Tag: june

Students and Instructors

CourseLink – In-Product Feedback

This release introduces in-product feedback into CourseLink as a new way to allow users to provide their feedback. Instructors and learners may receive a small survey prompt in CourseLink. The in-product feedback asks users for ratings on one to two questions; these questions ask about users’ experience with CourseLink (D2L Brightspace) as a whole, their experience meeting goals in CourseLink, or their experience in a particular workflow.

Social media share buttons – End of Life

As of this release, social media share buttons appearing in public Blogs and ePortfolio presentations that are externally visible are now removed for all users.

For additional information about this feature removal, refer to the Intent to EOL Social Media Share Buttons blog post.

Reminder: 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.

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Annotations update from Version 2023.4.0 to 2024.3.0

This release updates the Dropbox Annotations tool from PSPDFKit Version 2023.4.0 to Version 2024.3.0 This update fixes several defects; in addition, the icons used in the following areas have received minor updates:

• Main toolbar
• Line tools
• Ink tools
• Page Layout tools
• Sidebar tools
• Drawing sub-toolbar
• Highlighter sub-toolbar
• Text Highlighter sub-toolbar
• Eraser sub-toolbar
• Note sub-toolbar
• Textbox sub-toolbar
• Line and Arrow sub-toolbar
• Rectangle sub-toolbar

Editor – Updated storage location for feedback attachments in Dropbox, Discussions, and Quizzes

With this release, when instructors access Dropbox, Discussions, or Quizzes, and use the Insert Stuff file picker to attach feedback, those files are now stored in the Feedback Files location. This location is designated for the learner feedback area.

Learners can review their feedback files from the Grades page, just like files attached from Feedback Files.

Previously, when an instructor attached feedback files through the Insert Stuff file picker, the files were stored in Manage Files.

Manage Dates – Bulk edit and offset dates for recurring Intelligent Agents

With this release, users can edit and offset multiple intelligent agents that have already been set up with a recurring schedule (for example, daily or weekly). In addition to editing an intelligent agent in the Intelligent Agents tool, users can now use Bulk Edit Dates to add or remove a new start date or end date, or use Bulk Offset Dates to offset the start date or end date from the Manage Dates tool.

Previously, intelligent agents had to be manually edited or offset in the Intelligent Agents tool.

As of this release, intelligent agents with a one-time run schedule do not appear in Manage Dates and must be updated in the Intelligent Agents tool. Editing intelligent agents with a one-time run schedule in Manage Dates is under consideration for a future enhancement.

CourseLink Data Retention and Disposition Policy

For years, CourseLink has served as the University’s learning management system (LMS). The platform supports course delivery by allowing instructors to share course content and manage assessments. To maintain the performance of the system and a high-quality user experience, the CourseLink Retention and Disposition Policy has been released to manage the retention and disposition periods of data in CourseLink, including course information, content, activity logs, and users. This policy will help to ensure that an overaccumulation of course data will not inhibit CourseLink’s functional capabilities. This policy aligns with the University Record Retention and Disposition Policy, Data Storage Guidelines, and the assessment retention and disposal policy.

CourseLink Retention Period

All data, including courses, users, activity logs, and content will be retained for a period of 7 years. This time period was determined in consultation with the University Secretariat and Institutional Research & Planning (IRP).

Purge Schedule

The first purge process will begin on July 15, 2024. After the first, each subsequent purge will occur each year on the first Monday in May and result in the complete deletion of course data. This includes all course components including content, discussions, dropbox folders, quizzes, and grades. 

Please note, only course sites with a defined close date will be purged. Resource courses, development sites, and training sites will be maintained until the owner indicates that it can be purged.

Purge Date	Courses Purged
July 15, 2024	All courses from W17 and older
May 5, 2025	S17, F17, and W18 courses
May 4, 2026	S18, F18, and W19 courses
… and so on	…

Questions and Answers

Why do we only keep data for 7 years?

To meet contractual storage agreements with the vendor and to reduce performance issues, the data cannot be kept indefinitely. Additionally, the University must securely purge sensitive data on a regular basis. Seven years provides a good balance between accessing historical data and course content and purging older sensitive data.

Will there be an archive of old courses after they are purged? Is a data purge different than a data archive?

There will be no archive of purged data. When a course’s data is purged, the data is no longer in CourseLink. The course, and all content and activities, are completely deleted from the system and cannot be restored.

What if my department needs information from CourseLink for a grade dispute or letter of recommendation?

Grade disputes are typically filed within one year of the end date of the course. Courses, and all course data, will be retained for a period of 7 years and can be accessed during that time.

How can I backup my course components so they don’t get purged?

You have two options for backing up your course components. For course content, you can download each desired content item directly from the Content tool in the course, or by using the Manage Files tool.  For course components including content and assessment structure, you can use the Import/Export/Copy Components tool to save a copy of the course. The export can be imported back into the LMS at a later date. When downloading or exporting course components, please abide by University privacy policies regarding student identifying data (e.g., assessments, grades). 

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

Dropbox – Consistent settings and interface of availability dates across CourseLink

To improve consistency in activity tools, this feature updates settings and the format of availability dates and states across CourseLink for both instructors and learners.

With this release, the Dropbox List displays availability dates and states closely aligned with other activity tools to make a unified content experience. Availability dates are displayed below the titles of assignments and the hover tooltip includes the information about start and end dates with settings to explain how the assignment appears to learners before and after these dates.

Previously, the availability dates in the Assignments List tab did not include a hover tooltip.

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Accessible Rubric Confirmation dialog box in Consistent Evaluation experience

To improve accessibility and clarity for screen reader devices, the Rubrics Confirmation dialog box that appears when users navigate away from scoring an assignment or discussion post using a rubric now features the following changes:

• Screen reader-legible heading, text and buttons now appear in the dialog box.
• The dialog box heading now says Unscored Rubric Criteria in place of Confirmation, to improve the workflow clarity for all users, including those using screen readers.

Previously, the text in the dialog box was not accessible to screen readers.

Course Import – Course Groups added to Course Import and Export packages

This release adds Course Groups to the Brightspace Export Package and includes the handling of Groups on import. Exporting or Importing a Course Group does not include user information or membership in said Group.

Groups with automatic enrollments cannot be imported or exported at this time.

Course Import – Improve Import and Export of Gradebook settings

This feature adds consistency and addresses information gaps when exporting and importing a Gradebook using a Brightspace Package. The following items can now be imported and exported:

• Calculation options (Grade System, Final Grade Released and Grade Calculations). Calculation options are only imported and overwritten if the gradebook is empty.
• Grade scheme associated to a grade item if the grade scheme is shared from the org level. Grade schemes are set to match an existing org level scheme if the Name and ShortName match. If no match is found, or if duplicate matches are found, the course’s default scheme is selected instead.
• Grade categories maintain their display settings, as well as the display in calendar setting and whether they are excluded from final grade calculation. This is already possible for grade items.
• Gradebook display settings (Org Unit Display Options). These are only imported and overwritten if the gradebook is empty. This does not include the ePortfolio Artifacts options in Display Options.

Quizzes – Improved workflows for large quizzes

This feature updates instructors’ workflows for large quizzes in two ways.

Instructors can now use the Load More button on the initial page load if a quiz has more than 200 questions, sections, and question pools.

If the Load More button is shown, list operations such as moving to the bottom or adding new questions continue functioning as expected. However, to see their changes, instructors must click the Load More button to reveal the updated list.

Also, instructors can now select multiple items and use drag and drop to rearrange the question list.

Previously, quiz questions, sections, and question pools rendered slowly. Creating and editing quizzes with many items could take significant time. Moving multiple items was only possible using the Move To action menu.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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

Students and Instructors

Email – Auto save outgoing messages

When users send email messages, these sent messages are automatically saved in the Sent Mail folder. As a result, the User Account > Email Settings > Save a copy of each outgoing message to the Sent Mail folder check box is no longer available.

Instructors Only

New Accommodations Tool

Please note that this tool has been released for Guelph-Humber and Ridgetown instructors. Guelph campus instructors should continue to use the Automated Quiz Extension Tool.

This feature enables instructors to grant learners accommodations through the Classlist tool. Accommodation options currently available include: more time to complete quizzes at the course level and the ability to bypass right-click restrictions in quizzes. The right-click restriction in quizzes is the ability for learners to right-click in the quiz while taking the quiz and is important for accessibility tools like screen readers.

Once granted, these accommodations apply to all quiz activities in a course for that learner. The additional time can be applied in terms of quiz time multipliers (for example, 1.5x quiz time) or +minutes (for example, an additional 30 minutes) on every quiz in a course. 

