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Brightspace Tip #450: May Continuous Delivery Updates

Janice FlorentMay 26, 2024May 25, 2024Leave a comment

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 May 2024/20.24.5 release that were added to our system this month:

1) Awards – Certificate ID for an issued award

To improve security when issuing certificates, instructors can now use a new replacement string field when creating their certificate templates to add an automatically-generated numeric ID. This ID uniquely identifies the issued award, which can be verified using the new Brightspace API.

The feature introduces a new replacement string {CertificateID} that instructors can add to their PDF templates. A unique ID is generated and populated into the replacement string {CertificateID} on an ongoing basis when released.

The unique generated ID is 12 numeric characters long and is stored in the Brightspace database as CertificateID, along with other data for the issued award.

Note: The {CertificateID} replacement string follows existing rules of other current replacement strings and is marked read-only.

To support this change, the new Awards Brightspace API has been introduced, which allows the verification of issued certificates:

/d2l/api/bas/(version)/issued/certificates/(certificateId)

The feature is only available on certificates issued with this release when the Certificate ID replacement string is added to the certificate template. The Certificate ID does not have to be added to a certificate template to be auto-generated, but the ID has to be added to be visible to the learner.

Previously, the {CertificateID} replacement string was not available.

2) Grades – Feedback files are now available in Grades for Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions

This feature allows instructors to ensure that learners can easily review feedback from the Grades tool.

Instructor feedback added in Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions is now visible to learners under Grades.

Learners can review feedback from the Grades page.

Previously, feedback files were only available to the learner by accessing the activity.

3) Manage Files – Receive notification when zipping and unzipping files

As of this release, whenever users add (zip) or extract (unzip) one or more files to a ZIP archive in Manage Files, a new dialog confirms that files are being zipped or unzipped in the background. Once the process is complete, a notification appears in Update alerts (the bell icon).

Previously, adding files to a ZIP archive was not a background process and thus there was no notification after zipping. In addition, the notification for unzipping files appeared in the Subscription alerts area.

A notification dialog appears when zipping or unzipping files. Click Close to resume work.

Once files are successfully zipped or unzipped, a notification appears under Update alerts.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the May Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform May 2024/20.24.5 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
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Join the Brightspace Community.
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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

CAT+FD Wins an Excellence Award!

Janice FlorentMay 22, 2024Leave a comment

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) is proud to announce that we have received the 2024 D2L Excellence Award for our work on #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced. The D2L Excellence Award recognizes leaders, educators, and trainers who have used D2L Brightspace to help further the innovation, progress, and betterment of learning experiences in their organizations.

The Challenge: Advancing Faculty Expertise Through Instructional Continuity

We were faced with the challenge of preparing faculty for effective online instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly because D2L Brightspace was new to us.

Our Solution: #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced

To address this challenge, CAT+FD developed two innovative programs:

#LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX): This self-paced online course helps faculty members develop high-quality, well-designed courses in Brightspace. It is based on the eight General Standards for Higher Education set forth by Quality Matters. By completing the course, faculty gain the skills and knowledge they need to create effective online learning experiences for XULA students.
#LEX Advanced: This program goes beyond the basics, helping instructors explore advanced features in Brightspace. These features allow faculty to increase their presence in their courses, streamline workflows, and improve overall efficiency. Ultimately, this leads to more user-friendly, accessible, and effective online courses.

The Results: Increased Proficiency and Improved Courses

Thanks to #LEX and #LEX Advanced, XULA faculty have become more proficient in using Brightspace to deliver high-quality online instruction. This has led to increased use of the platform's tools and better alignment with Quality Matters standards.

A Note of Thanks

The CAT+FD team is grateful to D2L for recognizing our work and awarding us with the 2024 D2L Excellence Award. We would also like to acknowledge Drs. Jason S. Todd and Tiera S. Coston for their contributions and help in developing #LEX and #LEX Advanced.

For More Information

Xavier faculty who are interested can use this enrollment request form to request enrollment in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.

We’ve included a link to D2L’s press release and the case study.

Conversation #118: Beth Schwartz and Regan Gurung on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Brightspace Tip #449: Video Notes – Closed Captions

Janice FlorentMay 13, 2024Leave a comment

celebrate GAAD heading with disability icons

Thursday, May 16th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD aims to get you talking, thinking, and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different abilities and talents.

Accessibility is about everyone. It is extremely important for students with disabilities to have access to accessible course content.

Video Notes is a built-in media recording tool in Brightspace that allows instructors and learners to record short videos with a webcam. This makes it easy to personalize the learning experience with short, video-based feedback, comments, or instructions. Video Notes can be added where video attachments are supported and when the Brightspace Editor’s Insert Stuff option is available.

People who are deaf or hard of hearing rely on captions and subtitles to understand video content. But there are a lot of other great reasons for using captions. For example, you may have some learners who choose not to use the sound or they cannot use it without disturbing those around them. You may have some learners who are not native in your language or who have trouble understanding you. Closed captions and subtitles will allow these individuals to receive your message and understand it.

