
A conversation with Jayalakshmi Sridhar, Floristina Payton-Stewart, and Richard Peters about an exciting upcoming workshop opportunity — open to faculty in any discipline who are interested in a deliberative approach to science communication.
(for thought)

A conversation with Jayalakshmi Sridhar, Floristina Payton-Stewart, and Richard Peters about an exciting upcoming workshop opportunity — open to faculty in any discipline who are interested in a deliberative approach to science communication.
Did you know a new quiz accommodations feature was introduced in our February 2021 Continuous Delivery Updates? This new feature enables instructors to grant quiz accommodations to learners through the Classlist tool. Instructors can assign accommodations to specific learners that apply across ALL quizzes instead of applying them on a quiz-by-quiz basis. The accommodations option allows the instructor to give the learner more time to complete quizzes at the course level.


Once granted, the accommodations apply to all quiz activities in a course for that learner. The additional time can be applied in terms of quiz time multipliers (for example, 1.5 x quiz time) or +minutes (for example, an additional 30 minutes) on every quiz in a course.
Accommodations for Instructors:
Accommodations for learners:


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. Accommodations set for learners in Classlist are displayed in the Special Access for the quiz.

Set Up Brightspace Accommodations by Learner for All Quizzes
Brightspace Tip #207: Quizzes – Special Access
Grant Special Access to Users for a Quiz (video)
Resources for the Quizzes Tool
Brightspace Tip #254: Tests and Quizzes
Best Practices: The Quiz Tool
Quizzes FAQ
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.
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 September 2022/20.22.9 release that were added to our system this month:
With this release, instructors have the option to create quizzes with no time limit. The No Time Limit option is now the default Timing setting for new quizzes.
Previously, instructors who wished to create quizzes with no time limit had to use the Recommended Time Limit option, which was selected by default and set to 120 minutes. This led to confusion for learners because the recommended time limit displayed on the quiz itself.
Instructors can create quizzes with no time limit in the Restrictions tab, under Timing, select No Time Limit.
Learners who take a quiz with no time limit now see No time limit under Time Allowed on the Quiz Summary page and Est. Length: No Time Limit on the quiz itself.
This feature implements the following PIE items:



To help users with more flexibility around course design, the release condition Date of enrollment in current org unit now includes the following options:

This feature can also be used to set an Intelligent Agent; e.g., for learners who have been enrolled more than once in the course, you can decide if the agent applies based on the first time or the last time they were enrolled.

Previously the release condition for Classlist Date of enrollment in current org unit was based on users’ first enrollment into the org unit.
This feature implements the following PIE items:
If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the September Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform September 2022/20.22.9 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.
View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.
We share the same house
A conversation between Laura Beebe and Bart Everson on teaching, learning, and ecological education.

