While we are announcing this more than a year before it will officially become the default, this New Content Experience has actually already been available for some time. Until now, Instructors who wanted to use this view in their course had to email Brightspace Support for it to be enabled on a course-by-course basis. Starting today, Instructors and other course builders will have the ability to enable or disable this feature in each of their courses without having to contact Brightspace Support. Importantly, Instructors who prefer the Classic Content Experience will not lose that access to that view. Even after the default is changed starting with Fall 2027 courses, Instructors will still have the option to change their courses back to the Classic Content view whenever they wish. This option allows us to improve the overall usability of Brightspace courses, while continuing to allow Instructors to control how their course content is shown to students.

Over the past few weeks we have been updating existing Content guides for instructors and studentsĚýand creating our New Content Experience Transition pageĚýto answer questions and share resources for the New Content Experience. We also have added new guides for features that are unique to this new Content view. We will share more updates on this throughout the year, and if anyone has any questions about this process, please reach out to Brightspace Support.

• Brightspace – Rubric Icon in Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes
• D2L Lumi Remix – Review in full-screen mode
• D2L Lumi Remix – Review side-by-side in split view
• D2L Lumi Study Support – Study Support settings included during course copy

Brightspace – Rubric Icon in Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes

Instructors can now identify which Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes include attached rubrics directly from activity pages, helping instructors and administrators quickly audit assessments, confirm rubric setup, and reduce configuration errors.

When a rubric is attached to an activity, a rubric icon appears beside the item in the Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes list pages. Written response questions in the Quiz Creation page also display a rubric indicator when a rubric is attached. Activities that include both rubrics and learning outcomes continue to display the rubric icon.

Figure: Rubric icon displayed beside assignment in Assignments list.

The rubric icon is informational only and does not link to the rubric, consistent with other informational icons such as release conditions and anonymous marking.

D2L Lumi Remix – Review in full-screen mode

A new full-screen option is available in . Users can now clickĚýView FullscreenĚýin the upper-right corner of theĚýModify Page Content With AIĚýwindow to expand the review pane to full-screen mode. Iteration controls remain available and functional in full-screen mode.

In full-screen mode, anĚýExit Fullscreen option appears in the upper-right corner, allowing users to return to the standard Remix view at the same iteration. Previously, users could review changes only in the right pane.

Figure: The View FullscreenĚýoption in theĚýModify Page Content with AIĚý·Éľ±˛Ô»ĺ´Ç·É.

Figure: Full-screen review mode with theĚýExit FullscreenĚý´Ç±čłŮľ±´Ç˛Ô.

D2L Lumi Remix – Review side-by-side in split view

Users can now review changes in using a split view. In full screen mode, users can clickĚýCompare in Split View to compare iterations side-by-side. Previously, users reviewed iterations individually and could not compare them side-by-side.

In split view, the source iteration appears on the left and the current iteration appears on the right so users can compare versions simultaneously. This workflow makes reviewing changes easier without switching between iterations. Users can clickĚýReturn to Single View to return to the single-pane review.

Figure: TheĚýCompare in Split ViewĚýoption in Lumi Remix full screen mode.

Figure: Split view showing the source iteration on the left and the current iteration on the right with theĚýReturn to Single ViewĚý´Ç±čłŮľ±´Ç˛Ô.

D2L Lumi Study Support – Study Support settings included during course copy

With this update, quiz configurations are included in course copy workflows. When a course is copied, quizzes with Study Support enabled retain their Study Support configuration in the destination course. This update reduces manual setup and helps administrators and instructors scale adaptive learning experiences across multiple courses.

Previously, quizzes copied to another course did not retain Lumi Study Support settings. Administrators and instructors had to manually re-enable Study Support for each quiz in the destination course.

References:

• Assignments – Group assignments now supported in Advanced Assessment
• Assignments – Improved error messages when uploading unsupported file types
• Grades – Improved navigation within the Enter Grades page
• Users – Improved filters by groups and sections

Assignments – Group assignments now supported in Advanced Assessment  

Group assignments are now supported in Advanced Assessment, enabling instructors to collaboratively evaluate groups of students in Brightspace using Co-Marking, Delegation, and Multi-Evaluator capabilities. This update leverages the existing Groups tool, allowing students to submit work as a team and receive shared feedback and grades through Advanced Assessment. 

The feature introduces the following key improvements: 

• Seamless group evaluation: instructors can allocate evaluators to groups rather than individuals. 
• Consistent experience: interface terminology and visuals have been updated to reflect group workflows: 
• References to Students are replaced with Groups, such as Allocate Evaluators to Groups. 
• Evaluation and feedback panel text reflects group-based workflows. 
• Improved workflow integrity: confirmation prompts prevent accidental evaluator setting loss when switching between group and individual assignments. 

To enable group assignments, instructors must first create groups in the Groups tool. This can be found by going to Course Admin > Groups. Then, when creating an assignment, they must select Group Assignment under Submission & Completion. 

Figure: Select Group Assignment under Assignment Type in the Submission & Completion settings to create a group-based assignment. 
 

To trigger the Advanced Assessment workflow, select evaluators in the Evaluation & Feedback dropdown section when creating an assignment.  

Figure: Click Select Evaluators under Evaluators in the Evaluation & Feedback settings to create an assignment. 

Additionally, the following changes were made in the Manage Allocations table: 

• New dropdown options are available to assign evaluators to groups. 
• Group member names are displayed in a separate pop-out. 

Figure: Use the Manage Allocations dialog to set a default evaluator allocation method and adjust group assignments. 
 

Figure: An example of group member names when viewed from the Manage Allocations dialog. 

When sections are enabled, a Sections filter appears in the Manage Allocations dialog. Instructors in the selected section display a small tag under their names to indicate the applied filter, and only groups containing students from the selected sections appear in the left-hand column. 

When switching between individual and group assignments after evaluator allocations are made, existing allocations are removed. A confirmation prompt appears to alert users. 

Assignments – Improved error messages when uploading unsupported file types 

Brightspace now provides clearer and more consistent error messages when students attempt to submit file assignments using unsupported file types. These improvements help students understand which file types are allowed and make it easier to correct submission issues. 

The updated messaging appears across assignment submission workflows and Activity Display Content pages using the New Content Experience, ensuring students receive appropriate guidance based on the context of their submission. 

Updated error messages for file submissions 

When a student attempts to upload a file with a restricted or unsupported file extension, Brightspace now displays more specific messages depending on the number of restricted file types configured for the assignment. 

Assignment submission page 

• If fewer than seven file types are restricted, students see a message listing the allowed file extensions, such as: 
  Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with the following file extensions: PDF, DOCX, or TXT. 
• If seven or more file types are restricted, students see a simplified message: 
  Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with allowed file extensions. 

Legacy content assignment submission page 

• If fewer than seven file types are restricted, students see a message listing the allowed file extensions. 
• If seven or more file types are restricted, students see a simplified message indicating that only allowed file extensions can be submitted. 

For file assignments, students can now also see the list of Allowed File Extensions. This list previously appeared only for File and Text assignments and is now available for File assignments as well. 

Improved feedback in Activity Display Content pages using the New Content Experience 

In Activity Display Content pages using the New Content Experience, students now receive clearer visual indicators when uploaded files are not allowed: 

• If a student uploads files with unsupported extensions, Activity Display identifies which uploaded files are not allowed. 
• If a file has no extension, or the file type cannot be detected, Activity Display notifies the student that the file type is unsupported. 
• If five or more files with unsupported extensions are uploaded, Activity Display displays a consolidated message indicating that multiple files are not allowed. 

Improved validation when configuring Custom File Types in Assignment Creation 

When instructors set Allowable File Extensions to Custom File Types during assignment creation, Brightspace now requires at least one file extension to be entered before the assignment can be saved.  

If the field is left blank, Brightspace displays a clear inline error message and prevents the assignment from being saved. This improvement helps instructors avoid invalid assignment configurations and reduces submission issues for students. 

Figure: New Assignment page displaying a validation error when Custom File Types is selected without specifying at least one allowable file extension. 

Grades – Improved navigation within the Enter Grades page 

The Enter Grades page now offers improved horizontal navigation, making it easier to work with large gradebooks. Instead of relying on a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page, instructors can use navigation arrows on either side of the gradebook, along with a scroll bar at the bottom of the grid, to navigate across grade columns. 

This update also improves how dropdown menus behave, preventing them from appearing underneath other fields such as usernames. 

Figure: Use the left and right arrows to scroll horizontally and view additional grade columns in the Enter Grades table. 

Previously, horizontal navigation relied on a scroll bar at the bottom of the page, which was not always visible unless users scrolled down.   

Users â€“ Improved filters by groups and sections 

With this release, user filters across multiple tools are updated to display Groups and Sections in separate dropdowns, improving navigation and scalability for courses. 

Previously, the View By filter combined groups and sections into a single dropdown. In courses with many groups or sections, this resulted in long, difficult-to-navigate lists. 

Figure: The previous View By filter shown in Classlist. 

Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Classlist. 

Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Enter Grades. 

Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Manage Special Access. 

The updated filter is available in the following areas: 

• Assignments: 
  • Filtering by users on the Manage Evaluators and Manage Special Access pages 
  • Filtering by users on the submissions page, and observed submissions page 
• Attendance: 
  • Filtering by users when viewing and entering attendance data 
• Class Progress: 
  • Filtering by users 
• Classic Content: 
  • Filtering by users on the Completion Summary tab 
  • Filtering by users on the Content Reports pages 
• Classlist: 
  • Filtering by users 
  • Emailing and filtering by users 
• Competencies: 
  • Filtering by users when grading an activity 
  • Filtering by users when viewing competencies, or viewing rubrics statistics 
• Discussions: 
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page 
  • Filtering by users when viewing Topics 
  • Filtering by users when assessing Topics 
• Grades: 
  • Filtering by users on the Export Grades page 
  • Filtering by users on the Enter Grades pages 
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page 
• Quizzes: 
  • Filtering by users on the Manage Special Access page 
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page
• Surveys:
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page 

References: 

Note: For-creditĚýcourses are not included in Brightspace Discover.ĚýFor those official courses, all enrollments still have to be done in YES. For more information on what courses are suitable for self-registration through Discover, please review theĚýBrightspace Acceptable Use Policy.Ěý

Brightspace Discover is a built-in course catalog that allowsĚý91şÚÁĎÍř faculty, staff, and studentsĚýtoĚýbrowse available courses and enroll directly within Brightspace. Instead of navigating multiple links or registration pages, Discover puts everything in one place.Ěý

Specifically, theĚýnewĚýDiscover experience offers several key benefits:Ěý

• Easier to Find Courses:ĚýDiscover presents courses in a searchable, filterable catalog. You can quickly browse by keyword or availability to find what you need.

• Clear Course Information Up Front:ĚýEach course listing includes a description and relevant details, so you know what the course is about before enrolling.

• Faster Self-Enrollment:ĚýWhen a course is open for self-enrollment, you can join it with just a click—no extra steps or separate registration forms.Ěý

• A More Consistent Brightspace Experience:ĚýBecause Discover is built directly into Brightspace, the process feels seamless and familiar, whetherĚýyou’reĚýaccessing it on a computer or mobile device.Ěý

As we move away from the older self-registration system, Brightspace Discover will become the way toĚýlocateĚýand self-enroll in eligible courses. This transition helps ensure a more modern, reliable, and user-friendly experience for everyone at 91şÚÁĎÍř.ĚýWe encourage you to exploreĚý the next time you’re looking for an interesting course for your own learning journey.Ěý

• Announcements – Images now appear in emailed Announcement notifications
• Assignments, Quick Eval – Improved usability for assistive technology users
• Classlist – Export Classlist details to CSV and improved Print output

Announcements – Images now appear in emailed Announcement notifications

When instructors create an announcement (or administrators create a global announcement) which includes in-line images, any instant notification or emailed copy of that announcement now includes those images in the body of the email. Previously, only images added as file attachments to the announcement were included with the notification email, and in-line images were not shown. 

Note: This update applies only to images. Videos embedded in announcements are not included in emailed announcement notifications. 

This change ensures that learners who rely on email notifications can see the same visual content that appears in the original announcement, helping them notice important information that may have previously been missed when images were omitted from the email version. 

Assignments, Quick Eval – Improved usability for assistive technology users 

As part of their ongoing commitment to accessibility and inclusive design, with this release, D2L has made several updates to enhance the experience for users relying on assistive technologies. 

• The Submissions page in Assignments: The dropdown menus for submissions, feedback, and results per page now include accessible labels. Previously, these menus only had titles, which some screen readers could miss. This change ensures that all users can access and understand these controls.

• The Submissions view in Quick Eval: The number of search results returned is now read aloud by assistive technology, making it easier for users to understand the scope of their results. 

 

Figure: Quick Eval interface displaying filtered submission results, with the number of returned results now read aloud. 
 

• The Activities view in Quick Eval: The status messages that show the number of search results are now accessible to screen readers, improving clarity and usability for all users.

Figure: Quick Eval interface showing filtered activity results based on a search query, with the number of returned results now read aloud. 
 

Classlist – Export Classlist details to CSV and improved Print output

Note: The Classlist export feature has currently been disabled by D2L. This feature is scheduled to be reenabled at a future date. 

The Classlist tool now includes a new option that allows instructors to export Classlist details to a CSV file. The new Export button provides a quick way to download all users, or a selected subset of users, along with the same details that are visible in the Classlist view. This update makes it easier for instructors to use Classlist information for administrative or offline processes outside of Brightspace.

Figure: A new Export button appears on the Classlist page. 

