Uncategorized – Page 6 – CourseLink Continuous Delivery Update

Continuous Delivery Updates for February 2022

Students and Instructors

D2L – Updated visual branding

To reflect D2L’s growth and evolution as a company, the company behind CourseLink, they have updated the visual brand to better reflect who they are today and will be in the future. Over the next several releases, the new visual brand will be updated in several default logos and icons that appear in D2L web applications and mobile apps. These updates do not impact brand overrides in existing instances. For more information on the new visual branding, browse to: https://www.d2l.com/brand/.

Content – Print and Download in fullscreen

The Print and Download buttons are now available when viewing a topic in fullscreen, using the Content tool.

Previously, the options to print and download a topic only appeared on the main Content view, and when users opened a topic in fullscreen by clicking View content in new window, those options were not available.

Figure: Top of a fullscreen topic page, with the new Print and Download buttons in the top right.

Instructors Only

Intelligent Agents – Agent List page changes

This feature adds the following new functionality to the Agent List page, where users manage the Intelligent Agents they have created:

The ability to create, assign, and manage categories; and
A new Bulk Edit for some agent details: title, category, and active/inactive state.

This feature also updates the icons denoting the active/inactive state of each agent.

Figure: The new Intelligent Agent List page, with the bulk edit and category management functionality.

Zoom – Cloud Storage

Zoom has proven to be an important tool to facilitate remote and hybrid teaching during the pandemic. We continue to use it extensively to deliver courses and create resources for our students.

To ensure we have the required storage space for the remainder of the W22 semester and the Summer 2022 semester, we must delete all 2020 Zoom cloud recordings created up to and including December 31st, 2020, from the Zoom cloud storage environment. Deletion of 2020 Zoom cloud recordings will occur after Reading Week, on Friday, March 4th, 2022. Please note that you do not have to take any action for recordings from 2021 or 2022 at this time.

If you wish to keep a copy of any 2020 Zoom cloud recordings, OpenEd has created a Zoom Transfer Tool that allows instructors and staff to identify Zoom cloud recordings to copy to their OneDrive account. Once recordings are identified, the tool will facilitate the transfer. In addition, the Zoom Transfer Tool includes the option to automate copying all future recordings to OneDrive.

Support resources for the Zoom Transfer Tool are available via OpenEd’s Documentation and Support site. If you need any assistance using the Zoom Transfer Tool, please do not hesitate to contact OpenEd’s CourseLink Support team.

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 January 2022

Students and Instructors

Content Service – Uploaded media files use Content Service

To improve the functionality of audio-video files in Brightspace this feature ensures most audio-video files are handled by the Content Service.

Newly uploaded audio-video files can now take advantage of all the features of the Content Service, and similar behavior is experienced in all locations where media files can be uploaded or edited. Audio-video files that were uploaded prior to this release do not have access to the features available to files hosted by the Content Service. All audio-video files uploaded to Content service are now automatically converted to mp4 files (or mp3 for audio) to ensure they are playable on all supported devices.

Note: Videos uploaded as Assignment submissions or uploaded to a course’s Manage Files area continue to use the legacy method for handling files.

CourseLink – Improved viewing features in Audio-Video player

To improve the functionality of the Audio-Video player in CourseLink, multi-bitrate streaming, and search functionality are now available.

Multi-bitrate streaming allows high-definition videos to be played at standard definition to reduce the bandwidth necessary for users to watch videos.

The new search functionality allows users to locate key words in video captions and quickly navigate to those sections.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:
• WCAG 2.1 Success criterion WCAG 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded)

CourseLink – Supported browsers

With this release, CourseLink’s browser version check now displays warnings for browsers earlier than the following versions:

Chrome 93 (released in August 2021)
Safari 13 (released in September 2019)
Firefox 91 (released in August 2021)
Edge 93 (released in August 2021)

You can access CourseLink with older versions of our supported browsers; however, D2L does not test CourseLink against these older versions. This means you may encounter unexpected user interface behavior and appearance or broken and unsupported functionality. For an optimal experience that offers better performance, accessibility, and security, we strongly recommend that all users access CourseLink with the latest version of a supported browser.

Brightspace Pulse – Subscription notifications for Discussions

With this release, subscription notifications in Brightspace Pulse are now consistent with subscription notifications in CourseLink. From the Notifications > Subscriptions tab in Brightspace Pulse, learners now receive all replies to discussions they are subscribed to and @-mentions in discussion threads. Previously, the subscription notifications that learners received in Brightspace Pulse were inconsistent with the subscription notifications that they received in CourseLink.

Instructors Only

CourseLink – Improved editing features in Audio-Video Editor

This feature introduces new capabilities to the Audio-Video editor for files uploaded to the Content Service. Users can now edit video timelines, create chapters, and add captions to their videos. CourseLink recommends using the desktop experience when editing audio-video files.

Editing timelines allows users to skip unwanted sections of a video recording.

Chapter titles can be used to create a Table of Contents for videos to allow quick navigation to specific sections.

Captions can be uploaded from a .vtt or .srt file or automatically generated to make videos accessible to all users.

Videos can be edited from course content or by using the Edit > Advanced Editing option in the Edit Video screen menu.

Discussions – Scoring Rubric drop-down for evaluations

To make the Discussion evaluation consistent with the Dropbox 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.

If a normal topic assessment with Points/Custom Points-based rubric is selected, this rubric is the one whose score transfers to the Overall Grade field. The score transfer does not occur if Allow assessment of individual posts or a Percentage rubric is selected.

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

Calendar – Improvements to Date and Time Selection Web Components

Building upon the Calendar – Improvements To Date And Time Selection Web Components released in March 2021, this release updates the date and time picker in CourseLink to include the following usability changes:

The Set to Today button is renamed to Today. The Today button continues to set the date and the time based on the context. For example, choosing Today for an End Date sets the current date and sets the time to 11:59 PM.
Added a Now button that sets the current date and time. The Today and Now buttons only appear when a date and time are required. When only a date is required, only the Today button appears and functions the same as the Now button.
The Today, Now, and Clear buttons are center-aligned in the date and time picker.

This feature implements PIE item D7627.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

WCAG 2.1 Success criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard

Figure: The new date and time picker in CourseLink

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 December 2021

Students and Instructors

CourseLink – Support for surname prefixes during sort function

In some countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Sri Lanka, surnames have one or more prefixes (known in Dutch as Tussenvoegsel) that are part of the formal last name. For example, van der Speigle or Van Gogh. In some cases, the sortable last name should not include those prefixes.

It is now possible to indicate if a user’s Last Name differs from the Sortable Last Name. If users provide a Sortable Last Name, CourseLink uses the Sortable Last Name when alphabetizing user lists.

The following tools currently support the Sortable Last Name:

Classlist
Grades
Quizzes
Dropbox
Discussions
Manage Exemptions
Content – Completion Summary

Additional tools will be added to this list in future releases.

Users can reach out to CourseLink Support to update their Sortable Last Name.

Figure: The Sortable Last Name field on the User Information screen

Content – Updated count and overdue badges

In the Content tool for instructors and learners, the count and overdue badges in the Table of Contents now reflect an updated appearance that is consistent with other CourseLink tools. The new count badge is circular (for single digits) or a capsule (for double-digits), with a grey background, and with higher contrast text. In addition, the overdue badge is now circular (for single digits) or a capsule (for double-digits). Previously, the count badge was rectangular, with a white background, and grey text/outline. The overdue badge was rectangular and red.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)

Instructors Only

Dropbox – New creation experience universally enabled

This feature sets the new Dropbox creation experience to ON by default. This will mean that the classic experience will no longer be available.

Please see the details of the New creation experience; the differences between classic to new creation experiences can also be reviewed.

Insights – New version of the Assessment Quality Dashboard

To increase the value of the Assessment Quality Dashboard, originally released in May 2019, this release updates and adds the following features:

Filtering, which allows filtering of data across different levels.
Exporting data to CSV.
Settings page, where users can define their own settings to better control and surface the relevant data.
Interactive cards and visualizations that apply different views to the data.
Accessibility features: visual cues like filter tags and toast messages, support for screen readers, and keyboard navigation.
Pagination, which enables users to define the number of results per view and easily sequence the results.
Updated wording:
- “Top Lure” is now “Popular Incorrect Answer”
- “Top Lure Response Rate” is now “Popular Incorrect Answer Response Rate”
Question Analysis View, which displays a preview of the question, the question grading, comments, and hints.

Discussions – Consistent evaluation experience

This release removes the ability to opt-out of the new Discussions evaluation experience.

For more detail about the improvements in this new experience, visit the Welcome to Our New Discussion Evaluation Experience post on D2L Brightspace Community.

Discussions – Consolidated dates ON by default

This feature builds on the default setting progression for visibility and posting restrictions in discussion forums and topics. The workflow in December 2021 sets the discussion date consolidation ON by default for all clients, and cannot be turned off.

Note: All date overrides are cleared when the default changes to ON.
For more information, see the Changes To Availability And Locking Dates For A Consolidated Dates Workflow blog post.

Once the new workflow is enabled, the following changes are visible to instructors when creating or editing discussion forums and topics:

Note: These changes also affect the Content and Manage Dates tools.

