August 2018

Brightspace Platform August 2018/10.8.4 Current Release Notes

The following release notes are for clients installing Brightspace Learning Environment 10.8.4 (August 2018).

Brightspace Learning Environment

Activity Feed – Long posts include a ‘more’ link | New

Written posts and assignment instructions that exceed 4 lines of text are now truncated and include a ‘more’ link that displays the full post. This prevents a single long message or set of instructions from cluttering the Activity Feed, and allows users to more easily scan for desired materials and information.

Figure: Click 'more' to read the full post

Impact of Change	Technical Details
No impact to administrators if Activity Feed is already in use.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: Ensure the d2l.Tools.ActivityFeed.ShowWidgetconfiguration variable is turned on. Microservices dependencies: Activity Feed functionality depends on the Landlord, Authentication, Activity Feed, and Reflex microservices. Microservices location(s): Landlord and Authentication are in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia). Activity Feed and Reflex service are in the following AWS locations: U.S. East (N. Virginia), Canada Central (Montreal), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney). User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Interact and Engage with Learners - Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or Post messages and links to course materials(online resource) at release.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

No impact to administrators if Activity Feed is already in use.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: Ensure the d2l.Tools.ActivityFeed.ShowWidgetconfiguration variable is turned on.

Microservices dependencies: Activity Feed functionality depends on the Landlord, Authentication, Activity Feed, and Reflex microservices.

Microservices location(s): Landlord and Authentication are in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia). Activity Feed and Reflex service are in the following AWS locations: U.S. East (N. Virginia), Canada Central (Montreal), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney).

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Interact and Engage with Learners - Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or Post messages and links to course materials(online resource) at release.

Brightspace Daylight Experience - Login page renders top strip color and logo from the selected settings in Login Page Management | New

Previously, login pages in Brightspace Daylight Experience that were configured using Login Page Management only used the logo and color strip from the Org navbar settings.

Brightspace Daylight Experience now derives the login page logo and color strip from the Login Page Management settings that define those elements instead of from the Org navbar logo and color strip settings.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators who might be required to update login page settings.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Brightspace Daylight Experience users. Ensure the Manage login page permission is selected for Administrators at the Org level. If a navbar was applied pre-Daylight using Login Page Management that has a different logo and color strip than the Org navbar, users might notice a change to how the login page appears. To resolve this change prior to release, edit Login Page Management with the logo and color strip settings of the Org navbar or another navbar that has the current logo and color strip settings you want to display on the login page. From Admin Tools, click Login Page Management. Make your changes. Click Preview > Publish. Microservices dependencies:N/A Microservices location(s):N/A User Resources: For more information on Login Page Management, access the Brightspace Learning Environment – Administrator Guide (print-based resources) or the Customize the login page (online resource) at release.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to administrators who might be required to update login page settings.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Brightspace Daylight Experience users. Ensure the Manage login page permission is selected for Administrators at the Org level.

If a navbar was applied pre-Daylight using Login Page Management that has a different logo and color strip than the Org navbar, users might notice a change to how the login page appears. To resolve this change prior to release, edit Login Page Management with the logo and color strip settings of the Org navbar or another navbar that has the current logo and color strip settings you want to display on the login page.

From Admin Tools, click Login Page Management.
Make your changes.
Click Preview > Publish.

Microservices dependencies:N/A

Microservices location(s):N/A

User Resources: For more information on Login Page Management, access the Brightspace Learning Environment – Administrator Guide (print-based resources) or the Customize the login page (online resource) at release.

Brightspace Learning Environment - Supported browsers | Updated

This feature clarifies the browser support provided by D2L for Firefox ESR as follows:

Firefox ESR - latest version (including a 12-week overlap with the previous version).

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators due to the clarification of Firefox ESR browser support.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: N/A Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Brightspace Platform Requirements (print-based resources) or Browser Support (online resource).

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to administrators due to the clarification of Firefox ESR browser support.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: N/A

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Brightspace Platform Requirements (print-based resources) or Browser Support (online resource).

Pre-Daylight - End-of-life | Removed

This feature turns off the Pre-Daylight interface of Brightspace Learning Environment for all clients. The d2l.System.BrightspaceDaylightExperience configuration variable is set to ONby default and will no longer be editable by users.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Large impact to all users due to the end of life of the Pre-Daylight interface of Brightspace Learning Environment and due to the Daylight experience being turned on by default for all users.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Brightspace Learning Environment users. No further action is required. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the All Guides section (print-based resources) or Brightspace Help (online resource).

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Large impact to all users due to the end of life of the Pre-Daylight interface of Brightspace Learning Environment and due to the Daylight experience being turned on by default for all users.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Brightspace Learning Environment users. No further action is required.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the All Guides section (print-based resources) or Brightspace Help (online resource).

