Skip to content

Author: Janice Florent

Technology Coordinator in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

About Janice Florent

Technology Coordinator in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #431: Quizzes – Deduction Option For Incorrect Answers

feedback scale

Our November Continuous Delivery Updates introduced a new negative grading option in Quizzes that allows instructors to deduct a percentage of a question's point value for incorrect answers submitted.

You may be wondering what is the rationale for using negative grading on a test. Deducting points for incorrect answers on a test is a common practice that serves several important purposes:

  • Encourage careful consideration and discourage guessing: When students know that incorrect answers will result in point deductions, they are more likely to carefully consider each question and only answer if they are confident in their response. This discourages guessing, which can lead to inaccurate assessment of students' true understanding of the material.
  • Accurately measure student knowledge and understanding: By deducting points for incorrect answers, tests can provide a more accurate assessment of students' knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. This is because it prevents students from getting credit for answers they do not actually know, which can artificially inflate their scores.
  • Promote deeper learning and discourage superficial memorization: When students know that simply memorizing facts or formulas will not guarantee them a good grade, they are more likely to engage in deeper learning strategies that promote understanding and application of concepts. This leads to more meaningful learning and better retention of information.
  • Identify areas for improvement: Incorrect answers can provide valuable information about students' misconceptions or gaps in knowledge. By analyzing incorrect responses, instructors can identify areas where students need additional support or instruction.
  • Promote accountability and encourage academic integrity: Deducting points for incorrect answers sends a message to students that they are accountable for their learning and that they need to demonstrate their understanding in order to succeed. This can foster a culture of academic integrity and discourage cheating or other dishonest practices.

While deducting points for incorrect answers can be effective in promoting accurate assessment and encouraging deeper learning, it is important to use this practice judiciously. In some cases, it may be more appropriate to provide partial credit for incorrect answers that demonstrate some understanding of the material. Additionally, it is important to provide students with clear feedback on their incorrect answers so that they can learn from their mistakes and improve their understanding.

About Quizzes With Negative Grading

Negative grading applies specifically to question types that can be auto-graded, for example, multiple-choice, multi-select, and true/false questions. The only question type that cannot be auto-graded is written response.

Under Evaluation & Feedback, instructors can select Deduct points for incorrect answers and enter a Deduction percentage.
Under Evaluation & Feedback, instructors can select Deduct points for incorrect answers and enter a Deduction percentage.

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

Instructors can manually enter negative grades when grading quiz questions.
Instructors can manually enter negative grades when grading quiz questions.

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.
Question Statistics displays updated values to account for negative grading, including a below zero average score.
Question Statistics displays updated values to account for negative grading, including a below zero average score.

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. Even though a notice about negative grading will be on the Summary page, we recommend that the instructor also include this information in their quiz instructions for the learners.

Quiz start summary page showing negative point values are deducted from final grade attempt
Before starting a quiz, learners are notified on the Summary page that point values are deducted from the final attempt grade for incorrect answers.

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. Also, see the note about Mandatory questions below.

Learners can select Clear Selection to remove their answer from a multiple-choice or true or false question.
Learners can select Clear Selection to remove their answer from a multiple-choice or true or false question.

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.

Learners can review incorrect questions with negative deduction grades when they submit a quiz.
Learners can review incorrect questions with negative deduction grades when they submit a quiz.

Note:

  • The overall quiz score cannot be negative and caps at zero.
  • We strongly recommend that you do not add Mandatory questions to quizzes with negative grading AND auto-submit enabled. This is because forcing learners to answer mandatory questions before submitting their quiz may also force learners to guess and incur an unfair point deduction.

Want More Information?

About Brightspace Quizzes
Create a quiz with negative grading
Manage Quiz Questions

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: Image by Sabine Kroschel/Pixaline from Pixabay (image cropped)

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #430: Notifications

focused female professional looking at a mobile phone

Students can control how they receive information about course activity through their notification preferences. They can customize which actions in Brightspace will trigger a notification.

The Notification tool allows users to:

  • Subscribe to a summary of activity for each course and receive a daily email.
  • Specify your preferred email address and mobile number for instant notifications and announcements.
  • Receive instant notifications about course activity, such as edited content, new discussion posts, assignments, grades, course announcements and upcoming quizzes.

Instructors can help their students to keep up with their coursework by encouraging them to setup their notification preferences. Additionally, there is a Getting Started for Learners Video Playlist that students should watch to get familiar with Brightspace.

Follow these steps to do it.

