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Instructors can 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.

The Edit Accommodations option in the Classlist
The Edit Accommodations option in the Classlist
The Edit Accommodations dialog box
The Edit Accommodations dialog box

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:

  • An icon 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.

Accommodations for learners:

  • An icon appears next to learners’ own names in the Classlist 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.
Example of a Classlist page highlighting the Learner has Accommodations icon
Classlist page highlighting the Learner has Accommodations icon
Example of accommodations reflected in the quiz's time allowed.
Learners can see accommodations reflected in the time allowed when taking quiz

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.

Accommodations indicator in Special Access
An example of how Accommodations set for a learner in Classlist will show up in the Special Access for a quiz

Want more information?

Set Up Brightspace Accommodations by Learner for All Quizzes
Brightspace Tip #207: Quizzes – Special Access
Special Access in Quizzes
Quizzes FAQ: Hot tips and workarounds
Brightspace Tip #254: Tests and Quizzes
Resources for the Quizzes Tool

View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
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Brightspace Known Issues
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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 showing various disasters

Each threat of tropical storms, 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

young black woman looking at a computer screen

A misconception about 21st-century students is that they are proficient with all technology, even in the absence of clear instructions. Many students know how to use online platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for fun, but have no idea how to leverage them for academic or professional use.

In an article in the Times Higher Education, Elizabeth Losh says universities must stop presuming that all students are tech-savvy. Many educators assume that young people are digital natives and they should know how to use technology. Gen Z may be savvy about using social media personally. However, they are not as savvy about how to use tech tools academically or professionally.

I don't appreciate when professors just assume because we are young we know how to use this stuff...we are learning with y'all. - Anonymous Xavier Student

In feedback from some Xavier students, they stated that their professors assume they know how to use Brightspace when in fact they do not. To better serve our students, faculty should not assume students are digital natives. Instructors can help students learn the basics for the tools that will be used in their course by providing them links to how-to resources.

Did you know that we have a list of Brightspace how-to resources for students on our CAT FooD blog? You can find Brightspace how-to resources at the following links:

Additionally, here's an example of how you might include how-to instructions for a discussion forum in your Brightspace course:

example of a Q&A discussion forum
Example of Q&A discussion forum with instructions on how to post to the forum

In this example, instructions for the Q&A forum are provided along with instructions on how to post to the forum as well as a link to a how-to video.

Including information on how to use course tools will go a long way to helping students to be successful in your course.

Image credit: image by Aspen from Nappy

The Assignments tool is an efficient way to manage and collect your student's individual and group assignments digitally. Students use the Assignments tool to upload and submit assignments directly in Brightspace, eliminating the need to mail, fax, or email their work to instructors. On paper submissions, and observed in person assignments are also available and do not require file submissions to be made in Brightspace.

Did you know that you can quickly create new assignments from existing assignments using the Copy Assignment and the Copy to Other Courses options?

The Copy Assignment feature copies all settings of an existing assignment except the associated grade item and Turnitin settings.

Example of the Copy Assignment and Copy to Other Courses options as they appear in the drop-down menu for existing assignments
Example of the Copy Assignment and Copy to Other Courses options as they appear in the drop-down menu for existing assignments

Instructors who teach multiple courses can Copy Assignments to Other Courses. To copy assignments to another course, you must be enrolled in both the source and destination course with a role having the permission Assignments > Copy to Other Courses in order to copy from source to destination.

Instructors can copy the following assignment attributes to the new destination:

  • Assignment folder and its properties, including instructions, assignment category, and visibility
  • Assignment properties including description and category
  • Attachments like direct file attachments, uploaded from Google Workspace or OneDrive, and audio and video files
  • Grade item and grade category
  • Availability dates
  • Submission and completion information, including the Optional Grade item and the course scheme if used.
  • Rubric(s) associated with the assignment. When copying an assignment that uses a shared rubric, instead of linking a copied assignment to a shared rubric, the rubric is also copied. The copied assignment links to the copied rubric. If an assignment uses a rubric that is archived, the rubric is copied and retains its archived state in the destination course.

The following attributes are NOT copied:

  • Instruction Quicklinks and attachment resources created with the Attach link to existing activity action
  • Instruction images added using Insert Image that were saved to course files
  • Availability release conditions and special access settings
  • Submission and completion information, including group assignment designation
  • Evaluation and Feedback information including Turnitin associations, competency, and outcome associations
  • Content topic associations (for example, if the assignment is linked from content)

Note: In some cases, references to links and images that are not copied may result in broken links.

Follow these steps to do it.

To copy an existing assignment, you should:

  1. On the NavBar, click Activities and then click Assignments.
  2. From the drop-down menu of the assignment you want to copy, click Copy Assignment.
  3. The copied assignment opens in edit mode. Update the name, score, due date, instructions and other settings of the copied assignment.
  4. After reviewing all the details, click Save and Close to go back to the Assignments page.

