Instructors can now turn on the e-rater Grammar checker, developed by ETS ®, in CourseLink.
Once turned on by an instructor, learners are provided a link to e-rater Grammar feedback upon submission of an assignment. This enables learners to review Grammar feedback immediately on dropbox submission, which is important for assignments that allow for multiple submissions. Learners can initially submit an assignment, receive Grammar feedback, and then submit another version of their assignment after incorporating the Grammar feedback.
It’s recommended to set up folders for draft submissions with the “Do not store the submitted papers” option set to avoid students matching their own papers when viewing the Originality Score.
Figure: Turnitin Submission Settings
Faculty Survey FAQ
After reviewing the comments from the 2018 UofG Educational Technology Survey, we identified a number of questions that were asked and that we are be able to answer. Some of the questions relate to features that were just recently released.
When accessing Dropbox, the list view now displays updated information.
Instructors see information on the folder name, the number of learners who have completed the assignment, the number of learners who have been evaluated, the number of learners who have had feedback published, and the Due Date. This allows instructors to quickly determine what assignments they need to evaluate, how far along they are with their evaluations, and if they have published the evaluations.
Figure: New Dropbox list view for instructors
Learners also have an updated view of the Dropbox list, and are now able to see the assignment name, the Completion Status (Not Submitted, Submitted, Completed), their Score, The Evaluation Status (Not yet evaluated, Feedback: unread, Feedback: read), and the Due Date. This change to the list view allows learners to easily locate unfinished assignments, as well as access their scores and view instructor feedback on their work.
Figure: New Dropbox list view for students
Brightspace Daylight Experience Updated
System and custom widgets now display more prominently against homepage backgrounds. The new widget container style appears by default for both system and custom widgets.
The new widget styles appear as white cards, with 20px of space between the top, bottom, left and right edges of the cards and the content. There is a subtle gray background colour for the homepages.
Figure: Updated homepage widget styling
Instructors Only
Activity Feed Available
The Activity Feed widget creates a unique “feed” or “stream” for a course. The feed is a way for instructors to provide access to activities learners need to complete, deliver information they need to know, and facilitate learner engagement using simplified workflows in an intuitive and friendly interface.
Activity Feed can be set to allow students to reply to or comment on posts in a social media inspired interface creating a community atmosphere in courses. Add Activity Feed to your course by adding the widget to your course homepage.
Figure: Example Activity Feed
Intelligent Agents – Export agent run history to CSV
Intelligent Agent run history, previously only visible in Brightspace Learning Environment, can now be exported to a CSV file. The export can include all agents or a specific agent. It can also include runs made during a specified date range. This feature allows instructors to better track learners that are triggering Intelligent Agents.
Rubrics – Improved rubric creation experience
To improve on the new rubric creation experience, rubric creation has been changed to a single-page workflow. Clicking New in the Rubrics tool immediately brings the user to the rubric authoring page. As well, the two previous Rubric Tool options Properties and Levels and Criteria are now condensed into a single Edit option.
Figure: The new rubric creation experience in the single page format.
Update to the Instruct-facilitator Role
The Instruct-facilitator role can now enroll the TA-facilitator and TA-grade roles. Due to student privacy concerns, only teaching assistants hired for the course should be enrolled in a course using those specific roles.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
Rubrics – Display Graded Rubric Feedback in Gradebook
In the June 2018/10.8.2 release, the user experience for rubrics was improved to allow learners to view their graded rubric feedback in Gradebook for discussions, dropbox, and quizzes.
For instructors, this change impacted how they used rubrics with activities. They could assess discussions, dropbox or quizzes from the corresponding tool, and the completed rubric displayed in its entirety in Gradebook (if the activity had a linked grade).
As of the December 2018/10.8.8 release, this functionality is turned on by default and is not configurable.
Instructors Only
Dropbox – Change Dropbox and Submission Type
If no learner submissions have been made to a dropbox, instructors can change the dropbox type and submission type. This allows for existing folders to be modified without the need to create a new folder.
Dropbox – Evaluate Submissions by Clicking Learner Names
On the Submissions page, instructors can now click on a learner’s name to access the Evaluate Submission page. Previously this action allowed instructors to email learners. Emails can still be sent from the Submissions page by selecting the check box beside a learner’s name, and clicking Email.
