Brightspace Learning Environment

Activity Feed - Inline rendering of remote plug-in attachments | New

When an instructor attaches a remote plug-in via a Quicklink to a message or assignment post, the plug-in now renders inline as an embedded attachment. This allows users to view the material without navigating away from Activity Feed. Previously, a remote plug-in attachment rendered as a simple web link.

Figure: An Activity Feed post with a remote plug-in attachment

Impact of Change	Technical Details
No impact to administrators.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: Users must have a remote plug-in enabled via Quicklinks.
Slight impact to instructors due to how third-party plug-in attachments render in Activity Feed.	Embedded content displays in the allocated attachment area on posts. The ability to expand this preview into full screen is available by clicking the Expand to Full Screen button. Users can also interact with this material directly in a new browser tab by clicking on the link provided below the preview.

Activity Feed - Message posts now support embed codes | New

To allow instructors and learners to share more material in a course, users can now paste embed codes directly into the body of message posts. These embed codes automatically attach and display inline for all users to view and interact with.

Figure: An Activity Feed post with an embed code attachment

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators due to using the Trusted Sites tool to control which sites appear to users in embed code links.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Activity Feed users. However, the Activity Feed only renders embedded material that administrators have set using the Trusted Sites tool. If a user attempts to embed an untrusted site, the material is attached, but as a non-embedded web link.
Slight impact to instructors due to embed code support in message posts.	N/A

Activity Feed - Improved attachment workflow and thumbnail previews | New

Users can now attach web links to message and assignment posts by pasting them into the body of messages or the instructions of assignments. The display of link attachments has also been enhanced to show a thumbnail and description, if available. Previously, links could only be added to posts by the Click and Attach workflow and the display was limited to a simple link icon and title.

Figure: An Activity Feed post with the new link styling containing a thumbnail preview and description

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 Activity Feed users. No further action is required.
No impact to instructors and learners.	The legacy Click and Attach workflow for adding web links remains and is also enhanced with thumbnails and previews, if users do not use the new Copy and Paste workflow.

Assignments - Grades entered in Assignments and Grade Book are synchronized | New

When an instructor enters a grade for an assignment submission in the standard or spreadsheet view of Grade Book, the grade also appears with the submission in Assignments. Previously, grades entered in the Assignment tool were passed on to Grade Book; however, grades for assignment submissions entered in Grade Book were not passed to the Assignments tool. This change ensures data consistency between Assignments and Grade Book. Currently Assignment grades are not synchronized when the Assignment tool is updated by the Brightspace API or when Grade Book is exported and imported.

Note: Existing grade data for assignment submissions are not migrated. This synchronization only occurs for new grade entries. To migrate historical assignment submission marks, contact Brightspace Support.

This feature implements PIE items D3610, and D391.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to Administrators and Instructors who need to be aware of the functional change.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Assignments and Grade book users. No further action is required.

Assignments - Improvements to Assignments | Updated

This feature includes the following improvements to the Assignments tool:

• New configuration variable to handle assignment level default state for Annotations: The existing d2l.Tools.System.Features.Annotations ( OrgUnit) configuration variable is set at the org level with ON or OFF values, essentially controlling whether this feature can be used in Brightspace Learning Environment. The new d2l.Tools.Assignments.AnnotationsDefault configuration variable allows Administrators to set the desired default behavior of ON / OFF at the assignment level for a specific course. This new configuration variable manages the default state of the Make annotation tools available for assessment check box if annotations are enabled for that course. Currently, the default is set to ON. However, with this new configuration variable Administrators can set the default to OFF when new assignments are created.
  
  
  Figure: Make annotation tools available for assessment check box
  
  
• User-tied tool preferences for Annotations: Now when instructors select tools when assessing assignments, their tool selections remain the same until they are actively changed. Previously, the preferences defaulted back to the original option when moving from one submission to the next). This approach saves instructors time in not having to update their preferred settings with each submission they assess.
• New save warning for the browser close / Back button: When a user attempts to close the browser, or clicks the Back button on the browser when assessing an Assignment, a new warning appears, prompting the user to either save their work / changes made on the page or actively choose to proceed without saving.

This feature implements PIE items D5321, D5611, D5450, D5367, and D5229.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators due to the new d2l.Tools.Assignments.AnnotationsDefaultconfiguration variable.	Availability: Available to Brightspace Core clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Assignments users. No further action is required.
Slight impact to instructors due to their preferred settings remaining the same while assessing submissions until they are actively changed and due to the new warning message that appears on closing the browser when assessing assignments.	Availability: The user-tied tool preference for Annotations is available to Brightspace Core clients. The warning message to save your work / changes feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Assignments users. No further action is required.

Brightspace Pulse - Activity Feed notifications | New

To help keep learners up to date on course activity, Brightspace Pulse now displays Activity Feed notifications in the Updates tab, for example, messages and links to course materials and external resources. Tapping an Activity Feed notification displays the post in Brightspace Pulse.

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 Brightspace Pulse users, if Activity Feed is enabled in their courses. No further action is required
Slight impact to learners due to a new notification type in Brightspace Pulse.	Activity Feed notifications generate a push notification on the user's device. Push notification settings are managed by the operating system on the device.

Class Progress – Hide progress indicators from users | New

This feature allows administrators to set the Class and User Progress information visible to their users. The settings determine information visible in all courses, and cannot be customized for individual courses. Administrators have new options when they access Class and User Progress to set which progress indicators display on the Class Progress dashboard, and which progress indicators display in the User Progress report.

Figure: Set which indicators display in the table on the Class Progress dashboard

Figure: Select which progress indicators to display in the User Progress report

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Moderate impact to administrators due to the ability to customize the Class and User Progress information visible to users.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Class Progress users. Administrators with the Modify Org Default Progress Indicators permission can access Class Progress and set the availability of all progress indicators.

Data Hub - Brightspace Data Sets Version 4.0 | New

To increase the value of the Data Hub offering, the Brightspace Data Sets version has been updated to 4.0. Included in this update are major changes that remove and rename columns in existing Brightspace Data Sets. These redundant columns have been replaced by new and recently released data sets.

• The CriterionName column has been removed from the Rubric Assessment Criteria data set
• The TimeLimitExcceededBehavior column name has been changed to TimeLimitExceededBehavior in the Quiz Objects data set.
• Removed Name, AwardType, IssuerName, IssuerContact, ExpiryCalculationType, ExpiryNotificationType, DateCreated, IsDeleted, DeletedDate, and DeletedByUserID columns from the Course Awards data set. This data set now only includes AssociationId, AwardId, OrgUnitId, CreatedDate, HiddenAward, and ConditionSetId.
• The bookmark for the differential for the Course Awards data set is changing. As a result, the first time you run the Course Awards differential using Brightspace Data Sets version 4.0, the query will return no results. Subsequent runs of the data differential will return expected changes. D2L recommends that you use the full differential the first time you run this data set after upgrading to Brightspace Data Sets 4.0.
• Removed Checklist, Item, IsAutoChecked, ChecklistItemCount, Category, DueDate, ChecklistId, and OrgUnitId columns from the Checklist Completions data set.
• Removed Thread, Topic, and Forum columns from the Discussion Posts data set.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Large impact to administrators as a result of many changes to existing data sets and the ability to update to Brightspace Data Sets 4.0

Availability: This feature is available to AWS-hosted and co-located Brightspace Insights and Brightspace Core clients To enable: Starting with Brightspace Platform 20.19.9, users can opt-in to Brightspace Data Sets 4.0 to receive the updated features. To opt into this change, update the d2l.Tools.BrightspaceDataSets.Version to 4.0. After a 6-month period ending in February 2020, Brightspace Data Sets version 4.x becomes the default and the functionality is automatically enabled for Data Hub users. Note that subsequent minor changes to Brightspace Data Sets will be included in both version 3.0 and 4.0. For more information, see Updating The Brightspace Data Sets Change Management Policy on the Brightspace Community.

Data Hub – Question Library and Question Relationships Brightspace Data Sets | New

To increase the value of the Data Hub offering, this release includes two new Brightspace Data Sets:

• Question Library, which details all the questions that have been created in the organization, whether or not they appear in a quiz.
• Question Relationships, which details the quizzes, sections, and question pools to which questions have been added in an organization.

The Quiz Questions Brightspace Data Set will be deprecated in the March 2020 release.

This feature implements PIE item D5291.

Impact of Change

Technical Details

Slight impact to administrators who now have additional question information available in the Brightspace data sets.

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: Ensure the Can Access Brightspace Data Sets permission is granted to administrators at the org level. New fields appear the first time the data set runs after the version update. You must also ensure the d2l.Tools.BrightspaceDataSets.Versionconfiguration variable is set to version 3.

Discussions - Grades entered in Discussions and Grade book are synchronized | New

When an instructor enters a grade for a discussion in the standard or spreadsheet view of Grade Book, the grade also appears with the discussion post in Discussions. Previously, grades entered in the Discussion were passed on to Grade Book; however, grades for discussions entered in Grade Book were not passed to the Discussions tool. This change ensures data consistency between Discussions and Grade Book. Currently Discussion grades are not synchronized when the Discussion tool is updated by the Brightspace API or when Grade Book is exported and imported.

Note: Existing grade data for discussions are not migrated. This synchronization only occurs for new grade entries. To migrate historical discussion evaluations, contact Brightspace Support.

This feature implements PIE items D3610 and D391.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators and instructors who need to be aware of the functional change.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Discussions and Grade book users. No further action is required.

Learning Outcomes - Learning Outcomes Management page for a course | New

The Course Administration page now features a link to import outcomes into courses. This new location is now the central location to manage learning outcomes. Learning Outcomes continue to appear in New Content Experience (Lessons), and any learning outcome you import in one location is reflected in the other.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Moderate impact to instructors due to a change in their workflow to use the new Course Administration page instead of Lessons to add learning outcomes to their courses.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: Ensure the d2l.Languages.Terminology.LearningOutcomesconfiguration variable is correctly defined. Note: If you set the Learning Outcomes term to Competencies, you will see both a link to the old Competencies tool and a link for the new Learning Outcomes called Competencies.

Quick Eval – Activities View | New

In Quick Eval, select Activities to display a list of the assessable activities that have items awaiting evaluation in all your courses. An activity shows up in Quick Eval’s Activities view when there is an unevaluated learner submission, or when all students have not submitted to the activity. This view makes it easy to complete all assessments for one assignment, discussion, or quiz, before moving on to the next task. This feature helps evaluators who prefer to evaluate submissions in the context of an activity. Activities view displays indicators to show the progress on submissions, progress on evaluations, and progress on publishing feedback to learners. It also includes links to the evaluation page, submission page, and a publish all action.

This feature implements PIE item D5475.

Figure: Activities view in Quick Eval

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Moderate impact to instructors due the availability of Activities view in Quick Eval.	Availability: This feature is available to Brightspace Core clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Quick Eval users. Note: Screen reader accessibility is not fully supported in this release.

Quizzes - Rounding Logic configuration variable on by default | Updated

The d2l.Tools.Quizzes.RoundingLogicUpdate configuration variable is now on by default for all users. This configuration variable controls the updated rounding logic for arithmetic and significant figures questions in quizzes, which now round up from .5 by default. Previously these types of questions used to round to the nearest even integer (“banker’s rounding”). As a result, some calculations will round up where they previously rounded down from .5. Past quiz attempt scores are not affected by this change. As of September 2019, organizations can no longer opt-out of this change and the configuration variable is no longer available.

This feature implements PIE item D1751.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators, who can no longer opt out of the changes to rounding logic .	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for Quizzes users. No further action is required.
Slight impact to instructors due to changes in how arithmetic and significant figures questions are rounded when calculating scores.	N/A

Release Conditions - Release condition for topic completion | New

The Completed content topic is a new release condition that is met when a user completes a content topic. The method of completing the topic depends on the type, such as viewing a file or submitting an assignment. Similar to the currently available Visited content topic release condition, optional topics can also trigger this release condition.

This release condition ignores exemptions, meaning that if the learner completes the activity, the release condition can be met, regardless of the activity being required, optional, or exempt.

Figure: The Completed content topic release condition is now available from the Condition Type drop-down list.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators and instructors who can now use the additional Release Condition.	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.

Widgets - Support paging of content in the Visual Table of Contents widget | Updated

This feature changes how the Visual Table of Contents widget handles a large number of modules. The widget displays the optimal number of modules in the widget, and adds a button that allows users to navigate back and forth between pages.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to users due to the updates made to the Visual Table of Contents widget.	Availability: This feature is available to all clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for existing Visual Table of Contents widget users. No further action is required. To purchase this widget, contact your D2L Client Sales Executive.

Integrations

LTI 1.3 - Deep Linking Message | New

Deep Linking is a new feature for LTI 1.3 that is similar to the current CIM functionality that exists in Brightspace Learning Environment. Deep Linking supports a natural and time-efficient user workflow between a content tool and Brightspace for instructors when developing courses and programs. Deep Linking allows users to launch out to a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) specified by an external tool, select content appropriate for their use, and generate a URI that instructors and learners can use at a later time as the basis for other launches directly to that specific content. The implementation of Deep Learning brings increased security, fewer issues from older LTI standards, and improved integration between the tool and Brightspace Learning Environment. Deep Links can only be created at the Organization level.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Moderate impact to administrators due to new Quicklink and Insert Stuff options added to the Links user interface.	Availability: This feature is available to all LTI clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for LTI users. No further action is required. Note: Deep Links can only be created at the Organization level.

LTI 1.3 - Enhancements to Basic LTI Launch | Updated

The following workflow improvements are now included in the LTI Advantage workflow:

• Ability to View Link Request
• Ability to Delete a Link created at the course level
• Quicklink User Interface changes remove Version information from the pop up, and increase the spacing for LTI Name

This feature implements PIE item D3632 and D5571.

Impact of Change	Technical Details
Slight impact to administrators due to the new ability to view the link request to see what details are sent to the LTI tool.	Availability: This feature is available to all LTI clients. To enable: This functionality is automatically enabled for LTI users. No further action is required.
Slight impact to instructors due to an updated Quicklink user interface that improves visibility of available links.	N/A