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Brightspace Troubleshooting

Logging into Brightspace

  • It is best to do this while logged into a Google chrome Flex Academy account, either in a browser (laptop, MacBook) or from a dedicated school user profile (Chromebook)

  • Students will receive an email from encom requesting a password reset. 

  • If a student hasn’t received a reset email, contact a school admin. 

  • In the reset email, students click the password reset link, and it will bring them to a place where they can choose a new Encom password.

  • Then, take note of the user name (usually it’s in the format of FirstnameLastname)

  • There will be a link after the password reset that they can click to get to Brightspace where they can login with their Encom username and newly created password

The Brightspace login website is https://hcos.onlinelearningbc.com/d2l/login 

  • Students should bookmark the BS login page and save their login information so that they don’t need to remember it all.

  • If a student gets an error on logging into Brightspace (eg invalid username or password error), they can shut their browser, re-open it and try logging in again carefully with their login info. Even one mistyped letter will result in a failed login.

  • If students still run into trouble and you aren’t able to help them with the above information, please contact school administration or send the details (include exactly what you are trying to do) to tickets@onlineschool.ca .

Brightspace Errors

If a student discovers that they are missing a Flex Blended course or an HCOS online course, please let your teacher know as soon as possible so that we can you into the course or fix any issues.

If a student discovers that something is broken in one of their Brightspace courses, email your teacher with the link to the page that is broken. If you are in class, clearly explain what is happening or show your teacher. It sometimes takes a little while to fix problems like that, so see if you can move on and circle back.

Teachers might need to remove conditions they’ve set up that don’t allow students to skip the (broken) lesson. Make sure to ask your teacher about this for any broken lessons.

One of the more common errors is not using a supported browser. Please only use Firefox or Chrome to access Brightspace. Other Browsers are not guaranteed to work.

Troubleshooting Lesson Errors in Brightspace (StudyForge Content)

  1. Only use Brightspace with the most current version of Google Chrome or Firefox

  2. Do a HARD refresh on the page (Hold down Ctrl and click the Reload button)

  3. Log out, close your browser and log in again

  4. Clear your browser’s cache

How to Clear your Browser’s Cache 

A great way to see if it is a caching issue is to open an “incognito window” or “private browsing window” which will always start from scratch with cache and browser sessions, and try logging in from there. If the problem persists, move on to the next step.

  1. If none of that works, email your instructor a picture or screenshot that shows

  • the lesson or question ID

  • If there is an error message, show that as well

  • The link to the page

When reporting a Brightspace error, please share the student’s first and last name, and any other information that can’t be found in the picture.

Sending Files to your Teachers

Some Brightspace assignments ask you to submit PDFs. There are a few ways you can do this.

  1. If you are working in Google Docs, here are instructions for saving your doc as a PDF (this also works for sheets and presentations).
  2. If you are sending in work that you have completed on paper, use a scanning app such as Adobe Scan app for iPhone & Android.
  3. If you are using an Android device, Google Drive will let you scan documents to PDF and upload them to your Google Drive. Here are the instructions.
  4. If you are using an iPhone or iPad, you can scan to PDF using the notes app.
  5. If you are using a Chromebook, you can use Google Drive and the Chromebook's camera app to scan documents.
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