Question Library – Removal of the question mark icon
The question mark (?) icon that appears next to questions in Question Library is removed to prevent visual clutter. However, the folder icon that appears in Question Library next to each section remains.
This change only impacts Question Library and the question mark icon remains in other areas of CourseLink.
Scheduled Turnitin Maintenance – March 16, 2024
Turnitin will take a 4 hour maintenance window on March 16 10:00 am – 2:00 pm EST with the following services being unavailable during these times:
Similarity (including Integrations)
The following will be available but may have disruptions in service during the maintenance:
Turnitin
Gradescope
Integrations through LTI 1.3
We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
SMS (Short Message Service) notifications will no longer be supported or available starting in the July 2024 release. This change is in response to the deprecation of this service by mobile providers. Users can receive mobile push notifications in Brightspace Pulse, and can subscribe to email notifications in place of SMS notifications. For more information, refer to Intent to EOL SMS Notifications.
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.
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 Open Badges Baking Specification.
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.
CourseLink 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.
Chat – End of Life | Removed
As of this release, the Chat tool is removed for all users. Content topics that are Chat-based are not removed, but the chats are no longer accessible.
Dropbox & Discussions – Improved tooltip for unsaved changes to evaluations
In the Dropbox and Discussions evaluation experience, the tooltip for reporting evaluation errors is updated to include clearer language. The tooltip appears when a user enters over 300,000 characters into the Overall Feedback field or enters an invalid grade into the Grade field.
The new tooltip reads “There is one or more errors in the information entered”. Previously, the tooltip read “There are invalid grades on this page”, excluding various errors that may have caused the tooltip to appear. The new language makes the types of errors clearer as it encourages users to review the entire evaluation.
Outcomes Management – Easily differentiate outcomes statements using short codes
With this release, you can optionally add short codes when creating grade items to make the experience of aligning authored outcomes to grade items more consistent with ASN outcome alignment. Additionally, the short code now consistently appears for both authored and ASN outcomes when using the pop-up outcomes picker. Previously, the short code was not consistently visible across view modes and pickers.
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 the learner 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.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
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.
Quizzes – 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.
Instructors Only
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, users with proper role permissions 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 check box 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.
Dropbox – Interface improvements for annotations
CourseLink is updating the Annotations tool in Dropbox to be a web component, as part of our internal technical maintenance work. As a result, the user interface for the annotations viewer is improved to include the following changes:
Error state includes updated dialog language.
Document conversion state now has in-page messaging and a loading icon. Previously, there was a dialog displaying the messaging.
General loading state now has a loading icon. Previously, there was no loading icon.
Note annotations and their print format show annotations instead of just the annotations icon.
Dropbox and Discussions – Feedback field limitations for evaluation experiences
The Dropbox and Discussions tools’ evaluation feedback field is changing from a 500,000 character limitation to a 300,000 character limitation, resulting in an updated dialog warning appearing when the user hits 300,000 characters.
The character limit update improves performance and security for evaluations. Previously, when a user would enter over 300,000 characters, the new information may not have been saved. This potential save failure resulted in the loss of anything entered between 300,000-500,000 characters.
Discussions – New Discussion Topic Editing Experience universally enabled
With this release, the New Discussion Topic Editing Experience, which was introduced in the December 2022 release.
The New Discussion Topic Editing Experience is set to on as the default with no option to opt out, and the Legacy Discussion Topic Editing Experience is no longer available after this release.
Rubrics – Grades tool now uses Consistent Evaluation interface for assessments
When an evaluator assesses a Dropbox submission or discussion in the Grades tool, the rubric now uses the Consistent Evaluation interface whether there is work submitted for evaluation. This is consistent with the assessment experience for Dropbox or Discussions in other areas of CourseLink.
Previously, evaluations for these types of activities used a pop-out Rubric grid when launching from the Grades tool. When users click the drop-down menu on the column header to enter grades, the rows with un-submitted work now use the Consistent Evaluation experience instead of the previous Rubric pop-out.
Reminder: Möbius – Upgrade CourseLink integration
On December 22, the current deprecated Möbius integration (LTI 1.1) will be removed. The new Möbius integration (LTI 1.3) has been made available. The new integration has been added to Content > Existing Activities > Möbius.
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select the new LTI 1.3 version from Content menu. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
On December 22, the current deprecated Macmillan integration (LTI 1.1) will be removed. The new Macmillan integration (LTI 1.3) has been made available.
The integration is available under two link options:
For more information about using the Macmillan CourseLink integration, please review the Macmillan (LTI 1.3) integration support materials.
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select the new LTI 1.3 version from Content menu. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
GH Panopto Deep Linking (editor Insert Stuff video link)
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select one of the new LTI 1.3 links. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
On December 22, the current deprecated Cengage integration (LTI 1.1) will be removed. The new Cengage integration (LTI 1.3) has been made available. The new integration has been added to Content > Existing Activities > Add Cengage Content.
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select the new LTI 1.3 version from Content menu. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
Announcements – Copy announcements to other courses
This feature adds the ability to copy announcements to other courses. Users must be enrolled in both the source and destination courses with a role that has permission to copy announcements.
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.