Did you know you can generate automatic closed captions for newly created Video Notes AND you have the ability to manually add or edit closed captions for all previously recorded Video Notes?

Follow these steps to do it.

To generate automatic captions:

Select Add Video Note from the Insert Stuff option in the Brightspace Editor.
Click on New Recording, click Stop Recording when done recording.
Click on Next
Enter a title and description for the Video Note.
Choose the audio language.
Check the "Automatically generate captions from audio" box.
Click Next and follow the prompts.
After video processing, you can view the closed captions using video player controls.

example of automatically generate captions from audio checkbox — Video Notes - automatically generate captions from audio

Note: As with any automatically generated captions, you should verify the accuracy of the automatically generated captions.

To edit/update Video Note captions:

Select Audio/Video Note Editor from the Admin Tools. Admin Tools are accessed from the cog icon in the top right corner of the page.
Locate the Video Note you would like to review the captions for.
Select the Video Note from the list.
Edit the captions in the Captions Editor.
Click on Save Captions.

Admin Tools with Audio/Video Note Editor highlighted — Audio/Video Note Editor

example showing update to automatic captions — Video Notes - update automatic captions

To add Video Note captions:

Select Audio/Video Note Editor from the Admin Tools. Admin Tools are accessed from the cog icon in the top right corner of the page.
Locate the Video Note you would like to add captions to.
Select the Video Note from the list.
Click on the Closed Captions tab.
For automatic captions, select the audio language and then click Auto-Generate OR select Upload to add a captions file.
After video processing, you can view the closed captions using audio/video player controls.

example showing how to generate automatic captions — Video Notes - add captions

Reminder: As with any automatically generated captions, you should verify the accuracy of the automatically generated captions.

Want more information?

Brightspace Tip #299: Video Notes
Create Video Notes
Create and insert a Video Note in Brightspace Editor
Reuse Video Notes
Understanding the Brightspace Editor
Add closed captions to a Video Note
Edit Video Notes closed captions

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: "celebrate GAAD" by jflorent is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 and is adaption of "disability symbols" by National Park Service in the public domain

Brightspace Tip #448: Accessibility Checker

Janice FlorentMay 12, 2024May 12, 2024Leave a comment

Thursday, May 16th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD aims to get you talking, thinking, and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different abilities and talents.

Accessibility is about everyone. It is extremely important for students with disabilities to have access to accessible course content.

The Brightspace Editor has a built-in accessibility checker that makes it easy to check for issues or offer suggestions to fix identified accessibility issues.

Follow these steps to do it.

To check for accessibility issues:

After you add content to the Brightspace Editor, click the accessibility checker icon.

Brightspace Editor accessibility checker icon

The checker indicates if the content is free of accessibility issues, or offers suggestions to fix them.

Want more information?

Improve Your Course with Brightspace Accessibility Checker
Brightspace Accessibility

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: "celebrate GAAD" by jflorent is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 and is adaption of "disability symbols" by National Park Service in the public domain

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2024

Janice FlorentMay 11, 2024May 10, 2024Leave a comment

Thursday, May 16th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) access/inclusion and people with different disabilities.

While people may be interested in the topic of making technology accessible and usable by persons with disabilities, the reality is that they often do not know how or where to start. Awareness comes first.

The key to embracing accessibility – whether online, in the classroom, or on campus is realizing that taking the time to address an issue doesn’t just help a handful of individuals; in the end, everyone benefits.

Participants in global accessibility awareness day are encouraged to attempt to go an hour without using a technology most people take for granted – such as not using a computer mouse, attempting to navigate a website using a screen reader, or enlarging all of the fonts in a web browser to 200 percent, to see how functionality may be lost when accessibility isn’t taken into consideration in the design.

Whether you participate in an organized activity with others or not, join in and take an hour out of your day to experience digital accessibility first-hand.

Also, thanks to those of you who attended our "Accessibility Is Not Just for Individuals with Disabilities" workshop. The workshop, the seventeenth in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and gives you the skills and knowledge you need to create accessible course materials that can benefit everyone. 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 “Make It Accessible” 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.

Image credit: "Global Accessibility Awareness Day logo" by Mindymorgan licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

New Certified Part-time Instructor!

Jeremy TumanMay 9, 2024Leave a comment

The end of the spring semester, 2024, marks the completion of the first year of CAT+FD's pilot program to support part-time instructors at Xavier. As you know these teachers do excellent work here in teaching, scholarship, and service, and they increasingly make up a significant portion of our teaching rosters.

This semester I had the pleasure of meeting and working with some of the continuing part-time teachers, some of whom have been at Xavier for many years. Though this cohort needs less support, they have valuable experience and insight to offer us all, and I was particularly pleased by some members' decisions to drop in and check out our programming.

This more experienced cohort includes Albertina Walker, who represents the Institute for Black Catholic Studies, Daniel Curley, who brings a wide range of prior work experience to his teaching, including a stint with the federal government, and Kesia Walker, who has worked for 20 years in public health.

