What’s New with Brightspace?

Quiz Vocabulary

Quiz vocabulary has been updated. The names and help descriptions for various quiz settings and features have been revised to provide a clearer indication of their function, particularly around grading behaviour. For instance, the “Automatic Grade” setting under Edit Quiz > Assessment has been renamed “Automatically Publish Evaluation” to communicate more distinctly that this setting controls the automatic release of the quiz mark/feedback to the students and is not necessary for automated grading.

Copying Intelligent Agents

Intelligent agents can be copied between courses. Brightspace now permits the import, export, and copying of Intelligent Agents between courses, thereby eliminating the need to recreate them in new course pages.

NOTE: Imported Intelligent Agents will be inactive by default and must be manually enabled. The import/copy function will replicate all associated settings and restrictions except for Release Conditions, which require the additional “Release Conditions” option to be selected as well. If these Release Conditions are related to the Classlist (e.g., course enrolment, group enrolment, etc), these conditions will not become associated with the new course when copied. In any case, it is always a good practice to double check and adjust your settings before activating them. For more information, refer to our support site on Import/Export/Copy Components.

Notification Alerts

Notifications in the mini-navbar persist for 90 days. Clicking to the alert icon will display the most recent 5 alerts in the drop-down menu with a “Load More” button to display the next 5 alerts in chronological sequence. These alerts are enabled by default and inform students when new Content has been created, when grades and feedback have been released, and other such updates for courses they’re enrolled in.

NOTE: Users can change their notification alerts to opt out of receiving many notifications.

Did you know?

Brightspace has group self-enrollment! You can have students enroll themselves in Groups in Brightspace by selecting the “Self-Enrollment” option when creating a Group Category. Use this in tandem with the Group Assignment type and file-sharing “lockers” for collaborative submissions, or even to get students to self-select project topics, presentation dates, and appointment slots.

For more information, see the support topic for Creating Groups in Brightspace

Document Viewer Options

The Document Viewer options menu has been moved to the top of the viewing frame for PDF files and other documents on the content page. These menu options include:

• View thumbnails and bookmarks in a sidebar
• Search/find in document
• Quick page navigation
• Document zoom and rotate
• Full screen viewing mode

To download or print the document, scroll down the document viewer page and click the Download or Print button beneath the Document Viewer frame.

Adding Images

Gradebook, Quizzes, and Discussions evaluation feedback text-fields in Brightspace now include the ability to insert image files directly from your device.

To use this feature, simply click on the text field to make it editable, and then choose one of the following options:

• Drag & drop the image: Click, hold, and drag the image file from the folder on your computer and release it into the text field in Brightspace.
• Copy & paste the image: Right-click on the image file in the folder on your computer (or open the file and right-click on the image). Select Copy from the drop-down menu, and then use a Paste command in the text field in Brightspace.

NOTE: Because the Gradebook, Quizzes, and Discussions feedback is associated with student assessment, images that are imported to these areas will not be saved in the Manage Files area for privacy reasons. If you would like to keep a copy of the image in your course, consider uploading the image file directly to Course Admin > Manage Files.

For more information on Managing Files, including managing image files in Brightspace, see the support topic for Using Manage Files.

Email To and CC Limits Increased

In the email composition window, the To and CC fields of emails sent from the Brightspace Email tool has been increased to 200 addresses each. If you are emailing your Classlist or specific portions of your course (e.g., groups, students without assignment submissions, etc), by default those addressees are added to the BCC field for privacy reasons. The limit for the BCC field continues to be 3,000 addresses.

For more information on the Email tool and connecting with your students via email through Brightspace, see the support topic for Emailing Your Classlist.

Did you know?

You can manually grade Quizzes question-by-question. The grading page for a quiz is divided into three tabs: Users (view quiz submissions by student), Attempts (view quizzes by submission date), and Questions. This lattermost tab lists all questions in the quiz with the options to grade responses individually or in bulk. Simply select your grading option and then click on the name of the quiz question to assess the responses to that question. If any questions require regrading because they have been modified or deleted after students have already taken the quiz, the old versions of questions will appear in a separate list at the bottom of the Questions tab under the heading Questions that are not in the quiz anymore. (Note: At this time, it is not possible to drag/drop or copy/paste images into the feedback text fields of this evaluation mode.)

