CourseLink Continuous Delivery Update – Page 5 – A summary of the CourseLink monthly updates.

Continuous Delivery Updates for July 2022

Students and Instructors

CourseLink Requirements – Receive browser update alerts

The supported browser list is updated to reflect browsers that need to be updated. Users will receive the message “Your browser is looking a little retro” that prompts users to update their browser. Legacy Browsers are also updated. All users of Legacy Browsers receive the message “Unsupported Browser” either before or after logging in. There are no changes to the ability to access CourseLink.

Figure: Browser update prompt in CourseLink.

Brightspace Pulse – Discovery better supports text-to-speech assistive technology

This release contains several accessibility improvements to Brightspace Pulse’s Discovery feature, allowing it to better support users who employ text-to-speech assistive technology. These improvements consist of:

The Who provides your learning autocomplete field is renamed to Find your school or institution. This is to make the label more intuitive and gives a non-visual learner a better idea that the field is autocomplete. The Find your school or institution autocomplete field is additionally marked up as an edit field, indicating to the user where to tap to activate it and what to enter in the field. If no results are returned, the following prompt is shown: “We’re sorry! We were not able to find a match. Please try a different institution. Or, if you know the school or institution’s web address, you can enter it down below.” Previously this prompt read “This may not be a compatible learning management system”.
When a user types a letter, the displayed results are announced via an ARIA audio alert. When a user enters a search without any results, they are notified of such without requiring them to press the Enter key. Upon pressing the Enter key, the ARIA audio alert indicates that “<N> results found. This indicates to non-visual users if there are results. Previously, this change of results was not announced by an ARIA audio alert despite changing visually.

This feature has accessibility impacts, including:

• WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions

• WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.3.1 Info and Relationships

• WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 4.1.3 Status Messages

Figure: The improved message displayed when a search in the Find your school or institution autocomplete field returns no results.

Instructors Only

Introducing OpenEd Toolbox

The OpenEd Toolbox application is a custom-built suite of CourseLink productivity tools created by our OpenEd Information Systems and Development (ISD) team. It began as an ad-hoc project to build and share additional custom utilities specifically for assisting CourseLink Support with common requests.

This application has now matured and is ready for release to our instructor community, allowing you to leverage the same tools safely and securely for your own course site(s).

Access OpenEd Toolbox using the UofG SSO system. Please view the Toolbox training session video to learn more.

OpenEd Toolbox support documentation

Figure: The Toolbox menu showing the available Group tools.

Grades – Copy grade items only copies unique or in-use grade schemes

This feature updates the Copy Course Components functionality in regard to copying grade schemes to prevent unnecessary duplicates.

When a grade item is copied, any grade scheme associated with the item is also copied. If a grade scheme is not associated to a grade item within the course offering, the scheme is only copied if the grade scheme is unique (i.e., there are no duplicates which match on name, and ranges).

Previously, unassociated grade schemes were always copied over with the grade items, causing numerous unnecessary duplicates.

Turnitin – Rearrangement of options for the Turnitin integration

The Turnitin integration options layout and feature names are changed with this release. The option changes can be viewed on the Turnitin Integrations options page.

GradeMark is now Online Grading and Originality Check is now Similarity Report. Instructors can enable features for Online Grading and Similarity Report separately within the Turnitin Integration options page.

Figure: Turnitin integration with updated options for Similarity Report and Online Grading.

Turnitin – Turnitin feature names are now reflected in CourseLink’s user interface

In CourseLink, the submission view now reflects the new Turnitin feature names that match CourseLink’s user interface styling and text. The column titled Turnitin Similarity is now Turnitin® Similarity Report. The column titled Turnitin® GradeMark® is changed to Turnitin Online Grading.

There is no change in the functionality of submission views.

Figure: The new Turnitin submission view columns in CourseLink.

Turnitin – Restrict files to file types supported by Turnitin

Previously, Turnitin similarity check only supported specific file types while Turnitin grading check accepted any file type.

Instructors can now restrict file types to those supported by Turnitin. If an invalid type is submitted, an error is reported with no other side effect.

