D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) has announced an end-of-life for the Self Assessments tool. Self Assessments is a formative assessment tool that enables instructors to provide learners with a series of questions and immediate feedback for responses.
The Self Assessment tool is a legacy tool with a limited set of features and functionalities. D2L has determined that the Self Assessments tool has a very low usage rate and has announced an end-of-life for the tool. The Self Assessments tool will no longer be available after May 2027. You can continue using it until then, but we recommend that you begin migrating your self assessments to Quizzes before that date.
The Quizzes tool has similar functionality to the Self Assessments tool. Instructors can set up a Quiz without a link to the Grade Book and not show any point values when learners take the Quiz. Refer to this Self Assessments vs. Quizzes blog post for a comparison between the Self Assessments tool and the Quizzes 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.
The midpoint of a semester tends to arrive without ceremony. By the time midterm grades come due, there is enough of the term behind us to feel its accumulated weight, and enough still ahead to keep the finish line at a distance.
I find it helps to treat midterm grades as information rather than obligation: they signal which students might benefit from outreach while there is still time to make a difference, and they offer early evidence of how a course is actually landing. When something isn't working as well as hoped, the midpoint still leaves time to adjust for the second half of the semester. And whatever the grades reveal, the patience faculty extend to their students is worth extending to themselves. Most of us are tired by October; that is less a failure than a predictable feature of the academic year.
In that spirit, CAT+FD's October programming continues through the month. Ongoing weekly gatherings remain on the schedule—Coffee & Chat, Walking Club, and the Faculty Writing Group on Mondays, and Quarter of Quiet on Wednesdays. Xavier faculty and staff can find current times on the CAT+FD Calendar.
Turnitin is a tool that promotes academic integrity, streamlines grading and feedback, deters plagiarism, and improves student outcomes. Turnitin is integrated into our Brightspace system. Instructors typically create an Assignment submission folder with Turnitin enabled. When students submit their assignments they are checked for potential plagiarism. However, there may be situations where an instructor needs to submit a paper to be checked by Turnitin.
The Quick Submit feature allows instructors to submit papers and receive Similarity Reports without creating an Assignment in their course. This is ideal for instructors who would like to use Turnitin to spot check submissions and have these papers in electronic format. Quick Submit SHOULD NOT be used if the instructor desires to have students submit their own papers or plans on using PeerMark (peer review assignment tool) or GradeMark (make comments on and assess student papers). Instructors should create an Assignment and enable Turnitin for the assignment instead.
Follow these steps to do it.
To use Quick Submit to submit a paper:
Log in to your Turnitin account natively through www.turnitin.com.
Activate Quick Submit by clicking on User Info from the top of the instructor homepage.
On the preferences page, select yes from the activate Quick Submit drop-down menu. The Quick Submit tab will appear on the instructor homepage, making the Quick Submit inbox available for use.
To start the upload process, click on the Submit button in the Quick Submit inbox and follow the instructions.
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.
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 September 2026/20.26.09 release were added to our system:
To make creating accessible content easier, the Brightspace Editor now includes Heading 5 and Heading 6 in the Format drop-down menu. Previously, the menu only displayed Heading 1 through Heading 4, and instructors had to use keyboard shortcuts or the Source Code editor to apply the additional heading levels. This update ensures that instructors can easily apply all standard heading levels directly from the Format menu, supporting compliance with accessibility standards.
The current Format drop-down menu showing only Heading 1 to Heading 4.
The new Format drop-down menu showing Heading 1 to Heading 6.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D13831 (Add H5 and H6 to 'format' dropdown)
2) Groups – Bulk edit group names and codes
To improve efficiency when managing large numbers of groups, the new Manage Groups experience now allows instructors to bulk edit group names and codes within a category. Previously, instructors had to select each group individually to edit its details. Instructors can now click Edit Group Names to update the names and codes for one, multiple, or all groups from a single interface, saving time and reducing administrative effort.
On the Group Category page, instructors click Edit Group Names to edit one, multiple, or all groups.
On Edit Group Names, instructors can edit the Group Name and Group Code for all groups.
3) Work To Do widget – Dismiss overdue items
To help learners better manage their workload, the Work To Do widget now allows users to dismiss overdue activities. Previously, overdue items remained on the list until completed or their due dates were removed, potentially cluttering lists for courses without end dates or those that remained active after completion.
Now, learners with the appropriate permission can select the X icon next to an overdue activity to remove it from their view. After dismissing an activity, an alert appears briefly with an Undo option, allowing learners to restore the activity if it was dismissed by mistake.
Learners can now dismiss overdue items from the Work To Do widget by selecting the X.
The Work To Do widget displays an Undo option after an overdue activity is dismissed.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D12110 (Provide students the ability to dismiss overdue notifications from previous semester courses)
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 Quizzes tool enables you to create and manage points-measured assessments. As part of your quantifiable assessment procedures, you can use quizzes to help evaluate students’ learning progress and learning outcomes.