Dropbox – Improved Evaluation Experience
The Evaluate Submission page has been updated to improve the evaluation experience for instructors with the following features:
To download a submission, instructors now click on the submission’s file name.
The Markup Document button has been replaced by a Launch Turnitin link for assignments that have Turnitin enabled.
The Publish and Save Draft buttons now display at the bottom of the page and are not confined to the Evaluation and Feedback pane.
An additional link to access the Next Student now displays next to the Publish and Save Draftbuttons at the bottom of the page.
Discussions – Improvements to the Rubrics Grading Experience
Grading with rubrics in Discussions now offers new functions and an improved workflow. The new design makes for an easier grading experience and is optimized for use on mobile devices.
New rubrics features include:
All rubric assessments and feedback updates for discussions and grade items now automatically save in draft state while updates are in progress
Rubrics in draft state are not visible to learners until the instructor selects Save & Publish, at which time learners can immediately view their feedback from Dropbox, Content, Discussions, Grades and User Progress
Instructors can choose to bulk publish feedback to all or select users at once, such as for an entire class or group
New Retract Feedback option enables instructors to remove published feedback from view of learners for changes to the Total Score. The Overall Score and Overall Feedback portions of the rubric can be edited without retraction
A grading pop-up window for easier grading that contains all rubrics for the discussion, a place to enter Overall Feedback, and a list of posts that the student has made
When grading on mobile devices, vertical margins are reduced for easier viewing
Quizzes – Add Initial Text to Written Response Questions
Instructors can add initial text to Written Response questions in the new Question Experience. Previously instructors could not add initial text into the answers for Written Response questions.
Quizzes – Opt-in for New Quiz Experience Removed
Users can no longer opt out of the new quiz experience.
Rubrics – Improved Rubric Creation Experience
To offer instructors a more streamlined approach to authoring rubric levels and criteria, this release introduces a new, opt-in rubric creation experience. Specifically, the Rubrics tool includes the following enhancements:
Quickly create and edit rubric levels and criteria inline using an auto-save experience
Easily change rubric type and scoring method during rubric creation Re-order criterion via drag and drop or keyboard
Improved logic for point-based rubrics, where new levels automatically follow existing point scoring sequences
Individual criterion cells in custom point rubrics dynamically scale when editing the criterion out-of value
Overall Score is visually separated from the rubric, displaying in its own section
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
Quizzes now display in full screen. When a learner clicks Start Quiz, the navbar disappears. This provides additional screen space for the quiz by removing unnecessary navigation elements from view.
Video Note – Closed Caption Support
Users can now add files containing closed captions to their video notes. The captioned text displays when viewing the video note, if users selected the closed caption option.
Widgets – Visual Updates to My Courses Widget Course Tiles
To provide added value and ease of use to the My Courses widget, the following changes are now available with the widget course cards:
New status indicator for Inactive and Closed states for courses
Cleaner layout of course name, code, semester, and dates
Course notifications are sorted by tool. When a user hovers on the notification icons, a tooltip provides more information.
Figure: The My Courses Widget now displays a course status indicator and sorts notifications by type.
Instructors Only
Dropbox – Anonymous Marking in CourseLink
Anonymous marking in Dropbox features the following updates:
Administrators can set folders to display a user’s Org Defined Id (student ID) as an anonymous identifier
Instructors can see a new icon associated with folders that have anonymous marking enabled
User names are revealed to instructors once feedback is published
A Publish All Feedback button is available in folders with anonymous marking enabled to ensure anonymity when publishing feedback
Improved confirmation messaging appears to remind instructors to complete feedback for all anonymous users. If Publish All Feedback is selected before providing feedback for all anonymous submissions, the confirmation window will state the number of users with feedback and the total number of users
Figure: A folder displaying the anonymous marking icon for instructorsFigure: The Publish All Feedback button confirmation dialog box indicating outstanding anonymous users that still require feedback
Dropbox- Evaluate Submissions Page Displays in Full Screen
The Evaluate Submission page no longer displays navbar links. This provides instructors with more screen space to view and evaluate submissions.