To customize notification preferences, users should:

  1. From your Personal Menu (located in the Minibar), select Notifications.

    2. select notifications from personal menu

  2. Select the email address and/or register the mobile phone number to which notifications will be sent.
  3. Select the course activities for which you would like to receive notifications.
  4. Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.

Want more information?

Navigate Brightspace - Notifications - Learner (video)
Getting Started for Learners Video Playlist
Change Personal Settings in Brightspace

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: Photo by Aspen from Nappy.co

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #429: Is Your Course Pulse Friendly?

Brightspace Pulse is a mobile app that can help learners stay connected and on track with their Brightspace courses. It provides one easy view of course calendars, readings, assignments, evaluations, grades, and announcement items. The app can help learners make better decisions about how to handle their workload, when to submit assignments, and when to prepare for tests. Real-time alerts can let learners know when classes are canceled, class is meeting in an alternate location, or new grades are available. The schedule view and weekly visualization enables learners to quickly at a glance view what is due today, this week, and upcoming across all their courses.

While the Brightspace Pulse app is designed for the learner, instructors can benefit too.

Brightspace Pulse App on iPhone

While the Brightspace Pulse app is designed for the learner, instructors can benefit too. When instructors enter due dates or end dates for assignments and activities the information is populated in the Pulse app enabling learners to stay connected and on track. Thus, instructors can spend less time reminding and more time teaching.

Instructors can make their courses Pulse friendly by including due dates or end dates for assignments and activities. When instructors do not enter due dates or end dates, no associated information is available in the Pulse app.

The Pulse app is great for helping students stay on track in face-to-face classes as well. Instructors can set up their face-to-face assignments and activities as events in the Brightspace course calendar. Students will get those date feeds in the Brightspace Pulse app.

Help keep students on track for success in all their courses by including a due date or end date for assignments and activities.

Want more information?

Brightspace Pulse App
Brightspace Tip #404: Due Dates
Pulse Dates - Set Date Restrictions for Content (video)
Pulse Dates - Set Date Availability for a Calendar Event (video)
Brightspace Tip #427: Manage Dates
Brightspace Tip #248: Drip-Feeding

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #428: Are You Ready?

image showing various disasters

Each threat of heavy rains and street flooding in our area should be a reminder that course delivery is vulnerable to unplanned events. Potential interruptions to class activities include but are not limited to natural disasters, widespread illness, acts of violence, planned or unexpected construction-related closures, severe weather conditions, and medical emergencies.

Here are a few things you can do in Brightspace to help you prepare should the need arise.

For those who missed our "Preparing to Teach During an Interruption: Strategies for Maintaining Instructional Continuity" workshop and for those who want to learn more about instructional continuity, you will find a link to the workshop recording, PowerPoint slides, and resources discussed in the workshop here:

Want More Information?

Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Continuous Delivery release notes
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: "The threat of disasters is real" by jflorent is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #427: Manage Dates

calendar

Instructors can use the Manage Dates tool to view, edit in bulk, and bulk offset date availability from one central location. You can also set the calendar status of all content topics and modules, discussion topics and forums, assignment submissions folders, grades categories and items, announcement items, quizzes, checklists, and surveys in their course in the Manage Dates tool.

Course objects display in a grid that you can sort by any of the column headings. You can also use the Type column to sort the Manage Dates page based on the tool-specific order and use advanced filter options to work with smaller sets of objects. If you filter your course objects, any bulk changes you make apply only to the filtered results. This enables you to update multiple availability dates based on specific criteria.

In addition to managing dates, you can open each course object in a new window by clicking on its name. This launches the object's edit page where you can edit additional properties for that object without leaving the Manage Dates tool.

The Manage Dates tool can be very useful after a course copy. For example, if you copied content from one course into another course, you can use the Manage Dates tool to easily adjust dates after the course copy. Additionally, if you've entered dates on items in your course and later need to adjust dates in bulk, try using the Manage Dates tool.

Follow these steps to do it.

To edit dates in bulk:

  1. Get into the course you want to change the dates of course objects.
  2. On the NavBar (of the course you want to change dates in), click Course Admin.
  3. Click Manage Dates.
  4. Select the check box of the items for which you want to bulk edit dates.
  5. Click Bulk Edit Dates.
  6. In the Bulk Edit Dates dialog box, update the due dates and availability dates.
  7. Click Save.

Want More Information?

About Manage Dates
Bulk edit dates in Manage Dates
Manage Dates - Offset Dates (video)

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.