Data Hub – In-progress Quiz and Survey attempts – AWS enabled | Updated

Administrators now see in-progress attempts included in the Quiz Attempts and Survey Attempts data sets. Attempts that are incomplete have no value in the time completed column.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Moderate impact to administrators due to additional rows of data included in total attempts data.	Availability: This feature is available to AWS-hosted and co-located Brightspace Insights and Brightspace Core clients in the following regions: North America, EMEA, and APAC. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Data Hub users. No further action is required. If you have existing queries and integrations that you use with your data sets, and do not want those incorporated in your results, ensure you update them to exclude in-progress attempts. Microservices dependencies: Data Hub functionality depends on the Authentication Service and Landlord Service microservices. Microservices location(s): Authentication Service and Landlord Service are in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia). User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Brightspace Analytics – Administrator Guide (print-based resources) or Brightspace Data Sets (online resource) at release.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Moderate impact to administrators due to additional rows of data included in total attempts data.

Availability: This feature is available to AWS-hosted and co-located Brightspace Insights and Brightspace Core clients in the following regions: North America, EMEA, and APAC.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Data Hub users. No further action is required. If you have existing queries and integrations that you use with your data sets, and do not want those incorporated in your results, ensure you update them to exclude in-progress attempts.

Microservices dependencies: Data Hub functionality depends on the Authentication Service and Landlord Service microservices.

Microservices location(s): Authentication Service and Landlord Service are in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia).

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Brightspace Analytics – Administrator Guide (print-based resources) or Brightspace Data Sets (online resource) at release.

Grades – Reorder grade items | Updated

Instructors with gradebooks containing 200+ grade items can now manually enter the sort order number in a new Sort Order text field on the Reorder Grade Items and Categories page. Instructors can enter a positive integer in the fields in any order, relative to each other. Items with the same sort order number will retain their current sort order, relative to each other. This new Sort Order field eliminates the need to scroll through a long list of grade items and categories to reorder the gradebook.

The previous Sort Order drop-down menu still appears for Gradebooks with fewer than 200 grade items.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to instructors with large numbers of grade items due to improved grade item sorting capabilities.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Grades users. No further action is required. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices locations: N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Assess and Grade Learners – Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or the Managing grades and grade items web topics for instructors (online resource) at release.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to instructors with large numbers of grade items due to improved grade item sorting capabilities.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Grades users. No further action is required.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices locations: N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Assess and Grade Learners – Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or the Managing grades and grade items web topics for instructors (online resource) at release.

Import Course Package - Date Offset | New

Previously, when importing course packages, old course dates were copied over from the activities in the package. Now, administrators and instructors can offset previous course activity dates to new dates for the destination courses using Advanced Options settings.

This feature eliminates the burden of manually editing course activity dates in imported course packages.

Figure: Select Advanced Options to access date offset for the course package

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators who can now offset dates while importing course packages.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Import Course Components users. No further action is required. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For information on Import/Export/Copy Components to share with users, refer to the Set Up and Deliver a Course - Instructor Guide (print-based resource) or the Import course components web topics (online resource) at release.
Slight impact to instructors who can now offset dates while importing course packages.	N/A

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to administrators who can now offset dates while importing course packages.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Import Course Components users. No further action is required.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For information on Import/Export/Copy Components to share with users, refer to the Set Up and Deliver a Course - Instructor Guide (print-based resource) or the Import course components web topics (online resource) at release.

Slight impact to instructors who can now offset dates while importing course packages.

N/A

Personal Dashboard - End-of-life | Removed

The Personal Dashboard tool is a personalized homepage for instructors and checklist to help set up courses easily in Brightspace Learning Environment. With the Brightspace Daylight Experience and standard org homepages, there is a strong overlap in the functionality that the Personal Dashboard provides, reducing the need for the tool.

As of the August 2018 release, the Personal Dashboard has reached end-of-life status. Moving forward, D2L is committed to providing a streamlined and consistent user experience with Daylight.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Large impact to administrators due to the end of life status of the Personal Dashboard.	Availability: As of the August 2018 release, this tool is no longer available to clients. To enable: If you have not yet adopted Daylight, D2L recommends ensuring the Personal Dashboard tool is turned off in Organization Tools. If you are already on Daylight, you do not need to wait until the official end-of-life date to turn off the Personal Dashboard. D2L recommends making the change at the best time for your organization between now and August 2018. If you currently have the d2l.Tools.Dashboards.DefaultHomepage configuration variable set to Personal Dashboard, consider contacting D2L Support to set the variable to Classic Homepage. This may help transition instructors to the new view. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For information on Brightspace Daylight Experience to share with users, refer to the Brightspace Daylight Visual Design - Getting Started Guide (print-based resource) or the Brightspace Daylight Experience web topics (online resource) at release. For more information on the end of life status of Personal Dashboard, see Intent To End-Of-Life Notice For: Personal Dashboard (blog post).
Large impact to instructors due to the end-of-life status of the Personal Dashboard.	N/A

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Large impact to administrators due to the end of life status of the Personal Dashboard.

