In this article, the latest changes and updates will be described with links to the relevant Screensteps-articles. The updates are based on D2L "releases": the monthly updates from the supplier of Brightspace.
In February D2l has made changes within the following Brightspace-tools: Text editor, LTI-items and Quizzes.
Text editor:
The Accessibility checker-icon has been changed to the following icon to improve user recognition:
Relevant articles:
LTI-items: The bug where LTI-items could not been edited without saving it to ‘open in another window’ has been fixed. Alterations can now be made while keeping the embedded view intact. Relevant articles:
- Hoe voeg ik een Möbius opdracht of toets toe aan mijn course en Content?
- How do I add a Möbius assignment or (mock) exam to my course and Content?
- How do I add a Remindo (mock) exam to my course and Content?
- Hoe voeg ik een Remindo (oefen) toets toe aan mijn course en Content?
- How can I add Wooclap in my Brightspace course?
Quizzes: Quiz statistics now include filters for Sections or Groups, allowing instructors to analyze specific sections and groups effectively. Relevant articles:
In January D2l has made changes within the following Brightspace-tools: The Pulse App, Assignments and Discussions, Course Homepage and Rubrics.
Brightspace Pulse App: The Pulse Homepage button now directs to the HHS Brightspace homepage instead of the default landing page to match the functionality of the My Home button in the web version. Relevant articles:
- Pulse - Brightspace voor mobiele apparaten (voor studenten)
- Pulse - Brightspace for mobile devices (for students)
Assignment and Discussion: The individual scores and feedback from Assignment and Discussion grade items are now synchronized with the grade book using the Update button regardless of whether a change was made. This feature enables instructors to verify that the information between the grade book and the Assignment or Discussion tool is properly organized. Read more about this in the following articles:
- Grading Quizzes
- Quizzes beoordelen
- Grading Discussion Forums
- Discussies nakijken
- Grading Assignments
- Assignments beoordelen
Course Homepage: Beneath the course-unit there are now clickable question marks which give a pop-up of the description. Besides this it is now possible to open the Wigdet Preview dialog when clicking View all modules if a course has more than 12 units. Relevant articles:
- Course Homepage
- Cursus Homepage
- How do I navigate through a course?
- Hoe navigeer ik door een cursus?
Rubrics: Teachers can now quickly assess all ungraded Rubric criteria by setting the ungraded levels to a minimum or maximum value. Relevant articles:
In December, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Assignments, Discussions, and Quiz evaluation, Content, Rubrics and the Pulse App.
Assignments, Discussions, and Quiz evaluation: With this release, the Consistent Evaluation and the New Quiz Evaluation experiences are updated to provide instructors the ability to view the grade scheme that is applied to learners in real time, based on the grade they enter during the evaluation process.
- Assignments beoordelen
- Grading Assignments
- Hoe beoordeel ik een opdracht met inline feedback?
- How do I assess an assignment with inline feedback?
- Hoe beoordeel ik een groepsopdracht (Group Assignment)?
- How do I assess a group assignment?
Content: In the New Content Experience (Lessons), instructors can now set topic completion criteria as Automatic or Manual on the Edit page for the following content types:
- LTI links
- Web links, including Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and Capture
- Course files, including media and HTML files
- SCORM content, including imported, content service, and LOR
- LOR links, including URLs and files
Besides this change, a search bar has been implemented to locate modules or topics via their titles. Read more about this in the following articles:
- Hoe maak ik een Page aan en voeg ik deze toe aan Content?
- Hoe gebruik ik Page templates in mijn content?
- How do I create and add a Page to Content?
- How do I use Page templates in my content?
Rubrics: The Criteria description character limit has been expanded to 500 characters to support larger descriptions when creating or editing rubrics. Existing rubrics retain their original 256-character limit unless manually updated. Relevant articles:
- Hoe beoordeel ik een Assignment met behulp van een rubric?
- How do I assess an assignment using a Rubric?
- Hoe maak ik een Rubric?
- How do I create a Rubric?
Brightspace Pulse App: External links now open in the native browser instead of using the in-app browser for better functionality. To access this improvement, users must first update the app and log out/in. Relevant articles:
In November, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Groups, Learning Outcomes and the Content.
