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An Introduction to Brightspace: Content Nesting and Navigation


What is content nesting?
Brightspace has many issues; alas, the most user-driven may be its nesting. Nesting is a term that describes the way content flows and is able to be accessed from a main screen. In a study done by Flood and O’Reilly (2006), "credibility, usability, and accessibility were the three issues in formulating the minimal set of guidelines for website design... insuring that the table content makes sense, providing clear and consistent navigation mechanisms." In a sense, the more accessible you make the content and the easier it is to navigate, the better your website is—so much so that these features are two of the three pillars of website design. Brightspace can therefore be judged against this measure to see how user friendly it is by means of navigation and content nesting.

Okay, what does that have to do with Brightspace?
Brightspace, like many other online academic websites, has a plethora of tools and medias with which students are supposed to navigate their classes and academic scholarship. The main issue that prevents the student (the user) from accessing and using these tools (the product) successfully is the website itself. The design of the website, which will be discussed later, is non-conducive to learning or navigation.

For example, look at any discussion thread. How did you get there? Did you go Class → Content → Announcement → Discussion Link → Thread? Or did you try Class → Tools → Discussions → Thread? Or better yet, a personal favorite of mine, Class → Content → Table of Contents → Due Soon → Discussion Post → Thread? There are many long and tedious ways to find a commonly used area of the website, and each contains at least three steps. Drawing off of the work of Rex P. Bringula, in usability, one of the main ideas is that a product, whatever it may be, should be as accessible as possible. You could have a great product that is very useful, but if you cannot make it available to your audience, it decreases in value. Enter Brightspace.

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