I am writing this blog post as a follow up to my Brightspace Tip #277: Grade Book - Bonus Points blog post. I've received a few questions about bonus items in a weighted grading system. This blog post addresses how bonus items work in a weighted Grade Book.
Bonus refers to optional activities. Students are NOT penalized for skipping the activity. Points earned for Bonus activities will improve the student’s grade. Checking the Bonus option means that any points earned will be added onto the Final Calculated Grade. Bonus items appear in the Grade Book with a Star next to them.
Bonus grade items are not included in the maximum points for a category or final grade. They are added on top of the calculated grade. The Can Exceed option must be selected in order for users' grades to exceed the maximum points specified.
The Can Exceed and Bonus options can both be selected for a grade item.
If you allow an item to exceed 100% or include Bonus items, but do not check the box "Can Exceed" in the category and/or “Final Calculated Grade” settings, then extra credit will count but it will be limited to no more than 100% for the category or “Final Calculated Grade.”
If you create a “Bonus” item with no category, limit its weight to the most you wish to add to the final course percentage. For example, if you do not want to add more than 3% to any given final grade, limit the Bonus item’s weight to 3%. The bonus points can be any number of points because the weight makes the difference in the overall calculation.
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.
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 March 2023/20.23.3 release that were added to our system this month:
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.
Allow users to share awardsShare award to LinkedIn
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)
The User Settings menu with the current language highlighted.
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? The Quiz Question Converter is a tool, from the Brightspace Community, that you can use to add a bank of questions to the Quiz Question Library.
The Quiz Question Converter will create a CSV file for import into Brightspace. Quiz questions have to be in a special format in order to be imported into Brightspace.
Example of a multiple choice question reformatted for the Quiz Question Converter.
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 your quiz questions along with the feedback and hints all in the same import file.
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.
There are two ways to give extra credit in Brightspace. The first is to allow the grade item to exceed the maximum number of points for the assignment. The other option is to indicate the grade item is a “Bonus” item.
The differences between the two options are explained here:
Can Exceed means in grading an item you are able to add extra credit to the assignment, quiz, or any item in the Grade Book. You indicate this by checking the Can Exceed box.
The Can Exceed option can boost student’s score on activity making it feasible to earn more than 100%. For example, on a grade item where the maximum points is 10 and the Can Exceed option is selected, a grade of 12/10 is a perfect score with 2 extra credit points added.
When you choose Can Exceed for a grade item in the Grade Book, you should also select Can Exceed for the Category in which the grade item resides.
Bonus refers to optional activities. Students are NOT penalized for skipping the activity. Points earned for Bonus activities will improve the student’s grade. Checking the Bonus option means that any points earned will be added onto the Final Calculated Grade.
Bonus items appear in the Grade Book with a Star next to them.
Bonus grade items are not included in the maximum points for a category or final grade. They are added on top of the calculated grade. Bonus grade items cannot make users' grades exceed the maximum points specified, unless the Can Exceed option is selected.
The Can Exceed and Bonus options can both be selected for a grade item.
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.
Thanks to those of you who attended last week's Rethinking and Improving Online Tests in Brightspace workshop. The workshop, the fourteenth in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course and challenges you to rethink and improve your tests and exams for better learning assessment.
In case you missed last week’s training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “Online Tests” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
Pi (π) Day is celebrated on March 14th (3.14). Did you know the Brightspace Community has a PIE? Yes, there is a PIE (Product Idea Exchange) in the Brightspace Community. The PIE is a system that allows users of Brightspace to share their suggestions on how to make Brightspace better. I invite you to take a few minutes to explore the Brightspace Product Idea Exchange (PIE).
We’ve put together this collection of PIE ideas you can consider upvoting so that we can add our voice to the community to make the Brightspace experience better. You can also search the PIE for ideas to upvote or submit your own idea to the PIE. Let us know if you submit your own idea to the PIE so that we can upvote it. Here is a resource on navigating the PIE, just in case you need it.
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.
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 ClasslistThe 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.
Classlist page highlighting the Learner has Accommodations iconLearners 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.
