Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

June 2023 Highlights

Posted by crystal.hines | 2 comments

D2L Brightspace updates for June 2023

This update is scheduled for the evening of June 23, 2023.

This month’s updates for D2L Brightspace include:

• New Discussion Creation Experience | Reminder
• Course Import – Improve Import and Export of Gradebook settings | Updated
• Quizzes – Improved workflows for large quizzes | New

New Discussion Creation Experience | Reminder

Reminder about the New Discussion Creation Experience is a minor user interface update for discussion editing and creation for instructors. This update will bring the display and functionality in line with the existing New Quiz Experience and New Assignment Experience. To learn more about the New Discussion Creation Experience, visit this resource.

Course Import – Improve Import and Export of Gradebook settings | Updated

This feature adds consistency and addresses information gaps when exporting and importing a Brightspace Gradebook using a Brightspace Package. The following items can now be imported and exported:

• Calculation options (Grade System, Final Grade Released and Grade Calculations). Calculation options are only imported and overwritten if the gradebook is empty.
• Grade scheme associated to a grade item if the grade scheme is shared from the org level. Grade schemes are set to match an existing org level scheme if the Name and ShortName match. If no match is found, or if duplicate matches are found, the course’s default scheme is selected instead.
• Grade categories maintain their display settings, as well as the display in calendar setting and whether they are excluded from final grade calculation. This is already possible for grade items.
• Gradebook display settings (Org Unit Display Options). These are only imported and overwritten if the gradebook is empty.

Quizzes – Improved workflows for large quizzes | New

This feature updates instructors’ workflows for large quizzes in two ways.

Instructors can now use the Load More button on the initial page load if a quiz has more than 200 questions, sections, and question pools.

If the Load More button is shown, list operations such as moving to the bottom or adding new questions continue functioning as expected. However, to see their changes, instructors must click the Load More button to reveal the updated list.

Also, instructors can now select multiple items and use drag and drop to rearrange the question list.

Previously, quiz questions, sections, and question pools rendered slowly. Creating and editing quizzes with many items could take significant time. Moving multiple items was only possible using the Move To action menu.