A Day in the Life of Ethan—a College Student

Meet Ethan, a freshman starting college

Ethan wants to finish his college degree and be prepared to be successful in the workforce when he graduates. Some of his top priorities include:

• Managing his time better so he’s not overwhelmed
• Accessing his schoolwork from his phone because he’s on the road a lot

Between school, extracurricular activities, and his social life, Ethan has a lot going on. Let’s look at his day and how he uses the Brightspace platform to help achieve these goals.

First thing: Find out what’s coming up

The first thing Ethan does in the morning is check his phone. Ethan sees a notification on his phone that a new grade is available. He swipes to reveal the grade and sees that he got an A! He looks at the feedback from the instructor. The instructor provided a rubric, and he can see exactly what he did to earn that A. With this level of detail, he has a good understanding of what’s expected and how he can keep achieving A’s.

Knowing how he did on his assignment, Ethan now plans his week using the Brightspace Pulse app. He sees an overview of his workload and can tell it will be a busy week. He’ll be out of school next week for a sports tournament, so he wants to be on top of everything before he goes.

• He can track upcoming assignments, access course content online or offline, submit a discussion post, take a quiz, access grades, or view the course activity feed. There is a notification about a discussion post that he needs to reply to, so he answers using speech-to-text.
• It’s easy to stay up to date with app notifications for new content and upcoming due dates, an activity feed of course announcements, and active discussions that he’s following.

Morning: Review content for his Psychology course

Ethan starts the day by reviewing the content for his Psychology course

• He wants to check out the latest updates for the course. He looks at the activity feed on the course homepage and sees that another student was asking questions about the midterm. He reads the responses and asks another question in the comments.
• He watches a video that his instructor just posted. This is great stuff and gets him thinking about what he wants to write about in his next assignment.
• Ethan takes the quiz for the current unit and aces it! He’s pleased to get a badge for his achievement and feels confident for the midterm.
• The next module is released automatically and he can keep working ahead. He’s eager to get ahead since he will be out next week. Ethan doesn’t want to be stressed out during the big game!

Noon: Get ready for his next quiz

Ethan knows that he has a quiz coming up and wants to do well. Ethan reviews the study guide for his Psych seminar. It’s easy for him to pull up the study guide on his phone. Ethan knows cell coverage is spotty, so he downloads the document to review it without interruption.

Afternoon: Engage in a lively discussion during a seminar

Ethan loves attending his Psychology seminar. The teacher shared a recorded lecture ahead of time and everyone comes ready to discuss.

• He has his key points that he wants to discuss prepared and is eager to see what the other students think about the topic. Seminars like this are a lot more fun than just listening to a lecture.

Late afternoon: Work on his midterm assignment

Ethan buckles down to try to get his big assignment done.

• He remembers something from their last lecture that he wants to mention in his assignment. He pulls up the recording of the lecture on Brightspace, does a quick search for the topic he’s looking for, and jumps to the exact spot in the video that he needs.
• Ethan easily navigates to the course content and can revisit the information he needs to finish up his assignment.
• He reviews the scoring rubric and understands what the instructor expects to see if he wants to get a good grade
• When he’s done his assignment, he uploads it to Brightspace and submits it. Ethan tends to do things last-minute and is glad that Brightspace is always up and running so he doesn’t have to stress that the system might be down when he submits his assignment two minutes before the deadline.
• He’s excited to see what his instructor thinks. He always gets feedback quickly.

Evening: Collaborate with peers in a group meeting

Ethan meets up with his World Literature 101 study group online. They work together on a group assignment in a Virtual Classroom session. He finds that being able to see the faces of his peers makes the conversation flow easily as they brainstorm ideas. He ends the day feeling inspired and full of new ideas.