Groups: A new Recycle Bin option is available within the Groups tool, enabling teachers to restore individual group units or entire categories within a course. When a group has been restored, the existing enrollments and lockers are also reinstated (if present). See the following articles for more information:
Learning Outcomes: now, it is possible to add a release condition that automatically triggers the release of content and activities when a student meets a specified achievement level for an outcome. It can only be aligned directly with activities in the Discussions, Quizzes, and Assignments tools. The levels that students can attain are: Beginning/Needs improvement, Approaching, Meeting and Exemplary when selecting the Criteria “Less than”, “More than”, "Not equal to” or “Equal to.” There is more info in the following articles:
Content: With this release, the New Content Experience (Lessons) and Learner Experience now supports nested modules up to a depth of five levels. However, we recommend using no more than three levels for the best user experience. For more information, you can read the following articles:
In October, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Content, Pages / HTML pages.
Content: A warning now appears when a teacher attempts to add an object (such as a link or image) in Brightspace Editor that has a path outside of the current course offering, for example, from another course offering. You can read more information about this change, and see the related screenshots within the following articles:
- Hoe plaats ik een link in mijn Brightspace cursus?
- How do I place a link in my Brightspace course?
- Hoe voeg ik een Weblink toe aan Content in mijn Course?
- How do I create and add a Weblink to the content part of my course?
Pages/HTML pages: To simplify terminology and make clearer the type of content being created, the HTML Document content type is renamed to Page within the Content of your course. You can see this change when clicking on Create New within the Content, and you can read the following articles for more information:
- Hoe maak ik een Page aan en voeg ik deze toe aan Content?
- How do I create and add a Page to Content?
- Hoe gebruik ik Page templates in mijn content?
- How do I use Page templates in my content?
- Hoe gebruik ik de HTML/Page bewerker?
- How do I use the HTML/Page editor?
- Cursus content
- Course Content and the Basic Course Template
In September, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Assignments, Quick Eval and Quizzes.
Assignments: The Bookmarks option within inline feedback has been removed as added bookmarks were not saved after refreshing the page. You can view screenshots of his small change within the following articles:
- Hoe beoordeel ik een opdracht met inline feedback?
- How do I assess an assignment with inline feedback?
Quick Eval: A warning message appears when users reach their enrollment limit of 1000. As being enrolled within more than 1000 courses would lead to time-outs. You can view screenshots of his small change within the following articles:
Quizzes: the new “Quiz Experience” has been implemented, this entails; the possibility for instructors to attach a rubric to written response question on a quiz, a pop-out option for assessment, the option to turn on or turn off the new quiz evaluation experience (as the new experience does not work for matching, ordering, arithmetic, significant figures, and multi-short answer questions), right and left arrows to select the learner and then select the quiz attempt you want to evaluate from the drop-down list. To read and view the exact changes, please check the following articles.
In August, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Assignments, Discussions, Grades and Learning Outcomes.
Assignments: With this release, the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message is no longer displayed for learners in the Email Status field after they submit an assignment as the message isn’t actually sent immediately and can take a few minutes. However, an email as a receipt of the submission is still sent to the students. You can view screenshots of his small change within the following articles:
Discussions: This release updates the deletion and restoration workflow for discussions associated with a group. When a user deletes a group, the associated activities, including discussions, are also deleted. And, the Start New Thread button is duplicated at the bottom of the page when viewing a topic, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top of the page. To view the exact changes, you can check the screenshots within the following articles.
- How do I use the Discussions tool?
- Hoe gebruik ik de Discussion Tool?
- Hoe maak ik een Discussion Topic per groep?
- How do I create a discussion topic per group?
- How do I start a group discussion?
- Hoe start ik een groups discussion?
- How do I participate in a discussion?
- Hoe neem ik deel aan een discussie?
Grades: It has been made easier to filter within the Mastery View. The sort component for learner names in Grade book Mastery View is updated to improve consistency with other areas of Brightspace and to resolve minor visual issues with the previous sort functionality. Again, please keep in mind, the Mastery View is only viewable/accessible within the Grades tool when Learning Outcomes are linked to an Assignment, Quiz or Discussion. To view the exact changes, you can check the screenshots within the following articles.
Learning Outcomes: A new kind of Learning Outcome is available within the Content as a release condition. This feature introduces a new Overall level of achievement release condition to Learning Outcomes. The condition is based on the learner's overall level of achievement for a given outcome in a course. To read and see the exact changes, you can check the screenshots within the following articles.
- What are release conditions?
