February 2026 Brightspace Updates
This month there are several key updates to Brightspace tools. These updates bring new features to existing tools as well as expanding other tools’ capabilities.
- Assignments – Group assignments now supported in Advanced Assessment
- Assignments – Improved error messages when uploading unsupported file types
- Grades – Improved navigation within the Enter Grades page
- Users – Improved filters by groups and sections
Assignments – Group assignments now supported in Advanced Assessment
Group assignments are now supported in Advanced Assessment, enabling instructors to collaboratively evaluate groups of students in Brightspace using Co-Marking, Delegation, and Multi-Evaluator capabilities. This update leverages the existing Groups tool, allowing students to submit work as a team and receive shared feedback and grades through Advanced Assessment.
The feature introduces the following key improvements:
- Seamless group evaluation: instructors can allocate evaluators to groups rather than individuals.
- Consistent experience: interface terminology and visuals have been updated to reflect group workflows:
- References to Students are replaced with Groups, such as Allocate Evaluators to Groups.
- Evaluation and feedback panel text reflects group-based workflows.
- Improved workflow integrity: confirmation prompts prevent accidental evaluator setting loss when switching between group and individual assignments.
To enable group assignments, instructors must first create groups in the Groups tool. This can be found by going to Course Admin > Groups. Then, when creating an assignment, they must select Group Assignment under Submission & Completion.
Figure: Select Group Assignment under Assignment Type in the Submission & Completion settings to create a group-based assignment.
To trigger the Advanced Assessment workflow, select evaluators in the Evaluation & Feedback dropdown section when creating an assignment.
Figure: Click Select Evaluators under Evaluators in the Evaluation & Feedback settings to create an assignment.
Additionally, the following changes were made in the Manage Allocations table:
- New dropdown options are available to assign evaluators to groups.
- Group member names are displayed in a separate pop-out.
Figure: Use the Manage Allocations dialog to set a default evaluator allocation method and adjust group assignments.
Figure: An example of group member names when viewed from the Manage Allocations dialog.
When sections are enabled, a Sections filter appears in the Manage Allocations dialog. Instructors in the selected section display a small tag under their names to indicate the applied filter, and only groups containing students from the selected sections appear in the left-hand column.
When switching between individual and group assignments after evaluator allocations are made, existing allocations are removed. A confirmation prompt appears to alert users.
Assignments – Improved error messages when uploading unsupported file types
Brightspace now provides clearer and more consistent error messages when students attempt to submit file assignments using unsupported file types. These improvements help students understand which file types are allowed and make it easier to correct submission issues.
The updated messaging appears across assignment submission workflows and Activity Display Content pages using the New Content Experience, ensuring students receive appropriate guidance based on the context of their submission.
Updated error messages for file submissions
When a student attempts to upload a file with a restricted or unsupported file extension, Brightspace now displays more specific messages depending on the number of restricted file types configured for the assignment.
Assignment submission page
- If fewer than seven file types are restricted, students see a message listing the allowed file extensions, such as:
Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with the following file extensions: PDF, DOCX, or TXT. - If seven or more file types are restricted, students see a simplified message:
Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with allowed file extensions.
Legacy content assignment submission page
- If fewer than seven file types are restricted, students see a message listing the allowed file extensions.
- If seven or more file types are restricted, students see a simplified message indicating that only allowed file extensions can be submitted.
For file assignments, students can now also see the list of Allowed File Extensions. This list previously appeared only for File and Text assignments and is now available for File assignments as well.
Improved feedback in Activity Display Content pages using the New Content Experience
In Activity Display Content pages using the New Content Experience, students now receive clearer visual indicators when uploaded files are not allowed:
- If a student uploads files with unsupported extensions, Activity Display identifies which uploaded files are not allowed.
- If a file has no extension, or the file type cannot be detected, Activity Display notifies the student that the file type is unsupported.
- If five or more files with unsupported extensions are uploaded, Activity Display displays a consolidated message indicating that multiple files are not allowed.
Improved validation when configuring Custom File Types in Assignment Creation
When instructors set Allowable File Extensions to Custom File Types during assignment creation, Brightspace now requires at least one file extension to be entered before the assignment can be saved.
If the field is left blank, Brightspace displays a clear inline error message and prevents the assignment from being saved. This improvement helps instructors avoid invalid assignment configurations and reduces submission issues for students.
Figure: New Assignment page displaying a validation error when Custom File Types is selected without specifying at least one allowable file extension.
Grades – Improved navigation within the Enter Grades page
The Enter Grades page now offers improved horizontal navigation, making it easier to work with large gradebooks. Instead of relying on a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page, instructors can use navigation arrows on either side of the gradebook, along with a scroll bar at the bottom of the grid, to navigate across grade columns.
This update also improves how dropdown menus behave, preventing them from appearing underneath other fields such as usernames.
Figure: Use the left and right arrows to scroll horizontally and view additional grade columns in the Enter Grades table.
Previously, horizontal navigation relied on a scroll bar at the bottom of the page, which was not always visible unless users scrolled down.
Users – Improved filters by groups and sections
With this release, user filters across multiple tools are updated to display Groups and Sections in separate dropdowns, improving navigation and scalability for courses.
Previously, the View By filter combined groups and sections into a single dropdown. In courses with many groups or sections, this resulted in long, difficult-to-navigate lists.
Figure: The previous View By filter shown in Classlist.
Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Classlist.
Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Enter Grades.
Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Manage Special Access.
The updated filter is available in the following areas:
- Assignments:
- Filtering by users on the Manage Evaluators and Manage Special Access pages
- Filtering by users on the submissions page, and observed submissions page
- Attendance:
- Filtering by users when viewing and entering attendance data
- Class Progress:
- Filtering by users
- Classic Content:
- Filtering by users on the Completion Summary tab
- Filtering by users on the Content Reports pages
- Classlist:
- Filtering by users
- Emailing and filtering by users
- Competencies:
- Filtering by users when grading an activity
- Filtering by users when viewing competencies, or viewing rubrics statistics
- Discussions:
- Filtering by users on the Statistics page
- Filtering by users when viewing Topics
- Filtering by users when assessing Topics
- Grades:
- Filtering by users on the Export Grades page
- Filtering by users on the Enter Grades pages
- Filtering by users on the Statistics page
- Quizzes:
- Filtering by users on the Manage Special Access page
- Filtering by users on the Statistics page
- Surveys:
- Filtering by users on the Statistics page
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