Course sites: A course site is the official work site for a particular academic course for an institution, and can be linked to a database (such as a registrar's) to automatically populate its roster.

Project sites: Project sites are designed to facilitate collaboration. You can invite anyone you wish to join your project site.

In your site, the toolbar is a customizable column along the left of the screen that contains links to numerous collaborative tools. Site owners (and those with an Instructor or Maintain role) have special permissions to add, edit, and delete tools with Worksite Setup or Site Info. 

Permissions allow users to access certain features of a course or project worksite, depending on their roles and on the decisions made by the site owner and the system administrator.

Roles are simply collections of permissions. Some roles allow the user to simply access or read content, while other roles allow for advanced changes, such as adding participants, editing the site's content, and changing permissions for other roles. All roles are not created equal.

 The Email Archive tool allows email to be sent to all members of a site using a single email address. Email sent using the Email Archive tool is archived and searchable on the course site.

The Gradebook tool allows you to record and compute cumulative student grades. Students can refer to the Gradebook to check their own progress in a course. This tool allows instructors to compute course grades and download a simply formatted spreadsheet in preparation for submitting grades to the Registrar at the end of the semester. GSI s can download a spreadsheet to manage their own section off-line. 

 My Workspace is an individual online worksite that functions as a private workspace for each user. When you log in, you will automatically open your My Workspace, which will display the Message of the Day and My Workspace Information boxes. By default, these boxes contain announcements and information from the system administrator.

The Polls tool enables instructors to get quick, anonymous feedback from students via a single question poll. NOTE: This is an experimental tool which may have some bugs.Quick and easy polls can be very useful in classes of any size. For instance, ask students if they heard about a relevant news event, to what degree they agreed with the point-of-view of a guest presenter, or if they completed the readings for a current topic.

The Resources tool allows you to publish material within your site, such as documents, links to websites, and HTML pages. You can create folders to organize resources and set permissions to control who sees the material (all members of your site or only certain groups/sections). You can post weekly readings in your course's Resources section, as well as supplemental reading materials, presentations, and slides used in lectures.

The Schedule tool allows you to post items in a calendar format. All your course and project site schedule events appear in your personal schedule, called My Workspace Schedule. A synoptic view of the Schedule is also displayed on the Home page of your site.

The Site Info tool allows you to edit your course and project sites after you set them up. You can add or delete participants, change permissions, determine the order of tools in your site, publish the site, duplicate the site, and import material from any other sites you own. You cannot remove this tool from any site.

The Web Content tool allows you to display other websites inside the bSpace frame. Web Content links are displayed in the bSpace toolbar. If you provide links to many websites in your course Resources section, you might choose to put the most important or most commonly used links in Web Content, such as a link to the library catalog online or another research tool.

On the Home page of each course site or project site, you will see areas for general information (e.g., Worksite Information) and Recent Announcements.