Dropbox and Discussions – Review key assessment information when publishing evaluations
The Publish All dialog for Dropbox and Discussions is improved and standardized to show key information about learner evaluations. Dialog messaging is consistent for both Dropbox 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 CourseLink.
Previously, the Publish All dialog did not display any information about learner evaluations or other key information, and the dialog messaging was not consistent across the Dropbox and Discussions tools.
Course Reset – Improved interface for detection of in-use courses
Course Reset has an updated interface that displays more information to help users better determine if they are resetting the correct course offering.
Semester and Department information is displayed alongside course code, start and end dates, and active status, ensuring users can see that the correct course is being reset.
A new dialog warning provides key information about the following:
The number of unevaluated assignment submissions in the course
The number of unevaluated quiz attempts in the course
The number of users who have accessed the course in the last 14 days
Based on the course information, users can cancel the course reset to review before continuing with the reset activity. This feature is intended to help prevent accidental course resets, which cannot be undone.
Quizzes – Deduction option for incorrect answers
When enabled, instructors can set a quiz to deduct a percentage of a question’s point value for incorrect answers submitted. This feature applies specifically to question types that can be auto-graded, for example, multiple-choice and true or false questions. The only question type that can’t be auto-graded is written response.
Note: We recognize that negative grading is not required to gauge mastery of concepts. For this reason, this functionality is set to OFF by default and requires a request to CourseLink Support to enable it.
Instructors can also enter negative values when manually grading individual quiz questions or manually updating all quiz question attempts from the Quizzes tool.
To ensure that instructors can view accurate quiz statistics, Question Statistics are also updated to account for this new functionality. Therefore, if negative grading is enabled, Question Statistics may display the following differences in statistics:
Point Biserial results may be lower when negative grading is enabled.
Standard Deviation has a wider distribution to account for negative grading.
Questions with a negative average score appear below zero in the Grade Distribution graph.
To ensure that learners are fully aware that negative marking is enabled for a quiz, the Summary page of a quiz explicitly notifies the learner that for each question answered incorrectly, a percentage of that question’s point value is deducted from the final attempt grade.
Also, learners are given the opportunity to explicitly clear previously-selected answers to auto-graded questions by clicking Clear Selection on non-mandatory questions. This gives learners the opportunity to leave the question blank and receive a mark of zero, instead of forcing them to guess and enter an answer that could possibly incur a percent deduction.
Note: The overall quiz score cannot be negative and caps at zero.
Möbius – Upgrade CourseLink integration
On December 22, the current deprecated Möbius integration (LTI 1.1) will be removed. The new Möbius integration (LTI 1.3) has been made available. The new integration has been added to Content > Existing Activities > Möbius.
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select the new LTI 1.3 version from Content menu. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
Macmillan – Upgrade CourseLink integration
On December 22, the current deprecated Macmillan integration (LTI 1.1) will be removed. The new Macmillan integration (LTI 1.3) has been made available.
The integration is available under two link options:
For more information about using the Macmillan CourseLink integration, please review the Macmillan (LTI 1.3) integration support materials.
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select the new LTI 1.3 version from Content menu. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
GH Panopto Deep Linking (editor Insert Stuff video link)
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select one of the new LTI 1.3 links. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
Cengage – Upgrade CourseLink integration
On December 22, the current deprecated Cengage integration (LTI 1.1) will be removed. The new Cengage integration (LTI 1.3) has been made available. The new integration has been added to Content > Existing Activities > Add Cengage Content.
Please note: The integration will not automatically update. Instructors must select the new LTI 1.3 version from Content menu. The old version links will be removed.
Please contact CourseLink Support if you need assistance with adding the new LTI 1.3 integration.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
With this release, users accessing the Chat tool now see a banner indicating the tool will no longer be available as of January 2024. For more information about this update, refer to Intent to End Of Life Notice for: Chat.
Editor – Users can set the Text Direction attribute for the entire page
This feature allows instructors, when creating Content or Widgets, to set the directionality for all text on a page when using the Attributes menu in Editor. The Text Direction attribute can be applied to the entire page by navigating to Attributes > Page Attributes and selecting the desired text direction. The attribute can have text be Default, Left to Right or Right to Left.
Previously it was only possible to set the text direction attribute on Selected Items.
Outcomes – Searching for Outcomes
Previously, learning outcomes could only be located using the exact term or spelling used in the outcome name. Now, in Dropbox, Quizzes, and the New Discussion Editing Experience, the search algorithm returns lists of outcomes using a fuzzy search technique commonly presented in most search engines. The new search algorithm returns results based on patterns approximately like the search criteria, improving quality or results to account for basic spelling mistakes or typos. The exact match is bolded to help identify the actual search query text within the returned results. Other locations in Content that access Learning Outcomes continue to use exact search terms or spellings of outcome names when using search functions.
Dropbox and Discussions – Field Restrictions
When evaluating activities in Dropbox and Discussions, users can no longer use the Publish or Save Draft buttons if their evaluation exceeds the limit for field restrictions. This limitation applies to the Overall Grade, Overall Feedback, and Annotations fields. Previously, a warning was displayed in the Overall Feedback field when the limit was reached, but the limitation was not enforced; and users could continue attempting to save their evaluation by clicking Publish or Save Draft.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at: