The instructor’s view of grades is not the same as the learner's view of grades. Did you know you can get a preview of what a learner sees when they view their grades in your course?
To verify what a learner sees when they view their grades, an instructor can Preview the learner's grades.
Follow these steps to do it.
To Preview a learner's grades you should:
On the NavBar, click Grades.
On the Enter Grades page, select "Preview" from the contextual menu associated with a learner name from the table. The Grades will appear in a new pop-up window.
NOTE: If you are meeting with a student and want to hide the grades of the other students, you should use the Grade Book Search to do so.
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.
As November arrives, I want to acknowledge both the richness and the intensity of this time in our academic lives. As faculty, we are juggling advising appointments, planning final projects, responding to crises both small and large, and somehow still finding ways to support our students through their own unique challenges. This month, CAT+FD offers spaces designed specifically for this moment: quiet writing time, conversations about AI and pedagogy, opportunities for mindfulness, and collaborative problem-solving with colleagues who understand exactly what you're experiencing.
I also want to remind you that professional development isn't just another item on your to-do list. It's one of the most generous things you can do for yourself during a demanding season. Whether you drop in for twenty minutes of the AI session between classes, join your colleagues for writing or meditation, or simply show up to a brown bag to remember you're not alone in this work, these gatherings are here to support you.
For any event below, click on the link for more information. Some events require registration. You can find all of our upcoming events on the CAT+FD Calendar. If you want to learn about other ways to keep up with everything happening at CAT+FD, check out this post on the CAT Food Blog: CAT+FD Event Information, Served Up Your Way.
WEEKLY OPPORTUNITIES
Coffee & Chat, every Monday, 10:00-11:00: Faculty can spend some time with members of the CAT+FD staff in our Conference Room for refreshments and conversation.
Walking Club, every Tuesday & Thursday, 8:30-9:00: All members of the Xavier community are invited to gather outside the Fitness Center to get in some steps together.
Quarter of Quiet, every Wednesday, 2:00-2:15: Members of the Xavier community are welcome in the Chapel's Meditation Room for 15 minutes of unguided contemplation.
NOVEMBER OPPORTUNITIES
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 03 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
Advanced Zoom Workshop: Breakout Rooms & Enhanced Features, November 05 at 2:00 PM, Mellon Seminar Room This hands-on workshop is designed to help participants master Zoom's advanced meeting tools. This session will cover essential techniques for creating more interactive and engaging virtual sessions, including how to effectively use breakout rooms to facilitate small group discussions and collaborative work. This workshop is limited to members of the Office of Student Affairs in the College of Pharmacy.
SERG (Science Education Research Group), November 05 at 3:30 PM, NCF 568 Join faculty from across disciplines for an informal discussion focused on teaching and learning. Each monthly SERG meeting provides an open space to share questions, concerns, and suggestions about pedagogy with colleagues in a supportive, multidisciplinary environment. Topics are participant-driven. Whether you're exploring new teaching methods, facing classroom challenges, or want to share successful strategies, all faculty are welcome. Registration is not required.
Faculty Portfolio Working Group, November 06 at 1:15 PM, Online Members of this year's Faculty Portfolio Working Group meet to discuss their monthly assignments and progress. This closed working group supports faculty in creating online portfolios that document the breadth of their academic work. Now in its third decade, the group evolved from the original 1994 Course Portfolio Working Group to its current focus on comprehensive faculty portfolios.
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 10 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
Deep Dive: AI Drop-ins, November 11 at 1:15 PM, Mellon Seminar Room NOT another AI Roundtable! Unlike traditional workshops, this drop-in format is designed around your specific questions, challenges, and curiosities about AI. Come and go as your schedule allows during our two-hour window. Whether you have 20 minutes between classes or can stay for the full session, you'll find targeted support for your AI-related interests. This collaborative format allows for deeper, more personalized discussions than traditional workshop Q&As. Registration is preferred, but NOT required.
Part-time Faculty Brown Bag, November 11 at 3:00 PM, Online All part-time faculty are encouraged to attend this virtual meeting to discuss end-of-semester tasks and challenges.
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 17 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
Fall Faculty Book Club, November 17 at 5:00 PM, Mellon Seminar Room The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development hosts an annual Fall Faculty Book Club. This professional development initiative brings together a small cohort of faculty to read and discuss a carefully selected book focused on teaching, learning, and higher education pedagogy. For our 18th year, we are reading The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI by Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger.
Faculty Portfolio Working Group, November 18 at 11:00 AM, Online Members of this year's Faculty Portfolio Working Group meet to discuss their monthly assignments and progress. This closed working group supports faculty in creating online portfolios that document the breadth of their academic work. Now in its third decade, the group evolved from the original 1994 Course Portfolio Working Group to its current focus on comprehensive faculty portfolios.
End-of-Semester Mindfulness Check-in, November 19 at 1:00 PM, CAT+FD Conference Room Do you have a regular practice of meditation, contemplation, or something else that feeds your soul? If not, would you like to cultivate one? Mindfulness supports our teaching and learning as university professionals. It also promotes the success and well-being of students, and it makes all of us more effective instruments of Xavier’s mission. Faculty, staff, and students are welcome.
New Faculty Brown Bag, November 20 at 12:15 PM, Mellon Seminar Room This year's cohort of of first-year faculty will meet to discuss successes and challenged during their first semester teaching at Xavier and will learn about faculty updates and Interfolio.
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 24 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
OUTSIDE OPPORTUNITIES
CAT+FD is not a sponsor of any of the following. These links are provided to share additional professional development activities.
8th Annual Sparking Success Faculty Development Conference, Tulane University, January 7-8, 2026. Tulane University’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) invites proposals for interactive breakout sessions for the 8th Annual Sparking Success to be held Thursday, January 8, 2026. Sparking Success encourages faculty, staff, and graduate and professional students to come together, build community, and find inspiration for enhancing our lives on campus.
AAC&U Conference on Learning and Student Success (CLASS 2026), Tucson, AZ, April 16-18, 2026.The theme for this year's AAC&U CLASS conference is "courageous care" in recognition "that transformative education emerges when institutions genuinely prioritize student and educator learning, well-being, belonging, and success." The conference takes place from April 16 to 18 and can be attended in person or online.
4th Annual Teaching and Learning with AI Conference, University of Central Florida, June 11-13, 2026. The call for proposals is now open for the 4th annual Teaching and Learning with AI: A Sharing Conference Between Educational Practitioners, hosted by the University of Central Florida. This in-person event will bring together instructors, higher education professionals, researchers, librarians, and policymakers to discuss best practices and the use of AI in classrooms and across campuses, colleges, and universities.
Brightspace D2L Academy. The D2L Academy is a version of Brightspace available to all members of the Brightspace Community where you'll find Premium (paid) content like Certificate and Subscription Training Courses, as well as FREE Courses, Downloads and Teaching Tools. The D2L Academy is also where you can connect with Brightspace Guided Training, and the Product Idea Exchange (PIE).
November 3 – 7, 2025 is National Distance Learning Week (NDLW). This is the 19th Anniversary of NDLW.
In association with NDLW, the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) is offering free webinars focused on how rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping various aspects of education, including teaching, learning, access, and equity in online and hybrid environments. A few other organizations are offering free webinars during NDLW as well.
For more information on the activities and to register for the webinars visit NDLW 2025.
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.
