setup issues
- How-to guides and support articles are available in our Knowledge Base, covering key features and common tasks in the New Content Experience
- IT Support Hub : You can submit a support request at any time if you have questions or run into issues
Links to all of these resources are available in the "Getting Started" section below.
Timeline Key Dates
-
May 2024
New Content Experience available to toggle on/off in all staff sandboxes
-
Mid-July 2024
The 2024/25 academic year module containers will become available in Brightspace
-
July/August 2024
Targeted Training & support for New Content Experience being rolled out
-
September 2024
Recommended that all Stage 1 core modules at the undergraduate level and, where feasible, graduate-taught programmes, begin using the New Content Experience
-
January 2025
NCE is available to all Spring modules
-
15 July 2025
25/26 New module shells available
-
15 August 2025
NCE becomes the sole content experience in Brightspace
-
2025/26 academic year
Full rollout of New Content Experience
UCD NCE Module Content Readiness Widget
The New Content Experience Module Content Readiness Widget is visible to instructors on the home pages of teaching modules. The widget analyses the content in the module and displays pre-existing module content from the Classic content experience that needs to be reviewed in order to display in the New Content Experience - making the review of module content quicker and easier for all instructors.
Meet Our Project Team
Meet our project team, working together to achieve our goals with expertise.
David Kane
Project Manager – Educational Technology Services
Team member
Nicola Carrigan
Senior IT Specialist – Educational Technology Services
Team member
Rachel Hickey
Senior IT Specialist – Educational Technology Services
Team member
Martin Heduan
Senior Educational Technologist
Team member
FAQ
No. Starting 15 July 2025, the New Content Experience (NCE) in Brightspace will become the default content experience for all newly created modules.
From 15 July to 14 August 2025, instructors will have the ability to view and access content in the Classic Content Experience — but only Module Coordinators in teaching modules will be able to switch between the Classic and New Content Experiences during this time.
This option is temporary. After 15 August 2025, all modules will permanently use the New Content Experience, and the ability to toggle between views will no longer be available.
Once the New Content Experience is enabled in a module, all instructors and students will interact with content through the new display.
Yes, there are differences in how content displays, new ways for creating and moving units and content. After adding content you should check to make sure it displays how you intend it to display.
Further information on the steps to add content are in this (opens in a new window)knowledge base article and (opens in a new window)more.
Yes. Review the (opens in a new window)checklist of key items do check to ensure your content displays well in the NCE and use the New Content Experience Module Content Readiness Widget on the home pages of your teaching modules to review any content that needs attention.
No - the New Content Experience impacts the display of content only in the My Learning area of modules. Other tools in Brightspace such as assignments, quizzes, and discussions,etc are unaffected.
The new experience now supports a maximum of five levels of units and subunits. Top-levels are called Units. The second level sub-units are called Lessons and 3rd level sub units are called Folders. It is recommended that instructors use a minimum amount of 'subunits' to avoid multiple layers where students have to click down into subunits to access the resourse/content. This is consistent with Universal Design Learning (UDL) best practices.
From 15th of July until 15th of August 2025, if there are pre-existing units from the Classic Content Experience that are too deep to display an alert message will appear that will be visible only to Module Coordinators.
The missing sub-unit and its content still exist and can be pinpointed by using the NCE module content readiness widget on the module home page. To move the units up, the sub-unit and its content can be located in the (opens in a new window)Module Builder Tool if you need to move them up a level. You can also use the toggle to revert to the Classic content experience in order to move the sub-module to a different location. You can then re-enable the New Content Experience. The option to toggle between the Classic content experience and the New Content Experience will only be available to Module Co-Ordinators until 15th of August.
The (opens in a new window)UCD VLE Standards units have been added by default into 2025/26 teaching modules. For further information on these, check out the Changes to the VLE Standards webpage.
The New Content Experience uses icons instead of text to identify different file types. (opens in a new window)More information here
See (opens in a new window)what you need to check and the key differences between the Classic and New Content Experience
Yes, the New Content Experience is designed for mobile devices. It is recommended that a full web browser is used with Brightspace on mobile devices. (opens in a new window)Brightspace Pulse displays are unaffected by which content display tool is in use in modules.
You can contact IT Services via the IT Services Helpdesk at www.ucd.ie/ithelp
IT Services are offering (opens in a new window)Bookable 1:1 online support appointments for instructors who want to become early adopters of the New Content Experience.
Short training sessions for instructors on using the New Content Experience are also available. Book here
All our support resources are linked from the project web page: Brightspace New Content Experience - UCD IT Services
Instructors can also open support queries at any stage via the (opens in a new window)IT Support hub
UCD IT Services
Computer Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.Contact us via the UCD IT Support Hub: www.ucd.ie/ithelp