Author: Janice Florent

1) Announcements – Copy announcements to other courses in published state

The ability to copy announcements to other courses was originally released for the Announcements tool in the November 2023/20.23.11 release.

As of this December release, users with proper role permissions can publish copied announcements in other courses using either the Announcements tool or widget. This is done by selecting the Copy to Other Courses option from the announcement's context menu. In the Copy Announcement window, there is a new check box option labeled Publish Announcement on Copy. When this box is selected, the announcement is directly published in the destination course or courses, skipping the draft stage. If the check box is not selected, the announcement copies as a draft into the destination course or courses.

Previously, copied announcements appeared in draft form and required publishing in the destination course to complete the process.

2) Assignments – Interface improvements for annotations

D2L is updating the Annotations tool in Assignments to be a web component, as part of our internal technical maintenance work. As a result, the user interface for the annotations viewer is improved to include the following changes:

• Error state includes updated dialog language.
• Document conversion state now has in-page messaging and a loading icon. Previously, there was a dialog displaying the messaging.
• General loading state now has a loading icon. Previously, there was no loading icon.
• Note annotations and their print format show annotations instead of just the annotations icon.

3) Assignments and Discussions – Feedback field limitations for evaluation experiences

The Assignments and Discussions tools' evaluation feedback field is changing from a 500,000 character limitation to a 300,000 character limitation, resulting in an updated dialog warning appearing when the user hits 300,000 characters.

The character limit update improves performance and security for evaluations. Previously, when a user would enter over 300,000 characters, the new information may not have been saved. This potential save failure resulted in the loss of anything entered between 300,000-500,000 characters.

4) Calendar – View quiz start and quiz end dates as separate events in Calendar

When an instructor adds a Start Date and End Date in Quizzes and then selects Add Availability Dates to Calendar, both dates are displayed in the Calendar tool as separate events. Previously, only one event displayed showing when the availability of that quiz ended.

This feature implements the following PIE items:

• D10060 (Consistency among Calendar Events (Start, Due, End Dates) for Quizzes and Assignments)
• D9956 (Add quiz start dates to calendar widget)
• D7273 (Add quiz start dates to calendar widget)
• D5688 (Post Assignment and Discussion End Dates in the Calendar and Upcoming Events)

5) Quizzes – Better identify bonus questions in a quiz

Quizzes now clearly mark bonus questions with Bonus, improving learner understanding and addressing a previous lack of indication in Quizzes.

6) Rubrics – Grades tool now uses Consistent Evaluation interface for assessments

When an evaluator assesses an assignment or discussion in the Grades tool, the rubric now uses the Consistent Evaluation interface whether there is work submitted for evaluation. This is consistent with the assessment experience for assignments or discussions in other areas of Brightspace.

Previously, evaluations for these types of activities used a pop-out Rubric grid when launching from the Grades tool. When users click the drop-down menu on the column header to enter grades, the rows with un-submitted work now use the Consistent Evaluation experience instead of the previous Rubric pop-out.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

• WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 3.2.4 - Consistent Identification

1) Announcements – Copy announcements to other courses

This feature adds the ability to copy announcements to other courses when the new permission Announcements > Copy to Other Courses is enabled for the user role. Users must be enrolled in both the source and destination courses with a role that has the new permission enabled to copy announcements. The permission is disabled by default for all roles.

A single announcement can be copied to multiple course offerings. Users can copy announcements from the Announcements tool or the Announcements widget from the context menu of an announcement by selecting Copy to Other Courses. Once copied, the announcement is in a draft state and users must publish the copied announcement in the destination course to complete the copying process.

The following attributes are copied:

• Headline
• Display Author Information
• Content - Note: The copied Content attribute includes any associated files such as inserted images.
• Start and End Date
• Attachments
• Pin state

Note: Release Conditions are not copied.

This feature implements the following PIE item D10642 (Send Announcements to Multiple Courses at Once).

2) Assignments and Discussions – Review key assessment information when publishing evaluations

The Publish All dialog for Assignments and Discussions is improved and standardized to show key information about learner evaluations. Dialog messaging is consistent for both Assignments and Discussions as it notes complete and incomplete learner evaluations and other key information, like how many learners have feedback and how many learners or groups are assigned to an activity. This change improves the user experience by including additional information about the status of learner evaluations and creating evaluation consistency across Brightspace.

Previously, the Publish All dialog did not display any information about learner evaluations or other key information, and the dialog messaging was not consistent across the Assignments and Discussions tools.

3) Quizzes – Deduction option for incorrect answers

Instructors now have the option to set up a quiz to deduct a percentage of a question’s point value for incorrect answers submitted. This feature applies specifically to question types that can be auto-graded, for example, multiple-choice and true or false questions. The only question type that can’t be auto-graded is written response.

Instructors can also enter negative values when manually grading individual quiz questions or manually updating all quiz question attempts from the Quizzes tool.

To ensure that instructors can view accurate quiz statistics, Question Statistics are also updated to account for this new functionality. Therefore, if negative grading is enabled, Question Statistics may display the following differences in statistics:

• Point Biserial results may be lower when negative grading is enabled.
• Standard Deviation has a wider distribution to account for negative grading.
• Questions with a negative average score appear below zero in the Grade Distribution graph.

To ensure that learners are fully aware that negative marking is enabled for a quiz, the Summary page of a quiz explicitly notifies the learner that for each question answered incorrectly, a percentage of that question's point value is deducted from the final attempt grade.

Also, learners are given the opportunity to explicitly clear previously-selected answers to auto-graded questions by clicking Clear Selection. This gives learners the opportunity to leave the question blank and receive a mark of zero (0), instead of forcing them to guess and enter an answer that could possibly incur a percent deduction.

Learners who are given the ability to view questions after submitting their quiz by their instructor can review questions that received negative score deductions for incorrect answers.

Previously, instructors could not set a quiz to deduct a percentage of a question's point value for incorrect answers submitted.

Note: The overall quiz score cannot be negative and caps at zero.

1) Brightspace Editor – Users can set the Text Direction attribute for the entire page

This feature allows instructors, when creating Content or Widgets, to set the directionality for all text on a page when using the Attributes menu in Brightspace Editor. The Text Direction attribute can be applied to the entire page by navigating to Attributes > Page Attributes and selecting the desired text direction. The attribute can have text be Default, Left to Right or Right to Left.

Previously it was only possible to set the text direction attribute on Selected Items.

2) Assignments and Discussions – Limit for field restrictions enforced

When evaluating activities in Assignments and Discussions, users can no longer use the Publish or Save Draft buttons if their evaluation exceeds the limit for field restrictions. This limitation applies to the Overall Grade, Overall Feedback, and Annotations fields. Previously, a warning was displayed in the Overall Feedback field when the limit was reached, but the limitation was not enforced; and users could continue attempting to save their evaluation by clicking Publish or Save Draft.

3) Chat – Intent to end-of-life for Chat

With this release, users accessing the Chat tool now see a banner indicating the tool will no longer be available as of January 2024.

For more information about this update, refer to Intent to End Of Life Notice for: Chat.

4) Pulse App – Accessibility improvements

Brightspace Pulse app is updated to provide a more consistent assistive technology experience between iOS and Android platforms. In addition, there is an added option to enable 3rd Party cookies within the Pulse app settings. As a result of these changes, users are required to log back in to the Pulse app.