Tag: 2023

Continuous Delivery Updates for February 2023

Students and Instructors

Groups – Leave Group option enabled for Self Enrolment groups

In response to instructor questions about self enrolment groups, CourseLink will enable the Leave group option for the Self Enrolment group type.

If a learner wants to leave a group that they self-enrolled in before the date and time specified by the Set Self Enrollment Expiry Date option (if selected), on the My Groups page, learners can click Leave Group.

Note: If no expiry date is set, students can click the Leave Group button at any time and transfer to another group. It is recommended to set the expiry date to lock the group memberships.

The leave group option on the student My Groups page.
Figure: The leave group option on the student My Groups page.

Instructors Only

Intelligent Agents – Support for copying One-Time Run agents

This feature allows users to copy, export, and import One-Time Run agents and their schedules. This allows users who utilize course shells which are copied to multiple courses to schedule One-Time Run agents to run as needed in all destination courses.

Note: This functionality only applies to agents that have yet to be run. If the agent has been run, no schedule exists to copy.

Previously, agents that were configured with scheduling frequency One-Time Run would copy without a scheduling frequency.

Media Library – Support added for Bulk Actions

To improve the audio-video content management experience, this release adds the ability to perform bulk actions in Media Library.

Instructors can perform the following bulk actions:

  • Delete files
  • Restore files in Media Library > Recycle Bin
The bulk Delete action in Media Library.
Figure: The bulk Delete action in Media Library.

Quizzes – Add quiz availability dates to your Calendar

Instructors can now add quiz availability dates to the Calendar tool in the Availability Dates & Conditions menu in the new quiz creation experience. Instructors can select the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox when creating a quiz to add quiz availability dates to their Calendar. This feature provides instructors with more control over where Start Dates and End Dates appear to learners. Previously, only the Due Date was automatically added in the new quiz creation experience; and control over adding availability dates was limited to the Manage Dates tool. Instructors previously had to revert back to the legacy quiz creation experience to add quiz availability dates to their Calendar.

The following is a reminder of how Calendar events are generated when using either the legacy or new quiz creation experience:

  • If the Start Date and End Date are set, an End Date event is created.
  • If the Start Date is set, a Start Date event is created.
  • If the End Date is set, an End Date event is created.
The Availability Dates & Conditions menu displaying the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox.
Figure: The Availability Dates & Conditions menu displaying the Add availability dates to Calendar checkbox.

Quizzes – Additional paging options

Two new paging options are available in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience. Instructors can choose to display 5 questions per page or 10 questions per page. The change optimizes instructors’ options when building quizzes with page breaks.

The new paging options in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience.
Figure: The new paging options in the Timing & Display menu in the new quiz creation experience.

Rubrics – Keep track of changes to assessed rubrics with enhanced visual cues

To maintain the integrity of assessments, any rubric that has been used to assess a grade item is locked. However, there may be incidences where it is necessary to add or update the text on a rubric without changing any points, or without adding or deleting any criteria or criteria levels. The text on the rubric, including criteria names and descriptions, level names, and default feedback, can continue to be updated after the rubric has been locked. To increase the value of the Rubrics – Clarify grading criteria by editing text fields in assessed rubrics feature released in November 2022, you can now use enhanced visual cues to keep track of the changes you have made.

Note: It is not possible to edit the name of the rubric using this feature.

When an instructor makes a change to a previously assessed rubric, it is updated with a blue highlight and the text Edited in the lower right corner. When the user saves and closes the rubric, the edit indications no longer appear.

Note: It is only possible to make changes to assessed rubrics that are created in the current course or are copied from another course. Shared rubrics remain locked.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

  • WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics
  • WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.1 Use of Color
The Edit Rubric window with changes highlighted and indicated with the word Edited.
Figure: The Edit Rubric window with changes highlighted and indicated with the word Edited.

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 2023

Students and Instructors

CourseLink – Supported Browsers

This release updates the list of retro or legacy browsers (specific older versions of supported browsers). If you are using a browser below the latest updates, the “Your browser is looking a little retro” warning message appears. The browsers include:

  • Chrome 107+ (released October 2022)
  • Android Chrome 107+ (released October 2022)
  • macOS Safari 16+ (released September 2022)
  • iOS Safari 16+ (released September 2022)
  • Firefox 106+ (released October 2022)

Previously this message would only show for browsers under Chrome/Edge 100, Safari 15, and Firefox 99. There are no changes to legacy browser requirements that remain at versions below Chrome/Edge 74, Safari 13, and Firefox 67.