Figure: File type options for Turnitin submissions including the new Compatible with Turnitin option.

What’s new in Zoom – June 2022

Zoom Whiteboard training is here! Explore the exciting new Zoom Whiteboard through Zoom Learning Center’s Welcome to Zoom Whiteboard training. Learn how to access, create, and share whiteboards before, during, and after meetings. Take advantage of the infinite canvas to visualize ideas, workflows, processes, and so much more. Come see all the possibilities of this new tool.

Search breakout rooms in Windows, macOS, and Linux – Hosts and co-hosts are able to better manage breakout rooms with the ability to search participants or breakout rooms by name, allowing them to quickly view, assign, or move participants between breakout rooms.

Software Lifecycle Policy – a reminder that Zoom will be implementing its new Software Lifecycle Policy on November 5, 2022 (Pacific Standard Time) for all products and services, starting with the minimum client version 5.8.6. Users who are running an end-of-life version after November 5, will not be able to join meetings via the Zoom Client and will be prompted to update or join from the Web browser. Please note that we will also be ending support for the ChromeOS client and are asking all customers to migrate to Zoom’s Progressive Web Application (PWA). As always, we highly recommend you regularly download and update to the latest version of Zoom software by checking for updates within the Zoom client or by navigating to zoom.us/download to take advantage of all of the latest security and functionality features.

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 June 2022

Students and Instructors

CourseLink SSO Maintenance

OpenEd and CCS will be updating the SAML SSO connection with CourseLink on Tuesday, June 28th at 9:30 AM. There will be a momentary lapse in service while the configuration is updated. Existing logged in users will not be affected.

CourseLink – Improved and consistent multi-contextual filter dialog

With this release, CourseLink is refreshing the multi-contextual filter dialog user interface component to ensure consistent filtering functionality across the platform. Changes to the filter dialog include:

Multi-dimensional filters now represent dimensions in a nested list instead of tabs
Ensuring that most filter dimensions have a search field
Changes in padding and styling for applying filters across each dimension
Improved mobile responsive behavior

Previously, only certain filter dimensions had a search field.

The areas of CourseLink being updated by this feature are:

My Courses Widget: Department/Semester Filters
Insights: Filters on various dashboards

Figure: A comparison of the new and previous My Courses Widget filters.

Brightspace Pulse – Pulse App now only supported on Android 6 / iOS13 and above

With this release, the Brightspace Pulse App is now only supported on the following mobile operating systems:

Android 6 and above
iOS13 and above

This ensures that mobile level support is consistent across all D2L Apps, rather than being on a per-app basis; and consistent with Android and Apple policies concerning operating system support.

Previously, Brightspace Pulse was supported on Android 6 and iOS12 and above.

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. They must check the Allow others to see my pronouns check box for their pronouns to display in Classlist.

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

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. — 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.

Instructors Only

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

Instructors who teach several courses are now able to copy Dropbox assignments between their courses. The copied assignment includes the following key properties:

Dropbox folder and properties, including instructions, assignment category, and visibility
Dropbox properties including 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 a Dropbox 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 Dropbox assignment is linked from content)

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

The Copy to Other Courses option appears in the context menu of assignments.

The Copy to Other Courses option in the Dropbox assignment menu. — Figure: The **Copy to Other Courses** option in the Dropbox assignment menu.

Manage Files – New/Edit File workflow change

Previously, when choosing the New File or Edit File option from Manage Files, users would see a dialog open that must be moved or expanded to become properly visible. If users attempted to use the advanced code editor (source code editor), they would open a second dialog that is not sized correctly and cannot be resized due to constraints from the first dialog.

Now, the New File and Edit File options in Manage Files open in a new tab in the user’s browser in order to support more efficient editing. By allowing the editor to open in a new tab, the advanced code editor dialog now opens fully.

Quizzes – Create engaging assessments quickly with the new quiz creation experience

The new quiz creation experience brings create and edit consistency changes from Dropbox to Quizzes.

