Brightspace Tip #224: April Continuous Delivery Updates

1) Accommodations - Improvements in Classlist, Quizzes, and User Progress

This feature builds on the Accommodations - Quiz accommodations | New feature that was released in the February 2021/20.21.2 release.

The following improvements have been made in the Classlist, Quizzes, and User Progress tools:

Improvements in Classlist for Instructors:

• An icon now 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.

Improvements in Classlist for learners:

• An icon appears next to learners’ own names 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.

Improvements in Quizzes for instructors:

• Instructors can now grant learners special access in terms of quiz time multipliers (for example, 1.5x quiz time) or +minutes (for example, an additional 30 minutes). Refer to the Quizzes – Improvements to Special Access functionality release note below for more information.
• 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. Previously, this warning appeared at the top of the Quiz special access screen. Now, it appears on clicking Save.

Improvements in User Progress:

• The accommodations icon now appears in the User Progress tool alongside the Quiz domain if the learner has a quiz accommodation in that course

2) Assignments - Action menu for group assignments in New Assignment Evaluation Experience

The New Assignment Evaluation Experience now includes a drop-down menu from the group name. This menu contains links to:

• Email the group (opens in a new window)
• See all group members
• Instant message the group (opens in a new window)

3) Assignments - Anonymous marking in the New Assignment Evaluation Experience

This feature makes anonymous marking fully supported in the New Assignment Evaluation Experience. When using Anonymous marking, the Anonymous User number appears in place of the username, just as it appeared in the legacy Assignments experience. In addition, the following features of anonymous marking remain the same:

• No profile card appears for anonymous users
• Usernames become visible once any learner’s evaluation is published
• Group names are always visible even when using anonymous marking
• Rubrics do not include the user’s name

Anonymous marking uses Publish All instead of the Publish button. If no feedback for anonymous users has yet been published, the Publish button is disabled and a message appears to direct users to the Publish All button. If any user feedback has been published, all Publish buttons become automatically enabled.

4) Assignments - Brightspace Editor in the new Assignment Creation Experience

The new Brightspace Editor replaces the previous HTML Editor as the default HTML Editor in the new Assignment Creation Experience.

Review the Brightspace Editor - Replaces the HTML Editor | New release note to learn more about the features of Brightspace Editor.

5) Assignments - Brightspace Editor in the New Assignment Evaluation Experience

The new Brightspace Editor replaces the previous HTML Editor as the default HTML Editor in the new Assignment Evaluation Experience.

Review the Brightspace Editor - Replaces the HTML Editor | New release note to learn more about the features of Brightspace Editor.

6) Assignments - Context menu on the Evaluation screen in the New Assignment Evaluation Experience

A new context menu appears in the side panel of the updated assignment evaluation screen. This menu links to the following:

• Edit Activity (opens assignment page in new tab). This option appears for users who have the See and Manage Assignment Submission Folders permission.
• Special Access Dates (opens the Edit Activity screen so users can update Special Access rules). This option requires the Set Special Access on Assignment Submission Folders permission.

7) Assignments - Single file submissions open directly in the New Assignment Evaluation Experience

In the New Assignment Evaluation Experience, when a learner has submitted only one file, the evaluator no longer has to click into the evaluation and then into the file. The file opens directly for the evaluator, saving a click during the evaluation process. Late submission information continues to display above the file, as it currently does.

8) Quizzes – Improvements to Special Access functionality

This feature is in line with the improvements made to the Quizzes tool as listed in the Accommodations – Improvements in Classlist, Quizzes, and User Progress feature. However, it is not dependent on granting any accommodations permissions, and is visible to any user with permission to Add Special Access.

Instructors can now grant learners special access in terms of quiz time multipliers (for example, 1.5x quiz time) or +minutes (for example, an additional 30 minutes). For example, if an instructor has a 30-minute quiz and using the Special Access page, grants three learners 1.5x the quiz time, their updated quiz time of 45 minutes displays. Instructors no longer have to manually calculate the updated quiz time.

Note: After extending the learners quiz time by way of quiz time multipliers or +minutes on the Special Access page, if an instructor updates the duration of the quiz, the learner’s quiz time on the Special Access page does not dynamically update at this time.

9) Quizzes – Secure and consistent editing experience

For a more secure and consistent editing experience in Brightspace, creating any of the following question types now automatically filters out JavaScript and non-standard HTML: Likert, Ordering, Matching, Fill in the Blanks, Short Answer, Multi-Short Answer, Arithmetic, and Significant Figures. For existing questions containing JavaScript and non-standard HTML, the questions continue to display as intended until an instructor edits and saves the questions, which removes the JavaScript and non-standard HTML. Previously, instructors could add JavaScript or non-standard HTML to question types in order to create dynamic content for quizzes.