Availability: As of the August 2018 release, this tool is no longer available to clients.

To enable: If you have not yet adopted Daylight, D2L recommends ensuring the Personal Dashboard tool is turned off in Organization Tools.

If you are already on Daylight, you do not need to wait until the official end-of-life date to turn off the Personal Dashboard. D2L recommends making the change at the best time for your organization between now and August 2018.

If you currently have the d2l.Tools.Dashboards.DefaultHomepage configuration variable set to Personal Dashboard, consider contacting D2L Support to set the variable to Classic Homepage. This may help transition instructors to the new view.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For information on Brightspace Daylight Experience to share with users, refer to the Brightspace Daylight Visual Design - Getting Started Guide (print-based resource) or the Brightspace Daylight Experience web topics (online resource) at release.

For more information on the end of life status of Personal Dashboard, see Intent To End-Of-Life Notice For: Personal Dashboard (blog post).

Large impact to instructors due to the end-of-life status of the Personal Dashboard.

N/A

Quizzes – New quizzing experience default status set to ‘on (opt-in)’ | Updated

The default status of the d2l.Tools.Quizzes.NewQuizExperienceOpt-In configuration variable is now set to ‘on (opt-in)’. This allows instructors to toggle the new quizzing experience in their courses to familiarize themselves with the new user interface and workflow changes. The ‘off’ value for the d2l.Tools.Quizzes.NewQuizExperienceOpt-Inconfiguration variable has been removed.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Moderate impact to instructors due to the default availability of the new quizzing experience.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: Ensure the d2l.Tools.Quizzes.NewQuizExperienceOpt-In configuration variable is set to the desired value. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Assess and Grade Learners - Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or Create Quizzes (online resource).

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Moderate impact to instructors due to the default availability of the new quizzing experience.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: Ensure the d2l.Tools.Quizzes.NewQuizExperienceOpt-In configuration variable is set to the desired value.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Assess and Grade Learners - Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or Create Quizzes (online resource).

Quizzes – Dynamic preview available in question pools | New

Question pools now include a dynamic preview. The preview displays questions randomly selected from the current question pool. A refresh button allows instructors to navigate through several selections to ensure the question pool is working as expected.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to instructors due to visual changes when creating quizzes with question pools.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: Instructors must opt-in to the New Quizzing Experience to use question pools. Ensure the d2l.Tools.Quizzes.NewQuizExperienceOpt-In configuration variable is set to the desired value. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Assess and Grade Learners - Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or Create Quizzes (online resource).

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to instructors due to visual changes when creating quizzes with question pools.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: Instructors must opt-in to the New Quizzing Experience to use question pools. Ensure the d2l.Tools.Quizzes.NewQuizExperienceOpt-In configuration variable is set to the desired value.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Assess and Grade Learners - Instructor Guide (print-based resources) or Create Quizzes (online resource).

Rubrics - Improvements to rubric feedback for learners | Updated

To provide learners with more detailed feedback on activities and apply a consistent look and feel to rubric feedback, this release includes the following improvements:

User Progress displays general feedback, score, and a graded rubric for Grades, Discussions and Assignments. Feedback displays to learners as soon as instructors save rubric and overall feedback assessment.
Content tool for Assignments displays general feedback, score, and a graded rubric. This replaces the previously displayed Instructor Feedback.

Figure: Rubric feedback for Assignments Progress in the User Progress tool

Figure: Rubric feedback for Discussions Progress in the User Progress tool

Impact of Change	Technical Details
No impact to administrators.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Rubrics users. No further action is required Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Brightspace Learning Environment - Learner Guide (print-based resources) or How rubrics relate to your grade (online resource).
Slight impact to learners due to interface changes for rubric feedback.	For the User Progress tool, learners can only see the names of the rubrics if there are multiple rubrics attached to an activity.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

No impact to administrators.

Availability: This feature is available to all clients.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Rubrics users. No further action is required

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Brightspace Learning Environment - Learner Guide (print-based resources) or How rubrics relate to your grade (online resource).

Slight impact to learners due to interface changes for rubric feedback.

For the User Progress tool, learners can only see the names of the rubrics if there are multiple rubrics attached to an activity.