Enhancements to Print functionality

This release also includes improvements to the existing Print option in the Classlist. Printed Classlists now display additional information, including pronouns for users (when visible in the Classlist) and details about which course the printout originated from. These enhancements provide more complete context when Classlists are printed for in-person workflows or record keeping.

References:

• Assignments – Update to Group Assignment evaluation email option
• Awards – Control notifications for Awards earned
• Content – Using D2L Lumi to Generate Practice Questions
• Discussions – Enforce timely learner engagement with first post due dates
• Quizzes – Zero point quiz questions

Assignments – Update to Group Assignment evaluation email option

This release introduces enhancements to the Email Group button in Group Assignment Evaluation. Previously, the Email Group button appeared even in groups with no users, which caused confusion.

If a group has no members, the Email Group button no longer appears. The button now displays only when it is actionable, reducing confusion and improving interface clarity. This update enhances the overall experience by aligning with accessibility and usability best practices, ensuring that only relevant options are shown to users.
 

Figure: The Email Group button in Group Assignment Evaluation before this update if a group has no members.

Figure: The Email Group button no longer appears in Group Assignment Evaluation after this update if a group has no members.

Awards – Control notifications for Awards earned

In response to continued feedback for more flexibility with Awards, administrators can now control which courses trigger the pop-up notification when a user is issued a certificate or badge. By default, this variable is ON, meaning the pop-up notification will be shown to users when they earn an Award. If an instructor would like Awards in their course to not have this display pop-up, please contact 91şÚÁĎÍř Brightspace Support to adjust this setting for your course.

Figure: Notification presented to a user when they are issued an Award.

Note: This update does not change the existing functionality. If no action is taken, users will continue to receive the pop-up notification when an Award is issued. Changing the new configuration variable to OFF will prevent the pop-up notification from appearing for users within that course.

Content – Using D2L Lumi to Generate Practice Questions

Beginning this month, Instructors and other users with the ability to create content in Brightspace can use D2L Lumi to generate Practice Questions. These Practice Questions are part of the Creator+ toolset that was launched in November 2024. Using Lumi and Creator+, course builders can use existing course content to generate practice questions for students to engage with. Note that these practice questions only exist on pages in the Content section of a course and do not connect to Quizzes or another evaluation tool. Practice Questions are designed to be formative assessments that students interact with during their review of course materials. 

Figure: Example of the review screen shown to Instructors or course builders when inserting Lumi generated practice questions. 

Important note: Lumi is a generative AI product. As such, users should always review output for accuracy before inserting it into a course. D2L has built Lumi so that it only references information from content in your course or that you provide it, so it will not access the internet or any prior training data to generate content. Having said that, Instructors and other course builders are responsible for any information added to a course, so always review output from Lumi before adding it to a course.

To learn how to use Lumi Practice Questions in your course today, please refer to our guide on this topic. 

Discussions – Enforce timely learner engagement with first post due dates

To ensure timely learner participation, instructors can now specify a due date for the first post in a discussion topic. This supports course pacing, institutional policies, and consistent expectations for learner engagement. This mirrors the behavior of Assignments and Quizzes, making the course experience more consistent and predictable.

Previously, instructors could not set due dates for initial discussion posts, which made it difficult to assess timely engagement or enforce deadlines. This update improves grading accuracy, simplifies compliance with participation policies, and supports smoother course migrations from learning management systems that already include this functionality.

The first post due date follows the same behavior as Assignments and Quizzes:

• Due dates must be between the start and end dates of the discussion topic.
• Availability types (for example, Hidden, Visible with access restricted, Visible with submission restricted) are still respected.

Additional improvements include:

• Calendar tool integration: If Add availability dates to Calendar is selected, the first post due date appears in the calendar.
• Grading: Discussion due dates support automatic zero grading.
• Other enhancements:
  • In Manage Dates, first post due dates are visible and editable.
  • In the Discussion List, due dates appear next to each topic.
  • In the New Content Experience, Overdue and Late indicators appear when deadlines are missed. Classic content will continue to show the due date on the content topic.
  • In Quick Eval and Consistent Evaluation, first post due dates appear in evaluation workflows.
  • In the Work to Do widget, due dates appear.

Figure: Instructor view of a discussion topic with a first post due date.

Figure: Student view of a discussion topic with a first post due date in the New Content Experience.

Figure: Instructor view of completion status of a discussion post in the New Content Experience.

Quizzes – Zero point quiz questions

Instructors can now assign 0 (zero) points to a quiz question to collect non-graded information, for example, feedback or personal input. Previously, instructors were restricted from entering zero points for quiz questions.

This feature eliminates the need for workarounds such as assigning 0.01 points or manually adjusting scores after submission. Instructors can enter zero points in the points field for any question type within the quiz, ensuring that these questions do not contribute to the quiz’s total points. This feature is especially useful for gathering additional information from learners during a quiz or for implementing an “Honesty Code” question at the beginning of the quiz.

Figure: Example of a quiz question displaying a statement on academic integrity with answer options for True and False, and the points field set to zero.

References:

• Admin Tools — Enhanced user experience
• Announcements – Email a copy of an announcement to your Classlist
• Assignments – Advanced Assessment now shows when an evaluation has no designated evaluator
• Brightspace – Progress bar for uploading files
• Grades – Bulk edit now supports excluding items from final grade

Admin Tools — Enhanced user experience

For those users who have access to the Admin Tools menu, this month’s update brings a new look and feel to the menu. To improve administrator workflows, this release enhances the Admin Tools menu by providing Administrators with:

• A single column display
• Search and auto-complete functionality
• Pin and save tool functionality
• Alphabetized pinned items

The new Admin Tools menu tool also pins the following tools as a default:

• Courses
• External Learning Tools
• Homepage Management
• Navigation & Themes
• Org Unit Editor
• Organization Files
• Roles and Permissions
• Users

Previously, administrators could not search, filter, or pin tools in the Admin Tools menu.

Figure: Before this update, the Admin Tools menu displayed all tools in a single window, often requiring administrators to use Ctrl+F to search for and locate items.
 

Figure: The new Admin Tools menu allows Administrators to quickly search for tools, pin them to the Pinned tab, or review the All tab for a categorized list of tools for easy access.

Announcements – Email a copy of an announcement to your Classlist

In response to many requests over time, when Instructors create a new announcement in a Course Offering, they can now choose to send a copy to all users in their Classlist as an email, sent as if from the instructor themselves.

In the user interface for creating or editing an announcement, a new Send Email Copy checkbox now appears when an instructor creates or edits an announcement.

When an instructor selects the new checkbox, the system emails the content of the announcement to all users in the Classlist on publishing.

Users who are not subscribed to receive a notification for announcements will also receive an email, ensuring that important information contained within the announcement is delivered to every learner.

For announcements scheduled to publish at a later date, clicking the Send Email Copy checkbox emails the copy to users in the Classlist at the time that the announcement is published.

Assignments – Advanced Assessment now shows when an evaluation has no designated evaluator

A new alert in the assignments evaluation user interface now notifies instructors when an evaluation currently has no evaluator assigned, so they can quickly identify the problem and take steps to assign a new evaluator.

This update helps prevent unexpected evaluation errors and improves clarity, especially for institutions with large enrollments and multiple sections.

Previously, if an instructor used Advanced Assessment features to delegate evaluation to a user who later became unenrolled from a course, there was no way to identify which submissions needed to be assigned a new evaluator. Learner submissions could remain unevaluated for extended periods of time, causing confusion and errors.

Example of a warning message when an assignment has no assigned evaluator.
Figure: An example of a warning message when an assignment has no assigned evaluator.

Brightspace – Progress bar for uploading files

With this release, Brightspace improves visual consistency and accessibility by updating progress bar indicators across several tools. These improvements enhance support for screen readers and assistive technologies.

Visual indicators have been updated in the following areas:

• New Content Experience – Upload a file
• Quizzes – Add Existing Question
• Import Quiz Questions – Upload a file
• Quiz Study Support – Check if the quiz meets the study support requirements
• Generate Question – Choose a file to generate a question
• Content Uploader – Upload a file
• Manage Groups – Export progress bar
• Upload File (Classic Content) – Upload a file

Figure: An example of the progress bar updating as a user adds a module to the Table of Contents in D2L Brightspace, indicating the step-by-step progress.

Grades – Bulk edit now supports excluding items from final grade

Instructors can now use the Exclude from Final column when bulk editing grade items in the Grades tool. Selecting this option excludes the grade item from the final grade calculation. Previously, this setting was only available when editing individual grade items. This enhancement helps instructors manage large grade books more efficiently by allowing them to update multiple items at once.

Note: This option is only available in courses using the Points grading system. Courses using Weighted or Formula grading systems can exclude items by assigning a weight of 0 or excluding them from the formula, respectively.

Figure: In the Bulk Edit Items and Categories page, select Exclude from Final for each item to omit from the final grade.

Reference:

It’s important to break down what the LockDown Browser is and is not. It is a custom browser that students install and launch from Brightspace when they take a quiz or exam. When students use the LockDown Browser to take a Brightspace quiz or exam, this software prevents them from accessing any other websites, apps or programs, clipboard functions, printing, or screen recording or screenshot programs on their device. It works with Windows and Mac computers, iPads, and Chromebooks. It does not require the use of a webcam, as it does not monitor students through video. It also does not monitor what students do outside of their assessment time. Students launch the LockDown Browser from the Start Quiz page in Brightspace, and when they complete the quiz or exam, the program closes, and they return to Brightspace. The LockDown Browser is also flexible enough to let instructors allow limited access to tools like a calculator or specific webpages, if they choose. As you can see below, students using the LockDown Browser still see the same quiz design and layout as they would within Brightspace directly.

Figure: The student view of a Brightspace quiz in the Respondus LockDown Browser.

In a time when there are countless distractions for students, using a tool like the Respondus LockDown Browser helps students focus on the task at hand and helps instructors accurately measure student assessment. If you are an instructor who wants to learn how to enable the LockDown Browser for a quiz in your course, please refer to our online instructor guide for more information. If you are a student who is required to use the LockDown Browser on a quiz or exam, you can refer to our student guide on how to install this tool. If you have any other questions about the Respondus LockDown Browser, or anything else related to Brightspace, feel free to contact our Brightspace Support Team today.

• Assignments
• Grades
• Quizzes

Assignments — Annotation availability awareness enhancements in assignment creation 

Annotations are only supported for File and File or Text Assignment Types. They are not supported for Text, Observed, or On Paper Assignment types. In response to requests from instructors for clearer indicators of which types of assignments support Annotations, we’ve enhanced the assignment creation experience with better tool tips, visual cues, and on-screen guidance. To this end, a new informational tool tip now appears beside the existing Annotations check box in the interface for creating assignments. When you hover over the new information ( ? ) button, a tool tip displays Annotation Tools help. 

Figure: New Annotation Tools help tool tip. 

Clicking the information ( ? ) button opens a pop-up window that explains what the Annotations tool does, and which types of assignments you can use it with. The text in the new window is as follows: 

Additionally, to make it easier to immediately understand whether you can use Annotations on an assignment, the Annotations check box now appears disabled (grayed out) for non-file type assignments, such as Text, Observed, or On Paper assignments. 

Figure: Visual cues indicate when Annotation Tools are not available for an assignment type. 

When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because the type is Text, On paper, or Observed in person, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message: Annotation settings are locked for submissions that are not files. 

Figure: New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because the assignment type is not File or File or Text. 

When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because learners already made submissions while the setting was disabled, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message: Annotation settings are locked after submissions are received. 

Figure: New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because learners made submissions for the assignment while Annotations were disabled. 

Assignments — Improved assignment type selection interface 

A usability improvement makes it easier to select the correct assignment type when you create an assignment. Previously, instructors used radio buttons to specify whether an assignment was for a Group or an Individual. 

Figure: Previous interface showing radio buttons for selecting Assignment Type. 

Starting with the October Brightspace update, a new drop-down menu for selecting the Assignment Type modernizes the interface and lays the groundwork for future enhancements to the Assignments tool. 

Figure: New drop-down menu for selecting Assignment Type. 

Figure: New drop-down menu with Individual Assignment Type selected. 

Grades – Comments and Assessments column always visible to learners 

Learners can now always see the Comments and Assessments column in Grades, ensuring that feedback and links to assessments are consistently visible. The column is no longer conditionally displayed, supporting additional links from tools such as Rubrics, Assignments, and Quizzes. This update supports future enhancements that add information to learner feedback in Grades. Previously, the column only appeared when a grade item included feedback. 

Figure: Comments and Assessments column now appears consistently to learners in Grades. 

Quizzes – Hide Quiz Question Points 

Instructors can now hide the point value for quiz questions to ensure learners focus on all questions equally, without the risk of inferring the number of correct answers based on point value. Previously, point values for quiz questions were always visible to learners. 

The new feature helps with the following: 

• Avoiding Hints in Multi-Select and Written Response Questions – Hiding point values prevents learners from guessing the number of expected answers based on the score, promoting a more consistent effort across all question types. 

• Diagnostic Assessments – This option is beneficial for assessments like subject knowledge audits or start-of-term baseline knowledge checks, where the purpose is to gauge understanding rather than focus on scoring. 

• Encouraging Equal Effort Across Questions – By hiding point values, learners are less likely to prioritize certain questions over others based on points. Hiding point values ensures a balanced effort and enables the inclusion of control or bonus questions without indicating their significance. 

The new option is available within the Timing & Display section when creating or editing a quiz.  