To copy an assignment to another course, you should:

  1. On the NavBar, click Activities and then click Assignments.
  2. From the drop-down menu of the assignment you want to copy, click Copy to Other Courses.
  3. Click to select the rubrics and/or grade items if you want those items copied with the assignment.
  4. In the Choose Destinations area, search by keyword or semester to find the destination courses for the assignment.
  5. Click to select the destination course(s) for the assignment.
    Note: By default, the maximum number of courses you can select is 10.
  6. Expand the Destination course to set the assignment location and visibility.
  7. Click Next and you will be taken to the progress page.

NOTE: The progress page indicates the status of each destination course and any issues. If you navigate away from the progress page, a minibar notification in Brightspace indicates when the assignment has been copied to all the destination courses. You can click the notification to open the progress page to review the status and logged issues.

Want more information?

Brightspace Tip #464: Simplify Assignment Collection
Copy an existing assignment
Copy assignments to other courses
About Assignments
Create an assignment
Observed in person assignments
Allow Special Access for assignments
Evaluate assignment submissions from Content
Brightspace Tip #143: Annotate Assignment Submissions

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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.

Learners sometimes have a hard time keeping track of what they need to get done. They may need to hop in and out of several courses to determine if there are upcoming assignments or projects with due dates in the near future (or even in the past!). The “Work To Do” widget helps by providing learners with a summary of assigned learning activities from all their courses that are overdue or have an upcoming due date.

The Work To Do widget is designed for learners and it displays all their overdue and upcoming learning activities across courses or within a course. This widget can help learners to keep track of assignments and activities that are due.

All quizzes, assignments, checklists, etc., with due or end dates in the near future or past appear in one place on the learner’s My homepage in the “Work To Do” widget. Overdue work appears at the top of the list, and upcoming items appear below.

Example of the Work To Do widget
Example of the Work To Do widget

Learners will see the “Work To Do” widget on their My Home page as well as their course homepages. The learner will be able to see overdue and upcoming learning activities for each course where the default course homepage is being used.

Example of the Work To Do widget with no activities due
Example of the Work To Do widget showing no activities due

The Work To Do widget can be seen by users with the role of student. Instructors will see the Work To Do widget when they view the course as a student.

Note: Instructors who have opted to customize their course homepage and want their students to be able to see the Work To Do widget on their customized course homepage, will have to add the widget to the course homepage.

For additional information and frequently asked questions about the Work To Do widget, see the following article in the Brightspace Community: Introducing the Work To Do Widget.

Want more information?

Brightspace Tip #50: Customize Your Course Homepage
Homepages and Widgets
Design a Course Homepage with Widgets (pdf)
Adding the Work to Do Widget to Course Homepage (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.

Use the Assignments tool to help you set and manage deadlines, unclutter your inbox, and save trees!

email inbox showing there are 6763 unread messages

The Assignments tool is an efficient way to manage and collect your student's individual and group assignments digitally. Brightspace's Assignments Tool allows instructors to create a secure location for students to submit class assignments.

The Assignments tool allows instructors to set up a place for students to submit their assignments digitally, with the ability to:

  • Control the window for submission
  • Facilitate individual submissions or group submissions (provided the groups have been set up using the Groups tool first)
  • Collect and assess submissions (with a connection to the Grades tool, if needed)
  • Enable plagiarism detection through Turnitin

Additionally, you can use Brightspace's Interactive Rubrics to increase efficiency. The interactive rubrics allow instructors to establish set criteria for grading assignments. Instructors can attach rubrics to assignment submission folders so that the criteria are visible to students at any time, only after grading has been completed, or not shown to the students at all. The rubrics click-and-score simplicity saves time when grading because rubrics are built into the grading workflow. For more information about rubrics refer to Brightspace Tip #204: Interactive Rubrics.

Follow these steps to do it.

To create an assignment submission folder:

  1. On the NavBar (of the course you want to create a submission folder), click Activities and then choose Assignments from the drop-down menu.
  2. Click New Assignment.
  3. Enter a Name for your submission folder.
  4. To evaluate the assignment with a numeric value, enter a Grade Out Of. A grade item with the same name as your assignment is automatically added to your gradebook. Alternatively, you can click on the "In Grade Book" menu item to reveal a drop-down list. Select the "Edit or Link to Existing" option and then navigate to a grade item that is already in your Grade Book.
  5. Set a Due Date.
  6. Enter assignment instructions.
  7. Upload any files, link to any existing activities or external weblinks, attach any files from Google Drive or OneDrive, and record and/or upload any audio or video notes.
  8. Expand Availability Dates & Conditions and do the following:
    • Set a Start Date and an End Date.
    • Attach Release Conditions.
    • Use Manage Special Access to enable the assignment to be available only to a select group of users or to add individualized due dates for certain users.
  9. Expand Submission & Completion and do the following:
    • For the Assignment Type, specify if this is an Individual Assignment or Group Assignment.
    • Select an existing category to align your assignment to or click New category to create a category.
    • Select a Submission Type:
      • For File submissions, set the number of Files Allowed Per Submission and the Submissions rules.
      • For Text submissions, set the Submission rules.
      • For On paper submissions, set Marked as completed to one of the available options: Manually by learners, Automatically on evaluation, or Automatically on due date.
      • For Observed in person assignments, set Marked as completed to one of the available options: Manually by learners, Automatically on evaluation, or Automatically on due date.
    • From the Allowable File Extensions dropdown menu, select an option to restrict file extensions on submissions for the assignment.
    • Use Notification Email to receive email notifications when an assignment is submitted.
  10. Expand Evaluation & Feedback and do the following:
    • Click Add rubric and either create and attach a new rubric or add an existing one.
    • Under Annotation Tools, select the Make annotation tools available for assessment check box.
    • To enable anonymous marking, under Anonymous Marking, select the Hide student names during assessment check box.
    • Under Turnitin Integration, click Manage Turnitin to enable the Turnitin integration and click Save.
  11. To make your assignment visible to learners, click on the Visibility toggle.
  12. Click Save and Close.

