Do you need to review a single student's grades privately? In a typical Grade Book, pulling up a student's grades will display the grades of the entire class, which is not ideal for one-on-one meetings. In Brightspace, you can solve this privacy issue instantly. Simply use the Grade Book search option to filter the view. This action will hide all other student data, allowing you to focus only on the grades for the specific student you are meeting with.
Follow these steps to do it.
To display one row in the Grade Book:
On the NavBar, click Grades.
On the Enter Grades page, enter the first and last name of the desired student in the Search For field and then click on search icon.
When done, you should only see the selected student.
Note: If you have more than one student with the same name, you can enter the 900 # of the desired student in the Search For field. Ultimately, your search results should yield the row with the desired student's record.
To display all rows in the Grade Book:
On the Enter Grades page, click on the Clear Search link.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
If you're like me, you live and die by your electronic calendar. I've got one calendar for my personal stuff, one for my work stuff, one for my daughter's school, and so on. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get all the faculty development opportunities from CAT+FD in your calendar too?
Well, you can. Keep in mind, this isn't the same as actually registering for any event, but it's pretty handy. All our CAT+FD events are stored in LibCal. (Many thanks to Xavier Library for sharing LibCal access.) So just head on over there and look for the iCal icon.
Don't be fooled, this isn't just for iCal users. It will work for Outlook, Google, and just about any app that supports the iCal format. Click the icon to reveal the super-secret link, but don't follow that link — just copy it. Then paste it into the appropriate field of your preferred calendar app.
For example, in Outlook, choose "Add calendar > Subscribe from web" to get there.
That should import all CAT+FD events into a discrete calendar that you can toggle on and off, to show or hide as you see fit. And the best part is, the calendar is updated automatically to reflect any changes.
Again, you haven't signed up for any of these events. If you want to attend, just visit our website to register. That's essential — and it's the only way to get the Zoom link for our hybrid events.
Not ready to go the calendar route? You might want to check out the portal. That's right, the good old Xavier portal at my.xula.edu now has CAT+FD event listings. They might be on your dashboard already, or hit the Events & Calendars tab. You can customize your view to show the calendars that are most relevant for you.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention our CAT+FD events newsletter. Don't forget to subscribe in order to receive updates in your inbox, approximately once per week.
D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.
Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.
Here are some of the updates in the October 2025/20.25.10 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Assignments — Annotation availability awareness enhancements in assignment creation
Annotations are only supported for File and File or Text Assignment Types. They are not supported for Text, Observed in person, or On paper submission assignment types. In response to requests from instructors for clearer indicators of which types of assignments support Annotations, D2L enhanced the assignment creation experience with better tool tips, visual cues, and on-screen guidance.
New informational tool tip
To make it easier for instructors to understand what the Annotations tool does and which types of assignments you can use it with, a new informational tool tip now appears beside the existing Annotations check box in the interface for creating assignments.
When you hover over the new information ( ? ) button, a tool tip displays Annotation Tools help.
New Annotation Tools help tool tip
Clicking the information ( ? ) button opens a pop-up window that explains what the Annotations tool does, and which types of assignments you can use it with. The text in the new window is as follows:
Information: Annotation Tools
Use annotation tools to add feedback directly to the uploaded documents by highlighting, drawing, and commenting. This is available for file submissions only.
New Annotation Tools informational pop-up window
Clear visual indicators make it easy to identify which assignment types support Annotations
To make it easier to immediately understand whether you can use Annotations on an assignment, the Annotations check box now appears disabled (grayed out) for non-file type assignments, such as Text, Observed in person, or On paper submission assignments.
Visual cues indicate when Annotation Tools are not available for an assignment type
Updated on-screen guidance
New on-screen guidance indicates when instructors can no longer enable Annotations for an assignment and why.
Guidance for non-file Assignment types
When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because the type is Text, On paper submission, or Observed in person, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message:
Annotation settings are locked for submissions that are not files.