Image credit: calendar by tigerlily713 from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #426: Copy Course or Copy Components

copy stamp

There are a some situations where you may want to copy components of a Brightspace course OR copy an entire Brightspace course into another one. For example,

  • You have a course from a previous semester and you would like to copy the course contents into your empty course shell for the current semester.
  • You have a Master Course Shell that you input content into and would like to copy the course contents into your empty course shell for the current semester.
  • You are teaching multiple sections of a course, you created all the content in one Brightspace course section and want to copy the content into the other sections.
  • You created content in one course (e.g. rubrics, discussions, quizzes, etc.) and would like to copy that specific content from one Brightspace course into another.

Copying an entire Brightspace course OR copying components of a Brightspace course into another Brightspace course is not hard. As long as you are the instructor for both courses, it is a simple process you can do.

Notes About Copying Between Courses

Here are some things to consider when copying a course or copying components of a course.

Overwriting and Duplicating Items

In general, course components already in the destination course will not be affected by copying course components. The only course component that can be overwritten is a course file, i.e., HTML pages that have been created in the course site or files that have been uploaded to it. A course file is overwritten if one of the files being copied into the course has the same name as an existing file.

If copying components from the same source multiple times, be careful not to copy the same items more than once, or this will create duplicates that may be visible to users in the course.

Student Data

Student data is not copied from one course to another; only the course structures are copied. For example, if a Discussion topic is copied, only the prompt and discussion settings are copied, not the individual student posts.

Links and Associations between Components

If copying linked or associated components, e.g., files attached to an Assignment Submission folder or the HTML files for pages that have been created, all of the related components must be copied at the same time. To do this, be sure to select the "Include Associated Content" checkbox when it appears. As long as that box is checked, all associated components are copied and the links between them are retained.

Copying VoiceThreads

If the course copy contains any VoiceThreads, they will need to be "re-linked" in the destination course. After the copy, go into the destination course and click on the VoiceThread links and re-select the VoiceThread.

Respondus LockDown Browser (RLDB) Settings

Copied courses that have tests/exams with RLDB enabled require instructors to access the Respondus LockDown Browser Dashboard once after the copy to update the RLDB settings in the destination course. This has to be done before students will be able to take exams that require RLDB.

Turnitin-enabled Assignments

When you copy course components from one course to another, confirm that all settings are configured for the Turnitin-enabled assignments in the destination course.

Turnitin PeerMark Assignments

Our Turnitin integration does not support copying of PeerMark Assignments. You will have to recreate your PeerMark assignments in the destination course.

Follow these steps to do it.

If you want to copy an entire Brightspace course OR copy components from a Brightspace course into another course, you should:

  1. Get into the course you want the content copied into (i.e., the target course).
  2. In the NavBar (of the course you want the content copied to), click on "Course Admin".
  3. Click on the "Import/Export/Copy Components" link.
  4. Click on the "Copy Components from another Org Unit" radio button.
  5. In the Course to Copy option, click the "Search for Offering" button.
  6. Click on the magnifying glass in the "Search for" field OR enter the name of the course you want to copy from (i.e., the source course) in the search field.
  7. Click on the radio button to the right of the course you want to copy content from and then click on "Add Selected".
  8. Verify your selections are correct before proceeding.
  9. At the bottom on the browser window you will click on either "Copy all Components" OR "Select Components" and follow the prompts.

Important:

Double-check to make sure that you are in the course you want the content copied into AND that you have selected the correct course you want to copy content from. There is no way to reverse the copy process once the wrong course is selected and the copy request is submitted.

Want more information?

About Import/Export/Copy Components
Import/Export/Copy - Copy Components video [1:31]

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #425: Are You Using the Chat Tool?

chat bubble

Did you know D2L announced a January 2024 intent to end-of-life for the Chat tool? We first reported this in our October Continuous Delivery Updates. Because of D2L's decision, we disabled the Chat tool in our Brightspace system at the end of the fall semester. For more information about the Chat tool and D2L's decision, read on.

Chat is a tool that allows users to setup spaces to conduct online, synchronous, text-based communication. Chat is NOT the same as the Brightspace Instant Messages tool.

Online communication has evolved over time and has been replaced by instant messaging on mobile devices. D2L reports that use of the Chat tool has been declining over the years, and their decision allows them to simplify the platform by reducing confusion around tools that do similar things. Other Brightspace tools you can consider using are the Brightspace Instant Messages tool or the Discussions tool. Other options are to use the chat within a Zoom or Teams meeting or use a Web 2.0 tool like Slack or GroupMe.

For more information about D2L's decision and what you can expect, refer to the Intent to End Of Life Notice for: Chat article in the Brightspace Community.

Want More Information?