Want More Information?

Assignments:

Turnitin:

Rubrics:

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 gabrielle_cc from Pixabay

Meditation Room

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development invites you to join us for a regular group meditation. We'll meet each Wednesday afternoon throughout the 2024-2025 academic year. Drop in when you can.

What to expect?

As the meditation room is located directly beneath the bell tower, we are using the bells in our meditation. They chime quarterly, so our period of silence begins at 2PM and ends at 2:15.

But I've never done this before!

You needn't have any experience with meditating; just stop by and give it a try. There's no commitment and no pressure.

Why meditate?

Meditation has numerous well-documented benefits, including stress management, improved emotional balance, increased focus and awareness and increased responsiveness to student needs.

All welcome

This is open for everyone in the Xavier community, for people of any faith or no faith.

  • Date: all school year (whenever classes are in session)
  • Time: 2 - 2:15 PM
  • Location: Meditation Room, St. Katharine Drexel Chapel
  • Sponsor: CAT+FD

Photo credit: Bart Everson

Notifications enable you to customize what methods you want to use to receive notifications, such as email, as well as what events will trigger 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 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

  3. Select the email address to which notifications will be sent.
  4. Select the course activities for which you would like to receive notifications.
  5. 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

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 some of the updates in the August 2024/20.24.8 release that were added to our system this month:

1) Assignments – Assessment workflows enhanced and available in all environments

Advanced Assessments help instructors and administrators to better manage courses with large class sizes and multiple evaluators, delegate and manage evaluator workflows, and reduce bias in marking.

Advanced Assessments allows instructors to:

  • Assign multiple evaluators to evaluate a single assignment submission when creating or editing assignments.
  • Choose which evaluators can publish grades for the assignment from the Assignment tool by setting them as publishers.
  • Match evaluators to learners.
  • Choose from two multi-evaluator workflows: One Shared Evaluation (Co-Marking) or Multiple Individual Evaluations.

For more information, refer to the Create an assignment topic and watch the Assign Evaluators and Publishers in Assignments | Instructor video.

Prior to the release of Advanced Assessments, there was no ability to create and evaluate delegated co-mark or multi-evaluate assignments.

In the May 2024/20.24.5 release, Advanced Assessment features were released to test, development, and staging (non-production) environments.

With this release, Advanced Assessment workflows for Assignments are available in all production environments of Brightspace. New features that are added to Advanced Assessments with the August release include:

  • Turnitin integrations
  • Accessibility improvements, including assistive technologies for keyboard-only users

Refer to the Advanced Assessment for Assignments in test, development, and staging environments of Brightspace blog post for details.

This feature implements the following PIE items:

  • D6901 (Restrict Teaching Assistant to Publish The Assignment Grade)
  • D142 (Multiple Graders in Dropbox)
  • D6977 (Assignments Role Permissions: Separate See/View from Submit)
  • D6654 (Auditor to view submissions of Assignments)

2) Assignments – Email status message no longer displayed after an assignment submission

With this release, the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message is no longer displayed for learners in the Email Status field after they submit an assignment. However, when a learner submits an assignment, an email as a receipt of the submission is still sent to them.

The Review Assignment Submission page with the Email Status field.
The Review Assignment Submission page with the Email Status field.
The Review Assignment Submission page without the Email Status field.
The Review Assignment Submission page without the Email Status field.

Previously, even if a confirmation email was not sent to a learner, they also received the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message in the Email Status field on their Submission History page.

3) Discussions – Reading View improvements

To improve the user experience for learners, this release introduces several updates to the learner Reading View in Discussions. These improvements include the following:

  • The Start New Thread button is duplicated at the bottom of the page when viewing a topic, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top of the page.
  • The Add Attachments section is opened by default when creating a new post or new topic. Previously learners had to open the section manually to add attachments.
  • The Add Attachments section is wider on screen when learners create a new thread.

This feature implements the following PIE item:

  • D8141 (Add a second Start a New Thread button to the bottom all threads)

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the August Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform August 2024/20.24.8 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.

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

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
Manage Your Course Workload with Brightspace Pulse - Learners
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 #460: 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.