Brightspace Tip #567: January Continuous Delivery Updates

1) Announcements – Images appear in emailed Announcement notifications

When instructors create an announcement (or administrators create a global announcement) which includes in-line images, any instant notification or emailed copy of that announcement now includes those images in the body of the email. Previously, only images added as file attachments to the announcement were included with the notification email, and in-line images were not shown.

Note: This update applies only to images. Videos embedded in announcements are not included in emailed announcement notifications.

This change ensures that learners who rely on email notifications can see the same visual content that appears in the original announcement, helping them notice important information that may have previously been missed when images were omitted from the email version.

This feature implements the following PIE items:

• D7210 (Images in announcements do not appear in the email-version of the notification)
• D12152 (Permit images to be sent in an email notification for an announcement)
• D7939 (Include images in Brightspace-generated email of Announcements - partial release; videos are not included)

2) Assignments, Quick Eval – Improved usability for assistive technology users

As part of D2L’s ongoing commitment to accessibility and inclusive design, with this release, they have made several updates to enhance the experience for users relying on assistive technologies.

• The Submissions page in Assignments: The dropdown menus for submissions, feedback, and results per page now include accessible labels. Previously, these menus only had titles, which some screen readers could miss. This change ensures that all users can access and understand these controls.
• The Submissions view in Quick Eval: The number of search results returned is now read aloud by assistive technology, making it easier for users to understand the scope of their results.

3) Awards – Increased flexibility in Awards text fields

To improve localization and language flexibility, administrators and instructors can now personalize certificates in the Awards tool using new replacement strings. These strings populate dates in a short YYYY-MM-DD format, which provides more consistent rendering across multilingual certificate templates.

Previously, existing date replacement strings used long-form formats. This caused issues when certificates were created in one language and the date string rendered in another, often breaking formatting. The new short-form format resolves this issue.

The following replacement strings are now available:

• {CourseStartDateShort}: Inserts the course start date.
• {CourseEndDateShort}: Inserts the course end date.
• {AwardDateShort}: Inserts the award issue date.
• {AwardExpiryDateShort}: Inserts the award expiry date.

4) Quizzes – Single Session Quiz

Instructors can now require learners to complete a quiz within a single Brightspace login session, helping maintain academic integrity. When this setting is enabled, learners cannot resume the quiz using another browser session. For example, if a learner starts a quiz on a laptop, they cannot continue the quiz on another device such as a smartphone or tablet.

When this configuration variable is enabled, instructors can navigate to the Availability Dates & Conditions section while creating or editing a quiz and select Lock each attempt to a single login session.

IMPORTANT:

• This setting only restricts access to the quiz. It does not prevent learners from having multiple active sessions in Brightspace.
• While this feature enhances academic integrity, you should use it with caution. We suggest reserving this option for live testing environments where you are available to assist immediately. If a student experiences a technical glitch or a dropped connection, they will be unable to resume the quiz attempt without your direct intervention to reset the session restriction.

This feature implements the following PIE item:

• D11297 (Prevent multiple sessions taking one quiz attempt simultaneously)