December 2024 Brightspace Updates
As the end of 2024 is upon us, D2L has a few important updates to Brightspace to round out the year. These updates will come out on Friday, December 13.
These updates are in addition to the big Creator+ update we launched a few weeks ago. For more information about that, refer to our page on that toolset and the exciting updates that come with it.
Topics covered in this update include:
- Consistent Evaluation – Learner View of Grade in Assignments and Discussions experiences
- Lessons View Content Experience – Manage student progress by enabling learners to manually complete topics
- Lessons View Content Experience – Locate modules or topics using search functionality
- Rubrics – The Criteria descriptions limit increased to 500 characters
Consistent Evaluation – Learner View of Grade in Assignments and Discussions experiences
Consistent Evaluation enables instructors to evaluate learner submissions to Assignments and Discussions using an improved and optimized experience. With this release, the Consistent Evaluation experience is 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. For example, if the grade scheme applied to a course is a Letter Grade, instructors can view that letter grade instantly from the consistent evaluation experience. The letter grade is based upon the grade entered during an evaluation. The instructor can also choose to Hide Learner View of Grade or Show Learner View of Grade directly from the evaluation experience.
Previously, instructors could not view the applied grade scheme grade when evaluating a submission. Instructors would have to save the grade they entered during their evaluation, and then navigate to Grades to compare the grades entered in the evaluation experience to the applied grade scheme grade.
Figure: With this update, instructors can refer to the applied grade scheme displayed under Learner View of Grade. This view updates in real time as the instructor enters a grade in the Overall Grade field.
Figure: The instructor can select Hide Learner View of Grade from the Evaluation Options menu (…). Instructors can select Show Learner View of Grade to make the learner view visible again.
Lessons View Content Experience – Manage student progress by enabling learners to manually complete topics
In the Lessons View Content Experience, instructors can now set topic completion criteria as Automatic or Manual on the Edit page for the following content types:
- LTI links for integrated tools like Perusall, Gradescope, or Top Hat.
- 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
In the Lessons View Content Experience, when instructors create new topics using the Manual by learner option, learners see a Mark as Complete button at the bottom of the content page. Previously, instructors had to use the Classic Content experience to change a topic’s completion type to either Manual by learner or Automatically when opened.
If instructors previously created topics in Classic Content Experience, and set the completion criteria to Manual by learner, learners were unable to manually mark content as complete, which limited accurate tracking of their progress. With this update, all topics with the Manual by learner completion criteria can now see the Mark as Complete button. The ability for learners to manually mark a topic as complete enables instructors and data administrators to track completion more accurately. After the topic is complete, the button is no longer available and the messaging beside the button indicates that they have marked it complete.
| Note: Manual completion is not available for assessable activities that are automatically updated based on the tool, such as assignments, discussions, and quizzes, or Brightspace tool topics such as checklists, surveys, news items, calendar events, and linked content. |
Figure: Expand the Completion area of the Edit topic view, then select Manually by learner.
Figure: If the instructor has set a topic for manual completion, learners see Mark as Complete at the bottom of the topic.
Lessons View Content Experience – Locate modules or topics using search functionality
Users can now search through the table of contents in the Lessons View Content Experience. Using the new search field in the table of contents, users can locate modules or topics via their titles and descriptions in the same way they currently can in the Classic Content experience.
Figure: Enter your search term in the Search titles, descriptions field to find modules and topics.
Rubrics – The Criteria descriptions limit increased to 500 characters
To support larger criteria descriptions, administrators and instructors can now add up to 500 characters to the description of the criteria when creating and editing rubrics. This new limit provides more context about learning expectations. Previously, the Criteria description field was limited to 256 characters.
Full descriptions of criteria are available in the Learner view.
For instructors, when evaluating, up to three lines are displayed. To display the complete text, they must click more.
Figure: Click more to display the complete text for the rubric description.
| Important: This change applies only to new rubric items created or edited after this release. Existing rubrics retain their original 256-character limit unless manually updated. |
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