Quiz-specific special access can overwrite an accommodation for any user on a quiz-by-quiz basis. When you overwrite an accommodation and then click Save, a warning describing the impact of overwriting an accommodation appears.

In the case where both the Accommodations tool and the Automated Quiz Extension Tool are used, the Automated Quiz Extension Tool will be the authoritative source and will ignore the Accommodations tool.

Insights – Navigation and metrics for Engagement Dashboard

A new Learner Engagement card is available on the Insights Portal. When you click the card, you can select a user from a list, and then view their Learner Engagement Dashboard. Previously, you would have to navigate through the Engagement Dashboard to access this page.

New Content View histogram on the Engagement Dashboard Summary View is now available. This metric tracks how many times course content objects, such as images, PDFs, or Word files, have been viewed to better understand content viewed offline.

Rubrics – Detach rubric warning for new Dropbox creation experience

When an attached rubric is deleted from an evaluated assignment, if evaluations of that rubric have been performed, the user now receives a detach rubric confirmation message for the assignment. This change applies to the New Dropbox Creation Experience.

Rubrics – Reorder criterion groups

In order to increase the value of rubric criterion groups, it is now possible to reorder those criterion groups in the New Rubric Creation Experience. If more than one criterion group appears in your rubric, direction arrows appear to the left of the criterion group header to reorder the criterion groups in the rubric. If only one criterion group appears in your rubric, the direction buttons do not appear.

Instructors Only

Dropbox – Create and edit experience

The create and edit Dropbox page has an updated look and feel. The classic tabbed view has been transformed into a new, fully immersive page layout.

The primary panel on the left contains frequently used fields that are always displayed. These fields are most relevant to learners and are the core details instructors want to add; a due date, instructions, and attachments.

The panel on the right organizes additional, more advanced options such as start and end dates, rubrics, annotation tools, and Turnitin. When these options are collapsed, summary text provides details about which settings are active and subtle hints that aid in the discovery of additional settings. As a result, you can see everything at a glance with little to no scrolling, and without having to navigate through any tabs.

The new experience streamlines the process of linking folders to your gradebook and builds on a pattern first introduced in Activity Feed. When you enter a score, your assignment is added to Grades, and the name and score are automatically synced for you. If you traditionally create grade items in advance, support for selecting existing grades and categories is also available.

As an Instructor, if you are opting out of the new experience, a prompt appears encouraging you to leave feedback on the new experience.

Learning Outcomes – Detach copied Learning Outcomes from the originating course

The default behavior for copying outcomes is to remain linked to the course from which they were copied. If you want to edit the target course, the outcomes must be detached, either individually, or in bulk. To solve this issue, the copied objects must be unlinked in the target course to be editable. When custom created learning outcomes are detached from the source course, they become their own object. This is useful in a scenario when you want to create an update to a master course shell or to teach a new course based on another course with similar but not identical outcomes.

Note: This feature does not apply to Achievement Standards Network (ASN) or Program-imported outcomes.

A warning message appears when you start this action to confirm that you intend to detach locally authored outcomes from the source, and that there is no undoing this function.

When the detach function is performed, all the aligned outcomes in the course are collected. For each outcome that references back to the source, a new outcome is created to replace the linked original. All reference links to the original linked object are updated with the object ID of the new outcome object.

Use the Import/Export/Copy Components tool to copy one or more learning outcomes from a source to a target course. Then, in the target course, in the Outcomes tool, select one or more outcomes to detach from the source course.

Rubrics – Accessibility improvements in Rubric creation workflow

The following updates have been made to improve the accessibility of the rubric creation workflow:

• The button next to the page title is now labeled so a screen reader reads “Actions for [title]” when the button has the focus.
• The Overall Score now has the proper heading level so screen reader users can navigate directly to it from the heading list. Previously, users were required to tab through all previous headings in the list first.
• There is no longer a skipped heading level between Rubric Levels and Criterion (both level 3) and Standards (previously level 5).
• In the rubric preview window, Criterion Score has been added as a column header. Previously, the column did not have any header text.

Widgets – My Courses and Updates widgets display unevaluated assignment submissions

The My Courses Widget and the Updates widget now display new, unevaluated assignment submissions instead of unread assignment submission files to instructors. This change aligns the widgets with the Assignments page and the Quick Eval tool to consistently notify users of unevaluated submissions and help them to track their work.

Contact

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

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