Visual Course List - End-of-life | Removed

The Visual Course List widget is designed to aid users who are not yet literate navigate their courses. Instructors can associate a title, color, and specific graphic to a course, giving a visual indicator to users and enhancing their ability to navigate the system. With the Brightspace Daylight Experience and standard org homepages, there is a strong overlap in the functionality that the Visual Course List provides, reducing the need for the widget.

As of the August 2018 release, the Visual Course List widget has reached end-of-life status. Moving forward, D2L is committed to providing a streamlined and consistent user experience with Daylight.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Large impact to administrators due to the end-of-life status of the Visual Course List.	Availability: As of the August 2018 release, this widget is no longer available to clients. To enable: After updating to this release, any instances of the Visual Course List widget in your courses are replaced with the My Courses widget from the Daylight experience (now turned on by default for all users). However, this update does not disable the Visual Course List widget. To ensure no one turns on the widget, D2L recommends ensuring the Visual Course List widget is turned off in Organization Tools. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For information on Brightspace Daylight Experience to share with users, refer to the Brightspace Daylight Visual Design - Getting Started Guide (print-based resource) or the Brightspace Daylight Experience web topics (online resource) at release. For more information, see Intent To End-Of-Life Notice For: Custom Visual Course List (blog post).
Large impact to instructors due to the end-of-life status of the Visual Course List.	N/A

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Large impact to administrators due to the end-of-life status of the Visual Course List.

Availability: As of the August 2018 release, this widget is no longer available to clients.

To enable: After updating to this release, any instances of the Visual Course List widget in your courses are replaced with the My Courses widget from the Daylight experience (now turned on by default for all users). However, this update does not disable the Visual Course List widget. To ensure no one turns on the widget, D2L recommends ensuring the Visual Course List widget is turned off in Organization Tools.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

For more information, see Intent To End-Of-Life Notice For: Custom Visual Course List (blog post).

Large impact to instructors due to the end-of-life status of the Visual Course List.

N/A

Integrations

Turnitin - Improvements to version 2 of the Turnitin Integration | Updated

The following improvements have been made to version 2 of the Turnitin (TII) integration:

Learners can also view GradeMark feedback in User Progress under Grades and in Content.
Error and status messages are being improved upon.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to instructors and learners due to access to formative feedback left in GradeMark, in User Progress, and Content and due to improvements in error and status messages.	Availability: These improvements are automatically available to all TII version 2 integration users. It does not affect version 1 users or users of the LTI solution. To enable: All functionality is automatically enabled for TII version 2 users. No further action is required. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices location(s): N/A User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Turnitin - Administrator Guide (print-based resources) or Assignments and Turnitin (online resource).

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to instructors and learners due to access to formative feedback left in GradeMark, in User Progress, and Content and due to improvements in error and status messages.

Availability: These improvements are automatically available to all TII version 2 integration users. It does not affect version 1 users or users of the LTI solution.

To enable: All functionality is automatically enabled for TII version 2 users. No further action is required.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices location(s): N/A

User Resources: For more information to share with users, visit the Turnitin - Administrator Guide (print-based resources) or Assignments and Turnitin (online resource).

Video Assignments Premium by YouSeeU - Interactive video assignments and reflection questions | New

Video Assignments Premium users now have the option to create Interactive Video assignments, which allows instructors to insert learning prompts, such as multiple choice questions and video responses, at various points within an instructional video. The prompts require learners to respond directly within the platform while viewing the video. Multiple choice questions are available in two modes: automatic grading or forced retake. Video responses can also be required at any point during the video and are manually graded. Learners can save their progress through interactive video assignments, allowing them to complete the assignment over multiple sessions. Additional Advanced Settings options including Question Summary and Peer Review are also available with this feature.

Reflection questions are an Advanced Settings option that requires learners to respond to a maximum of 10 written questions in a text response prior to completing an individual project or Q&A assignment video response. The learner responses to the reflection questions are submitted along with the video response for manual grading and are not considered a separate grade item from the video response.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to instructors due to new assignment settings and workflows.	Availability: This feature is available to all Video Assignments Premium users. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Video Assignments Premium users. No further action is required. Microservices dependencies: N/A Microservices locations: N/A User Resources: For information on Video Assignments to share with users, refer to the Virtual Classroom and Video Assignments by YouSeeU – Instructor Guide (print-based resource) or the Virtual Classrooms and Video Assignments by YouSeeU web topics for instructors (online resource) at release.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to instructors due to new assignment settings and workflows.

Availability: This feature is available to all Video Assignments Premium users.

To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Video Assignments Premium users. No further action is required.

Microservices dependencies: N/A

Microservices locations: N/A

User Resources: For information on Video Assignments to share with users, refer to the Virtual Classroom and Video Assignments by YouSeeU – Instructor Guide (print-based resource) or the Virtual Classrooms and Video Assignments by YouSeeU web topics for instructors (online resource) at release.