Brightspace Tip #220: March Continuous Delivery Updates

1) Assignments - Copying an assignment

Previously, when you copied an assignment, the copied assignment was set to active and you had to open the newly copied assignment to edit it.

Now when you copy an assignment, the copied assignment is set to inactive and you are directed to the Edit Assignment screen to continue editing it as part of the copy assignments workflow.

2) Assignments – Learner profile card in New Assignment Evaluation Experience

Starting with the March 2021/20.21.3 release, the Consistent Evaluation experience in Assignments is now referred to as New Assignment Evaluation Experience.

This feature updates the Assignments - Consistent evaluation experience | New feature released in December 2020/20.20.12. When hovering over a learner’s name or profile picture in the new evaluation experience, the learner’s user profile card appears. The card displays the user’s online/offline status as well as links to:

• Email
• Instant Message
• User progress
• User profile

Clicking any of the links in the profile card opens a new window.

NOTE: More information about the New Assignment Evaluation Experience can be found in this What is Coming in Evaluation article.

3) Assignments – Turnitin support in New Assignment Evaluation Experience

Starting with the March 2021/20.21.3 release, the Consistent Evaluation experience in Assignments is now referred to as New Assignment Evaluation Experience.

This feature updates the Assignments - Consistent evaluation experience | New feature released in December 2020/20.20.12. The New Assignment Evaluation experience now supports Turnitin Similarity and Turnitin Grademark in Assignments. The existing Turnitin workflows and functionality appear on the User Submissions page in the new experience. The Turnitin workflows are also supported in the mobile experience.

NOTE: More information about the New Assignment Evaluation Experience can be found in this What is Coming in Evaluation article.

4) Awards – Password-protected certificates

To prevent plagiarism and protect an organization's intellectual and branding copyrights, all earned certificates downloaded from the Awards tool are now password-protected from editing. Each certificate is generated with a random password that is not displayed to users, preventing anyone from editing the certificate in Adobe® Acrobat® or Adobe Reader®. Previously, if an administrator or instructor uploaded a password protected certificate, any learner that downloaded the earned certificate could edit it in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader.

5) Brightspace Pulse – Notifications for upcoming quizzes and assignments

In Brightspace Pulse, learners now receive push notifications that remind them about upcoming quizzes and assignments. By default, notifications display two days before each activity's due date or end date.

Learners receive a notification in Brightspace Learning Environment and Brightspace Pulse under the following conditions:

• If the assignment or quiz has a due date, the learner is notified two days before the due date.
• If the assignment or quiz has no due date, but has an end date, the learner is notified two days before the end date.

Learners do not receive a notification in Brightspace Learning Environment and Brightspace Pulse under the following conditions:

• Learner completed the assignment by submitting to the assignment folder.
• Learner completed the quiz according to the defined completion criteria (attempt submitted or score threshold achieved).
• The assignment or quiz has no dates attached.
• The assignment or quiz includes only a start date.

6) Calendar – Improvements to date and time selection web components

To improve the ease of use for clients using the date and time picker in Brightspace Learning Environment, there have been updates to the web components related to date and time selection. These changes are intended to provide better usability for keyboard users and better integration with assistive technology. Changes include:

• Ability to use arrow keys rather than the Tab key to improve keyboard navigation and accessibility.
• Aesthetic changes to hide unused elements until they are active.
• New selectable values of 12:01 AM and 11:59PM in the time picker
• New default values for Start, Due, and End dates.
• The new Set to Today button inside the date picker replaces the Now button outside the date picker.

Note: There may be some instances of the older date picker remaining in Brightspace Learning Environment. These instances will be changed to the new date picker in a future release.

7) Quizzes - Copy quiz workflow

Previously, to copy and continue editing a quiz, you had to navigate to the Manage Quizzes page, click the More Actions > Copy functionality, and then select the quiz you wanted to copy, rename it, and click Edit quiz after copy completes.

This feature updates the copy quiz workflow to better align with Assignments. Now, the copy functionality is available on the individual quiz drop-down menu. When you copy a quiz, the copied quiz is set to inactive (as per the original copy quiz workflow) and you are directed to the Edit Quiz screen to continue editing it. Now, the copy quiz workflow also copies over Special Access settings and aligned Learning Objectives.