Tag: updates

1) Announcements – Copy announcements to other courses in published state

The ability to copy announcements to other courses was originally released for the Announcements tool in the November 2023/20.23.11 release.

As of this December release, users with proper role permissions can publish copied announcements in other courses using either the Announcements tool or widget. This is done by selecting the Copy to Other Courses option from the announcement's context menu. In the Copy Announcement window, there is a new check box option labeled Publish Announcement on Copy. When this box is selected, the announcement is directly published in the destination course or courses, skipping the draft stage. If the check box is not selected, the announcement copies as a draft into the destination course or courses.

Previously, copied announcements appeared in draft form and required publishing in the destination course to complete the process.

2) Assignments – Interface improvements for annotations

D2L is updating the Annotations tool in Assignments to be a web component, as part of our internal technical maintenance work. As a result, the user interface for the annotations viewer is improved to include the following changes:

• Error state includes updated dialog language.
• Document conversion state now has in-page messaging and a loading icon. Previously, there was a dialog displaying the messaging.
• General loading state now has a loading icon. Previously, there was no loading icon.
• Note annotations and their print format show annotations instead of just the annotations icon.

3) Assignments and Discussions – Feedback field limitations for evaluation experiences

The Assignments and Discussions tools' evaluation feedback field is changing from a 500,000 character limitation to a 300,000 character limitation, resulting in an updated dialog warning appearing when the user hits 300,000 characters.

The character limit update improves performance and security for evaluations. Previously, when a user would enter over 300,000 characters, the new information may not have been saved. This potential save failure resulted in the loss of anything entered between 300,000-500,000 characters.

4) Calendar – View quiz start and quiz end dates as separate events in Calendar

When an instructor adds a Start Date and End Date in Quizzes and then selects Add Availability Dates to Calendar, both dates are displayed in the Calendar tool as separate events. Previously, only one event displayed showing when the availability of that quiz ended.

This feature implements the following PIE items:

• D10060 (Consistency among Calendar Events (Start, Due, End Dates) for Quizzes and Assignments)
• D9956 (Add quiz start dates to calendar widget)
• D7273 (Add quiz start dates to calendar widget)
• D5688 (Post Assignment and Discussion End Dates in the Calendar and Upcoming Events)

5) Quizzes – Better identify bonus questions in a quiz

Quizzes now clearly mark bonus questions with Bonus, improving learner understanding and addressing a previous lack of indication in Quizzes.

6) Rubrics – Grades tool now uses Consistent Evaluation interface for assessments

When an evaluator assesses an assignment or discussion in the Grades tool, the rubric now uses the Consistent Evaluation interface whether there is work submitted for evaluation. This is consistent with the assessment experience for assignments or discussions in other areas of Brightspace.

Previously, evaluations for these types of activities used a pop-out Rubric grid when launching from the Grades tool. When users click the drop-down menu on the column header to enter grades, the rows with un-submitted work now use the Consistent Evaluation experience instead of the previous Rubric pop-out.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

• WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 3.2.4 - Consistent Identification

1) Announcements – Copy announcements to other courses

This feature adds the ability to copy announcements to other courses when the new permission Announcements > Copy to Other Courses is enabled for the user role. Users must be enrolled in both the source and destination courses with a role that has the new permission enabled to copy announcements. The permission is disabled by default for all roles.

A single announcement can be copied to multiple course offerings. Users can copy announcements from the Announcements tool or the Announcements widget from the context menu of an announcement by selecting Copy to Other Courses. Once copied, the announcement is in a draft state and users must publish the copied announcement in the destination course to complete the copying process.

The following attributes are copied:

• Headline
• Display Author Information
• Content - Note: The copied Content attribute includes any associated files such as inserted images.
• Start and End Date
• Attachments
• Pin state

Note: Release Conditions are not copied.

This feature implements the following PIE item D10642 (Send Announcements to Multiple Courses at Once).