From the Restrictions tab, the previous Locking Options are now consolidated with the Availability Start Date and End Date options and display as the following new options:
- Visible with access restricted before/after start/end. The topic/forum is visible to learners before/after the start/end date, but they cannot access it. Previously, Classic Content was the only tool to make discussions visible without access.
- Visible with submission restricted before/after start/end. The topic/forum is visible to learners before/after the start/end date and they can access it, but they cannot post new threads or replies. This effectively makes a discussion read-only. Previously, this was accomplished with the lock option or unlock dates.
- Hidden before/after start/end. The topic/forum is hidden from learners until the start/end date. This is a new feature. Calendar events for Availability Starts and Availability Ends are hidden until the start/end date. Notifications are also not sent until the start/end date. Previously, the hidden status of a discussion topic was decided by the tool displaying the topic.
From the Restrictions tab, the Display in Calendar option is now consolidated with the Availability Start Date and End Date options, which adds the start date and end dates to the calendar. Previously, the tool decided which calendar event should be added to the calendar. With this change, calendar events for availability dates may change and additional events for Availability Start Dates may be added.
Calendar events for unlocked dates are now hidden from learners.
Where Discussions and User Progress may have previously hidden a topic or forum when outside of availability dates, those tools now may show them as visible, but inaccessible.
From Discussion Settings, instructors can now set the default visibility and access behavior for new discussion forums and topics.

Figure: The new consolidated options for visibility and posting restrictions in the Restrictions tab

Quizzes – Improved language terms

To offer more intuitive and consistent terminology to instructors and learners when using Quizzes, many interface labels and dialogs now use more descriptive language. For example, Automatic Grade is now Automatically Publish Evaluation. Previously, many interface labels and dialogs used short terms that did not provide clear meaning for some users.

For a detailed list of all language term updates in Quizzes, see the Quiz Language Updates blog post.

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 November 2021

Students and Instructors

Editor – Additional support for drag/drop and copy/paste images

Expanding further on the feature released in October 2021, additional tools and editors now support the drag/drop and copy/paste functionality, including:

Quizzes > Feedback
Grades > Feedback
Grades > Comments
Discussions > Feedback

This functionality is now available in user-specific areas that may contain images with learner-sensitive information. As a result, these images are stored in the database rather than the Manage Files area of a course offering. In addition, the Course Copy function does not include these images.

Content – PDF inline viewer menu improvements

This feature updates the PDF Inline viewer used when showing all converted documents (e.g. Word documents) as PDFs within Content. As a result the PDF inline viewer menu has moved to the top of the PDF document, along with PDF navigation and actions and an overall refreshed button design.

The inline viewer forces all original PDFs to also use the same viewer as converted documents. This has the benefit of consistent PDF viewer within the Content interface.

Figure: The new PDF in-line viewer with the menu bar at the top of the PDF viewer when viewing an original PDF.

Manage Files – Users receive warning message when uploading a file blocked due to security

This feature provides the user with a warning message if they attempt to upload a file with an extension that is either not allowed by the Dropbox or is on the security restricted list. This message appears as “This file extension is not allowed.” for a Dropbox; and as “This file extension is not allowed for security reasons. Please see our Restricted File Extensions article in the D2L Community for more detailed information.” for security restricted file extensions.

Figure: The warning message displayed when attempting to upload a security-restricted file extension.

Restricted Upload Extensions

ASP	ASHX	JSL	VB
ASPX	ASMX	LICX	VBPROJ
EXE	AXD	REM	VJSPROJ
BAT	CDX	RESOURCES	VSDISCO
DLL	CER	RESX	WEBINFO
COM	CONFIG	SHTM	INI
ASA	IDC	SHTML
ASAX	CS	SOAP
ASCX	CSPROJ	STM

Instructors Only

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. This is a result of increased limits on the size of headers in SMTP servers.

Previously, the limit was 50 email addresses.

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 October 2021

Students and Instructors

Editor – Drag/drop and copy/paste images

The drag/drop and copy/paste functionality of images is now available 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

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

Editor – Email notifications for users tagged in discussion posts and threads

This feature adds the ability for users tagged in discussion posts and threads to receive email notifications.

The new Discussions – mentioned in a discussion post or thread option appears in the Notifications page.

When a user is tagged, their profile is linked to their tagged name. At this time, a user can @mention any active user.

Brightspace Pulse – Operating system support

The latest version of Brightspace Pulse is supported on devices with iOS® 12+ or Android^TM 6.0+ (2015 release). Older versions of Brightspace Pulse will continue to work on devices with iOS 11 or Android 5.0, but will not receive any app updates.

Content – Add Print Button to PDF file types

This feature adds the option to print PDF file types.

The Print button is visible when viewing a PDF topic or the Course Outline as a PDF.

No option to print PDFs was previously available.

PDF view in Content - highlighting the location of the Print button. — Figure: PDF view in Content – highlighting the location of the **Print** button.

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Preview Activity in Evaluation mode

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

Now, in Evaluation mode, there is a Preview Activity option in the folder context menu to see a preview of the assignment.

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

Course Import – View Course Import history

Users can now view the history of course import attempts for courses. From the Import/Export/Copy tool on 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. After users have viewed the page, they can return to the Import/Export/Copy Components landing page in the Course Administration or click View Import Log to see a more detailed log. The log opens at the last line for the conversion you are viewing.

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

Contact

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

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