- Wat zijn release conditions?
- Hoe stel je Release Conditions in?
- How do I set up Release Conditions?
- All about Release Conditions, Manage Dates and Availability of your Content, Grades and Tools
- Alles over Release Conditions, Manage Dates en beschikbaarheid van je Content, Grades en Tools
- Case study: Release Conditions en Start-Eind Datums voor Assignments met Grade items
- Case study: Release Conditions & Start-End dates for Assignments with Grade items
- How do I create Learning Outcomes within my course?
- Hoe voeg ik leerdoelen toe aan mijn course?
In July, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Grades (Mastery View) and Content.
Grades: In Mastery View, when it was necessary to horizontally navigate to view multiple outcomes aligned to course activities, a scroll bar appeared at the bottom of the page. With this update, the horizontal scroll bar is replaced with left and right arrows at the top of the Mastery View table. The arrow navigation ensures the Mastery View experience is more consistent with the scrolling navigation experience in Grade book. Please keep in mind, the Mastery View is only viewable/accessible within the Grades tool when Learning Outcomes are linked to an Assignment, Quiz or Discussion. To view the exact changes, you can check the screenshots within the following articles.
Content: the color of the Units within the Content, has been made a little smaller. This is purely a change of appearance. To view the exact changes, you can check the screenshots within the following articles.
In June, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Assignments and Grades.
Assignments: the appearance of the icons of the annotations (within inline feedback) have been changed. This was a minor change. To view the exact changes, you can check the screenshots within the following articles.
- Hoe beoordeel ik een opdracht met inline feedback?
- How do I assess an assignment with inline feedback?
Grades: students are now able to see a link to a feedback file within the Grades tool. Before, when an Assignment was linked to a grade item, and when it was graded, the student was only able to see their grade.
You can read more and see screenshots within the following articles:
In May, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: Grades, Learning Outcomes and Manage Files.
Grades a: within the student view of the Grade tool, Instructor feedback files added in Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions are now visible to students under Grades. Before, only the written feedback was viewable, and feedback files had to be retrieved within the Assignment, Quiz, or Discussion.
Grades b: within the Grades tool, it is possible to Publish (or Retract) all the grades. Now, while performing this action, a "Publishing in progress" pop-up displays until the publishing action is completed. When the action has been finished, the pop-up will disappear. Before, it was sometimes unclear whether the action was successfully applied.
You can read more and see screenshots within the following articles:
- Waar kan ik mijn cijfers zien in Brightspace? (a)
- Where can I see my grades in Brightspace? (a)
- Grades publiceren aan je studenten (b)
- Release Grades to your students (b)
Learning Outcomes: previously, learning outcomes could be aligned directly or through rubric criteria to group assignments but were not assessable within the evaluation interface of the Assignment tool. Now, Instructors can assess learning outcomes aligned directly to group assignments or through rubric alignments. Instructors can also apply a learning outcome score while evaluating a group assignment. All group members will receive the same learning outcomes score.
In summary, learning outcomes now work the same way for both individual and group assignments.
This information has been added to the following articles:
Manage Files: a minor change for when users add (zip) or extract (unzip) one or more files to a ZIP archive in Manage Files. A new dialog confirms that files are being zipped or unzipped within the background. Once the process is complete, you will receive a notification within Update alerts, also known as the bell icon on the top right next to your name. This information has been added to the following articles:
In April, D2L has made changes within the following Brightspace tools: (Learning) Outcomes and Discussions.
Outcomes: Instead of typing everything, now, it is possible to easily import outcomes from a CSV file. Read more in these articles:
Discussions: the (attached) files are displayed within a different part of the discussion, this is a minor visual change. You can also add an attachment within your discussion assessment. Read and see more within these articles:
In March, D2L, has made a change to the following Brightspace tools: links and quizzes.
Links: there are different ways to add a link in your HTML page in Brightspace. Previously these different ways were all visually different from one another. Now the visual display of adding a link is more consistent between the three ways to add a link. Read more in these articles:
Quizzes: there has been a small change regarding the downloading of quiz reports. When you downloaded a quiz report previously, you would have to wait until the download was completed to start navigating in Brightspace again. Now the download happens in the background and you can navigate through Brightspace while the report is downloading. You can find this info within the following articles:
In February, D2L has made a change to the following Brightspace tool: quizzes
Quizzes: in the question library, which is part of the quizzes tool, there are no longer any question mark symbols next to questions to prevent visual clutter. The folder icon however does still appear next to sections. Read more in these articles:
PDF: we also recommend to use pdf files in the content of your course instead of word or excel files. Word files for instance can become distorted when viewed by students, whereas pdf files are much more reliable. We also advise students to hand in pdf files for the same reason. You can find these tips to use pdf files within the following articles:
In January, D2L has made a few small changes within the following Brightspace tools: Assignments, Awards, Grades, Learning Outcomes and Quizzes.