From the warm sands of the Gulf of Mexico to the frigid shores of the Bering Sea, Laura has lived and learned in a diversity of landscapes and cultures. As a geographer, ethnobotanist, and wilderness educator, Laura has sought to understand how humans have come to make sense of the world around them, be it through storytelling, backcountry field experiences, plant medicine, folk arts or spiritual rituals. Laura’s graduate work in Geography with a focus in the Circumpolar North and ethnobotany, explored the intimate relationships between arctic women and wild berries. While at Sterling, Laura has instructed field courses in the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada, arctic Labrador, Alaska and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. When not in the field, she has taught classes in Cultural Ecology, Storytelling, Ecology, Research Design and Writing. In these courses students have explored and questioned what they know about the world- how did it come to be, what forces hold it in place, how can they live in accordance with such forces, and how can they authentically articulate their evolving understandings of the world around them.
Bart Everson is a media artist and creative generalist at Xavier University's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development. His recent work draws on integrative learning, activism, critical perspectives on technology, and Earth-based spiritual paths.
Links for this episode:
Transcript:
...continue reading "Conversation #111: Laura Beebe on Ecological Education"Giving students timely, useful feedback can greatly enhance learning and improve student achievement. ICYMI, read my Give Students Feedback That Helps Them Learn blog post for information on providing better feedback.
Are you looking for ways to simplify grading and for providing feedback on assignment submissions? These Brightspace tools can help:
The use of a stylus is not required when using the Annotations tool. However, it could help to speed up the process of marking up the assignment submissions.
For more information, refer to this how to use the Annotations tool blog post.
NOTE: The Assignment Grader app allows instructors to make annotations on assignments. The Assignment Grader app is no longer available for download to new users. Existing users may continue to use the app if they have it installed on their device, but no further updates or support will be made available by D2L and the app is scheduled to be removed from app stores. As an alternative mobile grading option, D2L recommends using the Quick Eval tool.
For more information, refer to this using interactive rubrics in Brightspace blog post.
Here are a couple of blog posts with more information:
For more information, refer to this blog post on using Quick Eval.
Have you visited The Orange Room (Brightspace Educator Share Showcase)? The Orange Room is a community where educators can learn from each other about efficient and innovative ways to use Brightspace. Several of your colleagues shared tips and suggestions already. Here are two contributions that may be of interest to you:
Brightspace Tip #329: Simplify Assignment Collection
Brightspace Tip #143: Annotate Assignment Submissions
Brightspace Tip #204: Interactive Rubrics
Brightspace Tip #299: Video Notes
Brightspace Tip #320: Video Notes – Closed Captions
Brightspace Tip #120: Quick Eval
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.
Photo credit: photo by #WOCinTech Chat is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Engagement Strategies for Online Discussions in Brightspace [49:09]
Thanks to those of you who attended last week's Engagement Strategies for Online Discussions in Brightspace workshop. The workshop, the eleventh in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course. The focus of this workshop was to show you how you can take advantage of Brightspace's discussion tool to help you facilitate meaningful online discussions and build community in your courses.
In case you missed last week’s training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “Online Discussions” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
Many instructors are using reflective journaling as a teaching strategy. Reflective journaling is used as a means of aiding reflection, deepening students' understanding and stimulating critical thinking.
Brightspace does not have a Journal tool. However, you can setup private discussion forums for journaling using the Groups and Discussions tools. A private discussion forum is the same as any other discussion forum, except that only the instructor and an individually assigned student have access to the posted threads and replies. A private discussion forum ensures that students cannot see each other’s posts, but instructors can still respond and assign grades to the discussion threads.
IMPORTANT: Each group in Brightspace has a maximum capacity of 200 participants and is restricted to 200 groups per category. You WILL NOT be able to set up private discussions for journaling if your enrollment is more than 200.
Use Private Discussions for Journaling (video)
Setup Private Discussion Boards for Individual Students
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.
Are you looking for a way to recognize learner accomplishments in your courses? The Awards tool enables instructors to provide merit-based awards to students. Instructors can use the Awards tool to provide students with a reward, in the form of a digital badge, that acknowledges an achievement, whether it is a skill, competency, or completed task.
Dr. Christopher Jones, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Washburn University, uses the Awards tool to recognize individual students in his courses. A few years ago, he stopped grading participation and started issuing badges to recognize learner accomplishments instead. A few of the badges he issues to learners in his courses are:
If this has piqued your interest and you are looking to reward your students for positive behaviors, check out the sample awards in his award badges twitter thread!
Additionally, we conducted a workshop on how you can use Brightspace Awards to engage learners. In case you missed it, you can view the Engage Students Using Awards in Brightspace workshop recording at this link.
Also, we have a corresponding “Awards & Badges” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic that will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
The Usefulness of Digital Badges in Higher Education
Why Use Gamification in your Courses?
Issue Brightspace Awards to Recognize Learner Accomplishments
Awards Tool How-to's
Create a New Award
Brightspace Tip #237: Release Conditions
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.
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 August 2022/20.22.8 release that were added to our system this month:
Previously, the only way to remove PDF annotations in Assignments was to use the eraser tool or delete the selection. Now, an undo/redo button is added for PDF annotations when evaluating in Assignments. Alternatively, standard keyboard shortcuts are now also supported for undoing and redoing annotations:
This feature implements PIE items D6620, D7342, and D8698.

Previously, in Assignments, the search filter defaulted to Users with submissions for individual assignments and Submitted groups for group assignments. Now, instructors will instead default to Show everyone for individual assignments and Show all groups for group assignments. These modified filters are the new default search option. After applying one of these default filters, instructors can apply additional filters to improve search optimization.

This feature implements PIE items (D1659 and D5126). Data also shows that instructors prefer to display all users before applying additional filters.
There is a new option in Brightspace HTML Editor that allows instructors to directly insert a code snippet into their content. This is done by selecting the Other Insert Options menu from the Editor toolbar, and then selecting the new Insert Code option. From there, instructors select their programming language from a list of available choices and add their code into the interface to format before inserting it into the Editor.
Previously, instructors had to use the <code> tag and build out their own code to add a code snippet in the editor.
Note: The Insert Code option is not available in the Quizzes tool.