Figure: From the Edit Quiz page, under Timing & Display, select Hide question point values to prevent learners from seeing individual question scores. 

Quizzes – Improved visibility for insufficient question pools 

With this release, instructors can now see a status indicator when a question pool has insufficient questions, allowing them to resolve the issue before learners begin a quiz attempt. 

If a quiz attempts to draw more questions than are available in a question pool (for example, 12 questions requested but only 10 available), the interface now displays a warning indicator. Previously, no visual indicators identified when question pools contained too few questions, and these could be imported or copied without warning. 

This update adds visual warnings in the following areas: 

• The Grading view: If learners have already completed a quiz containing an affected pool, messaging displays in the grading evaluation experience. 

Figure: When grading a quiz, an error message appears indicating the question pool is exhausted. Instructors can review answer selections and enter a grade or feedback. 

• The Manage Quizzes page: A status indicator flags quizzes with insufficient question pools. 

Figure: On the Manage Quizzes page, a red warning icon appears beside a quiz name. Instructors can review quiz settings to resolve the issue. 

• The Edit Quiz page (Quiz Builder): A warning icon appears directly on the affected question pool.  

Figure: The Edit Quiz page displays a Question Pool with an error state, labeled Invalid Question Pool. 

• The Course Import and Course Copy workflows: Validation now prevents importing or copying pools with an insufficient number of questions. 

References: 

 Print Quizzes Functionality Added

This month, D2L adds a long requested feature to Brightspace – printing quizzes. With this update, Instructors will be able to select a Print option via the dropdown list of options for each quiz. This will allow Instructors to create different versions of the quiz with shuffled questions, select what formatting options are listed on the quiz, and print an Answer Key. For more information on this update, please review the video below and our new Printing Brightspace Quizzes guide. 

Update to Lessons View Display and Student Experience

This month also brings several new updates to the Lessons View formatting of the Content section of any Brightspace course. For more information on what the Lessons View content view is, please refer to our “What is Lessons View?” help page. With this update, the following improvements come to courses with Lessons View enabled:

1. Better display of student completion progress
   • Students can now track the completion of content topics within a module by viewing a progress indicator next to each topic. This feature brings several improvements to help students easily identify remaining topics in a module. The updates include:
     • Check marks for completed items.
     • Fractional summary of the learner’s progress for each content module.
     • Due dates are now displayed on a single line, with a tooltip appearing on hover for additional details.
       
        
2. Unlimited levels of depth for content units and and folders
   • This allows Instructors or course designers to add as many nested units and folders as they wish to a course. While this does give more freedom to the course design process, we do encourage keeping in mind that more nested units and folders may be more confusing to students. 
      
3. Updated look and feel to Lessons View
   • This update brings a new, more condensed view to courses with Lessons View. This allows more text and navigational content to be visible on one page while still keeping the more stylish look and feel found in courses with Lessons View enabled. 
     

References:

Assignments – Flexible text or file submission options for enhanced student choice 

This feature enables instructors to create a new assignment type that accepts submissions in the form of an uploaded file, text entered in Brightspace Editor, or both. 

To create this new type of assignment, instructors must go to the New Assignment page, expand the Submission & Completion panel, open the Submission Type dropdown, and select the new File or text submission option. 

Figure: The new File or text submission option appears in the Submission Type dropdown on the New Assignment page. 

 
Previously, the available Submission Types were: File submission, Text submission, On paper submission, and Observed in person. 

For these assignments, students can choose how they want to demonstrate their learning. For example, if the assignment is an essay, students can upload a file, paste a link to an external file in the text box, or type the entire essay into the text box. Students will also see an expanded Brightspace Editor for text submissions on the assignment submission page. 

Figure: The new Submit Assignment page for students, showing the option to submit files and the option to enter text in Brightspace Editor. 

Quizzes – Full HTML Editor for Question Feedback 

This update introduces the full HTML editor for question-level feedback in Quizzes, enhancing the instructor experience and aligning it with the editors already available for Attempt Feedback and Overall Feedback, including support for the equation editor and file upload features. 

Previously, instructors could provide feedback on individual questions using only the inline HTML editor, which offered limited formatting and functionality. With this update, instructors can now: 

• Upload files securely 

• Insert equations 

• Use advanced formatting and media tools 

Figure: The question Feedback editor now includes extended options. 

Quizzes – Reopen a submitted quiz attempt  

Instructors can now reopen the most recently submitted quiz attempt by a student, allowing them to resume from where they left off. The new feature supports scenarios where students run out of time or pass the quiz end date, reducing frustration from auto-submissions and improving overall quiz management flexibility. 

Previously, instructors could not reopen a submitted quiz attempt. This update introduces the ability to return quiz attempts to an unsubmitted state and adjust time limits if needed. 

Figure: Reopen a quiz attempt from Manage Quizzes by selecting an attempt and clicking Reopen. 

Figure: In the Reopen Quiz Attempt dialog, instructors can add extra time and confirm the reopened attempt. 

References: 

Assignments – Retract feedback in bulk on the Submissions page

The Submissions page in the Assignments tool now aligns with Discussions and Quizzes, allowing instructors to retract feedback in bulk. This update improves consistency and eliminates the need to use multiple tools for retraction tasks. Previously, instructors could only retract feedback individually in the Assignments tool.

The bulk Retract Feedback option allows instructors to choose how many learners to retract published feedback from.

Selective retraction is also supported. Instructors can select users by checking the box next to their names and then clicking More Actions > Retract Feedback.

The More Actions > Retract All option retracts feedback for all users, regardless of which users are selected.

Figure: From the Submissions page, click More Actions and select Retract All to remove published feedback in bulk.

After clicking Retract All, instructors are notified of the number of evaluations to be retracted and must confirm by clicking Retract.

Figure: A confirmation dialog displays the number of learners affected. Click Retract to proceed or Cancel to exit.

Quick Eval – Evaluate learners across Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes

This release enables instructors to quickly iterate through their list of submissions in Quick Eval even if those submissions are sourced from different activity types or courses. For example, an instructor has activities to grade in Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes and has been assigned items that appear in Quick Eval Submissions. The instructor directly accesses each submission to evaluate the items instead of navigating back to Quick Eval and going into each item again.

Previously, instructors had to click into each submission to view the evaluation and then click Back to Quick Eval to go to the Submissions view and then find the next submission to evaluate. With this release instructors are redirected to the next evaluation as listed in the Quick Eval.

Figure: From the Submissions view, select a submission and click on the linked learner’s name. In the activity evaluation page, use the forward and backward arrows to toggle to the next or previous learner to evaluate.

Quizzes – Updated Learner Submission View

The quiz submission page now features a sleeker, modernized layout. The previous banner image has been replaced with a checkmark icon, along with other visual updates.

Figure: The quiz submission page before this update.

Figure: The quiz submission page after this update.

References:

Quizzes – New Quiz Evaluation Experience  

This month D2L brings a new and updated evaluation experience to quizzes. The new evaluation experience brings the interface of grading quizzes in line with the evaluation interface for Assignments and Discussions.  

This tool was originally available in limited formats as a pilot starting in the fall, but it will now be available to all courses in Brightspace. This new evaluation experience will be opt-in starting with the April 2025 release but will become the default and only option beginning in July 2025.  

For more information about this new evaluation experience, please refer to our recent blog post on this topic.  

Figure: The new quiz evaluation experience is enabled by default on the quiz evaluation page. Click Turn it off to revert to the classic experience or Leave it on to continue using the new experience. 

Assignments – Update to assignment annotations software version 

With this release, the software that powers annotations in the Assignments tool is updated to the latest version, Nutrient 1.0.0 (formerly called PSPDFKit). This version update resolves the following defects: 

• WCAG/A11y layout issues in the Layout tool are now resolved. 
• Cursor behavior now works as expected. Previously, the cursor would return to the start when typing notes in Assignment Annotations. 
• All formatted annotation text now saves correctly. Previously, italicized and bold text elements would not save. 
• The annotations software no longer crashes on iPad OS versions 16 and below. 

Additionally, minor UI updates are introduced in Nutrient 1.0.0. In the previous version of PSPDFKit, the following buttons displayed tooltips when hovering with a cursor: 

• Next Page 
• Previous Page 
• Page Mode buttons 
• Page Transition buttons 
• Page Rotation buttons 

The previous version also highlighted the Search button when clicked. 

Now, in Nutrient 1.0.0, the buttons tooltips are removed, and the Search button no longer highlights when selected. 

Figure: In the previous version of the UI, annotations buttons appeared with a tooltip. In the updated version, the tooltip is removed. 

Figure: In the previous version of Annotations, the Search bar appeared highlighted when clicked. Highlighting is no longer visible in the updated version. 

Grades – Access Quiz Feedback 

This new feature allows learners to quickly access quiz attempt feedback from the Grades page. 

Figure: On the Grades page, click View Quiz Attempts to access feedback on quiz attempts. 

Previously, learners could view quiz attempt feedback only in the Quizzes tool, depending on how the instructor configured the review process. This option remains available. 

Figure: Before, learners could access quiz attempt feedback only through the Quizzes tool on the Quiz List page. 

Lessons View Content Experience – Improved navigation between content topics 

With this release, the Lessons View Content Experience now includes navigation buttons for easier movement between content topics. Instructors and learners can now use these buttons to move sequentially between topics in the course content structure, following the established sort order. Previously, navigation buttons were only available in Classic Content Experience. 

Figure: From the Content tool, use the navigation buttons in the top-right corner to move between topics. 

References: 

D2L, the company that makes Brightspace, has introduced a new update to the Quiz grading interface. As this update is released in early April 2025, grading workflows are now optimized in the quiz evaluation experience to improve instructor productivity. The new experience provides an updated look and feel to your grading workflow with a focus on optimizing instructor productivity by making the quiz evaluation experience easier to use. The look and feel are consistent with the updated experiences for Assignments and Discussions that were released in recent years.

Figure: Instructors can click the down arrow on the top right of the page to expand the dialog used to turn on or turn off the new quiz evaluation experience. 

Figure: Click the arrow to view the message for enabling or disabling the new quiz evaluation experience. 

Users can go back and forth between the two experiences for the next couple of months before this experience becomes the default and only option in July 2025. When turning off the new experience users are provided an option to provide feedback to D2L around why they are turning off the new experience. D2L is monitoring this feedback and will use it when making decisions regarding future improvements to the new quiz evaluation experience.  

After instructors have opted into the new experience, they can scroll between users and select the quiz attempt they want to evaluate for the user. 

Figure: In the new quiz evaluation experience, instructors can use the right and left arrows to select the learner and then select the quiz attempt they want to evaluate from the drop-down list. 

Get familiar with the new quiz evaluation experience 

The look and feel of the new quiz evaluation experience is consistent with the Assignments and Discussions evaluation experience, making the experience familiar to users. 

Figure: Overview of the new quiz evaluation experience. 

1. The top left panel shows the name of the quiz, the name of the course, and the name of the learner. The Attempt drop-down allows you to select from multiple attempts (if the quiz allows for that) or a Completion Summary. You will also find a summary of the attempt details. The Filters drop-down allows you to filter Quiz Results to show questions that are Pending evaluation or Retaken questions only.
2. The Quiz Results section shows the quiz attempt details like the quiz questions and indications for the correct answer.
3. Use the top navigation to scroll between learners. The Attempt Grade is autocalculated with the option to manually override it. Additionally, you have the Attempt Feedback area to provide overall feedback to learners.

On the left panel, evaluators can filter by Pending evaluation or Retaken questions only, and can view attempt details, quiz questions, and answers. From this area, evaluators can leave feedback for specific quiz sections. 

Figure: The Filters drop-down enables evaluators to see questions that are Pending evaluation, or Retaken questions only. 

On the right panel, evaluators can enter or review the grade and feedback for the quiz attempt, or use other quiz management options, such as Edit Quiz, Preview Quiz, Reset Evaluation, and Quizzes Event Log, in the Evaluation Options menu. 

Figure: Instructors can update the Attempt Grade, add Attempt Feedback, or use the Evaluation Options menu to Edit Quiz, Preview Quiz, Reset Evaluation, or view the Quizzes Event Log. 

We hope that you find the new quiz evaluation experience helpful in optimizing your grading workflow. Watch for future updates of exciting new features within the new quiz evaluation experience. 

References: 

Brightspace Editor – Updated Accessibility Checker icon 

This release updates the Accessibility Checker icon in Brightspace Editor to improve user recognition and understanding.

Figure: The updated Accessibility Checker icon is now a human figure within a circle, replacing the eye symbol with a check mark for better clarity.

Figure: The previous Accessibility Checker icon of an eye and checkmark.

Class Progress – Change default to hide grade distribution charts

The default display settings in the Class Progress section of a course now hide box plots of class grade distribution for graded items. Instructors can still enable this feature, but it is disabled by default to better match expectations of what data is visible to students.

Figure: Before this recent change, a box plot like the one shown above would automatically be visible to students when they looked at grades for activities like Assignments, Quizzes, or Discussions. These graphs can still be enabled by the course Instructor under Class Progress settings if they wish. 
 

Lessons View Content Experience – Add topic descriptions to provide context for activities

Instructors can now add topic descriptions in the Lessons View Content Experience to set expectations and provide context for learners. These descriptions appear directly on the activity page to guide learners. Additionally, they are visible to the Search bar, enabling learners to find the correct topic more easily.

Instructors can edit topic descriptions from the activity page using the (…) Options menu and selecting Edit.