Quizzes are often thought to only be useful for quick knowledge checks. However, the Quizzes tool has eleven question types that allow you to test different levels of knowledge. The question types available in the Quizzes tool are:
True or False (T/F)
Multiple Choice (MC)
Multi-Select (M-S)
Written Response (WR)
Short Answer (SA)
Multi-Short Answer (MSA)
Fill in the Blanks (FIB)
Matching (MAT)
Ordering (ORD)
Arithmetic (2+2)
Significant Figures (x10)
What Question Type Should You Use?
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a model that is used to classify different levels of comprehension, starting with the lower levels such as remembering and understanding, and then moving upwards to create/evaluate. You should select question types according to what level of understanding you want to practice.
Information Technology Services at Algonquin College developed a resource that goes through in detail, matching question types to the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy they practice. The table below shows the question types they suggest for the level of Bloom's Taxonomy you want to practice:
TABLE 1: Mapping Bloom's Taxonomy to Brightspace Question Types
Bloom's Taxonomy
Question Types
Create
WR
Evaluate
M-S, WR, MAT, and ORD
Analyze
MC, M-S, and WR
Apply
MC, WR, FIB, MAT, ORD, 2+2, and x10
Understand
MC, M-S, SA, FIB, 2+2, and x10
Remember
T/F, MC, M-S, SA, and FIB
The Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at Memorial University of Newfoundland created a Question Types in Brightspace resource that explains the question types, highlights their strengths and challenges, provide some tips to consider when choosing to use a question type, including the average time to allot for each question item type.
Some question types have grading options associated with them. It may be helpful to review this Understanding Grading Options for Question Types article if you plan to use the Quizzes tool for your tests/exams.
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.
Thanks to those of you who attended our "Engage Students Using Awards in Brightspace" workshop. This workshop, the 6th in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and will help you to design a course that will engage and motivate your learners.
NOTE: This is a repeat of a workshop from 2021; however, as you know, Brightspace is a constantly evolving system, and this workshop is a refresher for those who previously attended and brings users up to date with changes/improvements to the Awards tool.
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 “Awards & Badges” 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.
Instructors can grant quiz accommodations to learners through the Classlist tool. Instructors can assign accommodations to specific learners that apply across ALL quizzes instead of applying them on a quiz-by-quiz basis. The accommodations option allows the instructor to give the learner more time to complete quizzes at the course level.
The Edit Accommodations option in the Classlist
The Edit Accommodations dialog box
Once granted, the accommodations apply to all quiz activities in a course for that learner. The additional time can be applied in terms of quiz time multipliers (for example, 1.5 x quiz time) or +minutes (for example, an additional 30 minutes) on every quiz in a course.
Accommodations for Instructors:
An icon appears next to the learner’s name in the Classlist to indicate that the learner has an accommodation.
Instructors can filter the Classlist by Accommodations.
Instructors can also Print or Email a list of users with accommodations by adding the filter to those pages.
Accommodations for learners:
An icon appears next to learners’ own names in the Classlist to indicate they have an accommodation. To view accommodation details, learners can click My Accommodations from their learner context menu.
When commencing a quiz, the accommodation icon appears next to a learner’s quiz time to indicate that their accommodation has been applied. If a learner’s time accommodation has been overridden by a quiz-specific special access, this icon does not appear.
Classlist page highlighting the Learner has Accommodations icon
Learners can see accommodations reflected in the time allowed when taking quiz
Quiz-specific special access can overwrite an accommodation for any user on a quiz-by-quiz basis. When you overwrite an accommodation and then click Save, a warning describing the impact of overwriting the accommodation appears. Accommodations set for learners in Classlist are displayed in the Special Access for the quiz.
An example of how Accommodations set for a learner in Classlist will show up in the Special Access for a quiz
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.
Did you know Special Access is an option available in the Quizzes tool that allows the instructor to grant learners special accommodations?
Special Access allows the instructor to assign specific learners a different set of quiz availability dates, late submission properties, and/or time limits. The instructor can change Start, End, and Due dates; the "Recommended Time Limit" and "Enforced Time Limit" timing settings; and the number of attempts allowed for a quiz to provide allowances for different needs of learners.
Add Special Access in the Quiz Creation Experience
Special Access options in Quizzes
Select Allow selected users special access to this quiz if you want to give certain students different submission options from the rest of the class.
Select Allow only users with special access to see this quiz if only certain students are allowed to see this quiz.
Click Add Users to Special Access to select students who will get the special access.
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.
Did you know Special Access is an option available in the Assignments tool that allows the instructor to grant learners special accommodations?
Special Access permissions allow instructors to set different availability dates and times for specific learners. For example, you could extend the deadline for learners who require remedial help or who are submitting work beyond the original scope of the assignment. You can also add Special Access after an assignment’s end date has passed for learners who have a legitimate excuse for missing the deadline or for learners you want to submit additional material, such as planning notes or a bibliography. The special access icon displays on the Assignment list page beside any assignment that includes special access settings.
Add Special Access in the Assignment Creation Experience
Select Allow users with special access to submit outside the normal availability dates for this folder if you want to give certain students different submission options from the rest of the class.
Select Allow only users with special access to see this folder if only certain students are allowed to see this folder.
Click Add Users to Special Access to select students who will get the special access.
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.