HTML Editor – Equations render consistently for all users

To improve consistency in the HTML Editor, this release updates the Editor so that it renders all equations during editing or creation in the same MathJax format as when published.  This helps with correct formatting and spacing of equations, which makes it easier to review work prior to publishing.

Previously there were layout and styling differences during creation and editing; the former used WIRIS format rendering and the latter MathJax.

Note: There are no changes to the Equation Editor used to create an equation to insert into the editor.

The Equation Editor showing the rendering of an equation during creation after the January Release.
Figure: The Equation Editor showing the rendering of an equation during creation after the January Release.

Pulse – View topic descriptions

Building upon the Brightspace Pulse – Access links and images in module descriptions when you’re on-the-go feature originally released in October 2022. This feature improves the experience of learners using Pulse to review course topics by making full HTML topic descriptions available.

Previously, learners could access Content in Pulse, but could not see information included in topic descriptions that were visible in the CourseLink web application.

The View Description option for a topic in Pulse.
Figure: The View Description option for a topic in Pulse.

Instructors Only

Learning Outcomes – Clear aligned learning outcomes from assessment activities

A Clear All button is now available to remove all Learning Outcomes aligned to an assessment activity. When you click the Clear All button, a verification message appears to ensure that you do not mistakenly remove all aligned outcomes from an activity.

This feature addresses the following accessibility criteria:

  • WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 3.3.6 Error Prevention (All)
The new Clear All button. The Clear All Alignments dialog requires you to verify that you intend to clear all alignments.
Figure: The new Clear All button. The Clear All Alignments dialog requires you to verify that you intend to clear all alignments.

Release Conditions – Additional Replies Only release condition for Discussions

This release alters the existing release conditions for Discussions by adding a new Replies Only option to the Posts authored in topic and No post authored in topic condition types drop-down menus. This helps instructors release material, or not release material, based solely on replies.

Previously the only options were New Threads Only and Threads and Replies.

The Create a Release Condition dialog with the new Replies Only option selected from the Type drop-down menu.
Figure: The Create a Release Condition dialog with the new Replies Only option selected from the Type drop-down menu.

Rubrics – Discard incomplete evaluations

The Rubric evaluation workflow provides an autosave feature to streamline the evaluation process; however, if an instructor exited the partial evaluation, the automatically saved parts of the assessment were committed to the rubric and visible to the learner. To provide a better experience in Consistent Evaluation (inline and pop-out views), the instructor has the option to Publish the current evaluation, or to Save as Draft. If the instructor chooses to Save as Draft, the working copy of an evaluation is saved to a temporary file until the instructor clicks Publish, and then commits the assessment to the Rubric. If an instructor clicks the new Cancel button, the working copy is deleted. If an instructor edits a previously published evaluation and then decides to cancel before updating, all the changes in the evaluation, including the rubric evaluation changes, are discarded.

Note: Grade book pop out windows and the Rubric Create and Edit windows currently only support the auto-save functionality.

The Discard button on an in-process evaluation. The Saving and Saved indicators no longer appear at the top of the evaluation window.
Figure: The Discard button on an in-process evaluation. The Saving and Saved indicators no longer appear at the top of the evaluation window.

Rubrics – Statistics icon moved to allow more space to grade tasks

The Rubrics Statistics icon is available when the rubric tile is collapsed and expanded. When the rubric tile is collapsed, the icon appears at the bottom of the rubric tile. When the rubric is expanded, the icon now appears inside the grading task. This change provides expanded horizontal space for evaluators to complete the grading tasks.

Previously, when the icon appeared outside the expanded rubric tile, the space available to grade tasks was limited by the space used by the icon.

This change provides parity between the legacy evaluation experience and the new Consistent Evaluation experience.

Previously, the Rubrics Statistics icon appeared outside the collapsed Rubrics tile.
Figure: Previously, the Rubrics Statistics icon appeared outside the collapsed Rubrics tile.
Now, the Rubrics Statistic icon appears at the bottom of the collapsed Rubrics tile.
Figure: Now, the Rubrics Statistic icon appears at the bottom of the collapsed Rubrics tile.

Contact

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

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