New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because the assignment type is not File or File or Text
Guidance displayed for assignments after submissions are received
When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because learners already made submissions while the setting was disabled, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message:
Annotation settings are locked after submissions are received.
New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because learners made submissions for the assignment while Annotations were disabled.
2) Assignments — Improved assignment type selection interface
A usability improvement makes it easier to select the correct assignment type when you create an assignment.
Previous behavior
Previously, instructors used radio buttons to specify whether an assignment was for a Group or an Individual.
New drop-down menu for selecting Assignment type
A new drop-down menu for selecting the Assignment Type modernizes the interface and lays the groundwork for future enhancements to the Assignments tool.
New drop-down menu with Individual Assignment Type selected
3) Grades – Comments and Assessments column always visible to learners
Learners can now always see the Comments and Assessments column in Grades, ensuring that feedback and links to assessments are consistently visible. The column is no longer conditionally displayed, supporting additional links from tools such as Rubrics, Assignments, and Quizzes.
This update supports future enhancements that add information to learner feedback in Grades.
Previously, the column only appeared when a grade item included feedback.
Comments and Assessments column now appears consistently to learners in Grades
4) Media Library – Improved Media Library to help better organize and manage your course assets
This release introduces several new features to improve the capabilities of the Media Library and allow users to have a wider variety of assets that can be reused in their courses.
These improvements include:
Add Images, Office Documents, PDFs, and SCORM packages directly to Media Library for re-use across your courses.
Use Media Library’s new Manage Versions menu to upload and manage a new version of your asset.
Create folders to better organize your assets by type, subject, or however you’d like.
Share a folder with another user by adding them to a folder as a collaborator.
Manage Versions menu option in Media Library
The following file types can be uploaded to Media Library:
Video: .mp4, .avi, .f4v, .flv, .m4v, .mov, .webm, .wmv, and the ability to optimize for streaming (2GB max and up to 720p output)
Create Folder window in Media Library with options to save or cancel
5) Quizzes – Hide Quiz Question Points
Instructors can now hide the point value for quiz questions to ensure learners focus on all questions equally, without the risk of inferring the number of correct answers based on point value. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios like employee training and association quizzes.
The new feature helps with the following:
Avoiding Hints in Multi-Select and Written Response Questions. Hiding point values prevents learners from guessing the number of expected answers based on the score, promoting a more consistent effort across all question types.
Diagnostic Assessments. This option is beneficial for assessments like subject knowledge audits or start-of-term baseline knowledge checks, where the purpose is to gauge understanding rather than focus on scoring.
Encouraging Equal Effort Across Questions. By hiding point values, learners are less likely to prioritize certain questions over others based on points. Hiding point values ensures a balanced effort and enables the inclusion of control or bonus questions without indicating their significance.
A new option is available within the Timing & Display section when creating or editing a quiz.
From the Edit Quiz page, under Timing & Display, select Hide question point values to prevent learners from seeing individual question scores
This feature implements the following PIE items:
D2934 (Hide point value of quiz questions)
D10418 (Option to hide point value of quiz questions and show linked Learning Outcomes)
6) Quizzes – Improved visibility for insufficient question pools
With this release, instructors can now see a status indicator when a question pool has insufficient questions, allowing them to resolve the issue before learners begin a quiz attempt.
If a quiz attempts to draw more questions than are available in a question pool (for example, 12 questions requested but only 10 available), the interface now displays a warning indicator.
This update adds visual warnings in the following areas:
The Grading view: If learners have already completed a quiz containing an affected pool, messaging displays in the grading evaluation experience.
When grading a quiz, an error message appears indicating the question pool is exhausted
The Manage Quizzes page: A status indicator flags quizzes with insufficient question pools.
In the Manage Quizzes tab, a red warning icon appears beside a quiz name. Instructors can review quiz settings to resolve the issue
The Edit Quiz page (Quiz Builder): A warning icon appears directly on the affected question pool.
The Edit Quiz page displays a Question Pool with an error state, labeled Invalid Question Pool
The Course Import and Course Copy workflows: Validation now prevents importing or copying pools with an insufficient number of questions.