An example of how Accommodations set for a learner in Classlist will show up in the Special Access for a quiz
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.
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 February 2023/20.23.2 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Intelligent Agents – Support for copying One-Time Run agents
This feature allows users to copy, export, and import One-Time Run agents and their schedules. This allows users who utilize course shells which are copied to multiple courses to schedule One-Time Run agents to run as needed in all destination courses.
Note: This functionality only applies to agents that have yet to be run. If the agent has been run, no schedule exists to copy.
Previously, agents that were configured with scheduling frequency One-Time Run would copy without a scheduling frequency.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
D9467 (Copy One-Time Run agents with their schedules)
2) Media Library – Support added for Bulk Actions
To improve the audio-video content management experience, this release adds the ability to perform bulk actions in Media Library.
Instructors can perform the following bulk actions:
Delete files
Restore files in Media Library > Recycle Bin
The bulk Delete action in Media Library.
Previously, instructors could only perform these tasks individually.
3) Quizzes – Add quiz availability dates to your Calendar
Instructors can now add quiz availability dates to the Calendar tool in the Availability Dates & Conditions menu in the new quiz creation experience. Instructors can select the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox when creating a quiz to add quiz availability dates to their Calendar. This feature provides instructors with more control over where Start Dates and End Dates appear to learners. Previously, only the Due Date was automatically added in the new quiz creation experience; and control over adding availability dates was limited to the Manage Dates tool. Instructors previously had to revert back to the legacy quiz creation experience to add quiz availability dates to their Calendar.
The following is a reminder of how Calendar events are generated when using either the legacy or new quiz creation experience:
If the Start Date and End Date are set, an End Date event is created.
If the Start Date is set, a Start Date event is created.
If the End Date is set, an End Date event is created.
The Availability Dates & Conditions menu displaying the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox.
4) Quizzes – Additional paging options
Two new paging options are available in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience. Instructors can choose to display 5 questions per page or 10 questions per page. The change optimizes instructors' options when building quizzes with page breaks.
This feature partially implements PIE item D9327: Manually add page breaks in the New Quiz design.
The new paging options in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience.
5) Rubrics – Keep track of changes to assessed rubrics with enhanced visual cues
To maintain the integrity of assessments, any rubric that has been used to assess a grade item is locked. However, there may be incidences where it is necessary to add or update the text on a rubric without changing any points, or without adding or deleting any criteria or criteria levels. The text on the rubric, including criteria names and descriptions, level names, and default feedback, can continue to be updated after the rubric has been locked. To increase the value of the Rubrics – Clarify grading criteria by editing text fields in assessed rubrics | New feature released in November 2022, you can now use enhanced visual cues to keep track of the changes you have made.
Note: It is not possible to edit the name of the rubric using this feature.
When an instructor makes a change to a previously assessed rubric, it is updated with a blue highlight and the text Edited in the lower right corner. When the user saves and closes the rubric, the edit indications no longer appear.
Note: It is only possible to make changes to assessed rubrics that are created in the current course or are copied from another course. Shared rubrics remain locked.
This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:
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.
Thanks to those of you who attended last week's Using VoiceThread to Enhance Lectures and Discussions workshop. The workshop, the thirteenth in our #LEX Advanced series, helps you to build on the skills you learned in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course. The focus of this workshop was to show you how you can use VoiceThread to enhance your online lectures and discussions through the addition of voice.
In case you missed last week’s training session or if you attended the training session and want to recap what was covered, a copy of the workshop recording and resources referenced in the workshop are available. You can find the workshop recording and other resources in support of the workshop on the CAT+FD wiki.
Additionally, if you did not get the opportunity to earn a digital badge for participating in the workshop, it's not too late to earn that badge. We have a corresponding “VoiceThread” module in the #LearnEverywhereXULA (#LEX) course that you can complete to earn a digital badge for this topic. The badge will count towards your #LEX Advanced certification.
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 and mobile number 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:
From your Personal Menu (located in the Minibar), select Notifications.
Select the email address and/or register the mobile phone number to which notifications will be sent.
Select the course activities for which you would like to receive notifications.
Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.
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.
