Instructors can now turn on the e-rater Grammar checker, developed by ETS ®, in CourseLink.
Once turned on by an instructor, learners are provided a link to e-rater Grammar feedback upon submission of an assignment. This enables learners to review Grammar feedback immediately on dropbox submission, which is important for assignments that allow for multiple submissions. Learners can initially submit an assignment, receive Grammar feedback, and then submit another version of their assignment after incorporating the Grammar feedback.
It’s recommended to set up folders for draft submissions with the “Do not store the submitted papers” option set to avoid students matching their own papers when viewing the Originality Score.
Figure: Turnitin Submission Settings
Faculty Survey FAQ
After reviewing the comments from the 2018 UofG Educational Technology Survey, we identified a number of questions that were asked and that we are be able to answer. Some of the questions relate to features that were just recently released.
When accessing Dropbox, the list view now displays updated information.
Instructors see information on the folder name, the number of learners who have completed the assignment, the number of learners who have been evaluated, the number of learners who have had feedback published, and the Due Date. This allows instructors to quickly determine what assignments they need to evaluate, how far along they are with their evaluations, and if they have published the evaluations.
Figure: New Dropbox list view for instructors
Learners also have an updated view of the Dropbox list, and are now able to see the assignment name, the Completion Status (Not Submitted, Submitted, Completed), their Score, The Evaluation Status (Not yet evaluated, Feedback: unread, Feedback: read), and the Due Date. This change to the list view allows learners to easily locate unfinished assignments, as well as access their scores and view instructor feedback on their work.
Figure: New Dropbox list view for students
Brightspace Daylight Experience Updated
System and custom widgets now display more prominently against homepage backgrounds. The new widget container style appears by default for both system and custom widgets.
The new widget styles appear as white cards, with 20px of space between the top, bottom, left and right edges of the cards and the content. There is a subtle gray background colour for the homepages.
Figure: Updated homepage widget styling
Instructors Only
Activity Feed Available
The Activity Feed widget creates a unique “feed” or “stream” for a course. The feed is a way for instructors to provide access to activities learners need to complete, deliver information they need to know, and facilitate learner engagement using simplified workflows in an intuitive and friendly interface.
Activity Feed can be set to allow students to reply to or comment on posts in a social media inspired interface creating a community atmosphere in courses. Add Activity Feed to your course by adding the widget to your course homepage.
Figure: Example Activity Feed
Intelligent Agents – Export agent run history to CSV
Intelligent Agent run history, previously only visible in Brightspace Learning Environment, can now be exported to a CSV file. The export can include all agents or a specific agent. It can also include runs made during a specified date range. This feature allows instructors to better track learners that are triggering Intelligent Agents.
Rubrics – Improved rubric creation experience
To improve on the new rubric creation experience, rubric creation has been changed to a single-page workflow. Clicking New in the Rubrics tool immediately brings the user to the rubric authoring page. As well, the two previous Rubric Tool options Properties and Levels and Criteria are now condensed into a single Edit option.
Figure: The new rubric creation experience in the single page format.
Update to the Instruct-facilitator Role
The Instruct-facilitator role can now enroll the TA-facilitator and TA-grade roles. Due to student privacy concerns, only teaching assistants hired for the course should be enrolled in a course using those specific roles.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
Rubrics – Display Graded Rubric Feedback in Gradebook
In the June 2018/10.8.2 release, the user experience for rubrics was improved to allow learners to view their graded rubric feedback in Gradebook for discussions, dropbox, and quizzes.
For instructors, this change impacted how they used rubrics with activities. They could assess discussions, dropbox or quizzes from the corresponding tool, and the completed rubric displayed in its entirety in Gradebook (if the activity had a linked grade).
As of the December 2018/10.8.8 release, this functionality is turned on by default and is not configurable.
Instructors Only
Dropbox – Change Dropbox and Submission Type
If no learner submissions have been made to a dropbox, instructors can change the dropbox type and submission type. This allows for existing folders to be modified without the need to create a new folder.
Dropbox – Evaluate Submissions by Clicking Learner Names
On the Submissions page, instructors can now click on a learner’s name to access the Evaluate Submission page. Previously this action allowed instructors to email learners. Emails can still be sent from the Submissions page by selecting the check box beside a learner’s name, and clicking Email.
Dropbox – Improved Evaluation Experience
The Evaluate Submission page has been updated to improve the evaluation experience for instructors with the following features:
To download a submission, instructors now click on the submission’s file name.
The Markup Document button has been replaced by a Launch Turnitin link for assignments that have Turnitin enabled.
The Publish and Save Draft buttons now display at the bottom of the page and are not confined to the Evaluation and Feedback pane.
An additional link to access the Next Student now displays next to the Publish and Save Draftbuttons at the bottom of the page.
Discussions – Improvements to the Rubrics Grading Experience
Grading with rubrics in Discussions now offers new functions and an improved workflow. The new design makes for an easier grading experience and is optimized for use on mobile devices.
New rubrics features include:
All rubric assessments and feedback updates for discussions and grade items now automatically save in draft state while updates are in progress
Rubrics in draft state are not visible to learners until the instructor selects Save & Publish, at which time learners can immediately view their feedback from Dropbox, Content, Discussions, Grades and User Progress
Instructors can choose to bulk publish feedback to all or select users at once, such as for an entire class or group
New Retract Feedback option enables instructors to remove published feedback from view of learners for changes to the Total Score. The Overall Score and Overall Feedback portions of the rubric can be edited without retraction
A grading pop-up window for easier grading that contains all rubrics for the discussion, a place to enter Overall Feedback, and a list of posts that the student has made
When grading on mobile devices, vertical margins are reduced for easier viewing
Quizzes – Add Initial Text to Written Response Questions
Instructors can add initial text to Written Response questions in the new Question Experience. Previously instructors could not add initial text into the answers for Written Response questions.
Quizzes – Opt-in for New Quiz Experience Removed
Users can no longer opt out of the new quiz experience.
Rubrics – Improved Rubric Creation Experience
To offer instructors a more streamlined approach to authoring rubric levels and criteria, this release introduces a new, opt-in rubric creation experience. Specifically, the Rubrics tool includes the following enhancements:
Quickly create and edit rubric levels and criteria inline using an auto-save experience
Easily change rubric type and scoring method during rubric creation Re-order criterion via drag and drop or keyboard
Improved logic for point-based rubrics, where new levels automatically follow existing point scoring sequences
Individual criterion cells in custom point rubrics dynamically scale when editing the criterion out-of value
Overall Score is visually separated from the rubric, displaying in its own section
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
Quizzes now display in full screen. When a learner clicks Start Quiz, the navbar disappears. This provides additional screen space for the quiz by removing unnecessary navigation elements from view.
Video Note – Closed Caption Support
Users can now add files containing closed captions to their video notes. The captioned text displays when viewing the video note, if users selected the closed caption option.
Widgets – Visual Updates to My Courses Widget Course Tiles
To provide added value and ease of use to the My Courses widget, the following changes are now available with the widget course cards:
New status indicator for Inactive and Closed states for courses
Cleaner layout of course name, code, semester, and dates
Course notifications are sorted by tool. When a user hovers on the notification icons, a tooltip provides more information.
Figure: The My Courses Widget now displays a course status indicator and sorts notifications by type.
Instructors Only
Dropbox – Anonymous Marking in CourseLink
Anonymous marking in Dropbox features the following updates:
Administrators can set folders to display a user’s Org Defined Id (student ID) as an anonymous identifier
Instructors can see a new icon associated with folders that have anonymous marking enabled
User names are revealed to instructors once feedback is published
A Publish All Feedback button is available in folders with anonymous marking enabled to ensure anonymity when publishing feedback
Improved confirmation messaging appears to remind instructors to complete feedback for all anonymous users. If Publish All Feedback is selected before providing feedback for all anonymous submissions, the confirmation window will state the number of users with feedback and the total number of users
Figure: A folder displaying the anonymous marking icon for instructorsFigure: The Publish All Feedback button confirmation dialog box indicating outstanding anonymous users that still require feedback
Dropbox- Evaluate Submissions Page Displays in Full Screen
The Evaluate Submission page no longer displays navbar links. This provides instructors with more screen space to view and evaluate submissions.
Homepages – Users Can Edit Homepage Banner Image Titles
Instructors with the appropriate permission can change the homepage banner image titles. The title can be changed to the Org Unit Name, a custom value (such as Hello {FirstName}) or the title can be deleted to display no title.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