The primary panel on the left contains common, frequently used fields that are always displayed. These fields are most relevant to learners and are core to quiz creation. The add/edit question workflow has been brought into the primary panel, giving users the ability to easily modify quiz questions without the need to navigate to a separate interface.

The right-hand panel organizes additional, more advanced options such as start and end dates, release conditions, and special access. These options follow the same logical groupings as found in Dropbox. Other quiz-specific settings can be found in the right-hand panel including creating a password protected quiz, applying IP restrictions, adjusting quiz timing, setting display options, managing attempts, and altering evaluation and feedback settings.

Rubrics – Quickly determine a Rubrics state with archived tags and selection list descriptions

To provide consistency with other Rubrics experiences and build on the value of the Rubrics tool, there are several improvements in this release.

Archived Rubrics now appear with an archived tag
The Archived tag enables users to update rubric versions while keeping the existing evaluation records available for instructors and learners to review. Previously, when you changed a rubric, previous evaluations were removed. Now, if you change the status of a rubric to Archived, there are no effects on the alignment of rubrics to any assessment activities or previous evaluations that were completed using the rubric. Rubrics that are changed to an Archived status after the initial alignment to the activity continue to display and can be used for evaluation. There is a new Archived tag that appears on rubric tiles in activity creation and activity evaluation workflows to provide information to instructors and course developers that a rubric previously aligned to an activity is now archived. The Archived tag appears in both full-screen and pop-out views of the rubric in Grades, Competencies, and in the Consistent Eval experience. In addition, it appears in rubrics results pages and during evaluation for instructors in collapsed, expanded, and full-screen view. You cannot add archived rubrics to assessment activities and new rubric alignments – this behavior has not changed.

Note: The archived state tag is not visible to learners. If you have been evaluated using an archived status rubric, the learner can see those evaluations and feedback.

Rubric descriptions now appear in the Rubric picker list
The Rubric selection dialog window now includes the first two rows of the rubric description to enable instructors and course designers to better identify the version of a rubric when its name is being reused for a current rubric.

The help description for Status in the Rubrics tool now more clearly explains the interaction of archived status rubrics
The help text icon now appears next to the Status column heading, and the Archived Status text now more accurately reflects the available interactions with archived status rubrics. Specifically, it expands the description to indicate that archived rubrics do not appear in default search results and cannot be added to activities; however they can be evaluated. Further, archiving a rubric does not remove it from activities or published feedback.

The Archived tag appears under the Rubric title. — Figure: The **Archived** tag appears under the Rubric title.

The Archived tag in the Rubrics list of Consistent Evaluation. — Figure: The **Archived** tag in the Rubrics list of Consistent Evaluation.

The Archived tag in the Rubrics detail view of Consistent Evaluation — Figure: The **Archived** tag in the Rubrics detail view of Consistent Evaluation

Surveys – Use signed comments feature no longer supported

This feature allowed instructors to control the visibility of Signed Comments and enabled instructors to add an option to written response questions in anonymous surveys.

This option was not available to instructors since the New Question Creation workflows were set to On for all users in December 2018. However, previously created surveys and questions with this option continued to present the option to learners.

What’s New in Zoom – May 2022

Enhancements to polling and quizzing CSV exports – Hosts can export poll or quiz results as a CSV or PDF file that replicates the visual layout of the in-meeting poll report. The CSV export layout has been improved for optimal formatting and readability.

Control participant names in local recordings – Allow hosts to control whether participant names are captured as part of local recordings. Enabled by default in the client settings, names of participants (either with video on or off) are captured as part of their video for local recordings.

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 May 2022

Students and Instructors

CourseLink – Updated default font and colour stylings for improved accessibility

This feature introduces a colour change to fonts and icons in CourseLink to meet WCAG guidelines.

Previously the dark grey font #494c4e did not meet the 3:1 contrast ratio with the colour of our links. The new font #202122 (still grey!) is darker and meets the WCAG link contrast criteria for accessibility. This change is visible in most locations in CourseLink.

Figure: Before and after showing the updated font colour visible in the My Courses widget.