2) Assignments and Discussions – Review key assessment information when publishing evaluations

The Publish All dialog for Assignments and Discussions is improved and standardized to show key information about learner evaluations. Dialog messaging is consistent for both Assignments and Discussions as it notes complete and incomplete learner evaluations and other key information, like how many learners have feedback and how many learners or groups are assigned to an activity. This change improves the user experience by including additional information about the status of learner evaluations and creating evaluation consistency across Brightspace.

Previously, the Publish All dialog did not display any information about learner evaluations or other key information, and the dialog messaging was not consistent across the Assignments and Discussions tools.

3) Quizzes – Deduction option for incorrect answers

Instructors now have the option to set up a quiz to deduct a percentage of a question’s point value for incorrect answers submitted. This feature applies specifically to question types that can be auto-graded, for example, multiple-choice and true or false questions. The only question type that can’t be auto-graded is written response.

Instructors can also enter negative values when manually grading individual quiz questions or manually updating all quiz question attempts from the Quizzes tool.

To ensure that instructors can view accurate quiz statistics, Question Statistics are also updated to account for this new functionality. Therefore, if negative grading is enabled, Question Statistics may display the following differences in statistics:

• Point Biserial results may be lower when negative grading is enabled.
• Standard Deviation has a wider distribution to account for negative grading.
• Questions with a negative average score appear below zero in the Grade Distribution graph.

To ensure that learners are fully aware that negative marking is enabled for a quiz, the Summary page of a quiz explicitly notifies the learner that for each question answered incorrectly, a percentage of that question's point value is deducted from the final attempt grade.

Also, learners are given the opportunity to explicitly clear previously-selected answers to auto-graded questions by clicking Clear Selection. This gives learners the opportunity to leave the question blank and receive a mark of zero (0), instead of forcing them to guess and enter an answer that could possibly incur a percent deduction.

Learners who are given the ability to view questions after submitting their quiz by their instructor can review questions that received negative score deductions for incorrect answers.

Previously, instructors could not set a quiz to deduct a percentage of a question's point value for incorrect answers submitted.

Note: The overall quiz score cannot be negative and caps at zero.

1) Brightspace Editor – Users can set the Text Direction attribute for the entire page

This feature allows instructors, when creating Content or Widgets, to set the directionality for all text on a page when using the Attributes menu in Brightspace Editor. The Text Direction attribute can be applied to the entire page by navigating to Attributes > Page Attributes and selecting the desired text direction. The attribute can have text be Default, Left to Right or Right to Left.

Previously it was only possible to set the text direction attribute on Selected Items.

2) Assignments and Discussions – Limit for field restrictions enforced

When evaluating activities in Assignments and Discussions, users can no longer use the Publish or Save Draft buttons if their evaluation exceeds the limit for field restrictions. This limitation applies to the Overall Grade, Overall Feedback, and Annotations fields. Previously, a warning was displayed in the Overall Feedback field when the limit was reached, but the limitation was not enforced; and users could continue attempting to save their evaluation by clicking Publish or Save Draft.

3) Chat – Intent to end-of-life for Chat

With this release, users accessing the Chat tool now see a banner indicating the tool will no longer be available as of January 2024.

For more information about this update, refer to Intent to End Of Life Notice for: Chat.

4) Pulse App – Accessibility improvements

Brightspace Pulse app is updated to provide a more consistent assistive technology experience between iOS and Android platforms. In addition, there is an added option to enable 3rd Party cookies within the Pulse app settings. As a result of these changes, users are required to log back in to the Pulse app.

1) Quizzes – Quiz Timing Improvements featuring Synchronous Quiz

This release updates the Quiz Creation experience for instructors and learners by adding a new synchronous quiz option.

With this release, instructors can facilitate quizzes where learners take their attempts simultaneously, which is convenient for in-class sessions. The new addition of synchronous quizzes enables instructors to set up a quiz where the quiz timer starts on the start date for all learners rather than when the learner launches the quiz (asynchronous). The quiz timer then ends for all learners at the same time.

To set up a synchronous quiz:

1. From a quiz page, expand the Availability Dates & Conditions accordion.
2. Set start date and time.
3. Expand the Timing & Display accordion.
4. Click Timer Settings.
5. In the Timing dialog, under Quiz Start, select Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
6. Click OK.

