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ICYMI, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) is proud to announce that we 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.

#LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) is our Brightspace course that is organized around the eight General Standards for Higher Education set forth in the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric Sixth Edition. The information, activities, and assignments in the #LEX course aids faculty in developing high quality, well-designed, objective-driven courses on Brightspace for Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) students.

hot air ballons

When faculty complete the #LEX course, they have the opportunity to expand their horizons even more through #LEX Advanced certification. With the certification, faculty learn about using design and automation features available in Brightspace to apply better pedagogical practices within their courses by making them more user-friendly, accessible, and efficient.

#LEX Advanced takes a deeper dive into tools like Rubrics, Release Conditions, Intelligent Agents, HTML Templates, Awards & Badges, and more. #LEX Advanced certification also includes topics such as accessibility, academic integrity, securing online testing environment, alternative assessments, online discussions, group work, and video lectures.

A #LEX Advanced badge can be earned for participation in a #LEX Advanced workshop OR for completing its corresponding module in the #LEX course.

Our #LEX Advanced certification has five levels. Faculty can move up a certification level with every fourth #LEX Advanced badge they earn. Complete four modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 1 certification. Complete eight modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 2 certification. Complete twelve modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 3 certification. Complete sixteen modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 4 certification. Complete twenty modules to earn the #LEX Advanced Level 5 certification.

Faculty can view the badges they've earned by clicking on Activities in the NavBar and then click on Awards within the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.

Are you interested in becoming #LEX Advanced certified? Attend one of our upcoming #LEX Advanced workshops to start earning your badges. Alternatively, you can earn badges by completing modules in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.

NOTE: Faculty who are not enrolled in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course can request enrollment using this enrollment request form.

#LEX Advanced Certifications

#LEX Advanced certificate

Congratulations to those faculty who have earned #LEX Advanced Certification!

#LEX Advanced Level 1 Certificate Awardees

  • Ayyad, Dr. Ahlam
  • Bailey-Wheeler, Dr. Janel
  • Bellone-Hite, Dr. Amy
  • DiMaggio, Dr. Stassi
  • Earls, Dr. Martha
  • Edwards, Dr. Andrea
  • Farudi, Dr. Giti
  • Gaudin, Dr. Wendy
  • Gstohl, Dr. Mark
  • Hammer, Dr. Elizabeth Yost
  • Helm, Dr. Amanda
  • Laborde, Dr. Katheryn
  • Ma, Dr. Timmy
  • Manley, Dr. Elizabeth
  • McFerrin, Dr. Harris
  • Nguyen, Dr. Nam
  • Plaisance-Meyers, Dr. Sierra
  • Ratnayaka, Dr. Harish
  • Rousselle, Dr. Elizabeth
  • Salm, Dr. Steven
  • Sirohi, Dr. Sunil
  • St. Julien, Dr. Danielle
  • Taylor, Dr. Ashley
  • Todd, Dr. Jason
  • Verma, Dr. Abha

#LEX Advanced Level 2 Certificate Awardees

  • Ayyad, Dr. Ahlam
  • Bailey-Wheeler, Dr. Janel
  • Earls, Dr. Martha
  • Edwards, Dr. Andrea
  • Gstohl, Dr. Mark
  • Hammer, Dr. Elizabeth Yost
  • Ma, Dr. Timmy
  • Todd, Dr. Jason

#LEX Advanced Level 3 Certificate Awardees

  • Ayyad, Dr. Ahlam
  • Edwards, Dr. Andrea
  • Hammer, Dr. Elizabeth Yost
  • Ma, Dr. Timmy
  • Todd, Dr. Jason

#LEX Advanced Level 4 Certificate Awardees

  • Ayyad, Dr. Ahlam
  • Hammer, Dr. Elizabeth Yost
  • Todd, Dr. Jason

Image credits:
image by PDPhotos from Pixabay
"#LEX Advanced Certificate of Completion" by Bart | CC BY 4.0

ICYMI, an Automatic Zero Grading for Missing Submissions feature was introduced with our July Continuous Delivery updates. The automatic zero grading feature automatically assigns a score of zero (0) to unsubmitted learner activities once the due date passes. This automation eliminates the need for instructors to manually assign zeros to missing submissions, simplifying the process of identifying learners who have not submitted their course work. Additionally, learners benefit by receiving a more accurate view of their grade calculations for individual activities and the overall course.

Automatic zero grading is an optional feature that must be enabled by the instructor. It is enabled on a course-by-course basis. You will see the option to enable Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions in the Setup Wizard and in Grade Book settings.

Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions checkbox
For instructors, the Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions check box appears in the Grade Calculations area of Grade Settings when the Automatic Zero function is turned on.

The Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions grading option comprises two main features:

  • Automatically assigning a grade of zero for unreceived submissions past due date: This feature ensures that any assignment not submitted by the due date is automatically given a zero.
  • Automatically tagging the assigned zero grade: This indicator shows the grade was automatically assigned, not manually graded by the instructor.

You can differentiate between system-added zero grades and manually entered zero grades in the Grade Book.

On the Enter Grades tab in the Grade Book, instructors see a dashed underline applied to automatic zeros (0) along with a tooltip, that appears when you hover over it, to indicate that the system automatically applied the zero (0).

zero grade is underlined and automatic zero tooltip showing missing submission on due date message
Dashed underline applied to automatic zeros(0) along with a tooltip indicating the system automatically applied the zero (0) grade.

On the View Grades page, learners see a zero (0) grade appear, along with a default text message stating: This activity is overdue, and you haven’t completed it. Complete it now to update your grade. This default text is dynamic: learners can only see the message until the end date for the activity, at which time the feedback disappears. Instructors cannot edit this dynamic message text. Instructors must manually enter their own feedback comments if they want the learner feedback to persist.

NOTE: The default text is not grade feedback. The message text disappears when the grade item is regraded, hidden, or past the end date. Additionally, the default text does not appear in grades notifications, data sets, or user progress. Therefore, instructors must manually enter a comment if they want to provide feedback on the zero grade.

learner's view of grades when automatic zero is applied
Learners see a zero (0) grade along with the default text message stating: This activity is overdue, and you haven’t completed it. Complete it now to update your grade.

Timing and Availability for Automatic Zero Grading

Timing

  • The Automatic Zero feature is most effective when implemented at the start of a course. Once automatic zero grading is turned on, only activities with due dates in the future will be able to trigger automatic zero grading.
  • Automatic zero will not affect grades retroactively. Manually grading missed submissions is still required in this situation.
  • There is no retroactive automatic zero grading applied for new users enrolled after the due date has passed for activities. Courses with frequent additions of new users should consider this limitation.
  • This feature is based on local time zones for both instructors and learners. It follows the same rules as existing due dates.
  • Automatic zero grading is triggered within minutes of a due date passing. Note that it may take up to 15 minutes for zero grades to appear in the Grade Book.

Availability

  • Automatic zero grading only applies to course activities with grade associations and a future due date. Editing an activity to change its past due date to a future due date also applies the automatic zero grading feature.
  • Automatic zero grading only applies to visible and available activities. If an assessment has Release Conditions and due date, a learner will only receive an Automatic Zero if they meet the release conditions when the due date passes.
  • Automatic zero grading is course-wide setting. It cannot be selectively enabled or disabled at the activity or grade item level.
  • Automatic zero grading applies to individual and group assignments.
  • Automatic zero grades apply to special access due dates. In the event special access is added after the original due date, the original 0 grade remains in place until the activity is evaluated manually.
  • Learners can submit a course activity after the due date after they have received an automatic zero (if the activity remains available). Instructors can manually grade and override the zero. In this case, the corresponding overdue indicators will be cleared in the gradebook and learner view of grades.
  • Automatic zero functionality publishes grade items with zero to learners automatically in the Grades view.
  • Like other grade settings, automatic zero setting is respected and copied over when copying a course. Note the setting does not persist when importing or exporting a course or grades.

Want more information?

About automatic zero grading for missing submissions
How course activity types interact with automatic zero grading

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.

Do you want your students to take a quiz or test online? Do you have a test that you normally administer on paper and you don’t want to retype all the questions into Brightspace? Learning and Teaching Services at Algonquin College developed a Test/Quiz Question Generator that provides an easy way of creating a collection of questions that can be imported into Brightspace.

the word test written in chalk on a chalkboard

Quiz questions have to be in a special format in order to be imported into Brightspace. The Test/Quiz Question Generator allows you to reformat your questions and it will create a CSV file that can be imported into Brightspace.

Additionally, the Brightspace Community developed a Quiz Question Converter that you can use to add a bank of questions to the Quiz Question Library. One benefit of using the Quiz Question Converter is that you can add feedback and hints to the quiz questions you are importing into Brightspace. Therefore saving you time in importing quiz questions with feedback and hints into Brightspace.

Want more information?

Test/Quiz Question Generator (Algonquin College)
Quiz Question Converter (Brightspace Community)

About Quizzes
Quizzes, Surveys, and Question Libraries
Question Types and When to Use Them
Understanding Grading Options for Question Types
Use Quiz Results Displays to Show Quiz Results

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

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
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 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

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

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.

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

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
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Image credit: image by geralt from Pixabay