Tag: updates

1) Assignments - Create and edit experience

The create and edit Assignments page has an updated look and feel. The classic tabbed view has been transformed into a new, fully immersive page layout.

2) Rubrics – Accessibility improvements in Rubric creation workflow

The following updates have been made to improve the accessibility of the rubric creation workflow:

• The button next to the page title is now labeled so a screen reader reads “Actions for [title]” when the button has the focus.
• The Overall Score now has the proper heading level so screen reader users can navigate directly to it from the heading list. Previously, users were required to tab through all previous headings in the list first.
• There is no longer a skipped heading level between Rubric Levels and Criterion (both level 3) and Standards (previously level 5).
• In the rubric preview window, Criterion Score has been added as a column header. Previously, the column did not have any header text.

3) Widgets - My Courses and Updates widgets display unevaluated assignment submissions

The My Courses Widget and the Updates widget now display new, unevaluated assignment submissions instead of unread assignment submission files to instructors. This change aligns the widgets with the Assignments page and the Quick Eval tool to consistently notify users of unevaluated submissions and help them to track their work.

1) Brightspace Pulse - Pin and unpin courses

To help learners more easily find their current courses in Brightspace Pulse for Android, learners can now pin and unpin courses from the Courses screens. Pinning a course ensures it remains at the top of the screen for easy access. Previously, learners could only pin and unpin their courses in Brightspace Learning Environment and Brightspace Pulse for iOS.

To pin or unpin a course in Brightspace Pulse, do one of the following:

• From the Courses screen, tap the ellipses (...) icon in a course tile.
• From the Course Homepage screen, tap the ellipses (...) icon at the top of the screen.

From the list of actions, tap Pin or Unpin. A pinned course is denoted by a Brightspace Pulse pin icon. Unpinning a course removes the pin icon.

2) Calendar - Bulk delete items

To create parity with other tools and improve workflow, the Calendar tool now offers a Delete interface. Previously, it was impossible to bulk delete calendar items. This change enables users to multi-select and delete calendar items using the More Actions menu.

1) Assignments - Assignments page column name

This feature updates the New column name on the Assignments page to read as New Submissions.

2) Brightspace Pulse - Pin and unpin courses

To help learners more easily find their current courses in Brightspace Pulse for iOS, learners can now pin and unpin courses from the Courses screens. Pinning a course ensures it remains at the top of the screen for easy access. Previously, learners could only pin and unpin their courses in Brightspace Learning Environment.

To pin or unpin a course in Brightspace Pulse, do one of the following:

• From the Courses screen, tap the ellipses (...) icon in a course tile.
• From the Course Homepage screen, tap the ellipses (...) icon at the top of the screen.

From the list of actions, tap Pin or Unpin. A pinned course is denoted by a Brightspace Pulse pin icon. Unpinning a course removes the pin icon.

1) Announcements – Display author information

To provide more information to users, Announcements now supports displaying author information (name and timestamp) on new and edited announcements.

If a user has the new permission, when the user creates or edits an announcement, a new Show Author Information check box displays in the New/Edit Announcement page, allowing them to choose if they want author information to display.

Users reading the announcement may see some or all of the following author information:

• the original author
• the original date and time of the announcement
• the author who edited the announcement
• the date and time of the edit

2) Groups – Set exact time learners can self-enroll

When setting up groups that allow learners to self-enroll, instructors can now add an exact time when enrollment opens, and an exact time when self-enrollment expires. Previously, instructors could only set the date when enrollment opened or expired.

3) Quick Eval – Support for anonymous marking

Assignments created with the Hide student names during assessment option selected now display in Quick Eval’s Submission view with learner names and profile images hidden. Instructors using anonymous marking can access Quick Eval with confidence that it supports their anonymous marking needs.

4) Rubrics – Confirmation message for partially unevaluated rubrics

To prevent publishing partially unevaluated rubrics, the publishing workflow in the new Rubrics grading experience now includes a confirmation message that warns users when the rubric is not fully evaluated. Instructors have the option to continue publishing, or cancel. Warning messages appear when publishing a rubric for an individual student and when bulk publishing rubrics. Users attempting to publish an incomplete rubric evaluation must now click Publish to complete the workflow.