Note: If no start date and time is set for the synchronous quiz, the No Start date set alert appears under the selected option, and you cannot save the quiz. The Due Date option is disabled for synchronous quizzes because students do not choose the time frame of when to take the synchronous quiz, therefore there is no need to set a due date.

To ensure that learners are aware of upcoming synchronous quizzes, instructors should create instructional or manual solutions. For example:

• Make a synchronous quiz visible in the calendar:
  • Instructors can select Add availability dates to Calendar or set up an event showing the whole time.
  • Instructors should use the Start Date parameter when setting up a synchronous quiz and leave the End Date field empty.
• Create an announcement with information about the synchronous quiz.
• Set up an event and give a link to the quiz to provide more context.

Note: Instructors must modify or review quizzes one-by-one to avoid accidentally modifying quiz availability dates for synchronous quizzes.

A synchronous quiz starts at the Start Date and ends when the time limit has lapsed, regardless of any action taken by the learner. For example, if a learner clicks Start Quiz! 15 minutes after the start date on a 1-hour quiz, they only have 45 minutes left to complete it. To indicate when a quiz becomes available, learners have a countdown timer on the Quiz Information and Start Quiz pages. The Start Quiz! button becomes available when the start date and time is reached.

Instructors should provide learners with information about a synchronous quiz before it starts. Learners can also access information about synchronous quizzes in the Quiz Information page.

This feature implements the following PIE items: D1552, D2135, D2914, D4450, D4481, D6373, D6812, D8816, D8924, D9257, D9656.

1) Announcements – Pin announcements to top of Announcement widget

With this release, instructors can now pin announcements and global announcements to the top of the Announcement Widget, allowing important information to remain visible to learners. Announcements so pinned are indicated to learners as such with the use of a new pinned icon that appears on the announcement. Global announcements appear at the top of the Announcements widget before any announcements pinned within a course offering.

This feature implements the following PIE item:

• D7111 (Ability to Pin Announcement to the Top)

2) Rubrics – Improve your evaluation experience with the new collapsible panel for Assignments and Discussions in mobile view

When evaluating assignments or discussions in a mobile browser, instructors can now collapse the containers for Rubrics, Grades & Feedback, Outcomes, and Competencies. The new collapsible container appears in the right-hand panel and reduces unnecessary scrolling, giving instructors more control over which fields are displayed to them. Each component is open by default when the instructor accesses the item. Instructors can open and close each collapsible component by selecting the triangle beside the name of the container.

Note: This change applies to the mobile view only.

The Rubrics tool was updated in the July 2023/20.23.7 release to include collapsible panels as part of interface improvements.

3) Rubrics – Pop-out details provide increased evaluator awareness

To provide a more complete context for learner evaluation, rubric pop-outs now provide activity details including activity title, course name, learner name, and evaluator name. The evaluator name only appears if it is explicitly assigned; implicit evaluators' names do not appear with the additional details. These additional details are critical for new multi-evaluation workflows, where evaluators can have access to view and edit multiple rubrics concurrently. However, having the additional activity details in the single-evaluation experience also provides consistency across all evaluator experiences.

Note: Multi-evaluation workflows are currently only available as part of a development pilot program.

Previously, the activity title, course name, learner name, and evaluator name were not visible in the rubric pop-outs.

Note: Learner name information respects user information privacy policies and displays Anonymous if evaluating with the Anonymous role or marking in Anonymous Mode.

4) User Progress – Class Progress displays absent periods more clearly

This feature updates Class Progress to better align the login date and the absent period. When viewing data for Course Access, Login History, and System Access History, the absent period now correlates to the login date on the same line.

Previously, the login date and absent period were misaligned, which caused confusion to users viewing the data.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

• WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.8 Visual Presentation

1) Brightspace Editor – Edited images are saved with their original names to improve ease of location

With this release, images edited within Brightspace Editor are saved with their original names followed by a date-time string, which helps instructors find changed images easily in Manage Files. Changes to an image using Edit image in the floating toolbar are saved as a copy of the image with the name format "OriginalFileName_yyyyMMddHHmmss.jpg."

