General Announcements

 

SMS Notifications – End of Life | Removed

 

As of this release, SMS Notifications are permanently removed from Brightspace. Short Message Service (SMS) Notifications allowed users to subscribe to select notifications to be forwarded to their mobile phone number. Stored phone numbers are deleted following this release and are no longer needed to send notifications. The Mobile Carrier Management page is removed from Admin Tools; and the Notification Number seen when viewing a user in the Users tool is also removed.

Email-based notifications remain, and users can still receive email notifications if they subscribe. Alternatively, users can use the Brightspace Pulse app to receive the same mobile push notifications that were available with SMS Notifications.

For more information, refer to the Intent to EOL SMS Notifications blog post and the High Impact Changes Timeline.

 

Brightspace Tutorials – Youtube

 

As of August 1, 2024 the Brightspace Tutorials YouTube channel will have only recent, updated videos that reflect current workflows. D2L will unlist and eventually permanently remove outdated videos that no longer accurately capture Brightspace’s current interface and experience. As of August 1, the specified list of videos on the Brightspace Tutorials YouTube channel will be unlisted, and embedded video links in our documentation will be updated with up-to-date videos exhibiting the workflow. On October 31, all the specified outdated videos will be permanently removed. To view the list of videos and learn more about this initiative, refer to Unlisting and Removal of Brightspace Tutorials Videos.

 

Assignments – Assessment workflows enhanced and available in all environments | Updated

 

Advanced Assessments help instructors and administrators to better manage courses with large class sizes and multiple evaluators, delegate and manage evaluator workflows, and reduce bias in marking.

Advanced Assessments allows instructors to:

• Assign multiple evaluators to evaluate a single assignment submission when creating or editing assignments.
• Choose which evaluators can publish grades for the assignment from the Assignment tool by setting them as publishers.
• Match evaluators to learners.
• Choose from two multi-evaluator workflows: One Shared Evaluation (Co-Marking) or Multiple Individual Evaluations.

For more information, refer to the Create an assignment topic and watch the Assign Evaluators and Publishers in Assignments | Instructor video.

Prior to the release of Advanced Assessments, there was no ability to create and evaluate delegated co-mark or multi-evaluate assignments.

In the May 2024/20.24.5 release, Advanced Assessment features were released to test, development, and staging (non-production) environments.

Note: this workflow has been disabled temporarily as of August 26th, 2024 With this release, Advanced Assessment workflows for Assignments are available in all production environments of Brightspace. New features that are added to Advanced Assessments with the August release include:

• Turnitin integrations
• Accessibility improvements, including assistive technologies for keyboard-only users

Refer to the Advanced Assessment for Assignments in test, development, and staging environments of Brightspace blog post for details.

 

Note: this workflow has been disabled temporarily as of August 26th, 2024

 

Assignments – Email status message no longer displayed after an assignment submission | Removed

 

With this release, the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message is no longer displayed for learners in the Email Status field after they submit an assignment. However, when a learner submits an assignment, an email as a receipt of the submission is still sent to them.

Figure: The Review Assignment Submission page with the Email Status field.

Figure: The Review Assignment Submission page without the Email Status field.

Previously, even if a confirmation email was not sent to a learner, they also received the Confirmation Email Sent Successfully message in the Email Status field on their Submission History page.

 

Discussions – Consistent deletion and restoration workflows for group-restricted discussions | Updated

This release updates the deletion and restoration workflow for discussions associated with a group. When a user deletes a group, the associated activities, including discussions, are also deleted. These discussions cannot be restored unless their associated group is restored first.

Once the group has been restored, associated discussions can be restored using the Discussions restore workflow. This updated workflow is consistent with other group-associated activities such as assignments and lockers.

Previously, discussions that were deleted when their associated group was deleted could nominally be restored independently using the Discussions restore workflow. In practice, restoring these discussions resulted in errors and other issues.

 

Discussions – Reading View improvements | Updated

 

To improve the user experience for learners, this release introduces several updates to the learner Reading View in Discussions. These improvements include the following:

• The Start New Thread button is duplicated at the bottom of the page when viewing a topic, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top of the page.
• The Add Attachments section is opened by default when creating a new post or new topic. Previously learners had to open the section manually to add attachments.
• The Add Attachments section is wider on screen when learners create a new thread.