5) Rubrics – Improved accessibility in Rubric grading

In Rubrics, when using keyboard navigation to tab to a row of selectable cells, there is now a focus indicator to help orient users on the page.

6) Rubrics – Overall Score levels calculated after rubric criteria completion

In the new Rubrics grading experience, the Overall Score level is now only calculated after all the criteria in the rubric have been assessed. This change optimizes rubric performance by eliminating the calculation of incomplete Overall Score levels until the rubric evaluation is completed, and improves the grading experience for instructors and rubric evaluators.

1) Assignments - Streamlined access to inline feedback

To streamline access to assignment feedback, learners can now immediately access inline feedback from User Progress, Grades, and Assignments. From these tools, the View Inline Feedback link takes the learner directly to the annotations view (or Turnitin viewer, if that is the tool used to provide feedback). The inline feedback also includes a link to the file for the assignment, so learners know which document contains the feedback. Previously, the View Inline Feedback link took the learner to the Assignment feedback summary page, where they had to click a second link to view the feedback.

2) EXIF data warning appears when uploading images

In some instances, when users upload .jpg files in any file upload area across Brightspace Learning Environment, an EXIF (exchangeable image file) data warning appears informing the user that the file may contain geolocation data.

3) Course Administration - Course Reset

Course Reset is a new tool that enables a course administrator to reset a course back to an empty shell. Course Reset permanently deletes course content, activities, associated files, user grades, user progress records, and interaction data from the course in a single bulk process. Users can optionally choose to include course groups, and/or course widgets, navbars, and homepages as part of the course reset process, or leave them in the course.

The Course Reset process does not affect user enrollments, sections and section enrollment, course associations, course paths associated to the course, user progress in linked SCORM objects, LOR objectsin Brightspace Learning Repository, portfolio objects saved to a users' Portfolio or ePortfolio, ePortfolio sharing groups or forms, email/instant messages sent to or from users in the course, LTI tool provider information, and Activity Feed posts.

Course Reset permanently deletes the course data and it will not appear in any reporting or data sets after the course reset process is complete. After performing a course reset, an Audit Log maintains a record of the course reset action, including the date and time of the course reset, the data that was selected for deletion, the user who performed the course reset, and any errors that occur during the course reset process.

4) Grades – Tab delimited import into Gradebook

Users can now import tab separated value (.tsv) files into Gradebook. Previously, users could only import comma delimited files into Gradebook, which created a usability issue in some international regions.

5) Quick Eval - Course level filtering

When opening Quick Eval within a course, only the list of activities and submissions related to that course display. This helps instructors easily view and evaluate submissions on a course-by-course basis. If an instructor wants to view all submissions across all their courses, they can still use the More Options menu to see the Multi-Course Quick Eval, or open Quick Eval from outside of a course.

6) Quick Eval - Dismiss activities until next submission

Instructors can now remove items from their Quick Eval list until a new submission is received for the activity. The removed activity appears on the Dismissed Activities list and can be restored at any time. Once a new submission arrives to the Quick Eval list, the previously dismissed activity reappears there.

Previously, instructors could only select a specific date or forever when dismissing an activity. This new option provides instructors with an additional option to manage the submissions on their Quick Eval list.

7) Video Note – Automatic Closed Captioning

To improve accessibility, video notes now provide automatic closed captioning for newly created videos and the ability to manually add or update closed captioning for all previously recorded videos. After video processing, users can view closed captions using video player controls.

In addition, users can now download a transcript and the closed caption file associated with a video independent of Video Notes.

Localized closed captioning is available for the following languages:

• US English (en-US)
• British English (en-GB)
• Canadian French (fr-CA)
• German (de-DE)
• Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)
• Korean (ko-KR)
• Italian (it-IT)
• Spanish (es-US)
• Modern Standard Arabic (ar-SA)
• Russian (ru-RU)
• Japanese (ja-JP)
• Turkish (tr-TR)
• Dutch (nl-NL)
• Chinese Mandarin (zh-CN)

Notes:

• Canadian English is not available for closed captioning and defaults to en-US.
• Chinese Traditional (zh-TW) closed captions are not currently available and defaults to zh-CN.
• Mexican Spanish (es-MX) closed captions may not be available and defaults to US Spanish (es-US)
• Swedish closed captions are not available.