Brightspace Instant Messages
Brightspace Discussions Tool
Zoom Web Conferencing

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #424: Course Design Suggestions

I usually get a lot of questions from faculty related to setting up their Brightspace courses. In the spirit of starting the new year with less stress, I offer the following infographic with course design suggestions to reduce your course setup and management stress:

course design zen infographic

Accessible PDF version of Course Design Zen infographic.

Want more information?

Course Design Suggestions
Merging Courses
Setup your Spring Courses
Setup your Grade Book
Use Date Management
Using Quicklinks
Copy Course or Copy Components

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #423: Merging Courses

why merge road sign

Faculty can request to have two or more of their courses combined into a single course. Combining courses can be useful when you are teaching multiple sections of the same course or when you are teaching a course that is cross-listed. Merging courses allows you to have all the students in a single Brightspace course which can be useful for collaborative work. Merging courses reduces the number of courses an instructor has to manage within Brightspace, especially when each section has identical content.

Once your courses are merged, you can upload your course content and assignments into the merged course; communicate with the students in the merged course; setup collaborative course work; and have one Grade Book for the merged course. You can create groups within your merged course that correspond to the original course sections. This way you can target a particular course section (group) of students for specific things (e.g. send email to a specific group, make content available to specific group, enter/view Grade Book entries for a specific group, etc.)

NOTE: Merging of courses is typically done at the start of the semester before content is added and before students submit course work. You should wait to request your courses be merged if there is a possibility that there will be last minute changes to instructor course section assignments. You can request a Master Course Shell to build your course and then transfer the content into your merged course.

You should carefully consider whether merging courses is right for you. Some disadvantages to merging courses are:

  • Course enrollments for the merged courses will be combined which can make grading student work a challenge. If you create groups for the different sections, you will be able to view your Grade Book by groups to make grading easier.
  • Only one due date and start/end date can be assigned to an assignment, discussion, quiz, etc. Therefore you will not be able to assign different due dates and start/end dates to the activity (e.g., assignment, quiz, discussion, etc.).
  • If you decide you want to unmerge courses after students have submitted course work, student work and grades will be lost. Only student enrollments are retained when courses are unmerged.

Follow these steps to do it.

A system administrator will have to merge your courses. Send an email to Karen Nichols (knichola@xula.edu) if you want to merge courses. You should include the course ID (including CRN) for all the courses you want merged together.

NOTE: When courses are merged, one of the existing courses will serve as the "merged" course. If all the course sections are empty, it won't matter which one is used as the "merged" course. If you have already created content in a course, you should request that the course with the content be the "merged" course. This will reduce the need to copy content.

Want more information?

Merge Courses
Working with Groups

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: "why merge" by jflorent is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 and is a derivative of merging by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Brightspace Tip #422: December Continuous Delivery Updates

the word update written on a chalk board

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 a few updates in the December 2023/20.23.12 release that were added to our system this month:

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.

Select Publish Announcement on Copy to publish the copied announcement in the destination course or courses.
Select Publish Announcement on Copy to publish the copied announcement in the destination course or courses.

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.
If an error occurs while loading the assignment file, an error dialog appears.
If an error occurs while loading the assignment file, an error dialog appears.
The document conversion state appears while the assignment file is loading.
The document conversion state appears while the assignment file is loading.
When an assignment file is loading, the loading icon appears.
When an assignment file is loading, the loading icon appears.
If you print or convert an annotated file, the annotation appears on the page.
If you print or convert an annotated file, the annotation appears on the page.

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.

The warning message for character limitations appears when a user enters over 300,000 characters.
The warning message for character limitations appears when a user enters over 300,000 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.

From Quizzes, instructors must enter a Start Date and End Date, and then select Add Availability Dates to Calendar.
From Quizzes, instructors must enter a Start Date and End Date, and then select Add Availability Dates to Calendar.
Users can see when a quiz is available as a separate event item from when it ends.
Users can see when a quiz is available as a separate event item from when it ends.

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.

Learners completing a bonus question now see Bonus.
Learners completing a bonus question now see Bonus.

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
The Assessment column contains icons to indicate that there are evaluations available to complete.
The Assessment column contains icons to indicate that there are evaluations available to complete.
The grade item (in this example, a discussion submission) appears with the rubric collapsed on the right. Click the arrow beside the rubric name to expand the rubric assessment area.
The grade item (in this example, a discussion submission) appears with the rubric collapsed on the right. Click the arrow beside the rubric name to expand the rubric assessment area.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the December Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform December 2023/20.23.12 Release Notes.

Additionally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about current, past, and to preview upcoming continuous delivery updates.

Want more information?

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Brightspace Known Issues
Request a sandbox course
Sign-up for Brightspace training sessions
You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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.

Image credit: image by geralt from Pixabay