Descriptions can now be found in the following topic types: 

• LTI links
• Web links, including Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Capture.
• Files, including media files but excluding HTML files.
• SCORM, including imported content and content from Learning Object Repository (LOR).
• LOR items, such as URLs and files.

Figure: The topic descriptions appear alongside the content on the activity page.

Quizzes – Filter Quiz Statistics by Section or Group

Quiz statistics now include filters for Sections or Groups, allowing instructors to analyze specific sections and groups effectively. The new filter improves analytics for courses with large class sizes and multiple instructors.

Figure: On the View Statistics page, select the desired filter option and click Apply. The filters apply to all three tabs: User Stats, Question Stats, and Question Details.

Rubrics – Streamline grading with minimum or maximum score for ungraded rubric criteria

This feature updates the instructor workflow of evaluating a rubric and providing feedback to learners. Now, instructors can quickly assess all ungraded Rubric criteria and then go back through to add feedback where necessary. To provide a more streamlined experience for instructors using analytical type rubrics for assessments in the Consistent Evaluation experience for assignments, discussions, and written response quiz questions, the instructor can automatically set ungraded levels to a minimum or maximum value.

From a drop-down beside the rubric name in each assessment pop-out, or from a context menu in Consistent Evaluation, there are two options:

• Set Ungraded to [top rubric level name]: where all ungraded levels within this rubric are set to the maximum value using the top level of the rubric.
• Set Ungraded to [lowest rubric level name]: where all ungraded levels within this rubric are set to the minimum value using the bottom level of the rubric.

When an instructor selects an option, a confirmation dialog appears to advise of the bulk action and provides an option to undo the update.

Previously, instructors were required to click individual criteria, which, for large rubrics, was a time-consuming task involving many clicks to set the rubric score to 100%.

Figure: In Assignments and Discussions, click to open the context menu beside the rubric name to choose an option for all ungraded criteria.

Figure: In Consistent Evaluation, click the drop-down menu beside the rubric name to choose an option for all ungraded criteria.

References:

These updates are in addition to the big Creator+ update we launched a few weeks ago. For more information about that, refer to our page on that toolset and the exciting updates that come with it.

Topics covered in this update include:

• Consistent Evaluation – Learner View of Grade in Assignments and Discussions experiences 
• Lessons View Content Experience – Manage student progress by enabling learners to manually complete topics
• Lessons View Content Experience – Locate modules or topics using search functionality
• Rubrics – The Criteria descriptions limit increased to 500 characters

Consistent Evaluation – Learner View of Grade in Assignments and Discussions experiences 

Consistent Evaluation enables instructors to evaluate learner submissions to Assignments and Discussions using an improved and optimized experience. With this release, the Consistent Evaluation experience is updated to provide instructors the ability to view the grade scheme that is applied to learners in real time, based on the grade they enter during the evaluation process. For example, if the grade scheme applied to a course is a Letter Grade, instructors can view that letter grade instantly from the consistent evaluation experience. The letter grade is based upon the grade entered during an evaluation. The instructor can also choose to Hide Learner View of Grade or Show Learner View of Grade directly from the evaluation experience. 

Previously, instructors could not view the applied grade scheme grade when evaluating a submission. Instructors would have to save the grade they entered during their evaluation, and then navigate to Grades to compare the grades entered in the evaluation experience to the applied grade scheme grade.

Figure: With this update, instructors can refer to the applied grade scheme displayed under Learner View of Grade. This view updates in real time as the instructor enters a grade in the Overall Grade field.

Figure: The instructor can select Hide Learner View of Grade from the Evaluation Options menu (…). Instructors can select Show Learner View of Grade to make the learner view visible again.

Lessons View Content Experience – Manage student progress by enabling learners to manually complete topics

In the Lessons View Content Experience, instructors can now set topic completion criteria as Automatic or Manual on the Edit page for the following content types:

• LTI links for integrated tools like Perusall, Gradescope, or Top Hat.
• Web links, including Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and Capture
• Course files, including media and HTML files
• SCORM content, including imported, content service, and LOR
• LOR links, including URLs and files

In the Lessons View Content Experience, when instructors create new topics using the Manual by learner option, learners see a Mark as Complete button at the bottom of the content page. Previously, instructors had to use the Classic Content experience to change a topic’s completion type to either Manual by learner or Automatically when opened.

If instructors previously created topics in Classic Content Experience, and set the completion criteria to Manual by learner, learners were unable to manually mark content as complete, which limited accurate tracking of their progress. With this update, all topics with the Manual by learner completion criteria can now see the Mark as Complete button. The ability for learners to manually mark a topic as complete enables instructors and data administrators to track completion more accurately. After the topic is complete, the button is no longer available and the messaging beside the button indicates that they have marked it complete.

Figure: Expand the Completion area of the Edit topic view, then select Manually by learner.

Figure: If the instructor has set a topic for manual completion, learners see Mark as Complete at the bottom of the topic.

Lessons View Content Experience – Locate modules or topics using search functionality

Users can now search through the table of contents in the Lessons View Content Experience. Using the new search field in the table of contents, users can locate modules or topics via their titles and descriptions in the same way they currently can in the Classic Content experience.
 

Figure: Enter your search term in the Search titles, descriptions field to find modules and topics.

Rubrics – The Criteria descriptions limit increased to 500 characters

To support larger criteria descriptions, administrators and instructors can now add up to 500 characters to the description of the criteria when creating and editing rubrics. This new limit provides more context about learning expectations. Previously, the Criteria description field was limited to 256 characters.

Full descriptions of criteria are available in the Learner view.

For instructors, when evaluating, up to three lines are displayed. To display the complete text, they must click more.

Figure: Click more to display the complete text for the rubric description.

References:

Groups – Restore groups and categories

A new Recycle Bin option is available in the Groups tool, enabling instructors (or similar roles) to restore individual groups or entire group categories within a course offering. When you restore groups, existing enrollments and lockers are also reinstated (if present). Any activities linked to the restored groups, such as discussions or assignments, can then be individually restored through their respective restore pages.

Note: Groups and categories deleted before this feature was introduced on November 15, 2024 do not appear in the Groups Recycle Bin. This update only applies to groups and categories deleted after November 15, 2024

Figure: Click Recycle Bin to view the deleted groups and group categories.

Figure: Select the check box for a group or group category and click Restore.

Lessons View Content Experience – Module depth increased to support up to five nested levels

With this release, the Lessons View Content Experience now supports nested modules up to a depth of five levels. This allows instructors and administrators to more easily migrate content or courses with complex module structures.

Additionally, this release improves the course migration process to ensure that course content is accurately displayed in the Lessons View Content Experience, reducing the need for manual adjustments post-import.

Previously, the nesting limit for modules was set to three levels. Users attempting to migrate from Classic with courses with a nesting depth of greater than three levels were prompted to modify their course structure prior to moving to the Lessons View Content Experience.

UPDATE – November 21, 2024 – D2L has identified an issue with this feature rollout and at this time this feature is not available. We will update this post again once this issue is resolved. 

References:

Assignments – Update to assignment annotations toolbar

As part of the September update, the unsupported Bookmarks tool is disabled and the Bookmarks option in annotations is removed to avoid confusion. This update also fixes defects and prevents further defects related to PSPDFKit being out of date. Previously, instructors could click Bookmarks and add bookmarks to the document. However, added bookmarks were not saved after refreshing the page.

Figure: Before this update, instructors could click Bookmarks to add bookmarks to pages of a PDF. However, these bookmarks were not saved.

Figure: After this update, Bookmarks is removed.

Brightspace Editor – New path detection warning and configuration variable

A warning now appears when a user attempts to add an object (such as a link or image) in Brightspace Editor that has a path outside of the current course offering. The warning tooltip explains that if the item is copied to another course, the incorrect path would also be copied, potentially preventing learners from accessing the object. This new warning alerts the content creator to ensure a consistent experience for learners. 

Note: Files shared from Public Files or external URLs are not affected by this configuration and will not trigger the warning.

Figure: The path detection warning and tooltip appear in the Brightspace Editor.

Lessons View Content Experience – HTML Document renamed to Page

To simplify terminology and make clearer the type of content being created, the HTML Document content type is renamed to Page in the New Content Experience. This change of terminology is used on the Create New page and is applied to all courses using the Lessons View format.

References:

• Section Merges
• Unofficial Enrollment Requests 
• Enabling Lessons View
• Creating Non-SIS Courses 
• 1-on-1 Virtual Consults 

Section Merges  

If an instructor is teaching multiple sections of the same course in the same term (eg – HIST 1010-01 2024F and HIST 1010-02 2024F), then it can often be tedious to manage both courses in separate course pages in Brightspace, especially if the same content and activities exist in both courses. The EdTech team can help by combining the course shells for the different sections into one Brightspace course. This allows for easier management of course resources and activities, but it does also mean that all parts of a course are combined, including the course gradebook. For more information about this topic, you can refer to our guide on section merges. If you have questions about section merges, or if you want us to complete a section merge for you, contact the EdTech team at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu.  
 

Unofficial Enrollment Requests 

While all official enrollments such as students, TAs, and/or Instructors of Record for courses have to go through the University Registrar’s Office, the EdTech team can help with unofficial enrollments in courses as needed. Examples of this would be if an instructor wants to show a colleague their Brightspace course, or if they want to add someone to a past course that has already ended. If you’re an Instructor who wants someone added to their course as an unofficial enrollment, contact our team at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu.  
 

Enabling Lessons View 

Lessons View is an alternative format for the Content page in a Brightspace course. This view makes the Content section of a course look more like a website with HTML pages than the traditional Content view. For an example of what this Lessons View looks like, see the image below or watch our short video. You can also add yourself to the to see more detailed examples of what this view can look like. 

Image: Example of a lessons view content module. 

If you think Lessons View is something you want to try in your course, contact the EdTech team at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu to have us enable that for your specific course(s).  
 
 

Creating Non-SIS Courses 

In addition to the many traditional, for-credit courses that are automatically created when they become available for registration in YES, Brightspace is also home to many unofficial programs called Non-SIS courses. These courses are ones that are manually created by the EdTech team and must fit within our Acceptable Use Policy. Instructors can contact the EdTech team to create these Non-SIS courses throughout the year, but the fall is a particularly busy time for these courses as they often take the form of new student orientation programs or Instructor and/or TA working groups. If you need a Non-SIS course created for you, first make sure it fits within our Acceptable Use Policy and then email our team at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu.  
 
 

1-on-1 Virtual Consults 

In addition to our email and phone support offerings, the EdTech team also provides opportunities for 30 minute 1-on-1 virtual consultations over Zoom with a member of our team. Topics for these consultations are usually ones that are difficult to explain or that need real-time explanations and walkthroughs. If you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with a member of our team, email us at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu for more information and to get a link to our scheduling system.  

If you have questions about any of these services, or any other questions about Brightspace, be sure to contact the EdTech team for support. You can find information about our support options at our Brightspace Support webpage and can always email us at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu. 

Assignments – Assessment workflows enhanced

Advanced Assessments help instructors and administrators to better manage courses with large class sizes and multiple evaluators, delegate and manage evaluator workflows, and reduce bias in marking.

Advanced Assessments allows instructors to:

• Assign multiple evaluators to evaluate a single assignment submission when creating or editing assignments.
• Choose which evaluators can publish grades for the assignment from the Assignment tool by setting them as publishers.
• Match evaluators to students.
• Choose from two multi-evaluator workflows: One Shared Evaluation (Co-Marking) or Multiple Individual Evaluations.

For more information, refer to the  video below.

Prior to the release of Advanced Assessments, there was no ability to create and evaluate delegated co-mark or multi-evaluate assignments.

With this release, Advanced Assessment workflows for Assignments are available in all programs and courses in Brightspace. New features that are added to Advanced Assessments with the August release include:

• Turnitin integrations
• Accessibility improvements, including assistive technologies for keyboard-only users

Refer to D2L’s blog post for details on how these updates can work for you in your courses. 

Assignments – Email status message no longer displayed after an assignment submission

With this release, the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message is no longer displayed for students in the Email Status field after they submit an assignment. However, when a student submits an assignment, an email as a receipt of the submission is still sent to them.

Figure: The Review Assignment Submission page with the Email Status field.

Figure: The Review Assignment Submission page without the Email Status field.

Previously, even if a confirmation email was not sent to a student, they also received the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message in the Email Status field on their Submission History page.

Discussions – Consistent deletion and restoration workflows for group-restricted discussions

This release updates the deletion and restoration workflow for discussions associated with a group. When a user deletes a group, the associated activities, including discussions, are also deleted. These discussions cannot be restored unless their associated group is restored first.

Once the group has been restored, associated discussions can be restored using the Discussions restore workflow. This updated workflow is consistent with other group-associated activities such as assignments and lockers.

Previously, discussions that were deleted when their associate group was deleted could nominally be restored independently using the Discussions restore workflow. In practice, restoring these discussions resulted in errors and other issues.

Discussions – Reading View improvements 

To improve the user experience for students, this release introduces several updates to the student Reading View in Discussions. These improvements include the following:

• The Start New Thread button is duplicated at the bottom of the page when viewing a topic, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top of the page.
• The Add Attachments section is opened by default when creating a new post or new topic. Previously students had to open the section manually to add attachments.
• The Add Attachments section is wider on screen when students create a new thread.

Mastery View – Student sorting improvements

The sort component for student names in Grade book Mastery View is updated to improve consistency with other areas of Brightspace and to resolve minor visual issues with the previous sort functionality. Instructors can now sort student names in any of the following orders:

• Last name alphabetically
• Last name reverse-alphabetically
• First name alphabetically
• First name reverse-alphabetically

Figure: Click Learner to view the sorting options in Mastery View.

