Tag: june

Instructors Only

Discussions – Save feedback in draft state when associated with rubrics | Updated

This feature provides instructors the option to save feedback as a draft on discussions associated with rubrics before publishing it to learners. Now, when instructors add feedback for discussions with rubrics, the Save Draft and Publish buttons display. This feature extends existing Save Draft and Publish options available in other assessment tools to discussions that are only associated with a rubric.

Note that if a discussion topic is associated with more than one rubric, then both the rubrics are now visible in the same pop-up dialogue. Previously, the rubrics had to be opened individually to complete evaluation. This change also benefits the use case where a discussion topic was evaluated using a learning objective.

Quick Eval – Improvements to Quick Eval list | Updated

To improve the Quick Eval experience, the following updates are now available:

• A Draft icon displays in Quick Eval for discussion posts that have feedback in draft status.
• Evaluators only see discussion posts and quiz attempts from learners in sections they are enrolled in. This matches the behavior of Dropbox submissions.

Quizzes – Arithmetic and significant figures questions round up from .5 | Updated

Arithmetic and Significant Figures questions in quizzes now round up from .5 by default. Previously these types of questions were rounded down from .5. Past quiz attempt scores are not affected by this change.

Rubrics – Consistent assessment experience for Discussions | New

When instructors use the updated rubrics grading experience with Discussions, the following workflows present the same assessment experience:

• If a rubric is attached to a discussion that is not associated with a grade item
• If a rubric is attached to a discussion and associated with a grade item, but the instructor clicks on the rubric name to assess instead of topic score

In these workflows, the same assessment screen displays, with the details, score, feedback, post information, and all rubrics available to grade.

Rubrics – Updated grading experience for rubrics with learning outcomes | New

When an instructor assess a rubric with associated learning outcomes, the updated grading experience now displays. This new experience displays in all locations where an instructor can assess a rubric with learning outcomes, for example, Competencies, Dropbox, Quizzes, Survey, Discussions, and Grade Items.

Below the rubric, a list of associated learning outcomes displays. The pyramid learning outcome symbol appears on rows to indicate which criteria the learning outcome is aligned to, or with the overall score, if it is aligned to the overall score. In User Progress, the display of the rubric assessments for competencies obeys the draft/publish state of the associated activity.

User Progress – Consistent tracking of Content progress across the Brightspace Platform | Updated

Previously, different tools and features within CourseLink used different logic for determining user progress through Content topics. Now, the logic has been consolidated so that it is calculated in the same way across the platform.

Content must meet three criteria to be included in the user progress:

• The learner must have access to the content
• The content must be marked with a completion method of Required Automatic or Required Manual
• The content is not exempt

When content does not meet these conditions, the topics are not included in the calculation of the learner’s progress.

These changes affect the following areas of CourseLink:

• Class Progress has a new Content Completed graph to represent completed content. The current content-related column is being renamed from Content to Content Visited.
• The Content sections of the User Progress tool have several changes:
  • In the Content section of the Summary page and in the Content detail page, the Visits graph is being replaced by the Content Completed graph.
  • The progress on a module now reflects the number of completed and required topics in all levels below the module. Previously, the module progress reflected the number of completed topics immediately inside the module and the number of completed sub-modules. The new progress percentage and number is an actual reflection of how far the learner has progressed through the module.
  • The Topics Visited statistics on the left side of the page now include a denominator. The data represents the number of unique topics that the user visited. The denominator indicates the total number of topics that the student can access. In addition, the #Visits column is now renamed to Total Visits.

Brightspace Insights – Engagement Dashboard available in Insights Portal | New

There is a new embedded Engagement Dashboard available in the Insights Portal. This dashboard highlights areas where intervention might be required to guide learner engagement and performance. This dashboard includes 4 visualizations, including data for:

• Course Access
• Assignment Completion
• Time the learner spent in the course content
• Current final grades

The Insights Portal can be access on the My Home page navigation bar or through the Course Admin link in courses.

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

Removing App Support for Android 4.4

For security reasons, as of June 30, 2018, CourseLink will no longer support TLS 1.0, which is used on devices running Android 4.4 and below. Google does not have plans to update TLS on these devices. This change will impact mobile apps, including Binder, Pulse, ePortfolio, and Assignment Grader.

HTML Editor – Emoticons

Emoticons are now available across CourseLink in the HTML Editor. Use them to express feelings or mood in announcements, discussion posts, and anywhere esle the HTML Editor is available. There are currently 30 emoticons available.

Rubrics – Improvements to Rubric Feedback for Learners

To provide learners with a more detailed feedback on activities, this release includes the following improvements:

• Rubrics are now using a responsive display for desktops and mobile devices.
• The Overall Score row is removed and replaced by a Total row for the entire rubric.
• Discussion Topics will show the overall feedback at the top of the page.

Rubrics – Display Graded Rubric Feedback in Gradebook

For a consistent and simplified user experience, learners can now view their graded rubric feedback in the Gradebook for discussions, dropbox submissions, and quizzes.

For instructors, this change impacts how they use rubrics with activites. They can assess discussions, dropbox submissions, or quizzes from the corresponding tool, and the completed rubric will display in the Gradebook (if the activity is linked).

Instructors Only

Copy Course Components – Date Offset

When instructors copy the content of one course to another, old course dates are also copied over. This feature enables instructors to offset those old dates to dates relative to the new semester. This feature also eliminates the burden of tweaking delivery and due dates for their learners. When instructors copy course components in bulk, they can enable the offset to occur to the items copied into the course by days or hours.

Grades – Linked Discussion Threads

When assessing a discussion post in the Assess Student pop-up, an instructor can now see a link to the original discussion post. This allows instructors to see more information about why the user posted that reply, or what other learners replied to their post. Previously, there was no hyperlink, and instructors had to open Discussions and manually find the information.

Quizzes – Question Pools replace Random Sections

Question pools are now available to improve the process of creating quizzes with randomized questions, and are an effective way of preventing cheating on quizzes. All the functionality random sections provided is now located on a single screen, with a simplified workflow. When creating a question pool, instructors enter a title, the number of questions to select, and the points per question. On the same page, they can browse the Question Library to select the desired questions to add to the pool. Instructors are also able to edit or delete questions in place.

Rubrics – Control Rubric Visibility for Learners

This release introduces the ability to control rubric visibility for learners. This is useful for preventing learners from using preview rubrics as answer keys for activities. For example, an instructor can now describe assessment expectations in assignment instructions, hiding the associated preview rubric. Once the assignment is graded, the instructor releases the graded rubric as part of the learner’s assessment details.

 

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

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