Assignment Previews

The new Assignment preview feature allows instructors and TAs to see the students’ perspective of course assignments. There are two places where you can access assignment preview:

• Assignments page under the Tools menu: On the Assignments page (Tools in the navbar > Assignments), click the “More Actions” button at the top of the page and select “Preview” from the drop-down menu. While in this preview mode, click on an assignment’s title to view the instructions, restrictions, and submission options that students will see. To return to your normal view, simply click the “Exit Preview” button.
• More Options menu in Assignment grading: When grading a student’s submission, click on the More options menu (“…”) in the top right-hand corner of the evaluation frame and select “Preview Activity” from the drop-down menu. A new browser tab will open with the details (instructions, restrictions, and submission options) for that assignment from the student’s perspective. When you are done, simply close the browser tab.

For more information on Assignments, see the support page for Assignments.

Document Printing

Documents, such as Pdf and Word documents, can be printed from the document viewer.  A Print button beneath the document viewer frame gives users the option to print the content of the document file itself. The Print button is on by default and does not have to be enabled. It is not possible to turn the Print button off for documents inside the course.

For more information on adding documents to Brightspace, see the support topic for Adding Files.

Adding Images

More text-field areas of Brightspace are now outfitted with the ability to insert images files directly from your device. To use this feature, simply click on the text field to make it editable, and then choose one of the following options:

• Drag & drop the image: Click, hold, and drag the image file from the folder on your computer and release it into the text field in Brightspace.
• Copy & paste the image: Right-click on the image file in the folder on your computer (or open the file and right-click on the image). Select Copy  from the drop-down menu, and then use a Paste command in the text field in Brightspace.

NOTE: Adding images using these methods will give your image a generic title. But you can rename the image file after importing it by going to Course Admin > Manage Files. Or you can upload image files directly to Manage Files and then link to them in different areas of the course using the “Course Offering Files” import path.

For more information on Managing Files, including managing image files in Brightspace, see the support topic for  Manage Files.

Discussion Notifications 

In Discussions, there is a new email notification option. When a Brightspace user is posting to a discussion or replying to a discussion, the user can use the @mention tag to notify the user they’ve been mentioned. By default, users will only receive an internal alert notification in the mini-navbar when they are tagged. Users may also receive an email notification if they’ve customized their notification settings to include email. To enable the email notification for yourself when you are tagged in a Discussion, click on your user icon in Brightspace. Select Notifications, and place a checkmark next to “Discussions – mentioned in a discussion post or thread” in the Instant Notifications menu.

For more details on tagging in Discussions, see the support page on Using @mentions in a Discussion Thread.

Did you know?

You can view, set, and delete Start, End, and Due Dates in bulk by going to Course Admin > Manage Dates. Display all activities together to get a holistic view of your course, or filter the list according to tool (e.g., Assignments, Content, Quizzes, etc) and even apply “Advanced Filter Options” to narrow your search.

Preferred Pronouns

All Brightspace users are now able to enter their preferred pronouns and display their pronouns to other users in Brightspace. To enter your preferred pronouns, click on your user icon in the top right-hand corner of the Brightspace page and select “Account Settings.” Set up your pronoun at the top of the page, then click Save and Close to finalize. When other users view your Profile Card in Brightspace, your preferred pronouns will be displayed beneath your name. See LGBTQ2+ Inclusiveness and Supporting LGBTQ* Students in the Online Classroom.

Assignments

Enable restricted file types for submissions: Restricted file types can be set for new or existing Assignments to prescribe which files students can submit via the assignment tool. To enable Custom File Types during assignment setup or assignment editing, look under the “Submission & Completion” settings for the “Allowable File Extensions” menu. Use “Custom File Types”  to create a list of acceptable file extensions. If enabled, students will see a disclaimer listing the allowable file extensions for submission to upload their Assignment. Should a student attempt to upload a different file type, an error message will inform them that the file type is invalid. More information about setting up Custom File Types is available on the Assignment support page on Submission & Completion settings.

Grading with Rubrics

Now when grading an Assignment or Discussion Topic with rubrics, the collapsed Rubric tile gives more detailed information about the Rubric’s completion status. The tile will indicate if there are ungraded criteria; it will display the “out of” total and state the Overall Score. A shortcut to Rubric Statistics has also been added to the evaluation screen. Click on the bar graph / signal strength symbol to the right of the Rubric tile to access the statistics report for that Rubric. See our support site for more information on Creating Rubrics and Grading with rubrics.

Did you know?

You can personalise your User Profile in Brightspace. Click on your user icon at the top of the Brightspace page and select “Profile” to access your settings. Upload an image to create more of a presence in your Brightspace courses. Your thumbnail image will appear by your name in your Announcements, Discussion posts, and in other areas of Brightspace. You can even include a link to your homepage or add keywords that indicate your teaching and research interests.

If you have any questions about any of these Continuous Delivery changes, or would like help using these new settings, create a support request using the TLS Support Portal or complete a course consultation request form to be assigned a TLS support contact.