References:

• Emails queued as background task when sent to large numbers of recipients
• Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions
• Distinguish between root content modules with custom colors in Lessons View
• SMS Notifications – End of Life

Email – Emails queued as background task when sent to large numbers of recipients

With this release, emails that have 100 or more recipients are queued for sending as background tasks, allowing users to continue working while the email is being sent. A Sending label is displayed when viewing the email in their Sent Items folder to indicate that the email has been queued; this label disappears once the email is sent. If any issues occur while sending the email, an alert message appears in Message alerts with the details.

Emails sent to fewer than 100 recipients are sent immediately and any errors appear in the Compose New Message window. Previously, emails with large numbers of recipients were not run as background tasks and could cause page timeouts.

This release also includes header labels for the columns within the Email tool.

Figure: Users can see if their email is Sending as a background task and view details about the email under the appropriate headers.

Grades – Automatic Zero for Missing Submissions

The Automatic Zero feature allows a score of zero (0) to be automatically applied to unsubmitted learner activities after the due date passes. Applying the Automatic Zero feature eliminates the need for instructors to manually set missing submissions to zero. Additionally, learners receive a more accurate view of their grade calculations for individual activities and for the overall course.

Instructors can select between system-added and manually-entered zero scores. Automatic Zero applies to both individual and group assignments and respects any exemptions and release conditions set for an activity. Automatic Zero is triggered within one minute of the due date and is based on local time zones for both instructors and learners. The feature follows the same rules as existing due dates.

Supported submissions include file and text-based assignments, quizzes, and LTI tools. All activities must have grade associations. When Automatic Zero is applied to a learner’s assignment:

1. On the Enter Grades page, a zero (0) score with a dashed underline appears. Hovering over or focusing on the score displays a tooltip showing it was automatically applied by the system.
    
2. On the View Grades page, learners see a zero (0) grade, an overdue indicator in the Completion Status column, and optionally, a comment explaining the zero (0) grade in the Comments and Assessments column.

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

Figure: Learners see an automatic zero applied to a missing submission with an explanatory tooltip.

Lessons View Content – Distinguish between root content modules with custom colors 

To assist younger learners in finding modules based on color, while also enabling higher education classrooms to better align with organization branding, instructors now have the option of defining the color of root modules in their course. In addition, sub-modules now inherit the parent module’s color.

Previously, module color could not be customized from the Lessons View Edit Content pages; instead, the color was taken from the navbar theme color or a predefined set of rainbow colors. The child modules previously displayed in increasingly lighter shades of the parent module.

Additionally, to help modernize the appearance of the Lessons View and to avoid accessibility challenges related to supporting custom colors, the width of the color bar is reduced.

With this update, the Display accordion appears on the Edit Content page if the module meets the following criteria:

• There is no parent above the module in the content navigation hierarchy
• The course uses a theme to set a navbar color and all modules are one cohesive color

Figure: With this update, the side navigation color width changes, and sub-modules now inherit the parent module’s color.

When the criteria are met, the collapsible panel on the right of the Edit Module page includes the Display accordion.

Figure: Click Custom and select a color or enter a hex value in the Color Picker that appears.

SMS Notifications – End of Life

As of this release, SMS Notifications are permanently removed from Brightspace. Short Message Service (SMS) Notifications allowed users to subscribe to select notifications to be forwarded to their mobile phone number. Stored phone numbers are deleted following this release and are no longer needed to send notifications. 

Email-based notifications remain, and users can still receive email notifications if they subscribe. Alternatively, users can use the Brightspace Pulse app to receive the same mobile push notifications that were available with SMS Notifications. For more about how users can manage their notifications in Brightspace, view our online guide on this topic. 

References:

Assignments – Annotations update

The Assignment Annotations tool has been updated by fixing several defects and updating the icons used in the following areas:

• Main toolbar
• Line tools
• Ink tools
• Page Layout tools
• Sidebar tools
• Drawing sub-toolbar
• Highlighter sub-toolbar
• Text Highlighter sub-toolbar
• Eraser sub-toolbar
• Note sub-toolbar
• Textbox sub-toolbar
• Line and Arrow sub-toolbar
• Rectangle sub-toolbar

Below are examples of changes showing before and after comparisons of the updates to the Assignment Annotations tool. 

Figure: This feature updates the appearance of the icons in the main toolbar (above) to the new style (below).

Figure: This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the line tools (left) to the new style (right).

Figure: This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the ink tools (left) to the new style (right).

Figure: This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the page layout tools (left) to the new style (right).

Figure: This feature updates the appearance of the icons for the sidebar tools (left) to the new style (right).

Figure: This feature updates the appearance of the icons in the highlighter and drawing sub-toolbars (above) to the new style (below).

To learn more about grading submissions to assignments, you can review our online guide (linked here) as well as view the instructional video from D2L shown below. 

Warning: Safari browsers using versions older than version 15.4 are no longer supported for the Annotations software. This is currently a legacy browser. For more information, refer to . 

Brightspace/D2L – In-Product Feedback

The June Brightspace release introduces in-product feedback into Brightspace as a new way to allow users to provide feedback to D2L (the company that makes Brightspace). Instructors and learners may receive a small survey prompt in Brightspace. The in-product feedback asks users for ratings on one to two questions; these questions ask about users’ experience with Brightspace as a whole, their experience meeting goals in Brightspace, or their experience in a particular workflow. This information is shared with D2L only and not with 91şÚÁĎÍř. 

This feedback window will only be shown in specific circumstances. 

• No user account is prompted more than once per year. You won’t keep being asked to provide feedback.
• Responses are anonymized. D2L will track who has been prompted but responses are not tied back to particular users.
• Responding to the feedback prompt is optional, which means you can easily close a feedback prompt and keep working towards your goals.
• D2L will avoid prompting during workflows to minimize interruption of task completion. For example, D2L does not prompt during learner quiz taking or during instructor assignment creation workflows.

Figure: Users can provide feedback by rating your experience with tools and processes in Brightspace.

Grades – Feedback files are now available in Grades for Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions

This feature allows instructors to ensure that learners can easily review feedback from the Grades tool. Instructor feedback added in Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions is now visible to learners under Grades. Previously, feedback files were only available to the learner by accessing the activity directly through the Assignments, Quizzes, and/or Discussions pages.

Figure: Learners can review feedback from the Grades page.

References:

One of the most commonly used tools in Brightspace is the Quizzes tool. Whether they are used for basic formative assessments, unit tests, or midterm/final exams, Quizzes can be a useful assessment tool in Brightspace. As part of our On-Demand Resources, we have several guides about Quizzes that Instructors can review to get information on the basics of how to use the Quizzes. Having said that, now that we are at the midpoint of the Spring semester, we thought it would be useful to point out some of the less obvious features and settings available in Brightspace Quizzes. 

• One of the most commonly asked questions about Quizzes is how to control what students see upon completing a quiz and how to make full results available to students once grades are posted. Both of these steps can be done using the Customize Quiz Results Display settings menu for each quiz. While we do have our own guide on how to customize these settings, below is a brief video from D2L (the company that makes Brightspace) that shows these options as well. 

• One of the lesser known but very useful aspects of the Quizzes tool is what’s called the Question Library. This Question Library is a part of Brightspace Quizzes where you can create, import, or upload quiz questions into a central library that is available for all quizzes in a specific course. Once you have questions entered in the Question Library, you can do useful things such as utilizing Question Pools to randomly select questions for a selection for each student, or you can also also use the Question Library to easily import questions from one quiz into another (eg – from a weekly quiz into a midterm exam). 
  • We have our own online guide (linked here) that outlines how the Question Library works and how to get questions into the Library.
  • If you’ve ever wanted to randomize what specific questions get on a quiz, the Question Library allows a great way to do that. This video from D2L outlines how to use Question Pools to randomly select what questions each student gets from a predetermined set of questions. It also shows the two more common ways to shuffle questions in a quiz where every student will see the same questions.

• In the Summer of 2023, D2L released several Quiz Timing Changes that improved and updated options for quizzes. In addition to updates such as the new default of automatically submitted a quiz attempt when the time limit is up, there was also a big update to allow for synchronous quizzes that have a set Start and End Time compared to the traditional (and still available) option of a set Time Limit base on minutes. For more information on these changes, refer to our blog post from last September. 

• The last thing that we want to touch on is the use of the Respondus LockDown Browser. This integrated tool in Brightspace gives Instructors the option to require students to install and run special software on their local device so that quizzes with the LockDown Browser enabled can only be taken in this specific software without access to anything else on the student’s computer. This would block the usage of web browsers to look up answers, the file explorer to refer to any downloaded files, and it even blocks all other programs from running such as the device’s calculator. Unfortunately, this also prevents students from using allowed resources such as notes they have taken on their device, almost all online/electronic textbooks, and can often cause students to experience issues with installing the software or its compatibility with other programs on their device.
   
  
  • While our team does have a guide on how to use the Respondus LockDown Browser (linked here), it’s important for Instructors to weigh the pros and cons of its usage compared to alternatives such as students taking the quiz synchronously in the same location. It’s also worth noting that while the LockDown browser does heavily limit the capabilities of a student’s computer during a quiz, students almost certainly have access to other devices that cannot be controlled by the LockDown Browser.
     
  • It is also important to note that 91şÚÁĎÍř does not use or support the Respondus Monitor software that uses the webcam of students’ devices to record video and monitor their actions during a quiz. Video monitoring of students is a separate technology from the LockDown Browser that is not currently offered by 91şÚÁĎÍř. 
     

We hope that in this blog post you have found some useful new features and ideas for using the Brightspace Quizzes tool. For more information on Quizzes, check out our On-Demand Resources for Instructors. If you have any additional questions about this or other tools, please feel free to reach out to our Support Team anytime. 

Brightspace Editor – Consistent link creation with the ability to choose link format

As of this release, inserting a link in the Brightspace Editor opens the Add Link dialog which allows users to determine if their links open in a new window (set as the default) or in the current window. The text box in the Add Link dialog also allows users to add text to their link. This provides users with a consistent workflow and control over how links respond in their content.

The Add Link dialog opens when inserting links with the context menu or with keyboard shortcuts (for example, ctrl+K or command+K).

Additionally, the dialog includes a new Insert Quicklink option, allowing users to easily insert a quicklink. When using Insert Stuff > Insert Link or when using Insert Quicklink > Link, the same Link, Text, and Open In options are displayed ensuring consistent link creation.

Figure: You can access the new Add Link dialog using the context menu, or with keyboard shortcuts.

Finally, this feature updates the icons shown in Insert Quicklink to ensure all icons use the new style.

Figure: The Insert Quicklink menu with the previous icon style.
 

Figure: The Insert Quicklink menu with the updated icon style.

Previously, adding links throughout the editor resulted in different workflows, different fields, and different behaviors in the way that links would open. The previous Whole Window option is being removed, as it was being treated as the current window and thus caused inconsistent behavior. Several options have been renamed from the previous version to improve consistency:

• The option to have links open in the current window was previously called same frame.
• Link was previously named URL.

Lessons View Experience – Interact with assessable activities directly in Content

The new display pages in the Lessons View Experience render assignments, quizzes, discussions, and LTI assessments directly within the Content page. Users can now view relevant content about activities able to be assessed such as descriptions, due dates, and grading information without being redirected to the activity in a different page. This does not affect the student’s view for LTI topics.

The new display allows instructors and students to consistently view the activity details to ensure all users in the course are aligned with the requirements of that activity. Students can complete activities and review feedback or grades without leaving the Content page. Instructors can view the status of student completion and achievement results and complete evaluation workflows within the Content page that are otherwise done on specific assessment pages.

Figure: Instructors can access and monitor progress on assessable activities directly in the Lessons View Experience.

Figure: Students can submit activities and review feedback on assessable activities directly in the Lessons View Experience.

To learn more about the Lessons View Experience, and to see if you would like it enabled for your course, please refer to . 

Quizzes – Improved experience for generating quiz reports

This March release introduces a better experience for instructors when running and exporting quiz reports with large amounts of data. To avoid time-out failures and screen freezing, the following report types now run asynchronously:

• Attempt Details
• Question Statistics
• Question Details
• User Statistics
• User Attempts

When reports are ready for downloading, Brightspace generates a notification that instructors can access from the bell icon in the navbar. Previously, quiz reports were generated slowly and would time-out in large classes.

Figure: Quiz reports are generated asynchronously. Instructors are notified when they are ready for download via the bell notification icon in the navbar.

References:

First, Video Assignments (formerly known as Bongo) is a tool that allows students to submit videos through Brightspace in order for them to be evaluated similar to doing a presentation in class. This can obviously be useful if the course is 100% online, but even courses that meet entirely in person can make use of this tool by using it as a pathway to help students practice their presentations and get feedback before actually presenting in class. Just as submitting a rough draft and getting feedback helps improve the final draft of a paper or written project, practice rounds of presentations can also help students craft and hone their presentation skills without the pressure and anxiety of presenting in front of a classroom full of people. Additionally, you can have students do peer assessment of each other’s video submissions so that they can give positive and constructive feedback on presentations, speeches, or even practicing speaking a foreign language. We have several guides that outline various features in Video Assignments that may be of use to Instructors as well as Students.

• Instructor Guides
  • Getting Started with Bongo/Video Assignments (Instructor version)
  • How do I create a video assignment?
  • How do I view student submissions?
  • How do I leave feedback on the submissions?
  • How do I view peer feedback on the submissions?
  • How do I grade video assignment submissions?
     