Previously, no visual indicators identified when question pools contained too few questions, and these could be imported or copied without warning.
7) Quizzes – Attempt exports retain line breaks in question content
Instructors can now export quiz attempts using the Export to CSV and Export to Excel options without removing line breaks in question text or answers.
Previously, line breaks in question text and answers were removed during export.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Thanks to those of you who attended our "Online Assessment Strategies in the Age of AI" workshop. The workshop, the 23rd in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and will provide you with strategies to ensure your assessments truly measure student learning in this rapidly changing educational landscape.
In case you missed the training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “Online Assessment Strategies” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
Wednesday, October 15th, is International Pronouns Day. International Pronouns Day is celebrated on the third Wednesday of October and seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace. Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns particularly affects transgender and gender nonconforming people. For more information about International Pronouns Day visit pronounsday.org.
Did you know, users have the option to indicate their pronouns in their Brightspace user profiles? Brightspace user profiles are visible to anyone who shares a course with a particular user, including students, instructors, administrators, etc.
The area in your Account Settings, where you can set your pronouns
A user profile card with the pronouns displayed
Pronouns display in the 'Last Name, First Name' column of Classlist, to the right of the user's name, in parentheses. User name text is blue, pronoun text is grey.
Celebrate International Pronouns Day by entering your pronouns into Brightspace and invite your students to do the same.
If you are looking for a good pronoun primer on inclusive teaching, check out this Gender Diversity and Pronouns resource from the University of Michigan.
Also, check out name.pn if you or your students are looking for an easy way to share how you would like people to use your name. You can create a URL that links to information to help users get your preferred pronouns, title, and the pronunciation of your name correct.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Do you want your students to take a quiz or test online? Do you have a test that you normally administer on paper and you don’t want to retype all the questions into Brightspace? Learning and Teaching Services at Algonquin College developed a Test/Quiz Question Generator that provides an easy way of creating a collection of questions that can be imported into Brightspace.
Quiz questions have to be in a special format in order to be imported into Brightspace. The Test/Quiz Question Generator allows you to reformat your questions and it will create a CSV file that can be imported into Brightspace.
Additionally, the Brightspace Community developed a Quiz Question Converter that you can use to add a bank of questions to the Quiz Question Library. One benefit of using the Quiz Question Converter is that you can add feedback and hints to the quiz questions you are importing into Brightspace. Therefore saving you time in importing quiz questions with feedback and hints into Brightspace.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
The Brightspace Grades Tool is useful for providing students with up-to-date information about their current standing in the course. For instructors, it’s useful for assigning and keeping track of student grades. Students can view grade entries and monitor their progress throughout the course.
As an instructor, you can determine how to set up your Grade Book to best reflect your approach to evaluation, including the grading system and grade scheme that is most appropriate for your course. You can select how grades display to learners, how they update in the Grade Book, and how you want to deal with ungraded items. You can create grade items for projects, assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. to include in your Grade Book, and even associate them with other tools (e.g. Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions).
Follow these steps to do it.
Listed below are links to how-to documents to help you to use the Grades Tool:
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Faculty development legend Derek Bruff says that "higher ed podcasting is having a moment," and we couldn't agree more. Here are a few recent episodes of Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else, just in case you missed 'em. These are all from 2025. Our pace has slowed, but we're still plugging!
Thanks to those of you who attended our "Rubrics Reimagined: Save Time and Boost Feedback" workshop. The workshop, the 22nd in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and will equip you with the tools and insights to make assessment easier, faster, and more effective.
In case you missed the training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “Rubrics Reimagined” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
A conversation between Jon Ippolito and Bart Everson on a handy mnemonic to help you remember all the things that could go wrong with artificial intelligence.
Jon Ippolito is an American artist, an educator, a new media scholar and a former curator at the Guggenheim. He studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s and then pursued internet art in the 1990s. He's a professor of New Media at the University of Maine, where he teaches classes on programming, online culture, variable media, and viral media, and now, of course, artificial intelligence.