1) Support for Internet Explorer | Removed

As of January 1st, Brightspace has ended support for Internet Explorer. All versions of Internet Explorer will no longer be able to access Brightspace.

2) Brightspace Pulse – Additional languages supported

To provide consistent language support with the Brightspace platform, Brightspace Pulse is now available in the following additional languages:

• Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Danish
• French (France)
• German (Germany)
• Japanese
• Korean
• Swedish
• Turkish

Previously, Brightspace Pulse was only available in: English (U.S.), Spanish (Latin America), French (Canada), Portuguese (Brazil), and Dutch.

3) Classlist – Total number of users field and floating buttons

To improve ease of use, the total number of users for their selection (whole class, section, group) now appears in a field at the bottom of the Classlist page for at-a-glance viewing to help instructors keep track of the total number of learners, which may extend beyond the users visible on the page. On the Print Classlist and Email Classlist pages, the clickable Print and Email buttons now float consistently on screen, to ensure easy access to these actions without excessive scrolling.

4) Copy Course Components - Add validation logic to the copy process

Copy Course Components now contains a validation logic step to the course copy process, which can inform users if they performed a copy from the source previously, avoiding unnecessary duplication of copied course components.

5) Discussions – Assessment consistency changes

When assessing discussions, instructors have new multi-select options to Publish Feedback and Retract Feedback. In the Status column, the Draft / Published checkbox has been replaced by information on the date when feedback was saved as draft or published. These changes are visible on both the Users and Assessments tabs. The Save, Save and Close, and Cancel buttons have also been removed as their functionality has been replaced by the Publish Feedback and Retract Feedback options.

6) Grades – Export sorting options

This feature introduces the ability to sort exported gradebooks based on the following options: OrgDefinedID, Username, Last Name, and First name. The sort options available are based on the User Information Privacy permissions for the role.

7) Groups – Self-enrollment group capacity, start dates and descriptions

This feature includes three improvements to Groups:

• Group members can now see the description of their group. For self-enrolled groups, group members will now see the group description at all times, including before and after enrollment. For other group types, instructors can now choose to display the description to members of the group. This visible group description setting is off by default for non-self-enrollment groups. Previously, all group descriptions were hidden from group members.
• An instructor can now increase or decrease the capacity for self-enrollment groups after they have been created, and prior to the group sign-up expiry date. Decreasing a group size to an amount smaller than has already signed up for a group will not re-allocate users to other groups. Previously, self-enrollment groups were not editable after they were created.
• Instructors can set Start dates for self-enrollment groups. This feature allows them to schedule self-enrollment groups availability, ensuring learners are prepared and have equal opportunity to self-enroll.

8) Quick Eval – Dismiss activities from list

To improve the ability to manage items on their Quick Eval list, instructors can now select items that appear in their Quick Eval list and remove them temporarily or permanently. Instructors can view their dismissed items in the Dismissed Activities List and restore them to the Quick Eval list at any time.

9) Quizzes – Synchronization with Grades

Quiz scores and feedback entered in Grades now synchronize automatically with Quizzes. To further streamline the workflow, the Overall Feedback fields in Grades and Quizzes are now consolidated, and the Grade Item Public Comments field has been removed from Grades. All comments entered in the Overall Feedback field in Grades synchronizes automatically with the Overall Feedback field in Quizzes. This update creates a more direct workflow and aligns Quizzes with the consistent feedback experience implemented in Assignments and Discussions. Refer to the blog post Improving Consistency Of Synchronization Between Grades And Quizzes Tool (20.20.01 – January Release) for more information.

Note: Synchronization only occurs for new grade entries. Existing grade data for quizzes will not be migrated due to the high impact to all past data and reports.

