Continuous Delivery Updates for February 2024

Instructors Only

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:

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

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 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.

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

The new Intelligent Agent List page, with the bulk edit and category management functionality.
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 February 2021

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Save Progress and Visual Enhancements

The Save button in the new Dropbox creation experience enables an instructor to save their progress while creating or editing a folder. Previously, Save and Close was the only option.

The scrollbars on the main and right-hand panels now appear thinner and less noticeable, providing more vertical space when creating or editing a folder.

The name of the folder appears in the immersive navbar along the top of the page.

The name of the Dropbox folder on the immersive navbar and the less obtrusive scrollbar in the new Dropbox creation experience
Figure: The name of the Dropbox folder on the immersive navbar and the less obtrusive scrollbar in the new Dropbox creation experience

Brightspace Pulse – Course access events added to Brightspace Data Platform

To allow administrators and instructors to see when learners access courses from Brightspace Pulse, the app now sends course access events to the Brightspace Data Platform (BDP). The BDP stores these events, and then computes and stores the aggregated data, which can then be accessed through various course reporting tools, such as Classlist, Class Progress, Engagement Dashboard, and the Course Overview widget. For example, in Classlist, the Last Accessed column now displays a timestamp when a learner accesses a course from Brightspace Pulse.

Grades – Additional features for Mastery view of the grade book

The first time you use the Mastery View table page, a message appears under the page title indicating the default calculation method for the data in the view and provides a link to the Settings page, where you can change the calculation method.

If you change the calculation method after evaluation data has been collected, a warning message appears to indicate that the evaluations must be recalculated according to the newly selected method.  Any prior evaluations with manual overrides or feedback are not affected by changing calculation methods. If outcome overall achievements are already published, recalculations for the newly selected method are also immediately visible to learners.

When viewing the Outcomes Progress Evidence page from a mobile device, the evidence appears in a responsive display format for the smaller screen. 

Quick Eval – Homepage widget

Quick Eval can now be added to course homepages as a widget to allow instructors to view and access any submissions awaiting evaluation. The Quick Eval widget displays a list of up to six activities with submissions to evaluate. The activities are sorted by due date, with the earliest date first. The icon indicator in the widget shows the type of activity (dropbox, discussion, or quiz), and the number of unevaluated submissions for each activity. The due date and course information are also visible below the title of each activity.

The Quick Eval widget displaying unevaluated activities
Figure: The Quick Eval widget displaying unevaluated activities

Rubrics – Warning dialog for partial evaluations

Previously, if an instructor attempted to publish a partially completed rubric evaluation, the partial evaluation dialog appeared. If the instructor tapped Enter on their keyboard, the partial evaluation was published. 
Now, the default button behavior has changed so that tapping Enter on the page returns the user to the rubric to complete the evaluation. This change adds a verification layer to reconsider their action and ensure that instructors are not mistakenly publishing incomplete evaluations. 

The partial evaluation warning dialog appears the same, but has updated default behavior.
Figure: The partial evaluation warning dialog appears the same, but has updated default behavior.

Respondus – New Live Proctoring Feature

Earlier this month, the Respondus Live proctoring feature was released to instructors.

This feature leverages a video conferencing system (Zoom, MS Teams, etc.) and allows instructors to proctor students in real-time during online exams, tests, and quizzes.

This feature is intended for small classes where an instructor can view all students on the screen at once.

For more information on this new feature as well as instructions on how to enable it, please see the Live Remote Invigilation of CourseLink Quizzes with Respondus LockDown Browser section of the Tips for Live Remote Invigilation with Zoom or Teams page on OpenEd’s Remote Teaching & Learning website.

Zoom – Live Transcription (Closed Captioning) Service

Earlier this month, the Zoom Live Transcription Service was released.

The Live Transcription (closed captioning) service is available for Educational/Pro account holders. This service automatically captions speakers in Zoom meetings, adding their text to the bottom of the meeting window, as well as making a live transcript available in its own panel.

Visit the Zoom: Live Transcription Service page for details on configuration and setup options.

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 February 2020

Students and Instructors

Dropbox – Streamlined Access to Inline Feedback

To streamline access to assignment feedback, learners can now immediately access inline feedback from User Progress, Grades, and Dropbox. From these tools, the View Inline Feedback link takes the learner directly to the annotations view (or Turnitin viewer, if that is the tool used to provide feedback). The inline feedback also includes a link to the file for the assignment, so learners know which document contains the feedback. Previously, the View Inline Feedback link took the learner to the Dropbox feedback summary page, where they had to click a second link to view the feedback.

Grades view for learners displaying the View Inline Feedback link, which now opens directly in the annotation view.
Figure: Grades view for learners displaying the View Inline Feedback link, which now opens directly in the annotation view.

CourseLink – EXIF Data Warning Appears when Uploading Images

In some instances, when users upload .jpg files in any file upload area across CourseLink, an EXIF (exchangeable image file) data warning appears informing the user that the file may contain geolocation data.

Video Note – Automatic Closed Captioning

To improve accessibility, video notes now provide automatic closed captioning for newly created videos. After video processing, users can view closed captions using video player controls.

In addition, users can now download a transcript and the closed caption file associated with a video independent of Video Notes.

