Pulse
Both students and teachers can use Pulse. You can use Pulse on your phone or tablet to easily access your courses, course components, upcoming activities and your Notifications. The app contains three main components: Courses, Notifications and Upcoming.
- Please note: This manual is made based on an iOS device. On an Android device the interface could differ from the images below. Pulse will use your phone's default language. You can change the language settings by going to your phone settings, then Pulse, and then you can change the preferred language (iOS).
- Do you use an iPhone? Then third party links (such as weblectures and Kaltura) are not accessible in the Pulse App. You can navigate to your mobile browser within the app. The settings for Safari with regard to cookies then need to be adjusted. Read more in the article: How do I solve problems with external programs with (mobile) use of Brightspace?
- Download the Pulse app in the Playstore or Apple Store.
- Open the app.
- Select your school (on iOS: Pick my school). Type Radboud University in the search engine and click Radboud University when it comes up in the search results. You will be navigated to the Login screen of Brightspace.
- Log in with your Radboud account.
- You will be navigated to Courses, the start screen that displays your courses.
- Click a course to view the components used in the course. Note: unfortunately, it is not possible to filter your courses.
- Click Notifications to view your notifications. When you receive new notifications an orange dot will appear.
- Click Upcoming to view past and upcoming activities and events. You can add new activities here as well.
- If you click the pin icon, you will be able to pin courses - just like in the desktop version. The pinned courses will appear at the top of your scree. This might be useful to create an overview.
Courses
- Click the Courses tab to view a course.
You will land on the Content page of your course. If you want to navigate to Course Home or Activities, you have to open the course in your mobile browser.
Notifications
- Click Notifications.
- You will see the tabs Updates and Subscriptions:
- Using Updates you can view changes that have been made in the content of a course.
- Using Subscriptions you can see notifications on discussion topics you are currently following.
At Subscriptions you will only see text that has been placed in the discussion. When it comes to images (and other types of media) you will receive a notification of it in the text, but you will still need to open the discussion in your browser to view them.
You can choose which push notifications you want to receive from Pulse. To receive them, change the settings of your phone to receive notifications from Pulse. Pulse also needs to be able to refresh while running in the background. Next, you can choose which notifications you want to receive in the settings of the Pulse app. You can open the settings by going to the Radboud logo in the upper left corner of Pulse and then selecting settings.
You can choose between notifications on:
- Content Overview documents: new content that has been added by teachers to the Overview of a course;
- Course announcements: announcements on important updates or reminders;
- Grades: you will get an update if a teachers has added grades to the grade book.
- Discussions: you will receive a notification if you are tagged in an Discussion.
It is also possible to receive notifications via email. You can enable this in the Pulse settings. You will be redirected to Brightspace.
Upcoming
If there is course information in the Brightspace calendar, you will be able to find it easily in Pulse.
- Click Upcoming.
- The tab Work To Do will show you this week's activities of Activities and Content (topics) for which you have set a due date. In the graph you can see how busy your week is. Click on a specific day to view the activities for that day. Note: this is an overview of the activities of all your courses.
- Click an activity/event to open the details and to navigate to the website of Brightspace.
- The checkmark behind an activity indicates whether you have completed the activity or not:
- A light gray checkmark means not completed.
- A dark gray checkmark means completed.
- The Events tab will show you the scheduled items from your Calendar for the selected week. In the graph you can see how busy your week/day is. Click on a specific day to view the events for that day.
- Click the plus icon to create a new activity or event (for Android this button will be at the bottom right. Then choose Event or Work to Do.
New event
- Give the activity/event a title.
- In the drop-down menu, select the course it concerns.
- Fill in the date and time of the activity/event.
- If necessary, add a location.
- Add a description if you prefer.
- Click Save.
New Work To Do
- Name the event.
- Select the course concerned in the drop-down menu.
- Select the begin time and end time of the event.
- You can add a percentage for an activity to determine the weight of the activity for the final course rade. You can also add a location and notes.
- Click Save.
Events you add yourself are personal, meaning they are only visible for you personally. They will only be visible in Pulse, and cannot be found when you use your browser to access Brightspace.
Mobile browser
Some of the items that are visible in the browser, could be invisible in Pulse (this is the case for descriptions at Files for example.) You can however easily navigate to your mobile browser from Pulse.
If you open Pulse, you will be navigated to the Courses tab. From here there are two ways you can navigate to your mobile browser:
- Click the dotted button in the top-right corner of your screen. Now click Launch Radboud University Homepage. You will navigate to the personal homepage of your mobile browser.
- Click Radboud University Homepage. You will navigate to the personal homepage of your mobile browser.
You can also navigate directly to a certain course.
- Click the course you would like to view.
- Click the three-dots icon in the top-right corner of your screen. Then click Launch Course Homepage. You will be navigated to the Course Home of the selected course in your mobile browser.
- Or click Course Homepage. You will be navigated to the Course Home of the selected course in your mobile browser.