Brightspace Pulse – Added @mention push notifications

CourseLink Instructors (depending on their role definition within their institution) can now use @mention push notifications to direct a message to Learners using Pulse. Originally, @mentions came through CourseLink but were only visible if the user opened Pulse and viewed their Subscriptions tab under Notifications. Now, the new functionality sends a push notification to the user when they are @mentioned.

Note: These notifications are available in the Pulse Notifications > Subscriptions area and are still available in Discussions.

Brightspace Pulse – Updates and subscriptions now align with all update subscription Alerts in CourseLink

In Brightspace Pulse, the Updates and Subscriptions tab is now aligned to show the same items as the Alert Bell and Discussions in CourseLink.

All CourseLink alerts now display within the Pulse Updates and Subscriptions tab. Improved logic in how alerts are sent to Pulse ensures that alerts are no longer sent from courses that are inaccessible (courses that are inactive or past the end date).

HTML Editor – Improved context link menu supports previewing of quicklinks in Editor

This feature implements a new and improved context link menu in Editor. The new menu has the same functionality as before – enabling users to highlight text and create a link, edit the link, remove the link, and preview the link – but now also enables support for the previewing of quicklinks that contain replace strings while editing their HTML. The new formatting context menu continues to allow users to highlight text within the editor and apply formatting or create links.

Previously, when a user created a new quicklink within the editor that contains a replace string, this proved not replaceable by the context menu. Clicking to preview the link resulted in a 404 Error.

Figure: The layout of the new Content link menu.

Manage Files – Improved error message when invalid files are uploaded

Building on the Manage Files – Users receive warning message when uploading a file blocked due to security feature added in November 2021, this feature adds an improved error message to the File Upload dialogue. When a user attempts to upload a file containing one or more illegal characters in the filename, 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.

SCORM – Improved completion messaging to avoid confusion in SCORM embedded experience

Upon completion of SCORM content a “This activity is complete” message displays. This change has been implemented to avoid confusion in the SCORM embedded experience as the old message was only relevant to content rendered in a pop-up window and did not account for other SCORM experiences.

Previously, the SCORM player would display the message: “The content has exited successfully, you may now close this window”.

This feature has accessibility impacts, including:

WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 3.2.4 Consistent Identification

Instructors Only

Audio/Video – Manual transcoding option to optimize video files

Depending on the file format of audio and video files, they might not play in a web browser by default. Previously, all uploaded audio and video files were transcoded; now, transcoding only occurs when necessary, All MP3 and MP4 video files are saved in their original form because they can play in a browser without transcoding. Other files, such as WMV and AVI, which would not play by default, continue to be automatically transcoded.

With this update, the new Optimize for Streaming option in the editing tool enables users who want to manually transcode original versions of the files, for example, to reduce the file size or enable multi-bitrate streaming.

Note: This feature applies to uploading audio and video files in Content and Video Note upload. Original versions of videos are used for editing and playback. This feature does not apply to Video Note webcam recordings, which continue to be transcoded automatically.

This change also moves the Language selector to the Table of Contents and Closed Captions area.

The Video Editing tool showing the new Optimize for Streaming button, and the Language selector in the Table of Contents and Closed Captioning area. — Figure: The Video Editing tool showing the new **Optimize for Streaming** button, and the Language selector in the **Table of Contents** and **Closed Captioning** area.

This feature has accessibility impacts, including:

WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria 1.2.1 Audio-only or Video-only (Prerecorded)
WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded)

Awards – Awards task excludes evaluating non-learner roles

The Awards task was being evaluated against “All Enrollments”, which returns a list of all users enrolled in a course, regardless of roles or permissions. This list included users with the role setting “Display this role in the classlist” disabled.

Now when evaluating an award, the user list is limited to only users with the role setting “Display this role in the classlist” enabled. This is in line with the Awards UI configuration settings.

Role Permissions for earning certificates and badges are still respected.