Media Library is now available as an option within Insert Stuff. This allows users to embed any audio or video files added via Content since 20.22.1 and any existing Audio Notes and Video Notes into any supported Brightspace Editor field.
Previously, Media Library was not accessible from Insert Stuff and it was only possible to insert Video notes via Search for Video or Insert Video Note.
This release also allows instructors to embed a new inline Audio Player using Insert Stuff.
This feature releases an improvement to the Brightspace Editor > Insert Stuff dialog.
Now, when you are in the Brightspace Editor and you upload a file using Insert Stuff, a message appears indicating that the files uploaded using Insert Stuff are saved in the Manage Files area. The message also indicates that files in the Manage Files area are potentially accessible to all users enrolled in the course or to anyone who has access to the course.
As best practice, do not include individual learner feedback in the files you are uploading using Insert Stuff.


On the New Agent page, in the Criteria section, all selections under Take Action on Activity are now optional. This means users can now create a new Intelligent Agent that applies to certain roles and doesn't require any other criteria. Users are still required to select one of the options under Role in Classlist.
Previously, to create an Intelligent Agent, users had to select the roles the agent applies to, and one or more conditions the agent must check against: login activity, course activity, or release conditions. If a user attempted to save the agent without selecting a condition to check against, they received an error saying No Agent Criteria Defined.
Also in this update, on the New Agent page, in the Criteria section, under Role in Classlist, the option All users visible in the Classlist is no longer selected by default. This is a precaution to prevent users from accidentally creating an agent that runs against everyone.


As of this release, the Disable Right Click option in quizzes is removed from Quizzes in Brightspace Learning Environment. The option is no longer available in Quiz Setup, and existing quizzes with the setting no longer enforce the limitation on learners.
This option was previously intended to allow Instructors to disable right-clicking during the time a learner was taking quiz, thus making it more difficult for learners ability to copy or print the quiz and share it with others. However, as browsers have reduced the ability for web sites to control end-user behavior, the Disable Right Click setting could not necessarily be applied to all students, and it provided a false sense of security around quiz content.
For more information concerning this change, refer to Advanced Notice: Retirement of Quizzes "Disable Right Click" Setting in Brightspace Community.
This feature implements the following PIE items:
This feature adds a new option in quizzes that allows instructors to restore deleted quizzes. This option appears in the More Actions menu in the Quizzes tool. Instructors using this option are provided with a list of deleted quizzes that indicates when they were deleted and by whom, along with a button to restore a selected quiz.
Restored quizzes automatically have any associated quiz attempts that were already taken, statistics, and scores for those quiz attempts restored as well. Learning Outcomes associated to quiz questions are unaffected, and re-appear with the questions when the quiz is restored. Links to a grade item and competencies are not restored.
This feature implements the following PIE items:

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the August Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform August 2022/20.22.8 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.
View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.
The new Quiz creation experience was one of the changes implemented with our June 2022 Continuous Delivery update. The new Quiz creation experience brings create and edit consistency changes from Assignments to Quizzes. D2L’s goal with the redesign is to simplify common tasks for first-time or infrequent users, while giving easy access to the advanced features that experienced power-users love.

The primary panel on the left contains common, frequently used fields that are always displayed. These fields are most relevant to learners and are core to quiz creation. The add/edit question workflow has been brought into the primary panel, giving users the ability to easily modify quiz questions without the need to navigate to a separate interface.
The right-hand panel organizes additional, more advanced options such as start and end dates, release conditions, and special access. These options follow the same logical groupings as found in Assignments. Other quiz-specific settings can be found in the right-hand panel including creating a password protected quiz, applying IP restrictions, adjusting quiz timing, setting display options, managing attempts, and altering evaluation and feedback settings.
If you’ve tried the new quiz creation experience, but aren’t quite ready to commit to it, then switch back. Switching back is simple. You can switch between the new quiz creation experience and the old experience by clicking on the arrow in the upper right corner of the create/edit quiz page.

See the Welcome to the New Quiz Creation Experience knowledge article for an in-depth look at all the feature and capability changes with this redesign.
Welcome to the New Quiz Creation Experience
Using the Brightspace Quizzes Tool
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.