lwester – CourseLink Continuous Delivery Update

Continuous Delivery Updates for October 2018

Students and Instructors

Quizzes – Auto-Save During Quiz Taking

Learners’ quiz responses are now automatically saved during the quiz taking process. For forced response questions (such as Multiple Choice and True or False), learner responses are saved automatically when they select the radio button or checkbox. Text input questions autosave every 10 to 15 seconds, and html-enabled questions save when the mouse cursor is clicked outside the quiz response input area. Autosave sends save timestamps to the quizzing log, as the manual save function previously did. For quizzes with multiple pages, quiz responses automatically save upon navigating to a new quiz page. The Save all Responses and Go to Submit Quiz buttons have been removed, and are no longer visible on the quiz page. The only button now visible on the quiz page is Submit Quiz. If internet connectivity is lost during the quiz-taking process, learners can answer questions but are unable to autosave questions or submit the quiz until the connection is restored.

Figure: The autosave function as it appears beside questions, and a simplified left navigation panel

Dropbox – New Dropbox Types

On paper submission and Observed in person submission types are now available in Dropbox. These new submission types do not require users to make a file submission for them to be completed. This allows instructors to create assessments for a wide variety of activities, not just written work, and provide evaluation and feedback for these assessments.

On paper assessments are submitted directly to instructors in class, but allow evaluation and feedback to be completed in CourseLink. A presentation can also be observed in person and evaluated in CourseLink. Both new assessments can be marked as complete by learners, automatically marked as complete on their due date, or marked as complete upon evaluation by the instructor, depending on how the assessment is configured.

The properties tab interface has also been updated to simplify the work flow when creating assessments.

Figure: On paper submission and Observed in person submission types

Figure: Marked as completed options for Observed in person assessments

Figure: Marked as completed options for On paper submissions

Content – Removal of Send to Binder Button

Located on the Table of Contents page in the Content tool, the Send to Binder option allows learners to send course content to their Brightspace Binder accounts to review offline. With Brightspace Binder approaching end-of-life status, the Send to Binder option from the Content tool will no longer be available as of November 1, 2018.

To access course materials offline, learners can use the Brightspace Pulse mobile app.

Descriptive Error Message for Quicklinks to Unavailable Course Activities

A specific error message now appears to users who click a quicklink to a course activity that is outside the availability dates (not yet available or no longer available). The error message appears for the following unavailable activity types:

Assignments
Content modules
Content topics
Checklists
Discussion topics

Previously, when clicking a quicklink to unavailable activities, users received a non-specific error page that did not clarify the reason they could not access the activity. The updated messaging for unavailable course activities now aligns with existing messages for unavailable quizzes and surveys.

Figure: The new error message that appears when users click a quicklink to an unavailable course activity

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Anonymized Learner Names

To avoid unconscious bias in the grading and feedback process, instructors can now configure assessments to use anonymous learner names. When the feature is turned on, instructors can only see an anonymized learner name on the Dropbox submission.

Updates to Personalization at the Course Level

Users can now apply a color behind the link area on navbars, and set the text color scheme to either light (white) or dark (near black). This change lets users showcase organization colors. Users can change their color options in Navigation and Themes.

Figure: By editing the theme, you can use the defaults or select personalized colors

Quizzes – Removal of Rubrics

Instructors can no longer attach a rubric to a quiz or grade rubrics already attached to a quiz. D2L is currently working on a solution that will allow rubrics attached at the question level.

Rubrics – Improvements to Features and Workflows in the Rubrics Grading Experience in Dropbox

Grading with rubrics in Dropbox now offers new functions and an improved workflow and design that makes for an easier grading experience and is optimized for use on mobile devices.

New rubrics features include:

Rubrics that automatically save in Draft state while updates are in progress. Rubrics in Draft state are not visible to learners until rubric feedback is published, at which time learners can view their feedback from Dropbox, Content, Discussions, Grades and User Progress.
Ability to assess rubrics individually or assess all rubrics in the same grading workflow.
Separate rubric Total and Overall Score areas. The Total is a numeric value that is automatically calculated, and the value is populated in Grades. The Overall Score indicates level of achievement and is editable by the instructor.

Note that the new features and workflow only apply to grading rubrics without associated Learning Outcomes. If Learning Outcomes are associated with a rubric, the classic rubrics grading workflow remains in place. In addition, the new rubric grading workflow does not yet apply for group Dropbox folders.