We also had a solid roster of new or newer teachers come through this term, including Bonnie Katalenich, formerly in the private sector with LabCorp, LaTeshya Martin, who previously worked in the Attorney General's office of Mississippi, and Emily DeWet, cultural anthropologist with teaching experience at Notre Dame and U.N.O., who is teaching exclusively within the XCOR at Xavier.

A big thanks from CAT+FD to these amazing teachers. It's been my pleasure meeting and working with them. Please join me in thanking them for their work here, and I hope that in the fall we can bring even more returning and new part-time instructors into our support cohort, so that we may all benefit from their skills and expertise.

In the meantime, we had one teacher complete the program and earn the certificate this semester. This teacher went above and beyond in participating in our program, and it was an absolute joy to have her on the sessions, consistently brining insight, curiosity, and positivity to the table. This teacher is Melissa Lea!

Dr. Melissa Lea has been an adjunct professor of psychology and neuroscience at Xavier for three years. She has taught Introduction to Psychology, Physiological Psychology, and Cognitive Neuroscience.

Previously, she was a tenured faculty member of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Assistant Dean of Student Success and Academic Advising at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she has researched person perception, specifically the perceptual influences that affect familiarity and name recall.

Dr. Lea works as an academic advisor for the School of Psychological Sciences at The University of Northern Colorado. She has a passion for working with first generation, transfer, underrepresented minorities, and Pell grant eligible students.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Lea on her certification, and thanking her for her excellent contributions to all that we do here.

Thank you all, and have a great summer!

Jeremy Tuman

Brightspace Tip #447: Setup Your Summer Courses

Janice FlorentMay 5, 2024May 4, 2024Leave a comment

As you prepare to teach this summer, now is a good time to get started setting up your Brightspace courses. Our Information Technology Center (ITC) has created the summer courses in Brightspace.

NOTE: You should see your summer courses in the My Courses widget. If you do not see your summer courses in your My Courses widget, you should click on the link to "View All Courses" (located at the bottom of the My Courses widget). Verify that you are listed as the instructor for the course in Banner. You can find more information about the updated My Courses Widget sort logic at this link.

To get started, you can post your syllabus, course documents, announcements, and setup your Grade Book in your Brightspace courses. You can also customize your course homepage and/or course image/banner.

If you teach a course that is cross listed you will have a Brightspace course for each cross listing. You can combine the cross listed courses into one Brightspace course so that you can post course materials and grades to one combined Brightspace course. Combining courses may also work for you if you are teaching different sections of the same course and would like to have the different sections combined into one Brightspace course so that you can post course documents and grades in the one combined course. The beginning of the semester is the best time to submit a request to merge your Brightspace courses before you add course materials or grades to the courses.

Additionally, if the summer course you are teaching is the same as one of your previous courses you can copy the entire course (or copy components) into your "empty" Brightspace summer course.

NOTE: ITC will enroll students in the Brightspace courses at the end of the registration process, usually the night before the start of classes for the semester. If you want to view your class enrollments or email your students before they are enrolled in your Brightspace course, you can do so in Banner or through EAB.

Follow these steps to do it.

Listed below are links with instructions to:

Want more information?

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: image by analogicus from Pixabay

Brightspace Tip #446: End-of-Semester Tasks

Janice FlorentMay 4, 2024Leave a comment

As we approach the end of the semester there are a few things you can do in Brightspace to wrap up for the semester.

Release final course grades

: Unlike other grade items and categories in the Grade Book, final grades are not available to students by default. Final grades must be released. If you did not choose to enable the automatic release of final grades when setting up your Grade Book, you will have to manually release final grades in order for students to see their final grade.

Export your Grade Book

Student access to courses is removed two weeks after the end of a semester. This process of making the courses inactive allows student work and grades to be visible to instructors but students no longer have access to the course. Courses will remain on the Brightspace system for three semesters before they are removed. You should export (download) your Grade Book to your local computer after you submit your final grades.

NOTE: The export file that is created will NOT contain any student work or instructor feedback. Only the grades in your Grade Book will be exported.

Create a master copy of your course

: Courses remain on the Brightspace system for three semesters before they are removed. You can request a Master Course Shell that you can use to develop and maintain your course materials. Master Course Shells will not be removed from the Brightspace system.

Follow these steps to do it.

Instructions are available for releasing final course grades, exporting your Grade Book, and requesting Master Course Shells.

Want more information?

Release Final Grades
Export your Grade Book (video [2:03])
Master Copies of Courses

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: image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

1) Awards – Certificate ID for an issued award

2) Grades – Feedback files are now available in Grades for Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions

3) Manage Files – Receive notification when zipping and unzipping files

Want more information?

Share this post:

The Challenge: Advancing Faculty Expertise Through Instructional Continuity

Our Solution: #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced

The Results: Increased Proficiency and Improved Courses

A Note of Thanks

For More Information

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Follow these steps to do it.

To generate automatic captions:

To edit/update Video Note captions:

To add Video Note captions:

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Follow these steps to do it.

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Follow these steps to do it.

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Release final course grades

Export your Grade Book

Create a master copy of your course

Follow these steps to do it.

Want more information?

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