10) Rubrics – Share rubrics with other org units during creation

When creating new rubrics, users can now share the rubric created at the organization level with other org units (courses). The rubric creation process provides the capability to either share or, conversely, block rubrics from being shared with other org units (courses). Previously, this was only possible by using the legacy rubric editor.

1) Assignments – File size information in submission receipt email

File size information now displays next to the file name in the submission receipt email sent to learners upon making a submission to an assignment submission folder.

2) Assignments – Submission ID displays for Learners

A new column that displays Submission ID information is visible to learners on the View Feedback page in Assignments.

3) Content – Sort order changes in Upload / Create menu

When using the Upload / Create menu to add activities to Content, the placement of the New Assignment option has moved. Previously, it appeared between New Discussion and New Quiz. Now, New Assignment appears above New Checklist.

Updated sort order of the Upload / Create menu

4) Grades - Synchronization with Assignments and Discussions via API and import options

Grades are now fully synchronized in the Assignments and Discussions tools when grades are added to Brightspace via the existing Import as CSV, Import as Excel, and API entry options. This change builds upon recent grades synchronization updates for Assignments and Discussions.

Note: Synchronization only occurs for new grade entries. Existing grade data for assignment submissions and discussions will not automatically be migrated because of the high impact to all past data and reports.

5) Release Conditions – Learners are notified when a release condition triggers new content

In a course that uses release conditions to unlock additional content, learners previously were not informed when new content became available as a result of a release condition that was satisfied. Because there was no automatic notification or refresh of the table of contents, there was the potential for frustration when learners think they are done a module, and are later informed that there are steps left to be completed.

Now, when release conditions are satisfied, the learner is notified using a pop-up ("toast") message that there are new items available in the course.

6) Release Conditions – Updated ordering of Tools

When adding Release Conditions to activities or content, the View Conditions for, and Condition Type menus now display tools in an updated order.

When browsing for release conditions, Assignments is now at the top of the list of tools

When creating new release conditions, Assignments is now at the top of the list of tools

1) Assignments - Improvements to Assignments

The Assignments page shows a count of new submissions and resubmissions in the New column, which you can opt-in /opt-out of displaying.

2) Assignments – Letter grading available

Grade Schemes can now be used by instructors to evaluate assignments by associating Selectbox Grade Items to an assignment. When grading an assignment through Assignments, Quick Eval, or Grades, the evaluator is shown a dropdown menu with the associated grade scheme levels. This feature functions identically for rubrics and numeric values as the previously existing Selectbox grade item type in the gradebook.

3) Intelligent Agents - Email images

Users can now insert images directly into the body of intelligent agent emails using the Add Image button in the HTML editor. The images are attached to the email and shown in place when viewed in the recipient's external mail client.

4) Quick Eval – Improve consistency across supported tools

To improve consistency across tools in Quick Eval, the following updates are being released:

• When feedback on a quiz submission is saved as draft, a draft icon displays next to the quiz submissions in Quick Eval.
• In Activities view, the Publish All option is available for Quizzes.

5) Quizzes - Restore quiz attempts in the Quiz Attempt log

When an instructor restores a learner's deleted quiz attempt, note the following workflow changes:

• A deleted quiz attempt can only be restored if the learner does not have another quiz attempt in progress.
• The Restore button only appears for the latest deleted quiz attempt.

6) Quizzes – Save feedback as draft

Instructors can now clearly see when feedback is saved as a draft, or published, while evaluating quiz submissions. On the quiz evaluation page, the Graded (G) checkbox and Save button have been replaced by the Publish and Save Draft buttons.

1) Assignments – Change to immersive navigation bar

When evaluating an assignment submission, the user interface has been updated slightly. The Next Student and Previous Student buttons above the submission and learner information have been replaced by forward and back chevrons that display in the immersive navigation bar. Previously, these buttons were displayed across the entire width of the page. The information on which user you are evaluating (e.g. 1 of 12) displays between the back and forward chevrons.

2) Brightspace Learning Environment – Improvements to consistency

To provide a more consistent experience, there have been changes to update the language, interface controls, and workflows throughout Brightspace Learning Environment.