This update resolves the Brightspace Editor - Crop function for images does not function as expected issue. For more information about which defects have been resolved by this update, refer to the Known issues and Fixed issues lists on Brightspace Community.

Previously images that were edited were given a different, random filename on saving.

2) Discussions – Consistent settings and interface of availability dates across Brightspace

This feature updates the settings and format of availability dates and states in Discussions, to align with other activity tools and create a unified content experience for both instructors and learners. This update is a continuation of the changes introduced to the Assignment list tab in June 2023 Continuous Delivery Updates.

Availability dates in the Discussions list are now displayed as a simple date range below the titles of discussion topics. Hovering over the date range text displays a tooltip that includes the information about start and end dates. Tooltips also include applied settings to explain how the discussion topic appears to learners before and after these dates.

Previously, the availability dates in the Discussions topics did not include a hover tooltip.

The corresponding update for Quizzes is planned for a future release.

3) Quizzes – Quiz Timing Improvements Featuring Auto-Submission

This release updates the Quiz Creation experience for instructors by simplifying the quiz timing setup workflow, adding useful new features, including the ability to auto-submit, and removing obsolete quiz timing options.

With this release, learners can show or hide the timer, receive time warning messages, and access more information about their quizzes.

Note: All Quiz Timer settings behavior and User Interface changes will immediately be applied to existing and in-progress quizzes with the Continuous Delivery Update.

Instructors Workflow Changes

The following workflow changes and advanced Quiz Timing options are now available for instructors.

• Simplified and redesigned Quiz Timing & Display settings
  • The updated settings allow instructors to choose if they want to set a time limit by selecting the Set time limit checkbox, which is cleared by default. If Set time limit is selected, instructors can add a Time Limit and edit the Timer Settings.
  • The previous Prevent the student from making further changes option has been changed to Automatically submit the quiz attempt. Quiz auto-submission automatically hands in quizzes on enforced time limit quizzes at the end of the set time, improving quiz integrity. This behavior is changed on all existing and in-progress quizzes with the update.
    Note: The Automatically submit the quiz attempt option is now the default setting for all newly created quizzes with a time limit and is used automatically if the instructor does not edit the quiz timing settings. The previous default setting was Allow the student to continue working.
  • The previous Allow the student to continue working option has been changed to Flag the attempt as exceeded time limit and allow the learner to continue working. This behavior is changed on all existing and in-progress quizzes with the update.
  • The Grace Period and Allow student to continue working but automatically score zero options are removed to further streamline the process of quiz creation. With this update, any existing and in-progress quizzes that include these settings are changed to the following new behavior:
    • A quiz that previously had a grace period now uses the time limit set on the quiz.
    • A quiz previously set to Allow student to continue working but automatically score zero now sets the quiz to Automatically submit the quiz attempt.





• The Timing & Display section displays comprehensive summary information in either collapsed or expanded view, helping instructors to find errors and to understand which settings they could change.



• The Special Access settings are updated to simplify setup and incorporate the updated settings.

Improvements for Learners

The following improved Quiz Timing options are now available for learners:

• Option to show or hide the timer to reduce anxiety during quiz taking.
  Note: Once a learner sets their preference, the setting preserves across all quizzes.



• Warnings displayed at certain times to support awareness of time left. The following warnings are applied:
  • 1 minute remaining on the quiz
  • 5 minutes remaining (only on quizzes with 10 minutes or longer quiz time limit)
  • Half of the elapsed time (only on quizzes with 20 minutes or longer quiz time limit)



• The simplified Quiz Results page appears when a learner completes a quiz attempt or returns later to view their quiz results (previously known as Submission View). The page now displays the text ‘Your work has been saved and submitted’ to all learners. This text is no longer editable by instructors. The existing text field allows adding a custom message to be displayed within the Quiz Results page under the new default message.



• Option to review quiz instructions and details without leaving the quiz.

If a learner is taking a quiz at the time of the update, they will notice the user interface changes and new quiz timer setting behaviors immediately following the Continuous Delivery update. For more information about the impact to existing and in-progress quizzes, refer to the Quiz Timing Improvements – Pilot Summary blog post.

4) Quizzes – The New Quiz Creation Experience is now universally enabled

In this release, the New Quiz Creation Experience reaches the end of the adoption phase of feature development and becomes the only editing experience for all customers. The New Quiz Creation Experience is now set to on as the default with no option to opt out.

1) Assignments – Accessible Rubric Confirmation dialog box in Consistent Evaluation experience

To improve accessibility and clarity for screen reader devices, the Rubrics Confirmation dialog box that appears when users navigate away from scoring an assignment or discussion post using a rubric now features the following changes:

• Screen reader-legible heading, text and buttons now appear in the dialog box.
• The dialog box heading now says Unscored Rubric Criteria in place of Confirmation, to improve the workflow clarity for all users, including those using screen readers.

Previously, the text in the dialog box was not accessible to screen readers.

2) Assignments – Consistent settings and interface of availability dates across Brightspace

To improve consistency in activity tools, this feature updates settings and the format of availability dates and states across Brightspace for both instructors and learners.

With this release, the Assignments List tab displays availability dates and states closely aligned with other activity tools to make a unified content experience. Availability dates are displayed below the titles of assignments and the hover tooltip includes the information about start and end dates with settings to explain how the assignment appears to learners before and after these dates.

Previously, the availability dates in the Assignments List tab did not include a hover tooltip.

The corresponding updates for Discussions and Quizzes are planned for future releases.

3) Quizzes – Improved workflows for large quizzes

This feature updates instructors' workflows for large quizzes in two ways.

Instructors can now use the Load More button on the initial page load if a quiz has more than 200 questions, sections, and question pools.

If the Load More button is shown, list operations such as moving to the bottom or adding new questions continue functioning as expected. However, to see their changes, instructors must click the Load More button to reveal the updated list.

Also, instructors can now select multiple items and use drag and drop to rearrange the question list.

This feature implements PIE item D10368 (New Quiz Experience: Drag & Drop - Moving multiple questions at once).

Previously, quiz questions, sections, and question pools rendered slowly. Creating and editing quizzes with many items could take significant time. Moving multiple items was only possible using the Move To action menu.

1) Awards – Add criteria to awards in compliance with the latest Open Badges standard

Instructors can now specify what a learner must do to achieve a particular award.

This feature complements the use of evidence for awards by adding the new required Criteria field to the Awards tool.

Availability of Criteria and Evidence fields meets the latest Open Badges 2.0 standard from 1EdTech (formerly known as IMS Global):

• When instructors manually grant awards, they can now check the award's criteria and enter evidence describing what the learner did to meet the criteria and earn the award.
• When the award is automatically issued, the release conditions determine if learners meet the criteria.
• If learners share their award via a public link, both the Criteria and Evidence fields now appear on the Public Award page.

This feature implements PIE item D6128 (Incorporate Open Badge 2.0 Standards).

For existing awards that do not have explicitly stated criteria, Brightspace treats the Criteria and Evidence fields as the same.

Previously, there was no criteria field available in the Awards tool. When learners shared their awards to Badgr, the same field values were used for both Evidence and Criteria fields.

1) Discussions – Introducing the new creation and editing experience

The new discussion creation experience brings create and edit consistency changes from Assignments and Quizzes to Discussions, making it familiar and easy to learn. This first release is at full parity with classic discussions and brings refreshed workflows and improvements to restricting group topics and threads, associating topics to forums, and wording changes to a few settings that you may be familiar with.

The primary panel on the left contains the same frequently-used fields as Assignments and Quizzes. These fields are most relevant to learners and are core to discussion topic creation. The right-hand panel provides advanced options such as start and end dates and release conditions. These options follow the same logical groupings as found in Assignments and Quizzes. Other topic-specific settings can be found in the right-hand panel.

Refer to the Introducing the New Discussion Creation Experience knowledge article for an in-depth look at all the feature and capability changes with this update.

2) Quizzes – Confirmation dialog for learners exiting a quiz

This feature introduces a confirmation dialog to learners closing in-progress quizzes. The dialog is context-based, providing additional information about the impact of exiting the quiz (such as whether a learner will be able to return to their quiz after exiting).

Previously there was no dialog or warning to learners who exited a quiz accidentally or on purpose.

Note: The dialog only appears when the learner selects the X [Close this Quiz] for the quiz. Closing the browser window or tab does not display the confirmation dialog.

This feature implements the PIE item D7289 (Close/Exit Quiz errors correction).

The message shown when a student tries to exit a quiz depends on the time limit and end date settings for the quiz. In every scenario after exiting a quiz, learners are directed back to the Quiz Details page.

1) Awards – Share achievements to LinkedIn profiles

Learners can now share achievements from the Awards tool directly to their LinkedIn profiles.

This feature simplifies showcasing awards in LinkedIn profiles. Awards can now be shared directly from Brightspace without using a third-party tool or creating a link to the award first.

To share an award to their LinkedIn profiles, learners can navigate to the My Awards page, select the desired award, click Share, and then click the new Share to LinkedIn button.

Shared awards appear in the Licenses & Certifications section of learners' LinkedIn profiles.

Previously, awards could be shared to LinkedIn by first sharing the award to Badgr or creating a public link to the award (available as of November 2022) and then copying the link to LinkedIn.

This feature implements PIE item D8491 (Share Badges Directly to LinkedIn).

2) Calendar – Prevent duplicate calendar events on copy/import to reduce performance issues

With this release, calendar events are checked to see if they are duplicates when performing a course copy or import. When either action is performed, Brightspace only copies the following:

• Calendar events that have an association, such as to an activity that is being copied into the course offering.
• A single unique Calendar event that is manually created.

When a user manually creates multiple calendar items, Brightspace compares the following fields when checking for duplicates:

• Title
• Description
• Start Date (or Start Day for All Day Events)
• End Date (or End Day for All Day Events)
• If its an All Day Event
• Repeat Every (e.g.: every day, every second month)
• Repeat On (day of week, only valid for Weekly events)
• Repeat Until Date
• Repeat Type (None, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Annually)
• Event Visibility
• Location
• Group associations

This feature only applies when performing a copy into a course offering and when importing course packages. It does not check if existing events are duplicates.

Previously, manually created or imported calendar events were not checked for duplication, creating duplicate calendar items.

3) Media Library – Adapt the player to match available space or video resolution while using ISF Plugin

The ISF player insert is now responsive and adapts to match screen size. When using Insert Stuff in Brightspace Editor to insert a video, the video preview screen is updated to show a responsive player and will now scale to the available maximum width. Height and aspect ratio are still respected. Previously, the player was too small, especially for users with smaller devices. In addition, users had to specify a size to embed the player via ISF.

The layout slider will be removed as the responsive nature of this update makes it redundant. Existing videos that were added to Brightspace Editor before the 20.23.3 release will remain statically sized.

For customers using the sample HTML v3.0 Templates, the Video Lecture page, or who are managing any Learning Creative Services or third-party HTML templates and styles: please be aware that after the 20.23.03 update, videos hosted in the Brightspace Media Library are responsive automatically without having to insert videos into the video wrapper sections. Customers can now insert Brightspace Media Library videos where needed into any template as there is no longer a need to insert into a video wrapper section to make the video responsive. Customers wishing to continue using the video wrapper section with Brightspace Media Library videos can explore how to update their versions of the Sample HTML v3.0 CSS by visiting HTML Template (Version 3.0) - Brightspace.

4) User Management and Settings – Easily change language preferences using the User Menu

A new language selector is available in the user menu to easily change the language setting to the user’s preferred language. Previously, a user had to navigate to Account Settings or use a custom installed widget with a complex workflow. Users can continue to access language and locale within the Account Settings page; this update provides an option that you can more easily access.

Note: Only languages that are enabled by your organization are available for selection.

This feature implements the following PIE items:

• D8920 (Language toggle feature)
• D7508 (Preferred Language Selector)