Tag: updates

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 a few updates in the August 2018/10.8.4 release that were added to our system this month:

1) Quizzes – Dynamic preview available in question pools

Question pools now include a dynamic preview. The preview displays questions randomly selected from the current question pool. A refresh button allows instructors to navigate through several selections to ensure the question pool is working as expected.

2) Rubrics - Improvements to rubric feedback for learners

To provide learners with more detailed feedback on activities and apply a consistent look and feel to rubric feedback, this release includes the following improvements:

• User Progress displays general feedback, score, and a graded rubric for Grades, Discussions and Assignments. Feedback displays to learners as soon as instructors save rubric and overall feedback assessment.
• Content tool for Assignments displays general feedback, score, and a graded rubric. This replaces the previously displayed Instructor Feedback.

3) Turnitin - Improvements to Turnitin Integration

The following improvements have been made to the Turnitin (TII) integration:

• Learners can view GradeMark feedback in User Progress under Grades and in Content.
• Error and status messages are being improved upon.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the August Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform August 2018/10.8.4 Release Notes.

Additonally, 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
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.

D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model is different from the previous update model we had with Blackboard. With Blackboard we used a system of “Big Bang releases” (large updates released once or twice a year that required 24-48 hours of system downtime).

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 a few updates in the July 2018/10.8.3 release that were added to our system:

1) Assignments - New Text Submission type and workflow

Instructors can now create Text Submission assignment types in Brightspace. The new Text Submission type allows learners to create text documents for submission directly in Assignments using a rich text editor, eliminating the need to attach a file. Previously, learners had to create documents outside of Brightspace, then add them as attachments to their submissions within Assignments. This feature enables learners to work directly within Brightspace, allowing for a simpler workflow and standard file type submissions.

2) Turnitin - Improvements in the Turnitin Integration

Improvements have been made to version 2 of the Turnitin (TII) integration:

• Updates have been made to automate date management in TII. Start and End dates are no longer managed separately or prohibitive when learners make a submission in Brightspace and the TII dates are not set correctly.
• Learners have access to formative feedback left in GradeMark (even if there is no score, which can be found in the assignment submission folder, in User Progress, or in Grades).
• Feedback on Group Assignments is now provided to all learners in the group.
• Submissions made to a TII enabled assignment submission folder are pre-validated at time of submission to ensure they are within the file type and size requirements enforced by TII.
• Previously, when instructors used GradeMark to score or provide feedback, they had to sync each submission one by one to copy the score to Brightspace. A new configuration variable enables you to set up the default behavior of TII assignment submissions. Once set, scores can be copied automatically to Brightspace as a draft.

3) Quizzes – Removal of image and text information items

As images and text can be included in any type of question using the features of the HTML editor, there is no longer a need for image and text information items. Image and text information items in existing quizzes or question libraries convert into sections, and are still displayed to learners attempting the quiz. One section is created for each existing image or text information item. Once the conversion of existing image and text information items is complete, the ability to create new image and text information items is no longer available.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the July Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform July 2018/10.8.3 Release Notes.

Additonally, 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
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.

D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model is different from the previous update model we had with Blackboard. With Blackboard we used a system of “Big Bang releases” (large updates released once or twice a year that required 24-48 hours of system downtime).

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 a few updates in the June 2018/10.8.2 release that were added to our system:

1) Rubrics - Control rubric visibility for learners

This release introduces the ability to control rubric visibility for learners. This is useful for preventing learners from using preview rubrics as answer keys for activities. For example, an instructor can now describe assessment expectations in assignment instructions, hiding the associated preview rubric. Once the assignment is graded, the instructor releases the graded rubric as part of the learner's assessment details.

2) Grades – Linked discussion threads are now available

When assessing a discussion post in the Assess Post pop-up, an instructor can now see a link to the original discussion post. This allows instructors to see more information about why the user posted that reply, or what other learners replied to their post. Previously, there was no hyperlink, and instructors had to open Discussions and manually find the information.

3) Copy Course Components - Date Offset

When instructors copy the content of one course to another, old course dates are also copied over. This feature enables instructors to offset those old dates to dates relative to the new semester. This feature also eliminates the burden of tweaking delivery and due dates for their learners. When instructors copy course components in bulk, they can enable the offset to occur to the items copied into the course by days or hours.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the June Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform June 2018/10.8.2 Release Notes.

Additonally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about all continuous delivery updates.

Want more information?

Continuous Delivery release notes
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.

D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model is different from the previous update model we had with Blackboard. We used a system of “Big Bang releases” (large updates released once or twice a year) with Blackboard.

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 a few updates in the February 2018/10.7.10 Continuous Delivery release that were added to our system:

1) HTML Editor – Advanced Image Editing

The HTML Editor has been updated to include expanded image editing capabilities. Users can now edit images in place (including flipping, rotating, and adjusting brightness, sharpness, and color), edit the image description, and edit the size of the image.

2) Question Library – New Question Import Workflows

This feature adds new ways for instructors to search the Question Library when adding questions to a quiz. Using a slide in panel featuring the questions in a tree structure enables easy navigation of questions to be added to quizzes. The ability to sort questions by their source collection, question type, points value, and question text has also been added.

3) Quizzes - Due dates available

To improve the consistency of dates across tools in Brightspace, due dates are available for quizzes. This allows instructors to better communicate when quizzes are due, and better identify when a learner submits a quiz late. This change impacts when quizzes are marked as late. A quiz is now considered late if it is submitted after the due date is reached. Previously, ‘late’ referred to attempts submitted after the time limit of an ‘enforced time limit’ quiz was exceeded. Quizzes submitted after the due date are labeled ‘submitted late’. Quizzes submitted after the time limit is reached are now labeled as ‘exceeded time limit’.

If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the February Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform February 2018/10.7.10 Release Notes.

Additonally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about all continuous delivery updates.

Want more information?

Continuous Delivery release notes
View all the Brightspace training recaps
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.