Assignments: there is a limit of 300 thousand characters when giving feedback. When you exceed this limit, now, the following message will appear: "There is one or more errors in the information entered."
Awards: Students can now export earned awards by using the new Export Digital Credential button. Read the following articles to read exactly how:
Grades: If the Can Exeed option has not been set, and a tool sends a grade higher than the maximum set for the grade item: the maximum score appears in the grade book.
Learning Outcomes: you can now give the Outcome a Short Code to make it easier to find within the Achievement Standards Network. To learn more about Learning Outcomes, please check the new screensteps article:
Quizzes: when instructors grade quiz attempts, any ungraded written response questions now remain as "pending evaluation" until the instructor manually grades them. Read more in these articles (within the red text bar):
There are three tools that have been changed within the December release:
Rubrics: When an evaluator assesses an assignment or discussion in the Grades tool, the rubric now uses the Consistent Evaluation interface whether there is work submitted for evaluation. This is consistent with the assessment experience for assignments or discussions in other areas of Brightspace.
These are the relevant articles:
- How do I assess an Assignment using a rubric
- Hoe beoordeel ik een assignment met behulp van een rubric
- Grading Assignments
- Assignments beoordelen
Discussions: With this release, administrators can now determine how users assign forums to topics in the New Discussion Topic Editing experience. The newd2l.Tools.Discuss.CreateForumWorkflowconfiguration variable enables administrators to choose either the existing streamlined behavior for assigning discussion topics to forums or an option to directly select a forum on the primary panel. The default setting for the configuration variable is the existing streamlined workflow.
Please check these articles for more information:
Announcements: As of this release, instructors can publish copied announcements in other courses using either the Announcements tool or widget. This is done by selecting the Copy to Other Coursesoption from the announcement's context menu. In the Copy Announcementwindow, there is a new check box option labeled Publish Announcement on Copy. When this box is selected, the announcement is directly published in the destination course or courses, skipping the draft stage. If the check box is not selected, the announcement copies as a draft into the destination course or courses.
These are the relevant articles:
The biggest change in this release is the possibility to copy Announcements to other courses. Previously you could only copy within the same course.
You'll find both options in the menu of each Announcement. Please note that a copied Announcement is always a draft. So you need to (check and) publish them manually.
These are the relevant articles:
If you use the 'Publish all' option for Assignments and Discussions you now get a message with information on what student evaluations you're about to publish. Please note that the message 'You have x remaining learners with unpublished feedback' might also mean there is no feedback given at all.
Please check these articles for more information:
Within the HTML page, now it is possible to set the text direction on a page in the Brightspace Editor. Just as in Word Documents, you can now align the text left to right or right to left. Previously it was only possible to set the text direction attribute on Selected Items.
To do this:
- Go to a HTML page
- Click on “Other Insert Options”
- Click on Attributes
- Click on “Page Attributes”
- The new option will show up there
These are the relevant articles:
D2L has also made adding Release Conditions in the Content easier. When creating a new Lesson, HTML document or Weblink users are able to add a release condition immediately. When creating a Content-item, it was already possible to give a start and end date, now you can also (already) add a release condition.
For more information and screenshots, you can check these articles:
Within the Quiz tool, the Timer Settings have been enhanced. Now, as an instructor, you have the option to make a quiz start asynchronous or synchronous.
- Asynchronous meaning: the timer starts when the learner launches the quiz.
- Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
These are the relevant articles:
Within the Announcement tool, now it is possible to pin a specific announcement for instructors. Relevant articles:
Within assessing an Assignment with the Rubrics tool, the Name and type of Assignment will be displayed more clearly when you full-screen the Rubric. Relevant articles:
Within the Quiz tool, the Timing menu has been simplified and redesigned. For example, now it is possible to enable Automatically submit the quiz attempt when a student exceeds the set time limit.
Relevant articles: