Tag: january

Students and Instructors

SMS Notifications – End of Life

SMS (Short Message Service) notifications will no longer be supported or available starting in the July 2024 release. This change is in response to the deprecation of this service by mobile providers. Users can receive mobile push notifications in Brightspace Pulse, and can subscribe to email notifications in place of SMS notifications. For more information, refer to Intent to EOL SMS Notifications.

Awards – Export achievements as digital
credentials

Learners can now export their earned awards in a standards-compliant format using the new Export Digital Credential option. This feature allows the download of certificates or badges as an industry-standard Open Badges 2.0 compliant Badge for their own record keeping or sharing.

Badge Baking is the process of embedding digital credentials within the badge image. This approach ensures that the user has legitimately earned the badge by including a verification link used to check the integrity of the embedded information. To learn more about Badge Baking, refer to Open
Badges Baking Specification.

For Baked Badge, the supported format in Brightspace is PNG only, and the
recommended pixel size of the badge should be no smaller than 200 px x 200 px.

Note: Not all applications support Open Badges 2.0 Badge Baking. Some third-party applications strip meta-data from images, causing baked badges to be non-compliant with Open Badges 2.0.

To download an award, learners must navigate to the My Awards page, select the desired award, click Share, and then click the new Export Digital Credential button. In the opened window, learners must provide their email address to link to their award and ensure verification, and then click Export.

Exporting a digital credential downloads badges or certificates as a .png file with the award data embedded in the image.

CourseLink Editor – Insert Stuff uses new file picker when uploading from users’ computer

This release updates the Insert Stuff > My Computer file picker with the version currently used in the Insert Image workflow, which allows drag-and-drop file uploads from the user’s computer.

Previously, the Insert Stuff > My Computer file picker used an older file picker that did not support drag-and-drop of files.

Chat – End of Life | Removed

As of this release, the Chat tool is removed for all users. Content topics that are Chat-based are not removed, but the chats are no longer accessible.

For additional information as to the reasoning for this removal, refer to Intent to End Of Life Notice for: Chat in Brightspace Community.

Instructors Only

Dropbox & Discussions – Improved tooltip for unsaved changes to evaluations

In the Dropbox and Discussions evaluation experience, the tooltip for reporting evaluation errors is updated to include clearer language. The tooltip appears when a user enters over 300,000 characters into the Overall Feedback field or enters an invalid grade into the Grade field.

The new tooltip reads “There is one or more errors in the information entered”. Previously, the tooltip read “There are invalid grades on this page”, excluding various errors that may have caused the tooltip to appear. The new language makes the types of errors clearer as it encourages users to review the entire evaluation.

Outcomes Management – Easily differentiate outcomes statements using short codes

With this release, you can optionally add short codes when creating grade items to make the experience of aligning authored outcomes to grade items more consistent with ASN outcome alignment. Additionally, the short code now consistently appears for both authored and ASN outcomes when using the pop-up outcomes picker. Previously, the short code was not consistently visible across view modes and pickers.

Quizzes – Written response questions remain as pending evaluation until being manually graded

When instructors grade quiz attempts, any ungraded written response questions remain as pending evaluation until the instructor manually grades them. Previously, when instructors clicked Publish or Update for a quiz attempt, the written response question’s pending evaluation status would be removed.

If a written response question is not graded, the status shows a pending evaluation message for the learner view. In the learner view, learners always see the message “This question has not been graded” until the instructor grades the question.

The instructor view displays the message “not auto-graded; a default value of 0 was assigned” until they grade the question.

Contact

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

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Contact

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

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

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.

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

Contact

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

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

Students and Instructors

Respondus LockDown Browser for Chromebooks

A beta release of Respondus LockDown Browser for Chromebook is now available for CourseLink.

Instructors

During the beta period, instructors will have to enable the use of the Chromebook version on a per exam basis.

• Go to the LockDown Browser Dashboard within CourseLink
• Select “Require Respondus LockDown Browser for this exam”
• Expand “Advanced Settings” and select “Allow students to use LockDown Browser for Chromebook (beta)”
• Save the exam settings for LockDown Browser

Students

Installing LockDown Browser on your Chromebook is easy.  

• Log into the Chromebook and start Google Chrome
• Log into CourseLink and navigate to the exam that requires LockDown Browser
• Select the link for downloading and installing LockDown Browser
• From the Chrome web store, select “Add to Chrome” to install the LockDown Browser Extension
• Note: during the beta, this extension will only work with quizzes an instructor has enabled for use with LockDown Browser for Chromebook

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Multiple Rubric Support in Consistent Evaluation Experience

This feature is a continuation of the feature that was introduced in the December 2020 release.

If a Dropbox folder includes multiple rubrics, they are all visible to instructors using the Consistent Evaluation Experience. Instructors are also able to choose the default scoring rubric. Previously, the Consistent Evaluation Experience would only display one rubric on the assignment evaluation screen.

Insights – Settings and Filter Improvements on the new Engagement Dashboard

The new Settings page has two tabs: Summary Metrics and Result Table Metrics. The Summary Metrics tab contains the Roles filter, which enables you to select the learner roles you want to include in dashboard data. All roles that you exclude are not included in any data query on the Engagement Dashboard. The Summary Metrics tab also enables you to determine which cards are included in the Dashboard display and set your own threshold for the System Access metric. By default, all the cards are included on the dashboard. 

Widgets – Widget Sandboxing to Enhance Content Security

To enhance the security of Widgets that execute scripts to create extra-rich HTML experiences (such as objects that can execute JavaScript), there is now a sandboxing feature that creates a secure iFrame around the HTML file. This will allow an HTML file to execute scripts (such as JavaScript) within the iFrame only but will prevent them from executing outside the iFrame (against the domain). This enables some flexibility in creating rich content, but reassurance for the security- conscious that end user information remains secure in all situations.

Course Export – Export File Upload Attribute for Written Response Questions

Written Response quiz questions that allow for file upload can now be imported and exported from CourseLink. With the ability to import and export these questions users can share them with users from other instances of CourseLink (D2L Brightspace). 

Grades – Additional Features for Mastery View in Grades

To increase the value of the Mastery view of Grades, originally released in December 2020, this release updates and adds the following new features:

• Three new calculation methods: Highest Level, Most Recent Level, and Decaying Average.
• A Publish All button for overall levels of achievement for all outcomes to all learners.
• A Search by Student Name field.
• A warning when the user attempts to change the default achievement scale.
• Removal of the Clear Default option in the Achievement Scale dialog.

Contact

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

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