Localized closed captioning is available for the following languages:

  • US English (en-US)
  • British English (en-GB)
  • Canadian French (fr-CA)
  • German (de-DE)
  • Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)
  • Korean (ko-KR)
  • Italian (it-IT)
  • Spanish (es-US)
  • Modern Standard Arabic (ar-SA)
  • Russian (ru-RU)
  • Japanese (ja-JP)
  • Turkish (tr-TR)
  • Dutch (nl-NL)
  • Chinese Mandarin (zh-CN)

Notes:

  • Canadian English is not available for closed captioning and defaults to en-US.
  • Chinese Traditional (zh-TW) closed captions are not currently available and defaults to zh-CN.
  • Mexican Spanish (es-MX) closed captions may not be available and defaults to US Spanish (es-US)
  • Swedish closed captions are not available.
A Video Note with closed captions.
Figure: A Video Note with closed captions.

Instructors Only

Course Administration – Course Reset

Course Reset is a new tool that enables an instructor to reset a course back to an empty shell. Course Reset permanently deletes course content, activities, associated files, user grades, user progress records, and interaction data from the course in a single bulk process. Users can optionally choose to include course groups, and/or course widgets, navbars, and homepages as part of the course reset process, or leave them in the course.

The Course Reset process does not affect user enrollments, sections and section enrollment, course associations, course paths associated to the course, ePortfolio, ePortfolio sharing groups or forms, email/instant messages sent to or from users in the course, and Activity Feed posts.

Course Reset permanently deletes the course data and it will not appear in any reporting or data sets after the course reset process is complete. After performing a course reset, an Audit Log maintains a record of the course reset action, including the date and time of the course reset, the data that was selected for deletion, the user who performed the course reset, and any errors that occur during the course reset process.

Grades – Tab Delimited Import into Gradebook

Users can now import tab separated value (.tsv) files into Gradebook. Previously, users could only import comma delimited files into Gradebook, which created a usability issue in some international regions.

Outcomes Management – Levels of Achievement are Mapped to Rubric Levels

Levels of achievement, used to measure progress towards learning outcomes, can now be mapped to rubric levels. Instructors no longer have to use a percentage score to translate rubric levels to levels of achievement. This means they can use text-only rubrics, as well as points-based rubrics, to automatically identify a suggested level of achievement for the learner’s performance.

Achievement levels are automatically mapped to rubric levels. If there are more rubric levels than achievement levels, some achievement levels may span more than one rubric level. In this case, the levels on each side of the center are symmetrically and evenly distributed.

If there are more achievement levels than rubric levels, some achievement levels are excluded in the map. In this case, the top and bottom achievement levels are automatically mapped to the top and bottom rubric levels and distributed evenly and symmetrically.

After the automatic mapping has occurred, instructors can manually adjust the alignment. The alignment levels can be manually adjusted by dragging the colored circles in the Achievement Levels row of the rubric to identify the desired mapping. Changes can be made to the alignment until a submission is evaluated using the rubric. At that point, the rubric and mapped achievement levels are locked.

Rubrics dialog enabling instructors to adjust the outcomes mapped to rubric levels.
Figure: Rubrics dialog enabling instructors to adjust the outcomes mapped to rubric levels.

Quizzes – Learning Outcomes can be aligned to Quiz Questions

In the new Quiz Builder, questions can be aligned to learning outcomes. After you align an outcome to a quiz question, that outcome is aligned for all quizzes in which the question appears. This feature builds on the availability of learning outcomes with other tools, including content items, Dropbox, and rubrics.

After instructors align learning outcomes to one or more questions in a quiz, they can evaluate levels of achievement against learner quiz attempts. Suggested outcome achievements are provided for questions that are auto-graded with the ability to overwrite the suggestion. The default outcome achievement suggestion is based on the default outcomes achievement scale for the course. After the learning outcomes are published, quiz attempts appear in the outcomes progress page as individual demonstration of the learners’ achievement toward the outcomes. They are also visible to instructors when evaluating or reviewing attempts from within Quizzes and visible to learners within Quizzes if a submission view is set up to show quiz questions, responses, and associated outcomes to learners.

Instructors can align outcomes to all questions in a question pool by selecting the question pool from the main Quiz Builder page and then selecting Align to Outcomes from the More Actions menu. They can remove alignment to a particular question or set of questions within a question pool by opening the pool and selecting the clear option next to outcomes tag on each individual question.

Quick Eval – Course Level Filtering

When opening Quick Eval within a course, only the list of activities and submissions related to that course display. This helps instructors easily view and evaluate submissions on a course-by-course basis. If an instructor wants to view all submissions across all their courses, they can still use the More Options menu to see the Multi-Course Quick Eval, or open Quick Eval from outside of a course.

Quick Eval – Dismiss Activities until next Submission

Instructors can now remove items from their Quick Eval list until a new submission is received for the activity. The removed activity appears on the Dismissed Activities list and can be restored at any time. Once a new submission arrives to the Quick Eval list, the previously dismissed activity reappears there.

Previously, instructors could only select a specific date or forever when dismissing an activity. This new option provides instructors with an additional option to manage the submissions on their Quick Eval list.

Contact

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

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