Brightspace Learning Environment
Awards – Add criteria to awards in compliance with the latest Open Badges standard | New
Instructors can now specify what a learner must do to achieve a particular award.
This feature complements the use of evidence for awards by adding the new required Criteria field to the Awards tool.
Figure: The new required Criteria field on the New Award page.
Availability of Criteria and Evidence fields meets the latest Open Badges 2.0 standard from 1EdTech (formerly known as IMS Global):
- When instructors manually grant awards, they can now check the award's criteria and enter evidence describing what the learner did to meet the criteria and earn the award.
- When the award is automatically issued, the release conditions determine if learners meet the criteria.
- If learners share their award via a public link, both the Criteria and Evidence fields now appear on the Public Award page.
Figure: The new Criteria field on the Public Award page.
This feature implements PIE item D6128 (Incorporate Open Badge 2.0 Standards).
For existing awards that do not have explicitly stated criteria, Brightspace treats the Criteria and Evidence fields as the same.
Previously, there was no criteria field available in the Awards tool. When learners shared their awards to Badgr , the same field values were used for both Evidence and Criteria fields.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to instructors due to the ability to specify criteria for learners to achieve the award.
- Slight impact to learners due to knowing the criteria to achieve the award.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients.
To enable:
- This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.
Blog – Comments on Blog entries limited to reduce page load times | Updated
This release introduces a limit to the number of comments that can be added to a Blog entry to improve performance and reduce page load times. This limits public comments to 100 public comments from unauthenticated users and up to 500 total comments (including public comments) on a single Blog entry.
If an existing blog entry already has more than 500 comments, only the first 500 comments will be visible. Administrators or similar user roles with the View Entries for Other Users permission can access Blog List and filter comments to over 500 to get an indication of any impacted blogs.
Previously, there was no limit to the number of comments that could be added to a Blog entry, which occasionally resulted in performance issues.
For addition information about blog management, refer to the Blog Permissions and Blog Configuration Variables documentation in Brightspace Community.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to all users due to the restrictions on blog post comments.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all Brightspace Core clients.
To enable:
- This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.
Brightspace IntegrationHub – Partner solutions integration directory | New
D2L is excited to introduce our new partner solutions offering, IntegrationHub. IntegrationHub is a new catalog site that lists partner solutions available for integration with Brightspace. It replaces App Finder, the legacy partner solutions hub that will reach End of Life status in August 2023.
Built on LTI 1.3., IntegrationHub makes it easy for Brightspace users to distill D2L’s extensive list of integrated technologies and solutions, such as accessibility tools, student information systems, secure proctoring assessment platforms, and many more.
IntegrationHub improves on App finder in the following ways:
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Built on LTI 1.3, IntegrationHub integrates with Brightspace as an external learning tool. IntegrationHub is also available via at the following link: https://integrationhub.brightspace.com.
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IntegrationHub offers a comprehensive search system and filtering options for regions, language, segment, and other criteria.
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Users will benefit from a visually appealing design which offers intuitive workflows to browse available solutions. There are also improved workflows for non-partner integrators.
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IntegrationHub provides developer resources.
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Users can access learning and development events held by partners and D2L via the Events feature.
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IntegrationHub also features an Announcements area so users can keep up with all relevant details about new and updated solutions, resources, and events.
Figure: The Integration Directory page of the IntegrationHub website displays the logos of partner solutions.
Technical Details
Impact:
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Slight impact to administrators due to set up requirements for IntegrationHub.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients.
To enable:
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IntegrationHub is integrated with Brightspace as a Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) external learning tool. To allow users to launch IntegrationHub from Brightspace, you must complete the steps to enable LTI functionality in your organization and then create an external learning tool link to Brightspace App Finder.
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Note: Administrators require the appropriate LTI and IMS configuration permissions to integrate Brightspace IntegrationHub into your organization's Brightspace Learning Environment. To create the External learning tool link, you require the appropriate External Learning Tools permissions.
Discussions – The new Discussions creation experience now defaults to On (Opt-in) | Updated
To encourage user adoption of the new Discussions creation experience, which was introduced in the April 20.23.4 release, the default state for the experience is now On (Opt-in) with the option to opt out. This update impacts the configuration variable d2l.Tools.Discuss.CreateExperienceOptIn, which manages this state. Administrators can choose to override this change ahead of this release by adding appropriate organization and course overrides to this configuration variable.
To learn more about the new Discussions creation experience, refer to the Introducing the New Discussion Creation Experience article in Brightspace Community.
Figure: A visual overview of the new Discussions creation experience.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to administrators who can choose to opt in or opt out of the new Discussions creation experience.
- Moderate impact to instructors who may now have the new Discussions creation experience as their default experience.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients.
To enable:
- This functionality is automatically enabled for all users with the default state being On (Opt-in). Administrators can avoid this change by adding appropriate organization and course level overrides to the configuration variable d2l.Tools.Discuss.CreateExperienceOptIn.
Email – Emails sent from senders external to your organization can be reported as spam | New
With this release, clients who receive external emails within Brightspace can now report those emails as spam to D2L. When viewing emails received from external email addresses, this feature adds a new Report Spam button, which forwards the email to D2L for analysis against our spam filters. After clicking the button, a dialog appears letting users know their emails have been forwarded to D2L. Users can then delete the email.
The Report Spam button does not appear for internally sent emails, nor for external emails received prior the release of this feature.
This feature implements the following PIE item:
- D5558 (Add SPAM / Antivirus protection to email)
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to all users due to the ability to report external emails as spam.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all Brightspace Core clients.
To enable:
- This functionality is automatically enabled for all users with the Receive Emails from External Email Addresses permission.
Homepages and Navbars – Help link now points to Brightspace Community | Updated
In your Brightspace environment, it is possible to have a link to Brightspace Help on your navbar. The link on the navbar previously pointed to the hosted Brightspace Help. The destination of that link now points to the new Brightspace Community, which contains all information previously available in hosted Brightspace Help site as well as the legacy Brightspace Community.
Note: The Brightspace Help link may not be visible depending on the items configured on the navbar by your administrators.
Figure: The Brightspace Help link appears on the More menu.
Figure: If the Brightspace Help link does not appear on your navbar, you can add it using the Edit this Navbar > Add Links > Brightspace Help option.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to all users due to the updated destination of the Brightspace Help link.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients.
Note: The Brightspace Help link may not be visible on the navbar depending on the items configured on the navbar by your administrators.
To enable:
- This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.
Learning Outcomes – Select the appropriate achievement scales for a course | New
To evaluate learners' achievements related to learning outcomes, this new feature introduces the selection of the appropriate achievement scales within a course offering.
Instructors can check the currently selected achievement scale information on the Outcomes in this Course page and use the Edit Settings button to choose an alternative achievement scale for the course if desired.
Figure: The new Edit Settings button on the Outcomes in this Course page.
Administrators must create achievement scales for courses at the main organization level so instructors can select them. When an administrator creates and saves the first achievement scale within the organization using the Learning Outcomes tool, that scale is automatically designated as the organization's default scale. Other scales can be designated as the organization's default scale at any time. Changing the selected default scale does not impact the achievement scale selection for any existing course offerings.
Instructors can select an alternative achievement scale for a course until assessment evaluation begins. The selected achievement scale applies to all outcome evaluations completed in the course. It is used to determine the suggested level of achievement for both individual activity evaluations and the overall suggested level of achievement in the Mastery View tab of Grades.
Figure: The Edit Settings page showing the achievement scales that can be selected.
This feature implements the following PIE items:
- D6605 (Set a different Achievement Scale per Course offering)
- D9382, partially (Set a different Learning Outcomes achievement scale per program)
Previously, only one achievement scale could be selected for all courses across any organization.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Moderate impact to administrators due to the need to create alternative achievement scales at the main organization level for use in courses.
- Moderate impact to instructors due to the ability to select the appropriate achievement scale for a course.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients who use the Mastery View of Grades and the Learning Outcomes tool.
To enable:
- This functionality is available to users who have the Manage Outcomes permission.
Learning Outcomes – The Manage Content permission is no longer required | Updated
To simplify granting access to the Learning Outcomes tool and resolve a defect requiring the Manage Content permission at the Course Offering level to access Mastery View, the Manage Content permission is no longer required.
Now instructors only need the Manage Outcomes permission at the Org level or Course level to use the Learning Outcomes tool. To access Mastery View, instructors must also have the See the Grades tool and Enter Grades permissions.
There are no changes to role permission settings as part of this update. Administrators can plan to limit permissions for users that require access to Learning Outcomes or Mastery View without the Manage Content permission.
Previously, the Manage Content permission at the Org level was required to use the Learning Outcomes tool.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to administrators due to the change in permissions required to use the Learning Outcomes tool and access Mastery View.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients who use the Mastery View in Grades and the Learning Outcomes tool.
To enable:
- This functionality is available to users who have the Manage Outcomes, See the Grades tool and the Enter Grades permissions, which are required to access Mastery View.
Learning Outcomes – The Mastery View table loads faster and includes the activity counter | Updated
With this release, the Mastery View tab in Grades is improved to provide better load times for courses with large numbers of learners and aligned learning outcomes. Now instructors can use an activity counter that provides a summary of the outcome information.
The aligned activity counter shows the number of evaluated assessments for each learner over the total number of assessments aligned to that outcome in the corner of each table cell.
Note: Portfolio evidence is included in the detail view trendline and history, but the counter does not include Portfolio evidence. The overall suggested level of achievement reflects Portfolio evidence evaluations.
Figure: The updated Mastery View page.
Previously, users with large class sizes and many outcome alignments sometimes had slow page load issues due to the underlying data architecture.
Technical Details
Impact:
- Slight impact to instructors due to the ability to load the Mastery View table faster and display the activity counter.
Availability:
- This feature is available to all clients who use the Mastery View in Grades and the Learning Outcomes tool.
To enable:
- This functionality is available to users who have the Manage Outcomes permission.