Gradescope Replaces Scantron in F22

Scantron and the CCS Test Scoring application will no longer be available to instructors for quizzes, midterms, or exams after S22. Beginning in F22, the OpenEd-supported Gradescope Bubble Sheet Assignment replaces Scantron for bubble sheet test scoring.

Looking for information about Gradescope Bubble Sheets during S22?
Register for any of OpenEd’s four Prepare for Gradescope Bubble Sheets sessions running June 13, July 14, and August 18 or join one of the weekly Gradescope Drop-in sessions, offered every Tuesday & Wednesday.

What’s New in Zoom – April 2022

Central library of polls – Users can manage a central library of polls for meetings. They can create or edit polls and use them for Personal Meeting ID (PMI) and non-PMI meetings. Previously, polls for PMI and non-PMI meetings were managed separately. When a poll is marked as available to all meetings, it will appear in the list of polls that can be launched in a meeting. This new central repository will not replace the “Personal Meeting (PMI) polls”; polls created here will only appear in PMI meetings. This feature is also available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS desktop clients.

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 April 2022

Students and Instructors

Editor – Advanced code editor visual update and accessibility improvements

Minor visual updates made to the advanced code editor in CourseLink increase the readability of tags and text in the advanced code editor and place the Save and Cancel buttons in consistent locations. Improved compatibility with screen reader technology is also included in this feature.

Previously, certain screen readers in specific form settings were unable to access or read from the advanced code editor.

The updated location of the Save and Cancel buttons for the advanced code editor. — Figure: The updated location of the **Save** and **Cancel** buttons for the advanced code editor.

Instructor Only

Insights – Quiz filter and contextual help added to Assessment Quality Dashboard

This feature builds on the Assessment Quality Dashboard updates released in March 2022 with two more usability improvements:

A new search input in the Quiz Details area where users can enter the name of a quiz to filter the dashboard results. Filtering the dashboard to quizzes with the same name allows users to compare multiple occurrences of the same quiz to see how the statistics vary.
Hover text added to the “!” icons to provide context to users about when to act on flagged quizzes and questions.

Figure: The updated Assessment Quality Dashboard with the Search by Quiz Name box highlighted.

Groups – Asynchronous Group Creation

This feature moves group creation and enrollment to background task, minimizing risk of timeouts when creating large numbers of groups requiring enrollments.

When instructors create and save a new group category, the Groups tool displays the category and prompts instructors that their group or groups are being created in the background; further, it indicates that the instructor will be notified once the groups are created. The instructor who created the group receives a subscription alert in the minibar that indicates that the groups for their courses have been created.

While this is in process, the CourseLink UI indicates that “Group creation is in progress”. While processing, users are unable to make changes to groups or enrollments.

To facilitate these changes, and the potential for allowing users to make much larger numbers of groups in a category, this feature introduces pagination to the Groups tool, that limits each page to a maximum of 200 groups. In addition, the header row for the category has been moved to above the grid and the Delete and Email options are added to the Category dropdown menu.

The updated Groups page with the 'Group Creation in Progress' message highlighted. — Figure: The updated Groups page with the ‘Group Creation in Progress’ message highlighted.

Intelligent Agents – Create Agent page facilitates more flexible scheduling and frequency options

Building on the Intelligent Agents – Agent List page changes feature released in February 2022, this feature changes the Intelligent Agents Create Agent page to facilitate additional scheduling options and frequency options to allow for improved flexibility.

The changes to the Create Agent page include:

A modernized user interface. This is a visual upgrade and does not impact functionality.
Scheduling options have been moved to the top of the page.
The ability to expand/collapse each section on the agent creation page (Scheduling, Criteria, Actions) to improve usability.
Two new agent frequency options:
- One-Time Run allows instructors to choose a single date and time to run.
- Hourly allows instructors to choose a date and time to run between. If no dates are chosen, the Hourly agent runs every hour with the first time being “now” (that is once the agent is saved and enabled).
The existing Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Annually options all now have a Scheduled Time option that users complete to determine what time that the agent will run on the dates scheduled for the agent to run.
The Subject line of the agents’ emails now supports up to 128 characters. This brings it inline with the Email tool. Previously, the character limit was 100 characters.