Contact

If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:

courselink@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 ext. 56939

Continuous Delivery Updates for September 2018

Students and Instructors

Content – Print/Download Function added to Course Outline

Users can now download and print an uploaded syllabus from the Course Outline area of Content. Note that when viewing a PDF file only Download is visible, while all other document types will display both Download and Print options.

Figure: The Download and Print buttons as they appear in the Course Outline area

Wiggio – End-of-life for virtual meetings

The ability to schedule Wiggio virtual meetings is no longer available in Brightspace Learning Environment. For more information on the end of life of Wiggio virtual meetings, visit the blog post on Brightspace Community.

Instructors Only

Discussions – Create groups and section threads in existing topics

Administrators and instructors can now associate existing discussion topics to a new group or section during the group or section creation process. In addition, users can associate existing discussion topics to groups or sections not associated with any other discussion topic. Note that users can only choose existing discussion topics that have no existing discussion posts for association. This feature is useful for creating groups or sections after copying a course, or if discussion topics are accidentally created before groups or sections.

Figure: The Set up discussion areas option, as seen when creating new groups or sections

Grades – Add grade release date to Grade Event Log

This feature enables instructors with the Manage Grades permission to view the exact date and time a learner’s grade is released or unreleased. The Grade Event Log now includes a column that displays the type of event that occurred (Grade Released and / or Grade Unreleased) in addition to the existing Grade Updated events. As a result, instructors can review and validate the dates a learner’s grades were released or unreleased.

Groups and Sections – Differentiate between similar learner names in groups and sections

Instructors can now differentiate between duplicate learner names by displaying the username or Org Defined Id beside a learner’s name. Instructors can enable this option in both the Manage Groups and Manage Sections tools.

Figure: The learner Org Defined Id, as it appears beside the learner’s name

HTML Editor – Add quicklinks to content modules, submodules and Course Outline

Users can now link directly to content modules, submodules, and Course Outline (if available) from the Insert Quicklink option in the HTML editor. This change allows users to insert quicklinks to specific portions of course content within any tool with the HTML Editor. Previously, only a link to the Content tool was available from the Insert Quicklink option in the HTML editor.

HTML Editor – Chemistry equation writing available in the equation editor

A chemistry equation writing function is now available in the HTML Editor. Users can select this feature directly within the equation editor.

For those instructors not familiar with the equation editor, here’s a quick video showing how it’s used.

Import/Export/Copy Components – Copy awards between courses

When copying components between courses, administrators and instructors can now choose to include awards and their release conditions. This allows instructors to reuse awards across different courses and sections in CourseLink.

Video Assignments and Virtual Classrooms by YouSeeU – Interface and workflow improvements

Users of Video Assignments and Virtual Classrooms by YouSeeU will notice improved interface designs and functions starting September 26, 2018.

What’s available September 26, 2018:

An updated Virtual Classroom experience
- Parts of Virtual Classroom will have a new look and feel, but will function in much the same way with:
  - A redesigned network health indicator

Figure: Comparison of the old and new health indicator

Redesigned drawing tools

A redesigned poll creator

The updated page will also auto-refresh and automatically launch attendees into the meeting at its designated start time

Desktop share improvements for Virtual Classroom
- Pause used to freeze the screen during a live session, but continue to show the moderators screen during the recording playback — pause will now freeze the screen during playback as well
- Users can now share Google Chrome tabs (can isolate down to a single tab without having to share your entire browser)

Separate ‘end meeting’ and ‘leave’ options in Virtual Classroom (prior there was only ‘leave’)

Safari will support Question & Answer Video Assignment on iOS
Safari will support Virtual Classroom on iOS
A warning will appear when a user clicks on the button to stop recording a meeting.

Contact

If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:

courselink@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 ext. 56939

Course Outline Advisory

Instructors Only

Allowing Students to Download Course Outlines

The Course Outline section, near the top of the Content tool, does not currently allow students to download or print PDF or DOC versions of course outlines. This is a known bug by D2L and we submitted a bug report for this issue several years ago. D2L will be fixing this issue in the September continuous delivery release and it will be available in CourseLink after September 28th, 2018.

To allow students to download course outlines before the fix, add the course outline file to a module in the Table of Contents. If the Course Outline link is not used, students will not see it when they load the Content page, so there should be no confusion.