The language and methods by which instructors make activities hidden or visible to learners across different tools is now consistent. Changes include:

• The visibility control now uses a checkbox with the consistent terminology Hide from users in all instances. This change affects the Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, Surveys, and Grades (grade item and grade category) tools.
• In Discussions, the Visibility, Availability Dates, and Locking options move from the Properties tab to the Restrictions tab.
• The Hide from users checkbox appears under the title field of all activity creation pages in the Content tool.
• In Content, on the table of contents, there is now a visibility icon button for use with both content topics and modules. The icon serves as a visibility switch. The visibility status of a topic appears when the topic is not visible, when the table of contents is in bulk edit mode, or when a topic is in edit-in-place mode. The table of contents fly-out no longer provides the ability to switch the visibility of a topic or module.
• In Content, the Hide from users and Make Visible to users options are available in the context menus for topics and modules in the table of contents, and in the context menus of topics on the topics’ detail page.

The Instructor view of the list page of several tools now has consistent icons in a consistent order for activity restrictions. Changes include:

• All common activity icons appear before tool-specific icons.
• There is now only one Special Access icon in Quizzes (previously there were two, one for each type of Special Access). The Special Access icon also now appears in Assignments where it previously did not.
• All icons have been updated to the Daylight style (except the Bonus Grade item, which will be done in a future release).
• The Exemptions icon now appears on the list pages.
• Alt-text appears on all icons on the activity pages. In some cases, the alt-text has been changed to provide consistent text across all icons of the same type.

Across many tools, including Quizzes, Surveys, Grades, and Discussions, the Restrictions tab provides the ability to control the visibility status and availability dates for an activity. Changes include:

• Changes to the Restrictions tabs in Quizzes, Survey, Grades, and Discussions to show Hide from Users with a check box control to turn on or turn off the visibility of the item.
• Previous sections containing the visibility settings in Surveys, Grades, and Discussions (for Forums and Topics) are renamed to Availability.
• Availability dates in Grades (for a grade item and grade category) and Discussions (for Forums and Topics) now appear and can be hidden.

There is now a consistent individual and bulk process workflow to hide or show activities. With this workflow, users can quickly change the visibility status from the list of activities without first having to edit the activity. Changes include:

• In Quizzes, Surveys, and Grades, users can hide or show individual items under the context menu of an individual item or bulk items from the More Actions button at the top of the page.
• In Discussions, users can hide or show individual items under the context menu of each topic and forum. Bulk hide or show is not available for Discussions.

The language and methods by which instructors save content on the New Activity page (Content tool) are now consistent. Whether the item is visible or not is determined by the Hide from Users permission check box. Changes include:

• Publish and Save as Draft have been combined into a single button called Save.

In addition, there are other consistency updates throughout the Brightspace Learning Environment:

• The Completion Method icon in the table of contents in the Content tool is now a menu. If an instructor does not have permission to edit the Completion Method, the icon is displayed and the button menu does not appear.
• In the Grade book, on the context menu for a grade item, the Grade All option is now Enter Grades.
• In the Grade Item and Grade Category event log, the Visibility property is now Visibility Status. Status options are now Hidden or Not Hidden.
• In the Grade Item and Grade Category event log, the End Date Restriction and Start Date Restriction properties are now Availability End Date and Availability Start Date.
• In the Grade Item and Grade Category event log, changes to the Visibility and Date properties are now logged independently.
• In Surveys, the display of availability dates on the survey Administrator and User list pages are now consistent with the display currently used in Quizzes.

3) Brightspace Pulse - iOS support

The latest version of Brightspace Pulse is supported on Apple devices with iOS 11 or higher. Older versions of Brightspace Pulse will continue to work on Apple devices with iOS 10, but will not receive any app updates. For an optimal experience, D2L recommends installing the latest version of Brightspace Pulse on Apple devices with iOS 11 or higher.

4) Intelligent Agents - Email Attachments

You can now add attachments to automated email messages when creating and editing Intelligent Agents. The intelligent agent email template contains an Attachments area that enables you to upload local files, select from available course files, or record audio. Attachment size is based on the email attachment size setting for your organization.