The Intelligent Agent scheduling page with the Hourly option selected. — Figure: The Intelligent Agent scheduling page with the **Hourly** option selected.

Zoom Cloud Storage Retention

Overview

Zoom is a web-based conferencing service available to all instructors teaching during the current semester or for those users who have purchased a license with OpenEd. Users have access to the Zoom Cloud service when provided a Zoom Pro license.

Zoom Cloud is intended for temporary, non-archival storage, to be used during the current or immediate academic term. Instructors and staff are expected to assess those recordings on a routine basis and transfer their recordings to University-approved storage solutions like OneDrive.

Retention Period

Starting September 1, 2022, OpenEd will implement a one-year Zoom Cloud retention period. All Zoom recordings will be retained for one year, keeping up to the matching semester from the previous year. At the beginning of each subsequent semester, the next deletion cycle will begin.

All deleted files will be stored in the owner’s Trash for an additional 30 days. After the 30-day Trash timer expires, the recordings will be deleted permanently.

Examples of Zoom Cloud Recording Deletion Dates

Deletion Date	Delete up to:	Semesters Retained
September 1, 2022	August 31, 2021	F21, W22, S22
January 3, 2023	December 31, 2021	W22, S22, F22
May 1, 2023	April 30, 2022	S22, F22, W23

Considerations

Be aware: Know the retention period so you can plan accordingly.
Backup or transfer your older recordings.
Consider automating backups using the Zoom Transfer Tool.
Want Reminders? You can enable an alert when recordings will be permanently deleted from Trash. Sign in to https://zoom.us, click Settings and select “Email Notification.” Enable “When the cloud recording is going to be permanently deleted from trash.”

Zoom Transfer Tool

OpenEd has developed a Zoom recording transfer tool to assist you with managing and transferring cloud recordings between your UofG Zoom Pro account and your UofG OneDrive account. The Zoom Transfer Tool makes the process of copying your Zoom cloud recordings to OneDrive simple and offers the option to automate the process for all future Zoom cloud recordings.

University Links Regarding Privacy and Retention

Privacy & Recording Virtual Lectures
Record Retention and Disposition Policy

What’s New in Zoom – March 2022

Support for Avatars: Meeting hosts can allow users to select an avatar to represent themselves during meetings. This setting is available at the account, group, and user level. Avatars are also accessible through Windows, macOS, and iOS desktop clients. You can select an avatar in the Background & Effects section of the desktop client settings or in-meeting settings. This feature requires 5.10.0 or higher.

Show invitee list in Participants panel: Meeting hosts can enable the Show invitee list in Participants panel setting that allows hosts, co-hosts, and alternative hosts to view a Not Joined section in the participants panel of the meeting. This section lists the people who were invited to the meeting but have not yet joined, as well as their calendar responses. This feature requires hosts and users to have the Calendar and Contacts Integration (Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar) configured in the user profile. This setting is available at the account, group, and user levels. This feature requires version 5.9.6 or higher and is also available for Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop clients.

Schedule a recurring meeting with a saved Breakout Room assignment: When a host saves a breakout room configuration and participant assignments during a Zoom meeting, they can select the saved breakout room assignment they want to use when scheduling a recurring meeting in the web portal. This is limited to 10 saved configurations per account/user and is also available on Windows and macOS desktop clients.

Expand/Collapse all Breakouts when self-selecting for Windows, macOS, and Linux: When self-selecting breakout rooms, participants can quickly expand or collapse all available breakout rooms. This makes it easier to find and select the desired breakout, in particular when there are many breakout rooms available to choose from.

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 March 2022

Instructors Only

Quizzes – Updated date/time language

To help instructors understand the date/time behaviour in Quizzes, the Has Due Date label has been updated with a message to make it clear that the quiz Due Date and End Date will not prevent a student from completing an in-progress quiz. The student will always have the full Enforced time limit once the quiz starts.

Figure: The new message on the Quiz Restrictions tab

Announcements — Create new announcements quickly with 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. This only appears when you are in the course where the announcement was created.

Users click Copy, which opens a new edit announcement page in draft mode with the details of the original announcement copied over. The following details are copied:

Headline, with “Copy of ” appended to the front
Content
Display Author checkbox setting
Show Start Date setting
Attachments
Release conditions

Start dates and/or end dates are not copied over. No notifications are triggered by this action until the edit page is saved.

Previously, users had to manually select the content of an announcement and paste it into announcement creation.

The new Copy option in the context menu. — Figure: The new **Copy** option in the context menu.

Insights Portal — Additional features added to the new Assessment Quality Dashboard

This release introduces several improvements to the Assessment Quality Dashboard:

New Flagged Question card added to the Summary area. When a user clicks this card, it filters the Quiz Details table and displays a “flagged questions” status indicator at the top of the page to indicate that this filter is in place. The Flagged Question card can be turned on and off in Settings. Flagged questions are those that are outside the set threshold for acceptable values in their statistics.
New Flagged Quiz Items column added to the Quiz Details table.
New “!” icon added next to quiz items that have one or more flagged questions.
New In Question Pool column added to the Quiz Item Analysis table to indicate if the item is part of a question pool.
Ability to link out to the Quiz edit page from the Quiz Item Analysis added to quickly take action.

Assessment Quality Dashboard with Flagged Question card. — Figure: Assessment Quality Dashboard with **Flagged Question** card.

Quiz Details table with Flagged Quiz Items column. — Figure: **Quiz Details** table with **Flagged Quiz** **Items** column.

CourseLink — Improved layout of show/hide interface

To improve consistency across the platform, this release features a stylistic upgrade to the layout of the show/hide interface. This does not affect usability or change interactions; in addition, all accessibility interactions remain unchanged.

Figure: The updated show/hide interface.

Content — Media Library added to Content Experience

This feature adds the Media Library to the Content experience, which is accessible by navigating to Existing Activities > Media Library.

For more information about the Media Library functionality (Classic Content), refer to Evolving The Audio-Video Experience in Brightspace Community.

Note: Videos that are drag and dropped into the Content interface will go to Manage Files, and not the new Media Library.

The Media Library option in the Existing Activities dropdown menu of the Content experience. — Figure: The **Media Library** option in the **Existing Activities** dropdown menu of the Content experience.

Content – Workflow improvements to creating media topics

When creating a new video or audio topic in Content, instructors no longer must wait for the uploaded media file to finish processing to continue creating the topic.

While the media file remains unavailable during processing, instructors can navigate away from the upload page to work on other content creation tasks. If another user attempts to access the media file in the topic before processing is complete, a message prompts them to wait for the media file to become available. When processing is complete (or the uploaded media file is invalid or corrupted), a notification displays from Update alerts on the navbar, with a link to the course home page.

Note: new video files are now published as visible by default. As a workaround, instructors can set the topic containing the processing video as hidden. When the processing is complete, instructors can set the topic to visible.

Video file processing messages from Update alerts on the navbar — Figure: Video file processing messages from **Update alerts** on the navbar

SCORM — Easier object import with optional custom review/retake process

This feature allows instructors using the new SCORM/xAPI in Content to disable CourseLink’s built in SCORM review/retake functionality. Disabling CourseLink’s review/retake functionality will prevent learners from experiencing issues when the package has a native built review/retake logic. Disabling the custom review/retake functionality can only occur during upload of a SCORM/xAPI object.

To view this new option in Content, navigate to Add Existing > SCORM/xAPI .

In the publishing workflow, navigate to Edit Properties and expand the Advanced Settings area. Under the new subheading Course Package Review/Retake Options, select one of the following:

Add review/retake options. My package does not have built in review/retake functionality. (Default); or
Do not add review/retake options. My package does have built in review/retake functionality.

If a currently uploaded file needs to have this setting changed, users must reupload and replace the original file.

The Review/Retake subheading in the Advanced Settings area. — Figure: The **Review/Retake** subheading in the **Advanced Settings** area.

Contact

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

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