Homepages – Users Can Edit Homepage Banner Image Titles
Instructors with the appropriate permission can change the homepage banner image titles. The title can be changed to the Org Unit Name, a custom value (such as Hello {FirstName}) or the title can be deleted to display no title.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
Learners’ quiz responses are now automatically saved during the quiz taking process. For forced response questions (such as Multiple Choice and True or False), learner responses are saved automatically when they select the radio button or checkbox. Text input questions autosave every 10 to 15 seconds, and html-enabled questions save when the mouse cursor is clicked outside the quiz response input area. Autosave sends save timestamps to the quizzing log, as the manual save function previously did. For quizzes with multiple pages, quiz responses automatically save upon navigating to a new quiz page. The Save all Responses and Go to Submit Quiz buttons have been removed, and are no longer visible on the quiz page. The only button now visible on the quiz page is Submit Quiz. If internet connectivity is lost during the quiz-taking process, learners can answer questions but are unable to autosave questions or submit the quiz until the connection is restored.
Figure: The autosave function as it appears beside questions, and a simplified left navigation panel
Dropbox – New Dropbox Types
On paper submission and Observed in person submission types are now available in Dropbox. These new submission types do not require users to make a file submission for them to be completed. This allows instructors to create assessments for a wide variety of activities, not just written work, and provide evaluation and feedback for these assessments.
On paper assessments are submitted directly to instructors in class, but allow evaluation and feedback to be completed in CourseLink. A presentation can also be observed in person and evaluated in CourseLink. Both new assessments can be marked as complete by learners, automatically marked as complete on their due date, or marked as complete upon evaluation by the instructor, depending on how the assessment is configured.
The properties tab interface has also been updated to simplify the work flow when creating assessments.
Figure: On paper submission and Observed in person submission typesFigure: Marked as completed options for Observed in person assessmentsFigure: Marked as completed options for On paper submissions
Content – Removal of Send to Binder Button
Located on the Table of Contents page in the Content tool, the Send to Binder option allows learners to send course content to their Brightspace Binder accounts to review offline. With Brightspace Binder approaching end-of-life status, the Send to Binder option from the Content tool will no longer be available as of November 1, 2018.
To access course materials offline, learners can use the Brightspace Pulse mobile app.
Descriptive Error Message for Quicklinks to Unavailable Course Activities
A specific error message now appears to users who click a quicklink to a course activity that is outside the availability dates (not yet available or no longer available). The error message appears for the following unavailable activity types:
Assignments
Content modules
Content topics
Checklists
Discussion topics
Previously, when clicking a quicklink to unavailable activities, users received a non-specific error page that did not clarify the reason they could not access the activity. The updated messaging for unavailable course activities now aligns with existing messages for unavailable quizzes and surveys.
Figure: The new error message that appears when users click a quicklink to an unavailable course activity
Instructors Only
Dropbox – Anonymized Learner Names
To avoid unconscious bias in the grading and feedback process, instructors can now configure assessments to use anonymous learner names. When the feature is turned on, instructors can only see an anonymized learner name on the Dropbox submission.
Updates to Personalization at the Course Level
Users can now apply a color behind the link area on navbars, and set the text color scheme to either light (white) or dark (near black). This change lets users showcase organization colors. Users can change their color options in Navigation and Themes.
Figure: By editing the theme, you can use the defaults or select personalized colors
Quizzes – Removal of Rubrics
Instructors can no longer attach a rubric to a quiz or grade rubrics already attached to a quiz. D2L is currently working on a solution that will allow rubrics attached at the question level.
Rubrics – Improvements to Features and Workflows in the Rubrics Grading Experience in Dropbox
Grading with rubrics in Dropbox now offers new functions and an improved workflow and design that makes for an easier grading experience and is optimized for use on mobile devices.
New rubrics features include:
Rubrics that automatically save in Draft state while updates are in progress. Rubrics in Draft state are not visible to learners until rubric feedback is published, at which time learners can view their feedback from Dropbox, Content, Discussions, Grades and User Progress.
Ability to assess rubrics individually or assess all rubrics in the same grading workflow.
Separate rubric Total and Overall Score areas. The Total is a numeric value that is automatically calculated, and the value is populated in Grades. The Overall Score indicates level of achievement and is editable by the instructor.
Note that the new features and workflow only apply to grading rubrics without associated Learning Outcomes. If Learning Outcomes are associated with a rubric, the classic rubrics grading workflow remains in place. In addition, the new rubric grading workflow does not yet apply for group Dropbox folders.
Contact
If you have any questions about the updates, please contact CourseLink Support at:
