Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

September 2021 Highlights

Posted by Donna Swanson

D2L Brightspace updates for September 2021 will be installed on Thursday, September 23rd, 2021.

This month’s updates for D2L Brightspace Include:

• Assignments – Create select box grade items in the New Assignment Creation Experience
• Assignments – Restricting file extensions for submissions | Updated
• Discussions – New Discussion Evaluation Experience | Updated
• Import / Export / Copy Components – Export release conditions in course packages | New
• Rubrics – Additional information on Grade tiles | Updated
• Rubrics – Brightspace Editor Additional Functionality | Updated
• Rubrics – Copy and delete criteria groups | Updated

Assignments – Create select box grade items in the New Assignment Creation Experience | New

With this release, the new assignment creation experience supports creating new select box grade items. Previously, only numeric grade items could be created from the new assignment creation experience.

In addition, this feature provides support for choosing a grade scheme when creating numeric or select box grade items. Grade categories now progressively display when creating a grade item. Previously, grade categories always displayed when available.

Also, to make interface text more clear, the following labels have been renamed in the new assignment creation experience:

• Score out of is now Grade out of
• In Grades is now In Gradebook
• Choose in Grades is now Edit or Link to Existing
• Remove from Grades is now Not in Gradebook

When creating a new assignment as an instructor, under Grade Out Of, click Ungraded.

Click In Gradebook, and then select Edit or Link to Existing.

From the Edit or Link to Existing dialog, the following options may display under Create a new grade item:

• If the Grades tool has available grade categories, the Choose Grade Category option displays. Clicking this button displays available grade categories for association.
• If the Grades tool has multiple grades schemes, the Change Grade Type & Scheme option displays. Clicking this button displays available grade types and schemes for association.

Click OK, and then Save.

Assignments – Restricting file extensions for submissions | Updated

Instructors can now specify the extensions of files that learners can upload as assignment submissions. When an instructor is creating a file submission assignment, there is a drop down in the Submission and Completion section of the New Assignment Creation Experience. In this drop-down list, instructors can choose the restrictions they want. Choices include:

• Annotatable files, which include all file types that are supported by the Annotation tool in Assignments. Currently, that list includes .DOC, .DOCX, .RTF, .ODT, .PPT, .PPS, .PPTX, .PPSX, .ODP, .XLS, .XLSX, .TXT, .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .TIF, .TIFF, and .GIF

Note: When a .GIF file is converted to PDF, only the first frame of the .GIF displays.

• .PDF only
• Files that can be previewed without any conversion, such as .HTM, .HTML, .MHT, .MHTML, and .BMP
• Images and videos
• Custom filetypes

If an instructor choses Custom File Extensions, they can then enter file extensions that are allowed for file submissions. When this restriction is set, learners are presented with a list of acceptable file extensions for their assignments. When a learner attempts to upload a file submission for an assignment of an file extension type that the instructor has restricted, an error message appears.

Discussions – New Discussion Evaluation Experience | Updated

The new evaluation experience for Discussions appears first for all users, but they have the ability to opt-out until the December 2021/20.21.12 release, at which time the new evaluation is set to on.

Import / Export / Copy Components – Export release conditions in course packages | New

Now when you export Brightspace Learning Environment course packages, you can export release conditions and any associations. As a result, you no longer need to re-create these release conditions when you import the course package.

Rubrics – Additional information on Grade tiles | Updated

When a rubric is collapsed, instructors can now see if the rubric is complete. If the rubric is complete, the collapsed rubric shows the overall level of the rubric, and if the rubric is not complete, the number of unscored criteria appears on the tile.

Previously, it was only possible to see the overall score of the rubric when the rubric was expanded.

Rubrics – Brightspace Editor Additional Functionality | Updated

This feature updates the Brightspace Editor released in June 2021/20.21.6 and updated in Brightspace Editor released in July 2021/20.21.7. This update includes the following for Rubrics:

• The Brightspace Editor toolbar now appears in the rubrics creation and edit experience in description and feedback fields.
• The Insert Stuff and Insert Quicklink buttons now appear in the different views with additional formatting options.

Rubrics – Copy and delete criteria groups | Updated

In response to client feedback about the New Assignment Evaluation Experience, it is now possible to copy or delete a criteria group on a rubric. The delete option is only available if there is more than one criteria group.
Note: When a rubric with attached assessment items has submissions evaluated against it, the rubric is locked and can no longer be edited or deleted.

After you click Copy Criteria Group, a new criteria group appears below the original criteria group.

If you are using keyboard-only navigation, these options are available in the tab order after the criteria group name. Once the criteria group is copied using keyboard navigation, the keyboard focus moves to the new group’s name.
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