Great Falls College MSU

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Brightspace Learning Environment

Announcements — Create new announcements quickly with new Copy option

This feature adds a new Copy option in the context menu of an announcement in both the Announcements tool and the Announcements widget. The Copy option is applicable to both course level and global announcements. This only appears when you are in the org unit where the announcement was created.

Users click Copy, which opens a new edit announcement page in draft mode with the details of the original announcement copied over. The following details are copied:

  • Headline, with "Copy of " appended to the front
  • Content
  • Display Author checkbox setting
  • Show Start Date setting
  • Attachments
  • Release conditions

Note: Release conditions only copy if the user has the Attach/Remove Release Conditions on Announcements permission. Display Author Information setting only copies if the user has the Change Display Author Information Setting permission.

Start dates and/or end dates are not copied over. No notifications are triggered by this action until the edit page is saved.

Previously, users had to manually select the content of an announcement and paste it into announcement creation.


Figure: The new Copy option in the context menu.

This feature implements PIE item D4608 – Ability to Copy Announcements

Technical Details

Impact:

  • Slight impact to administrators due to the ability to directly copy announcements.
  • Slight impact to instructors due to the ability to directly copy announcements.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients.

To enable:

At the org unit level, ensure that users have the See Announcements and Add/Edit/Delete Announcements permissions to copy course announcements. At the organization level, ensure that users have the See Announcements and Add/Edit/Delete Global Announcements permissions.

Brightspace Learning Environment — Improved layout of show/hide interface

To improve consistency across the platform, this release features a stylistic upgrade to the layout of the show/hide interface. This does not affect usability or change interactions; in addition, all accessibility interactions remain unchanged.


Figure: The updated show/hide interface.


Figure: The show/hide interface before this release.

Technical Details

Impact:

No impact to users.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients.

To enable:

This feature is automatically enabled for all users.

Content — Media Library added to Classic Content Experience

This feature adds the Media Library to the Classic Content Experience, which is accessible by navigating to Existing Activities > Media Library.


Figure: The Media Library option in the Existing Activities dropdown menu of the Classic Content Experience.

For more information about the Media Library functionality, refer to Evolving The Audio-Video Experience in Brightspace Community.

Technical Details

Impact:

Slight impact to Instructors due to the ability to access Media Library.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients using Classic Content Experience.

To enable:

Ensure the Content Service > Can Manage Objects permission is enabled at the Org level.

Content — New Learner Experience now supports Print and Download for all file types

This release adds Print and Download options to content files and HTML content in New Learner Experience (LX), which allows learners to study their course content offline more easily. The new buttons appear at the top of the page in the full-screen content viewer and function the same as in classic Content experience.

Previously in LX, learners could download their content files as PDFs but not in their original file formats, and there were no print or download options for HTML content.



Figure: Full-screen view of a Word file in New Learner Experience before the update, with buttons to download as a PDF and print as a PDF within the PDF renderer.


Figure: Full-screen content topic in New Learner Experience after the update, with Print and Download buttons near the top of the page.

This feature implements PIE items D7125, D8300, and D8565.

Technical Details

Impact:

  • Slight impact to administrators due to the ability to set the permissions for learners.
  • Slight impact to learners due to the availability of new print and download options.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients using New Content Experience (Lessons) and New Learner Experience (LX).

To enable:

Ensure the Compile and Print Content and Download Content Topics permissions are enabled for learners.

Content - Workflow improvements to creating media topics

When creating a new video or audio topic in Content, instructors no longer must wait for the uploaded media file to finish processing to continue creating the topic. While the media file remains unavailable during processing, instructors can navigate away from the upload page to work on other content creation tasks. If another user attempts to access the media file in the topic before processing is complete, a message prompts them to wait for the media file to become available. When processing is complete (or the uploaded media file is invalid or corrupted), a notification displays from Update alerts on the navbar, with a link to the organization home page. Previously, instructors had to wait for a media file to complete processing before they could continue creating the topic. Also, a lack of status information about the media file processing caused some instructors to upload media files multiple times, believing that the processing had completed or failed.


Figure: Video file processing messages from Update alerts on the navbar

Technical Details

Impact:

  • Slight impact to instructors due to workflow improvements when creating media topics.
  • Slight impact to learners due to a new message that appears when attempting to access a media topic that has not completed processing.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients using the Classic Content experience, New Content experience, and New Learner experience.

This feature does not change Video Note workflows or improve uploading time.