5) Links - Improved link validation

The Links tool has been updated to improve the link validation process. Pre-existing links are not impacted; however, any new links or updates to pre-existing links must be formatted to follow the new validation rules. (Valid formats include: URLs that begin with http/https, ftp/sftp/ftps, file, mailto, feed, itpc, mms, rtsp, or relative paths beginning with /).

6) Quizzes – Change to immersive navigation bar

When evaluating a quiz submission, the user interface has been updated slightly. The Next Student and Previous Student buttons above the submission and learner information have been replaced by forward and back chevrons that display in the immersive navigation bar. Previously these buttons were displayed across the entire width of the page. The information on which user you are evaluating (e.g. 1 of 12) now displays between the back and forward chevrons.

1) Activity Feed - Inline rendering of remote plug-in attachments

When an instructor attaches a remote plug-in via a Quicklink to a message or assignment post, the plug-in now renders inline as an embedded attachment. This allows users to view the material without navigating away from Activity Feed. Previously, a remote plug-in attachment rendered as a simple web link.

2) Activity Feed - Message posts now support embed codes

To allow instructors and learners to share more material in a course, users can now paste embed codes directly into the body of message posts in Activity Feed. These embed codes automatically attach and display inline for all users to view and interact with.

3) Activity Feed - Improved attachment workflow and thumbnail previews

Users can now attach web links to message and assignment posts by pasting them into the body of messages or the instructions of assignments in Activity Feed. The display of link attachments has also been enhanced to show a thumbnail and description, if available. Previously, links could only be added to posts by the Click and Attach workflow and the display was limited to a simple link icon and title.

4) Brightspace Pulse - Activity Feed notifications

To help keep learners up to date on course activity, Brightspace Pulse now displays Activity Feed notifications in the Updates tab, for example, messages and links to course materials and external resources. Tapping an Activity Feed notification displays the post in Brightspace Pulse.

5) Assignments - Grades entered in Assignments and Grade Book are synchronized

When an instructor enters a grade for an assignment submission in the standard or spreadsheet view of Grade Book, the grade also appears with the submission in Assignments. Previously, grades entered in the Assignment tool were passed on to Grade Book; however, grades for assignment submissions entered in Grade Book were not passed to the Assignments tool. This change ensures data consistency between Assignments and Grade Book. Currently Assignment grades are not synchronized when the Assignment tool is updated by the Brightspace API or when Grade Book is exported and imported.

Note: Existing grade data for assignment submissions are not migrated. This synchronization only occurs for new grade entries.

6) Discussions - Grades entered in Discussions and Grade book are synchronized

When an instructor enters a grade for a discussion in the standard or spreadsheet view of Grade Book, the grade also appears with the discussion post in Discussions. Previously, grades entered in the Discussion were passed on to Grade Book; however, grades for discussions entered in Grade Book were not passed to the Discussions tool. This change ensures data consistency between Discussions and Grade Book. Currently Discussion grades are not synchronized when the Discussion tool is updated by the Brightspace API or when Grade Book is exported and imported.

Note: Existing grade data for discussions are not migrated. This synchronization only occurs for new grade entries.

7) Quick Eval – Activities View

In Quick Eval, select Activities to display a list of the assessable activities that have items awaiting evaluation in all your courses. An activity shows up in Quick Eval’s Activities view when there is an unevaluated learner submission, or when all students have not submitted to the activity. This view makes it easy to complete all assessments for one assignment, discussion, or quiz, before moving on to the next task. This feature helps evaluators who prefer to evaluate submissions in the context of an activity. Activities view displays indicators to show the progress on submissions, progress on evaluations, and progress on publishing feedback to learners. It also includes links to the evaluation page, submission page, and a publish all action.

8) Release Conditions - Release condition for topic completion

The Completed content topic is a new release condition that is met when a user completes a content topic. The method of completing the topic depends on the type, such as viewing a file or submitting an assignment. Similar to the currently available Visited content topic release condition, optional topics can also trigger this release condition.

This release condition ignores exemptions, meaning that if the learner completes the activity, the release condition can be met, regardless of the activity being required, optional, or exempt.