June Brightspace Updates

Posted by Michael Coley on Thursday, June 16, 2022 in Releases.

Summer months are usually when we see the biggest updates from Brightspace and D2L. This summer is shaping up for some good updates across different areas of the platform.

Assignments – Save time by copying assignments to other courses you teach

Instructors who teach several courses are now able to copy assignments between their courses. The Copy to Other Courses option appears in the context menu of assignments.

Figure: The Copy to Other Courses dialog appears in the dropdown menu of any assignment.

In the Copy Assignment window, you can select any rubrics and grade items associated with the selected assignment to include them in the copy package. The Choose Destinations area enables you to search by keyword or semester to find the destination courses for the assignment. Only course offerings for which a user is enrolled as Instructor, Instructor (Non-SIS), Designer, TA Editor, TA Instructor, or any Elevated Access roles appear in the Choose Destinations list. The maximum number of courses you can select is 10.

Figure: The Copy Assignments dialog enables you to select the associated rubrics and grade items and choose destinations.

After you have completed the Copy Assignment dialog, the progress page indicates the status of each destination course and any issues. If you navigate away from the progress page, a minibar notification in Brightspace Learning Environment indicates when the assignment has been copied to all the destination courses. You can click the notification to open the progress page to review the status and logged issues.

Copied assignment includes the following key assignment properties:

Assignment folder and properties, including instructions, assignment category, and visibility
Assignment properties include 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 an 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 assignment is linked from content)

NOTE: In some cases, references to links and images that are not copied may result in broken links.

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. Users must check the Allow others to see my pronouns check box for their pronouns to display in Classlist.

Previously, the only location where pronouns were displayed was on a user’s profile card.

Figure: Pronouns display in the ‘Last Name, First Name’ column of Classlist, to the right of the user’s name, in parentheses. User name text is blue, pronoun text is grey.

Lessons View – Streamline workflows with the replace uploaded files functionality

Instructors can now replace uploaded PDF, Word, PPT, and image files when editing a topic in Lessons View. This feature does not include HTML or Audio/Video files.

Figure: Lessons > The Edit topic page with the grey banner that appears for uploaded files, weblinks, and LTI links and holds the Replace button for PDF, Microsoft Word, PPT, and image files.

On clicking Replace, the Add a File dialog box appears. This workflow is consistent as in the Classic Content experience and in Assignments > the File Upload workflow.