In the Classic Content experience, new video files are now published as visible by default. As a workaround, instructors can set the topic containing the processing video as hidden. When the processing is complete, instructors can set the topic to visible.

Data Hub — Enrollments and Withdrawals ADS now includes an Org Unit filter

To increase the value of the Data Hub offering, this release adds a new Org Unit filter to the Enrollments and Withdrawals Advanced Data Set. This filter allows users to find everyone enrolled in (or withdrawn from) a department, semester, or course offering by refining the ADS output. Like other ADSs with an Org Unit filter, users must enter a valid Org Unit ID or else the report will not run.

Previously, users could only apply an org unit filter after downloading the output file, which was potentially very large.

Technical Details

Impact:

Slight impact to administrators due to the addition of a new filter.

Availability:

This feature is available to Brightspace Insights and Brightspace Core clients in all regions.

To enable:

Ensure the Can Access Brightspace Data Sets permission and the Can Execute Enrollments And Withdrawals permission are selected at the org level.

Discover — Redundant activity type no longer appears on course cards

Previously, course cards in Discover displayed the activity type. However, as Course is the only type of activity currently available in Discover, the activity type was redundant. This change removes the activity type from the course cards.

Technical Details

Impact:

Slight impact to learner users who no longer see the activity type on Discover course cards.

Availability:

This feature is available to Brightspace Core clients in all regions.

To enable:

This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.

Discover — Support now available to override language terms in Discover

Customers can now override terms used within Discover to be consistent with how language terms provide custom language terms in other areas of Brightspace Learning Environment. Previously, it was not possible to override any terms in Discover as it has been in other areas of the Brightspace Learning Environment.

This feature implements PIE items D5657, D5431, D4661, and D4014 (Language terms can be updated in Discover using the Language pack)

Technical Details

Impact:

Slight impact to Administrators due to the new ability to have consistent language terms in Discover as already exist in the Brightspace Learning Environment.

Availability:

This feature is available to Brightspace Core clients in all regions.

To enable:

This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.

SCORM — Easier object import with optional custom review/retake process

This feature allows instructors using the new SCORM/xAPI in Classic Content or the New Content Experience to disable Brightspace’s built in SCORM review/retake functionality. Disabling Brightspace’s review/retake functionality will prevent learners from experiencing issues when the package has a native built review/retake logic. Disabling the custom review/retake functionality can only occur during upload of a SCORM/xAPI object.

To view this new option in Classic Content, navigate to Upload/Create > New SCORM/xAPI Object. In the New Content Experience, this workflow is Add Existing> SCORM/xAPI and then upload a SCORM object.

In the publishing workflow, navigate to Edit Properties and expand the Advanced Settings area. Under the new subheading Course Package Review/Retake Options, select one of the following:

  • Add review/retake options. My package does not have built in review/retake functionality. (Default); or
  • Do not add review/retake options. My package does have built in review/retake functionality.

If a currently uploaded file needs to have this setting changed, users must reupload and replace the original file.

Previously, instructors using new SCORM/xAPI workflows in Classic Content or the New Content Experience did not have a choice to disable the Brightspace built-in review/retake functionality. This could cause conflicts with native functionality if it existed.


Figure: The Review/Retake subheading in the Advanced Settings area.

Technical Details

Impact:

Slight impact to instructors due to the ability to disable the retake/review function during publishing under Advanced settings.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients.

To enable:

This functionality is automatically enabled for users of the new SCORM/xAPI workflows.

SCORM — Edit dates and associated grade items for imported SCORM packages

Building upon the SCORM – Improved editing in New Content Experience | New feature released in November 2021, imported SCORM topics in the New Content Experience have an improved editing experience. Instructors who use the new create/edit workflow can now edit dates and associated grade items for imported SCORM topics. This offers more consistent editing abilities to the New Content Experience and improves the editing experience for instructors.
Previously, in the New Content Experience, only topic titles were editable for imported SCORM.


Figure: SCORM edit page viewed in the Classic Content create/edit experience


Figure: SCORM edit page viewed in the New Content create/edit experience

Technical Details

Impact:

  • Slight impact to Administrators due to the need to set the value of the d2l.Tools.Content.LessonsCreateExperienceOptIn configuration variable.
  • Slight impact to instructors due to new editing options for imported SCORM packages in the New Content Experience.

Availability:

This feature is available to all clients.

To enable:

Ensure the d2l.Tools.Content.LessonsCreateExperienceOptIn configuration variable is enabled so instructors can opt-in to the new create/edit experience.