• Student Guides
  • Getting Started with Video Assignments/Bongo (Student version)
  • How do I submit a video assignment?
  • How do I leave feedback for my peers?

The second tool we want to take a look at is a specific feature of the Kaltura Media Player that we use in Brightspace. While most people know how to upload and add videos to courses with Kaltura, not everyone knows that you can also build Quizzes in Kaltura videos. This feature is a simple way for instructors to have students watch a video and then answer questions at specific times in that video. For example, if you have a video of demonstrations or situations you want students to respond to, you can add questions at various points throughout the video so that students can respond in time with the video they are watching. This works exceptionally well for gathering feedback throughout an asynchronous video session as well as having students answer how they would respond to a situation before giving them more information as the video continues.

• How can I create a video quiz using a video in My Media?
• How can I grade student responses to a Kaltura Video Quiz?

The last tool we will spotlight this month is Gradescope. This tool is made by the same company that makes Turnitin and is designed to make grading on-paper quizzes or exams easier to do at scale. Instructors or students can scan in student submissions, and then Gradescope is able to identify where questions are located on the page, what questions are the same on each student submission, and has a great ability to make grading submissions consistently and quickly. By using a uniform rubric across the entire assignment, graders in Gradescope are able to easily adjust scores for a single question that then are available and can apply to all submissions of the same assignment. 

If you are interested in learning more about how Gradescope can work for you, here are a few select resources for your review. 

• Setting Up Gradescope in your Course – This is our own guide on how to set up Gradescope in your Brightspace course.
• – This video walks instructors through the basics of using Gradescope for grading and managing student assignments/submissions. 
• – This video shows how students can use Gradescope to submit work and view grades and feedback.

If you’re interested in any of the other third-party integrated tools that our team supports, check out the Integrated Edu Tools in Brightspace page for more examples and resources. 

• While most Assignments are designed for students to upload and submit files, that isn’t actually the only submission type available. Other options like Text submission or On-paper submission allow students to be evaluated in other ways while still giving instructors the ability to give personalized feedback and grades via Brightspace. To learn more about these options, review this part of our guide on Creating Assignments.
   
• The majority of Assignments in Brightspace are designed to provide a grade for student work. In order for those scores to appear in the Brightspace gradebook, Instructors have to link their Assignments to a Grade Item. If you aren’t sure how to do that, or just need a refresher on the options available, check out our guide on” Linking your Assignment to the Gradebook.”
   
• Do you ever have a situation where a student needs an extension on an Assignment, or maybe you are teaching two sections of the same course and what to give each their own due date? Using the Special Access feature in Brightspace, Instructors can accommodate individual students (or groups of students) with specific start, due, and end dates. Take a look at our guide on Providing Alternate dates to an Assignment to see how to set this up in your course.
   
• Are you using Turnitin to check for similarities between your students’ writings and other sources? Be sure to review our guide on “How to use the similarity report tools on Turnitin” to make sure that you are using Turnitin’s resources the best way possible.
   
• Lastly, did you know you can easily email all students who have not submitted a specific assignment? This option, available on the Assignment Submissions page, is a helpful way to keep students engaged and reminder about upcoming deadlines. Click here to view our guide on “Contacting students who have not submitted an assignment.”

The options and guides linked above are only a few of the resources we have available on Assignments and other tools in Brightspace. For more resources, be sure to check out our On-Demand Resources for Instructors online. If you have any questions about these resources, or have other questions about Instructional Technology, be sure to reach out to the 91şÚÁĎÍř Brightspace and Instructional Technology Support team. 

Awards – Export achievements as digital credentials

Learners can now export their earned awards in a standards-compliant format using the new Export Digital Credential option. This feature allows the download of certificates or badges as an industry-standard Open Badges 2.0 compliant Badge for their own record keeping or sharing. Previously, awards could only be exported as a public URL or through the LinkedIn and Badgr integrations.

Badge Baking is the process of embedding digital credentials within the badge image. This approach ensures that the user has legitimately earned the badge by including a verification link used to check the integrity of the embedded information. To learn more about Badge Baking, refer to .

For Baked Badge, the supported format in Brightspace is PNG only, and the recommended pixel size of the badge should be no smaller than 200 px x 200 px.

Note: Not all applications support Open Badges 2.0 Badge Baking. Some third-party applications strip meta-data from images, causing baked badges to be non-compliant with Open Badges 2.0. 

To download an award, learners must navigate to the My Awards page, select the desired award, click Share, and then click the new Export Digital Credential button. In the opened window, learners must provide their email address to link to their award and ensure verification, and then click Export.

Exporting a digital credential downloads badges or certificates as a .png file with the award data embedded in the image. 

Figure: Click the new Export Digital Credential option in Awards.

Brightspace Editor – Insert Stuff uses new file picker when uploading from users’ computer

This release updates the Insert Stuff > My Computer file picker with the version currently used in the Insert Image workflow, which allows drag-and-drop file uploads from the user’s computer.

Previously, the Insert Stuff > My Computer file picker used an older file picker that did not support drag-and-drop of files.

Figure: Users can drag-and-drop files using the new Insert Stuff > My Computer file picker.

Chat – End of Life | Removed

As of this release, the Chat tool is removed for all users. This removal was first announced early in the 2023 Fall semester. Content topics that are Chat-based are not removed, but the chats are no longer accessible.

For additional information as to the reasoning for this removal, refer to in Brightspace Community.

Quizzes – Written response questions remain as pending evaluation until being manually graded

When instructors grade quiz attempts, any ungraded written response questions remain as pending evaluation until the instructor manually grades them. Previously, when instructors clicked Publish or Update for a quiz attempt, the written response question’s pending evaluation status would be removed.

If a written response question is not graded, the status shows a pending evaluation message for both the learner and instructor view. In the learner view, learners always see the message “This question has not been graded” until the instructor grades the question. The instructor view displays the message “not auto-graded; a default value of 0 was assigned” until they grade the question.

Discussions – Workflow in New Discussion Creation Experience

With this release, Instructors can now determine how to assign forums to topics in the New Discussion Topic Editing experience. The new configuration enables Instructors to either choose an existing forum or create a new forum. Previously the default was to create a new forum each time a new topic was created. 

Figure: When creating a new Discussion topic, Instructors now have the option to either select an existing forum or create a new forum.

References:

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 November 2023.

As of this release, Instructors and other similar users 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 checkbox 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.

Figure: Select Publish Announcement on Copy to publish the copied announcement in the destination course or courses.

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.

Figure: From Quizzes, instructors must enter a Start Date and End Date, and then select Add Availability Dates to Calendar.

Figure: Users can see when a quiz is available as a separate event item from when it ends.

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.

Figure: Learners completing a bonus question now see Bonus.

References:

One of the most common questions we get about the Brightspace gradebook this time of year is how to finalize grades and release those grades to students. While we have many different on-demand resources and guides about grades, there are a few specific resources that we want to spotlight.

• First, it is important for instructors and students to know how students primarily see their grades. While most people understand that activities like Assignments and Quizzes have their own sections for feedback and scores, the main place students can see all their grades is on the Class Progress page. For more information on where students can see their grades, you can view our guide on this topic here.
   
• If you want to know how to exclude a specific grade category or individual grade item from the final grade calculation in your course, we have a guide linked here that explains just that.
   
• If you feel limited by the Brightspace grade book and would prefer an Excel spreadsheet where you can make more granular adjustments and formulas, you can do that by exporting your gradebook to a CSV or Excel spreadsheet. We have a guide you can find here about how to export your gradebook to a spreadsheet.
   
• When you are done with your grades and ready for students to see their final grades, instructors do have to manually release those final grades to students. We have a guide you can find here about how to release final grades to students.
  • It is important to note that even if you release final grades to students in Brightspace, instructors still are required to enter final grades into YES for official grade reporting. The Brightspace grade book is not linked to YES for a number of reasons, but if you have questions about YES and how to use it, the Registrar’s Office has .
     

Hopefully through this post you have found some helpful resources about grades in Brightspace and how you can make it work best for you. If you have any questions about Brightspace at 91şÚÁĎÍř, or any other instructional technology questions, please feel free to reach out to our team using our contact information here.

Announcements – Copy announcements to other courses

Beginning with this release, Instructors and other similar Brightspace roles will have the ability to copy announcements to other courses. Users must be enrolled in both the source and destination courses with the ability to edit content in each.

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.

Figure: Click Copy to Other Courses from the announcement drop-down menu.

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 varied between the Assignments and Discussions tools.

Figure: Review learner evaluation information in the Publish All dialog before clicking Publish.

New Discussion Creation Experience – Default group and section restrictions 

The New Discussion Creation Experience that was released earlier this year brought the user experience of creating discussion topics in line with assignments and quizzes. The November Brightspace update brings with it a new default for the Group and Section Restrictions dialog option when Instructors enable Group Discussions. Moving forward, when Instructors enable the group restrictions, the default will be set to “Restrict topic and separate the threads” as default in the Group and Section Restrictions dialog. While this can always be changed during the setup process, this setting of separating threads based on group/section enrollment is more in line with what instructors expect with group discussions. 

Figure: The Group and Section Restrictions dialog window will now use “Restrict topic and separate the threads” as the default setting.

References:

Most of the quiz timing changes started with the July monthly update release. That release updated the quiz creation and quiz taking experiences to simplify existing workflows for instructors and learners by adding some useful new quiz timing options features.

The following advanced Quiz Timing options were made available for instructors in July 2023:

• Updated quiz timing settings allow instructors to choose whether they want to set a time limit and enter the length of time for the quiz. 
• Quiz auto-submission now automatically hands in quizzes on enforced time limit quizzes at the end of the set time. This improves quiz integrity and prevents cases where students may forget to submit a quiz and then be locked out. 

Figure: Select the option to Automatically submit the quiz attempt in Timer Settings.

• Removal of options that were deemed “not beneficial,” such as Grace Period and Allow students to continue working but automatically score zero to further streamline the process of quiz creation. With this update, the older settings are automatically updated to the following new behavior:
  • A quiz that previously had a grace period now uses the time limit set on the quiz.
  • A quiz that previously scored a quiz at 0 when the time limit was exceeded now sets the quiz to submit the learner’s quiz attempt automatically. 
• 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.

Figure: The collapsed view of a quiz with an enforced time limit in the Timing & Display section shows instructors a summary of their settings.

The July 2023 update to Brightspace also made the following improved Quiz Timing options available for students:

• Option to show/hide the timer to reduce anxiety during quiz taking and display warnings at certain times to support awareness of time left. The following warnings are available: 1 minute remaining on the quiz, 5 minutes remaining (only available on quizzes with 10 minutes or longer quiz time limit), and half of the elapsed time (only available on quizzes with a 20 minutes or longer quiz time limit).

Note: Once a learner sets their preference, the setting preserves across all quizzes.

Figure: Click the Hide Timer button beside the quiz timer to hide the timer from the view.

Figure: The Timer Warning dialog indicates how much longer a learner has in a quiz.

• Simplified the Quiz Results page that appears when a learner completes a quiz attempt or returns later to view their quiz results (previously known as Submission View).

Figure: The Quiz Results page shows learners the status of their quiz and their score.

• Students now have the option to review quiz instructions and details without leaving the quiz.

Figure: Click the Quiz Information option on the quiz page to view instructions and other information. This does not leave the quiz.

The next big update came in the recent September monthly update and allows for better in-class or synchronous quiz timing.

In this update, the Quiz Creation experience for instructors and learners added 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). For a synchronous quiz, the quiz timer then ends for all learners at the same time regardless of when they start the quiz.

To set up a synchronous quiz:

1. From a create/edit quiz page, expand the Timing & Display area.
2. Click Timer Settings.
3. In the Timing dialog, under Quiz Start, select Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
4. Click OK.

Figure: Set up a synchronous quiz.

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.

To ensure that learners are aware of upcoming synchronous quizzes, instructors can create instructional or manual solutions:

• 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.

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 synchronous quiz, they will only have 45 minutes left to complete that quiz. 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.

Figure: A countdown timer on the Start Quiz page.

For a walkthrough of this process, here’s a video from D2L showing how to setup a synchronous quiz for students. 

For more information on recent Quiz timing changes, you can read the full breakdown on D2L’s community site.

Quizzes – Quiz Timing Improvements featuring Synchronous Quizzes

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). For a synchronous quiz, the quiz timer then ends for all learners at the same time regardless of when they start the quiz.

To set up a synchronous quiz:

1. From a create/edit quiz page, expand the Timing & Display area.
2. Click Timer Settings.
3. In the Timing dialog, under Quiz Start, select Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
4. Click OK.

Figure: Set up a synchronous quiz.

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.

To ensure that learners are aware of upcoming synchronous quizzes, instructors can create instructional or manual solutions:

• 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.

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 synchronous quiz, they will only have 45 minutes left to complete that quiz. 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.

Figure: A countdown timer on the Start Quiz page.

For a walkthrough of this process, here’s a video from D2L showing how to setup a synchronous quiz for students. 

For more information on recent Quiz timing changes, you can read the full breakdown on D2L’s community site.

References:

When Turnitin launched its AI-detection tool, there were many concerns that we had. This feature was enabled for Turnitin customers with less than 24-hour advance notice, no option at the time to disable the feature, and, most importantly, no insight into how it works. At the time of launch, Ěý(Chechitelli, 2023). To put that into context, 91şÚÁĎÍř submitted 75,000 papers to Turnitin in 2022. If this AI detection tool was available then, around 750 student papers could have been incorrectly labeled as having some of it written by AI.ĚýInstances of false accusations of AI usage being leveled against students at other universities have been widely reported over the past few months, including multiple instances that involved Turnitin (Fowler, 2023; Klee, 2023). In addition to the false positive issue, (Myers, 2023).

Additionally, there is a larger question of how Turnitin detects AI writing and if that is even possible. To date, Turnitin gives no detailed information as to how it determines if a piece of writing is AI-generated or not. The most they have said is that their tool looks for patterns common in AI writing, but they do not explain or define what those patterns are. Other companies that offer popular AI detectors have either begun to either (Edwards, 2023)Ěýor Ěý(Coldewey, 2023). Even if other third-party software claimed higher accuracy than Turnitin, there are real privacy concerns about taking student data and entering it into a detector that is managed by a separate company with unknown privacy and data usage policies. Fundamentally, AI detection is already a very difficult task for technology to solve (if it is even possible) and this will only become harder as AI tools become more common and more advanced. Based on this, we do not believe that AI detection software is an effective tool that should be used.

Moving forward, with Turnitin’s AI detection tool disabled, how should instructors handle concerns about students improperly using AI writing tools? First, instructors should communicate with their students early about this. Many students are open to discussion about using AI, what is allowable or not, and how this usage can/will impact their future both in college and in the workforce after they graduate. Clearly outlining expectations and guidelines will go a long way to guiding how AI can be used in your course. If AI usage is allowed in courses, disclosures and citations for its use should be used. There are already guidelines on how to cite AI and ChatGPT to meet (McAdoo, 2023)Ěýand (2023) citation formats. Additionally, instructors can also consider reformatting assignments to mitigate any concerns about AI usage. Options like in-class writing, requiring students to write about specific topics discussed in class, or even focusing on current issues that AI tools are not trained on are all helpful steps in revising assignments.ĚýAdditionally, the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas has a great resource on “” (n.d.).Ěý One key aspect to remember throughout all of this is to balance the importance of mitigating inappropriate AI usage while also being mindful of AI’s benefits in the teaching and learning process.Ěý

If you suspect that students are using AI inappropriately, there are things you can look at to determine if a submitted text is AI-generated. First, if you can, compare this writing to other work from the student. Does it match their style, tone, and level of previous writing? You can also look for inaccuracies in sources, arguments, facts, etc. AI text generators often have no concept of something being accurate or truthful, so they may often “hallucinate” and generate whole sources out of nothing (De Vynck, 2023; Sands, 2023). If you have concerns about students misusing AI, talk to them about it. Some students will just admit the use upfront if approached correctly.

As we move into the future, AI tools will be more and more prevalent. AI tools are already available in places like Google Drive and Bing search, and will soon be included in everyday products like Microsoft Office. For more information on how to use AI in your teaching, please refer to the links below for various resources from across campus.

• Academic Affairs Guidance for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools
• Data Science Institute’s workshops series
• The Data Science Institute also posts recordings of most of their workshops on .
• 91şÚÁĎÍř Initiative on the Future of Learning & Generative AI
• The Brightspace and Instructional Technology Support team will also host a workshop on Generative AI’s Impact on Teaching and Learning on Tuesday, September 12. For more information and how to register, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/brightspace/workshops.

References

1. (n.d.). Adapting your course to artificial intelligence. University of Kansas, Center for Teaching Excellence. Retrieved July 15, 2023, from Ěý
2. (2023, March 17). How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? MLA Style Center. Retrieved June 12, 2023, from
3. Chechitelli, A. (2023, May 23).ĚýAI writing detection update from Turnitin’s Chief Product Officer. Retrieved June 1, 2023, from
4. Coldewey, D. (2023, July 25). OpenAI scuttles AI-written text detector over �low rate of accuracy’. Retrieved July 27, 2023, from
5. De Vynck, G. (2023, May 30). ChatGPT �hallucinates.’ Some researchers worry it isn’t fixable. The Washington Post. Retrieved June 1, 2023, from
6. Edwards, B. (2023, July 14). Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI. Retrieved July 28, 2023, from
7. Fowler, G. A. (2023, April 3). We tested a new ChatGPT-detector for teachers. It flagged an innocent student. Retrieved April 4, 2023, from
8. Klee, M. (2023, June 6). She Was Falsely Accused of Cheating With AI — And She Won’t Be the Last. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from
9. McAdoo, T. (2023, April 7). How to cite ChatGPT. APA Style Blog. Retrieved June 12, 2023, from
10. Myers, A. (2023, May 15). AI-Detectors Biased Against Non-Native English Writers. Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved July 18, 2023, from Ěý
11. Sands, L. (2023, April 6). ChatGPT falsely told voters their mayor was jailed for bribery. He may sue. Retrieved May 30, 2023, from

Announcements – Pin announcements to top of Announcement widget

With this release, instructors can now pin 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. 

Figure: Select Pin to top to pin an announcement to the top of the Announcement Widget.

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.

Figure: The previous mobile view for evaluation components.

Figure: The new mobile view that includes the collapsible evaluation components. Instructors can open and close each collapsible component by selecting the triangle beside the name of the container.

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. 

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.

Figure: An example rubric showing the activity title, course name, and learner name.

References:

Assignments – Availability dates are now on by default

Recent improvements to the Assignments tool’s availability dates allow Instructors to have greater control over the access and visibility of their assignments before or after the start and end dates.

Figure: The before and after of the Availability Dates & Conditions menu

Now Instructors have the ability to better control the visibility of Assignments before or after the Start and End Dates. When adding a Start Date, you have the ability to set visibility and access based on the options below.

Figure: Assignment availability options before the Start Date

Figure: Assignment availability options after the End Date

Assignments & Discussions – 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 students. With this release, the Assignments and Discussions lists display 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/discussions and the hover tooltip (what shows up when you hover your mouse over the date) includes the information about start and end dates with settings to explain how the assignment appears to learners before and after these dates. The corresponding update for Quizzes is planned for a future release.

Figure: The format of availability dates and states in the Assignments tool before this update.

Figure: The format of availability dates and states in the Assignments tool after this update.

Figure: The previous format of the availability dates in a discussion topic. The availability information appears beneath the topic title.

Figure: The updated format of the availability dates in a discussion topic. Availability details now appear in a hover tooltip.

Quizzes – The New Quiz Creation/Edit 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 users. The New Quiz Creation Experience is now set to on as the default with no option to opt out. For more information on the new quiz experience, check out our guides and a brief video here.

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/or 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. Previously, quiz questions, sections, and question pools were rendered slowly. Creating and editing quizzes with many items could take significant time. 

Figure: The Load More button.

Also, instructors can now select multiple items and use drag and drop to rearrange the questions as needed. 

Figure: Multiple items selected for movement using drag and drop.

Quizzes – Redesigned quiz timing options to simplify workflows

The July Brightspace release updates the quiz creation and quiz taking experiences to simplify existing workflows for instructors and learners by adding useful new quiz timing options features.

The following advanced Quiz Timing options are now available for instructors:

• Updated quiz timing settings allow instructors to choose whether they want to set a time limit and enter the length of time for the quiz.

• Quiz auto-submission now automatically hands in quizzes on enforced time limit quizzes at the end of the set time. This improves quiz integrity and prevents cases where students may forget to submit a quiz and then be locked out. 

Figure: Select the option to Automatically submit the quiz attempt in Timer Settings.

• Removal of options that were deemed “not beneficial,” such as Grace Period and Allow students to continue working but automatically score zero to further streamline the process of quiz creation. With this update, the older settings are automatically updated to the following new behavior:
  • A quiz that previously had a grace period now uses the time limit set on the quiz.
  • A quiz that previously scored a quiz at 0 when the time limit was exceeded now sets the quiz to submit the learner’s quiz attempt automatically.

• 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.

Figure: The collapsed view of a quiz with an enforced time limit in the Timing & Display section shows instructors a summary of their settings.

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

• Option to show/hide the timer to reduce anxiety during quiz taking and display warnings at certain times to support awareness of time left. The following warnings are available: 1 minute remaining on the quiz, 5 minutes remaining (only available on quizzes with 10 minutes or longer quiz time limit), and half of the elapsed time (only available on quizzes with a 20 minutes or longer quiz time limit).

Note: Once a learner sets their preference, the setting preserves across all quizzes.

Figure: Click the Hide Timer button beside the quiz timer to hide the timer from the view.

Figure: The Timer Warning dialog indicates how much longer a learner has in a quiz.

• Simplified the Quiz Results page that appears when a learner completes a quiz attempt or returns later to view their quiz results (previously known as Submission View).

Figure: The Quiz Results page shows learners the status of their quiz and their score.

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

Figure: Click the Quiz Information option on the quiz page to view instructions and other information. This does not leave the quiz.

References:

Awards – Share achievements with Public URL sharing for awards

Students can now share their awards with a Public URL directly from the Awards tool using the new Awards Sharing option.

The new method simplifies sharing a badge or certificate to showcase achievements. The user can create a public URL for an award, which can then be shared on a digital resume or social media profile, for example, LinkedIn.

To share an award using a public URL, a student can navigate to the My Awards page, select the desired award, click the Share link, and then click Create Link.

Figure: The Share option in Awards.

Figure: The Create Link button in Awards.

Figure: The Copy Link button in Awards.

As a result, the public URL of the award is generated and appears. students can copy and share this link or delete it if needed.

Lessons View – Make all new content topics visible by default

To simplify the instructor workflow when creating a course, newly-created content topics in courses with Lessons View enabled will be automatically Visible by default when the course begins.

Previously, newly-created topics were always Hidden. This required instructors to toggle the topics’ Visibility to Visible to allow students to access them. Instructors frequently missed that their new content topics were Hidden by default, which caused confusion.

Quizzes – Confirmation dialog for students exiting a quiz

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

Figure: An example of a confirmation dialog box to learners closing in-progress quizzes.

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

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

Figure: The X (Close this Quiz) button appears to a student attempting a quiz.

The message shown when a student tries to exit a quiz depends on the time limit and end date settings for the quiz. Figure: The Exit Quiz confirmation dialog for quizzes with no time limit, no end date, or a time limit that expires before the end date.

Figure: The Exit Quiz confirmation dialog for quizzes with a time limit and no end date.

Figure: The Exit Quiz confirmation dialog for quizzes with an end date, no time limit, or an end date that will arrive before the time limit expires.

Figure: The Exit Quiz confirmation dialog for quizzes that have an end date in the past.

References:

Assignments – Consolidate availability dates

Instructors can now include availability dates in the Calendar and also have greater control over the behavior of availability dates for their students. As a result, instructors can:

• Stop late submissions.
• Let students view assignment information and submissions after it ends.
• Schedule the visibility of an assignment.
• Allow students to view an assignment while preventing them from attempting it.
• Post the start and end of an assignment to the Calendar.

The Assignment list page for both instructors and students now contains all activity dates and date settings, including:

• Access restricted (students can see the assignment but cannot click on it)
• Submission restricted (students can click on the assignment but cannot submit work)
• Hidden (students do not see the assignment) 

Instructors can also choose the default settings for availability dates for any new assignment. The settings are available on the Availability Date Defaults page, which can be found under Course Admin.

Figure: The Assignment page with activity dates and date settings being changed.

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 editing experience. Once instructors have added a Start or End Date to a quiz, they can then select the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox to add those Start or End dates to their Calendar. This feature provides instructors with more control over where Start Dates and End Dates appear to students. 

Figure: The Availability Dates & Conditions menu displaying the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox.

Quizzes – Additional paging options

Two new paging options are available in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz editing 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.

Figure: The new paging options in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz editing experience.

Rubrics – Clarify grading criteria by editing text fields in assessed rubrics

Instructors, TAs, or other users who can edit Rubrics can now edit the text fields in rubrics that have already been used for evaluation. This feature is intended to let instructors correct spelling errors, clarify wording, and make other minor changes that do not impact the academic integrity of the rubric. Users still can’t make structural changes (such as adding evaluation levels or criteria), edit points, or add outcome alignments to assessed rubrics.

Figure: Alert box on the Edit Rubric page with new Edit Text button.

Figure: The Edit Rubric page shows which text fields can be edited within an assessed rubric.

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 times when 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. Now there are also enhanced visual cues to keep track of the changes you have made.

When an instructor makes a change to a previously assessed rubric, it is updated with a blue highlight, and the text Edited appears in the lower right corner. When the user saves and closes the rubric, the edit indications no longer appear.

Note: It is not possible to edit the name of the rubric using this feature. Also, 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.

Figure: The Edit Rubric window with changes highlighted and indicated with the word Edited.

To view full release notes from D2L, check out the links below.

Assignments – Access new shortcuts to undo and redo PDF annotations on evaluations

Previously, the only way to remove PDF annotations in Assignments was to use the eraser tool or delete the selection. Now, an undo/redo button is added for PDF annotations when evaluating in Assignments. Alternatively, standard keyboard shortcuts are now also supported for undoing and redoing annotations:

• Ctrl-z | Command-z (Apple) – Undo
• Ctrl-Shift-z | Command-Shift-z (Apple) – Redo

Figure: The top of the image shows the menu bar before the update; the bottom shows the menu bar after the update.

Assignments – Apply the filters Show everyone and Show all groups for individual and group assignments

Previously, in Assignments, the search filter defaulted to “Users with submissions” for individual assignments and “Submitted groups” for group assignments. Now, instructors will instead default to “Show everyone” for individual assignments and “Show all groups” for group assignments. These modified filters are the new default search option. 

Figure: New default search filter in Assignments.

Brightspace Editor – Easily insert code snippets with the Insert Code option 

There is a new option in Brightspace HTML Editor that allows instructors to directly insert a code snippet into their content. This is done by selecting the Other Insert Options menu from the Editor toolbar, and then selecting the new Insert Code option. From there, instructors select their programming language from a list of available choices and add their code into the interface to format before inserting it into the Editor.

Previously, instructors had to use the <code> tag and build out their own code to add a code snippet in the editor.

Note: The Insert Code option is not available in the Quizzes tool.

Figure: Brightspace Editor with the Other Insert Options menu opened, with Insert Code as the final menu option.

Figure: The Insert Code interface window.

Figure: The code snippet inserted into the content with Brightspace Editor.

Quizzes – End of Life for Disable Right Click option 

As of this release, the Disable Right Click option in quizzes is removed from Quizzes in Brightspace Learning Environment. The option is no longer available in Quiz Setup, and existing quizzes with the setting no longer enforce the limitation on learners.

This option was previously intended to allow Instructors to disable right-clicking during the time a learner was taking a quiz, thus making it more difficult for learners ability to copy or print the quiz and share it with others. However, as browsers have reduced the ability for websites to control end-user behavior, the Disable Right Click setting could not necessarily be applied to all students, and it provided a false sense of security around quiz content.

Quizzes – Save time and prevent data loss with the Restore Deleted Quizzes functionality 

This feature adds a new option in quizzes that allows instructors to restore deleted quizzes. This option appears in the More Actions menu in the Quizzes tool. Instructors using this option are provided with a list of deleted quizzes that indicates when they were deleted and by whom, along with a button to restore a selected quiz.

Restored quizzes automatically have any associated quiz attempts that were already taken, statistics, and scores for those quiz attempts restored as well. Learning Outcomes associated with quiz questions are unaffected, and re-appear with the questions when the quiz is restored. Links to a grade item and competencies are not restored.

Figure: The Restore option in the More Actions drop-down menu of the Manage Quizzes tab.

Figure: The new Restore Quizzes page.

References:

Assignments – Save time by copying assignments to other courses you teach

Instructors who teach several courses are now able to copy assignments between their courses. The Copy to Other Courses option appears in the context menu of assignments.

 Figure: The Copy to Other Courses dialog appears in the dropdown menu of any assignment.

In the Copy Assignment window, you can select any rubrics and grade items associated with the selected assignment to include them in the copy package. The Choose Destinations area enables you to search by keyword or semester to find the destination courses for the assignment. Only course offerings for which a user is enrolled as Instructor, Instructor (Non-SIS), Designer, TA Editor, TA Instructor, or any Elevated Access roles appear in the Choose Destinations list. The maximum number of courses you can select is 10. 

Figure: The Copy Assignments dialog enables you to select the associated rubrics and grade items and choose destinations. 

After you have completed the Copy Assignment dialog, the progress page indicates the status of each destination course and any issues. If you navigate away from the progress page, a minibar notification in Brightspace Learning Environment indicates when the assignment has been copied to all the destination courses. You can click the notification to open the progress page to review the status and logged issues.

Copied assignment includes the following key assignment properties:

• Assignment folder and properties, including instructions, assignment category, and visibility
• Assignment properties include description, attachments (direct file attachments, uploaded from Google Workspace or OneDrive, and audio and video files), and category
• Grade item and grade category
• Availability dates
• Submission and completion information, including the Optional Grade item and the course scheme if used.
• Rubric(s) associated with the assignment. When copying an assignment that uses a shared rubric, instead of linking a copied assignment to a shared rubric, the rubric is also copied. The copied assignment links to the copied rubric. If an assignment uses a rubric that is archived, the rubric is copied and retains the archived state in the destination courses. 

The following attributes are NOT copied:

• Instruction quicklinks and attachment resources created with the Attach link to existing activity action.
• Instruction images added using Insert Image that were saved to course files.
• Availability Release conditions and special access settings
• submission and completion information including group assignment designation.
• Evaluation and Feedback information including Turnitin associations, competency, and outcome associations.
• Content topic associations (for example, if the assignment is linked from content)

NOTE: In some cases, references to links and images that are not copied may result in broken links. 

Classlist – View user pronouns next to names to further personalize learning

Classlist can now display users’ pronouns next to their names. Users can choose whether to display their pronouns to other users in the Account Settings > Pronouns menu. Users must check the Allow others to see my pronouns check box for their pronouns to display in Classlist. 

Previously, the only location where pronouns were displayed was on a user’s profile card. 

Figure: Pronouns display in the ‘Last Name, First Name’ column of Classlist, to the right of the user’s name, in parentheses. User name text is blue, pronoun text is grey. 

Lessons View – Streamline workflows with the replace uploaded files functionality 

Instructors can now replace uploaded PDF, Word, PPT, and image files when editing a topic in Lessons View. This feature does not include HTML or Audio/Video files.

Figure: Lessons > The Edit topic page with the grey banner that appears for uploaded files, weblinks, and LTI links and holds the Replace button for PDF, Microsoft Word, PPT, and image files.

On clicking Replace, the Add a File dialog box appears. This workflow is consistent as in the Classic Content experience and in Assignments > the File Upload workflow. 

Figure: Add a File dialog box.

References:

This time of year there are not many updates to Brightspace, but there are a couple that we want to point out to users. One is going to be a big help to students and instructors alike, and the other is an interesting new option for those Instructors using the Lessons View experience for their Content page. 

Improved error message wording when uploading invalid files

This feature adds an improved error message to the File Upload dialogue. When a user attempts to upload a file containing one or more special characters in the file name, this message explains to the user the reason why the upload failed.

Previously, users received a generic “Oops! Your file could not be uploaded” message, which did not explain the reason the file upload failed.

Figure: The File Upload dialogue with the new error message displayed.

New Edit pages for Lessons are now available

In this release, the new edit pages with date management are now available to opt-in for Lessons View. The new create and edit experience makes the experience of creating and editing activities more consistent across all of Brightspace by giving instructors the option of adding a Due Date and/or a Start and End Date to their content items. 

Figure: The new edit view in Lessons View gives users the option of adding due dates and availability dates to their content items. 

References:

Updated Brightspace Branding

D2L, the parent company of Brightspace, recently updated its logo and company branding. As a result, you may have noticed the new logo in a few areas including the favicon in your browser tabs, shortcuts, and bookmarks. 

Create new announcements quickly with the new Copy option

This feature adds a new Copy option in the context menu of an announcement in both the Announcements tool and the Announcements widget. The Copy option is applicable to both course level and global announcements. This only appears when you are in the course where the announcement was created. 

Figure: The new Copy option in the context menu.

Discussions – Scoring Rubric drop-down for evaluations

To make the Discussion evaluation consistent with the Assignments evaluation, this feature adds the Grading Rubric drop-down to the sidebar menu. This allows the instructor to choose a grading rubric when evaluating a discussion. 

Figure: The new Discussions evaluation with the Grading Rubric drop-down.

References:

To add pronouns to your Brightspace account, follow the steps in this guide.

 Figure: The area under Account Settings where you can set your pronouns.

Students and others who intend to list their pronouns on Brightspace should know that once pronouns are set in Account Settings, these pronouns will be visible to anyone on the Classlist page and in places where the user Profile Card shows up. A common example is when users post in Discussions, hovering over their name and profile photo will show a card as you see below. 

Figure: Pronouns are now also visible in the Classlist of each course if the user has added them to their account settings.

Figure: A user profile card with the pronouns highlighted.

Faculty and staff who want to learn more about pronoun usage and other gender identity and LGBTQI topics are encouraged to take advantage of the variety of campus resources available including the Center for Teaching’s guide and the Office of LGBTQI Life’s “Straight Facts about LGBTQI Life”  training workshop. Faculty and staff are also encouraged to refer students to the English Language Center’s (ELC) pronoun guide.

Additionally, students who wish to change their displayed first name in Brightspace can do so by through the Office of the University Registrar. Brightspace automatically uses preferred names, as recorded by the Registrar, for student first names.

If you did use the previous method of adding your pronouns to your Brightspace Profile, you will need to re-add your pronouns to Account Settings. The option to add pronouns to the Profile has now been removed to avoid confusion. 

Other References

LGBTQI Life – Pronoun Guidance

LGBTQI Life – Name Changes & Pronoun Designation

Assignments – New Assignment Creation Experience Universally Enabled

This feature sets the new assignment creation experience to ON by default. This means that the old/classic assignment experience will no longer be available. For information and guides about how to use the new assignment creator, check out our Assignment guides here. 

Email – Increased Limits for To and CC Fields

This feature increases the number of email addresses that can be added to the To and CC fields in a single email to 200. Previously, the limit was 50 email addresses.

Homepage Courses Widget – Updated to Include Symbols for Course Updates

Starting on December 20, courses listed on your Brightspace homepage will begin to display symbols for different updates to the course. These updates include Unread Discussion Posts, Ungraded Quiz Attempts, New Assignment Submissions, and Assignment Submissions with Unread Feedback. We hope this will serve as a way to quickly update yourself about your course at a glance. 

These are an example of what the new update icons will look like. Hovering over any icon will tell you what update it stands for. 

For more information about these updates, and the others we didn’t have space to mention, you can find the full release notes linked below. 

Preview Activity in Evaluation mode for Assignments

Previously, users who did not have edit permissions for assignments could not preview assignments. As a result, not all evaluator types could see assignment information such as assignment instructions, start date, or due dates.

Now, on the Assignment Evaluation screen, there is a Preview Activity option in the Assignment context menu to see a preview of the assignment.  

Figure: The Preview Activity option appears on the context menu for the assignment.

Copy/Paste Images

Users can now drag/drop and copy/paste images in the following areas that contain no user-specific data:

• Content Module/Topic Descriptions
• Quiz/Survey/Self-Assessment – Description, Header. Footer
• Grades – Description
• Content Course Overview descriptions
• Discussion Forum/Topic descriptions

This should simplify the process of adding images to these areas instead of having to upload an image manually each time. 

Note: Similar to current functionality, image files added to these areas are saved in the Manage Files area of the course the user is currently in.

Add Print Button to PDF file types

This feature adds the option to print PDF file types to Content. The Print button is now visible when viewing a PDF topic or the Course Overview as a PDF. 

Figure: PDF view in Brightspace Classic Learning Environment – Content prior to this release, highlighting the absence of a print functionality.

Figure: PDF view in Brightspace Classic Learning Environment – Content highlighting the location of the Print button.

View Course Import history

Users can now view the history of course import attempts for courses in a specific course. From the Import/Export/Copy tool in Course Admin, users can view the Course Import History page, which includes the following information for each course import attempt:  

• the original package name 
• status of the import 
• user who created the import job 
• the timestamp for the import attempt 

The content is sorted by Start Time (Descending) by default, but users can change this sort setting as required. After users have viewed the page, they can return to the Import/Export/Copy Components landing page in the Course Admin or click View Import Log to see a more detailed log. The log opens at the last line for the conversion you are viewing. 

Figure: The View Import History link is available from the Import/Export/Copy Components tool in the Course Administration area of their course.

Figure: On the Course Import History page, you can view the import log for more information about the import attempt. 

For more information about these updates, and the others we didn’t have space to mention, you can find the full release notes linked below. 

Assignments – Restricting file extensions for submissions

• It’s now possible for instructors to restrict the types of files they accept for Assignments based on the file extension. This can be set to one of six settings.

1. 1. 1. No Restrictions
      2. PDF Only
      3. Annotatable Files
      4. Files that can be previewed without conversion 
      5. Images and Videos
      6. Custom File Types
         1. If this is chosen, instructors can type in what file extensions they want to allow. 
            

Figure: The Allowable File Extensions option is found under Submission & Completion in the new Assignment Creator Experience. 

Rubrics – Copy and delete criteria groups 

• It is now possible to copy or delete a criteria group on a rubric. The delete option is only available if there is more than one criteria group.

Note: When a rubric with attached assessment items has submissions evaluated against it, the rubric is locked and can no longer be edited or deleted.  

For more information about these updates, and the others we didn’t have space to mention, you can find the full release notes linked below. 

Brightspace Text Editor

• The addition of a format painter allows users to copy formatting easily from one section of text to another. This works anywhere you can type in Brightspace.

LaTeX Rendering 

• Instructors can now preview and see math and scientific formulas directly in the Brightspace Editor using the LaTeX rendering system. 

Rubric Updates

• If you are editing an assignment that has a rubric which has already been used to grade students, you will get a warning if you try to remove the rubric. If you do, assessments will be deleted as well.
  
  
• Instructors can now reorder criterion groups within rubrics.
  
  

Quizzes

• Introductions now go under the description area.
• Instructors can now search for pending evaluation to see only those questions that need to be graded.
• Quiz Reports has moved away from its own tab and is now under dropdown with edit, grade, etc.
  
  

Discussions

• The new evaluation experience for discussions is similar to the new assignments evaluation experience that was released earlier this year. The updated discussions evaluation will be available when assessing a topic or an individual learner, allowing instructors to better review and evaluate discussion contributions. This new experience involves a new page layout, with evaluation tools and the post being evaluated displaying side-by-side. The divider between the discussion post and the evaluation tools is also able to be adjusted as needed to customize the width of each section. 
  
  
• Within discussions, you can use @ mentioning to tag people in a post. This will create a link to the profile of the person tagged, and it will notify the person tagged.
  
  

For more information about these updates, and the others we didn’t have space to mention, you can find the full release notes linked below.