To add the file to Table of Contents:

Scroll to the bottom of the Content page and enter a module title in the Add a module text box. Something like “Outline” or “Course Outline.”
Select the new module and click the Upload / Create > Upload Files button.
Select the file from your computer.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact CourseLink Support at:

courselink@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 ext. 56939

Continuous Delivery Updates for August 2018

Instructors Only

Virtual Classroom & Video Assignments Premium by YouSeeU

CourseLink is now integrated with the premium version of the Virtual Classroom and Video Assignments tools powered by YouSeeU. These video tools are fully featured and are tightly integrated with CourseLink so you can quickly set them up and automatically transfer grades back to the Grades tool.

Check out the features list for Virtual Classroom and Video Assignments.

Check out the D2L Brightspace documentation for Virtual Classroom and Video Assignments.

Virtual Classroom

This webinar tool makes it easy to schedule live meetings and discussions, host office hours, record video-based training, and more. Video sessions can be automatically recorded and seamlessly embedded into a course alongside other learning materials.

See Virtual Classroom in action

Video Assignments

This video recording tool for students allows instructors to deliver structured, video-based assessments that evaluate learners on speeches, presentations, and more. Instructors can easily grade video assessments and add time-stamped feedback, showing learners exactly where they need to improve. Check out the peer review feature!

See Video Assignments in action

Microsoft Office 365 Widget

You can now access your Microsoft Office 365 account, including email, calendar, and OneDrive storage as a widget in CourseLink. This allows students and instructors to review email, calendar events, and access files directly from CourseLink. Students can also submit directly from OneDrive into the CourseLink Dropbox.

Add the Office 365 widget to your course to get started!

Import Ares Course Reserves Widget

You now have the ability to import your Ares course reserves directly from your course using the import widget. This widget, only available to instructors and TAs, allows you to import Ares readings just by clicking the link. The imported material will show up in the Content tool under a module labeled “Ares Course Reserve Lists”. The widget has been added to the default homepage.

If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:

courselink@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 ext. 56939

Continuous Delivery Updates for July 2018

Students and Instructors

Dropbox – New Text Submission Type

Instructors can now create Text Submission Dropbox type in CourseLink. The new Text Submission type allows learners to create text documents for submission directly in Dropbox using a rich text editor, eliminating the need to attach a file.

My Courses widget – Course Groupings

Courses that appear in the My Courses widget can now be grouped by Department, Semester Name or Role when the Update Sort Logic view is enabled. Once a course grouping option is selected, the courses are separated into tabs within the widget for easy viewing and selection.

Instructors Only

Quizzes – Removal of Image and Text Information Items

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

During the question conversion process the following actions occur:

Each image and text information item is converted to an individual section
If the information item included a title, that is used for the section title
If the information item did not include a title, one is automatically generated using the format: Untitled [converted from a Text Information Item], or Untitled [converted from an Image Information Item]
The setting to show the Section title to learners is set to off
The setting to show Section text to students is set to on
For text information items, the Question Text field is set as the Section Text field
For image information items, the Section Text consist of an image tag, followed by the Caption text. If there was a Description for the image, it is included as the alt text of the image.

Turnitin – Improvements to the Turnitin Integration

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

Updates have been made to automate date management in TII. Start and End dates are no longer managed separately or prohibitive when learners make a submission in CourseLink and the TII dates are not set correctly. Previously, dates were managed in both CourseLink and TII, which often led to dates being misaligned. As a result, it caused issues with learners getting access to their feedback or being able to successfully submit their assignments. This improvement will reduce the number of errors seen because there will no longer be issues with the TII assignment submission folder having different date restrictions than what is in the Assignments tool.
Learners have access to formative feedback left in GradeMark (even if there is no score, which can be found in the assignment submission folder, in User Progress, or in Grades).
Feedback on Group Assignments is now provided to all learners in the group. Previously, feedback was only provided to the individual learner that made the submission.
Submissions made to a TII enabled assignment submission folder are pre-validated at time of submission to ensure they are within the file type and size requirements enforced by TII. Previously, upon submission in CourseLink, learners immediately received their receipt of submission and the pre-validation was done after the fact. As a result, the submission might have not been accepted by TII at all, forcing instructors to analyze and, in some cases, request another submission. This improvement will reduce the number of submissions that were previously rejected by TII. It is also now obvious that the learner is making a submission to TII.
The version of HTTPS communications has been updated from TLS 1.0 to TLS 1.2.
Previously, when instructors used GradeMark to score or provide feedback, they had to sync each submission one by one to copy the score to CourseLink. The new GrademarkAutoTransferDefault configuration variable (which is set to on) allows scores to be copied automatically to CourseLink as a draft. The Auto copy as draft option can also be set within the Edit Assignment Folder page for each individual assignment folder.

If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:

courselink@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 ext. 56939