Monthly Releases

DLE Weekly Update: November News, Brightspace Tips and Grade Entry in ACSIS

New great feature introduced by the November release: Retake incorrect questions in subsequent attempts

This feature introduces a new option for Quizzes Attempt settings that allows students to only retake their incorrectly answered questions from previous quiz attempts. When you edit a Brightspace quiz (Activities/Quizzes), the new option is available for you to select from the Assessment tab. Each learner only sees the questions they had previously answered incorrectly in the same order as the initial attempt (including quizzes with random sections and random questions).

Brightspace Tips

Are you marking your students’ assignments anonymously?

Anonymous Marking is a tool in Brightspace which allows you to mark your students Assignment submissions without knowing the identity of the student. In case you are using Anonymous Marking, note it is not possible to publish individual evaluations. To maintain anonymity, all evaluations have to be published at the same time using the Publish All Feedback button. When marking, the first step is to save the grades/feedback as a draft (select Save Draft to save), and then go back to Activities/Assignments/View Submissions page and click on the Publish All Feedback button.

Do you need to copy ONLY the final exam (or any other quiz) from one course to another?

Use the Select Components button when you perform a course copy and select only the Quizzes option, followed by Selected Quizzes, and then the quiz you wish to copy. If your quiz is created as a random quiz with questions from the Question Library, make sure you also copy that particular section from the Question Library, by selecting the Question Library option, along with the Quizzes one. By doing this, you will make sure that you will have that Question Library section in the destination course, for usage in other quizzes.

Preparing a CSV (Excel) File for Uploading Grades into ACSIS

At the end of each semester, you are asked to upload the final grades for your students to ACSIS. This article provides you with step-by-step instructions describing how to prepare a .csv (Excel) file from the gradebook in Brightspace in preparation for submitting/uploading grades to ACSIS.

Does your course contain TechSmith Relay videos?

The TechSmith web server will be shut down on December 31, 2020. Any content not retrieved by this date will no longer be available to users.
You may have inherited a Brightspace course that contains TechSmith Relay presentations, created by you or another faculty member (past or present). The URL will typically contain “replay.algonquincollege.com” and will also indicate the username of the original creator, e.g. “replay.algonquincollege.com/replay/kershar/…” For more information, and the steps that you should take to address this, please take a look at this myAC post.

Digital Learning Environment Weekly Update: New Name for Our Weekly Updates

New Name, Same Great Content

With the addition of a number of new tools that have been integrated with Brightspace in the last few months, our LMS Weekly Update has been renamed to Digital Learning Environment (DLE) Weekly Update, in order to accurately represent our support for you.

What’s New in Brightspace: September Release

Assignments – The new Assignment creation experience now has Special Access options

The June Brightspace release included a new assignment create and edit experience, that will eventually replace the current Assignment tool. As of today, the Special Access options are available to you, when using this new assignment view. You can use Special Access rules in a Assignment to provide students with alternate time restrictions, attempt limits, or different due dates.

Class/User Progress – Include Pulse activity in usage data: Learner activity data is now captured more accurately through the addition of a new system usage metric. Previously, Pulse usage was not tracked, and learners who accessed their courses through the app were misrepresented as having low engagement and could not access conditionally released content.

  • Class Progress has a new System Access performance indicator, which displays the number of times each student has accessed the system through the LMS website or Pulse in the last 30 days. You can add System Access to the Class Progress dashboard by clicking Settings.
  • User Progress has a new System Access History section, which displays the number of times the student has accessed the system through the LMS website or Pulse in the last 30 days. You can select System Access History to display in the User Progress report by clicking Settings.

My Mediasite

As you already know, My Mediasite is a new tool in Brightspace, with a simple interface that allows you to create, record, share, and publish your presentations easily. Mediasite hosts these videos and also has a Brightspace integration that allows you to embed video content directly within your courses.

Whenever you or your students are prompted for the user name and password when you are asked to sign in to access Mediasite content, make sure you use your Algonquin College user name and NOT the full email address.

ZOOM Tips

  • Please remind your students that the Zoom calendar events in their courses (notifications automatically added in the courses’ calendars when you schedule Zoom meetings) are NOT necessarily supposed to match the schedule on their timetables.
  • When creating recurring Zoom meetings, before saving the meetings, make sure that there is only one day of the week checked off (assuming that you are giving a lecture only once a week). As the week day when you set up the meetings gets automatically checked off, there have been situations when two week days were checked off by mistake, and this creates confusion among students.

Multiple Ways to find Answers to your Questions:

  • Book Online Appointments with our Team. You will notice that, the booking form and the emails confirming the appointments, now have a different name : Digital Learning Environment (DLE) Support
  • Email our DLE Team at brightspace@algonquincollege.com. After emailing us, you will receive an automatic reply with your case number.
  • Access our Digital Learning Environment Knowledge Base (DLEKB).

LMS Weekly Update: The Discover self-enrollment tool and other system enhancements

The Discover self-enrollment tool

As a new school year begins, we are pleased to announce the deployment of the Discover self-enrollment tool in Brightspace. This tool allows our students to self-enroll in various offerings like courses, spaces and resources that will help make their journey at Algonquin College a success.

Starting today, you will see a new Discover link on the Brightspace homepage navigation menu.

My Mediasite available in Brightspace

My Mediasite is a new tool, replacing TechSmith Relay, with a simple interface that allows you to create, record, share, and publish your presentations easily. Mediasite will host these videos and also has a Brightspace integration that allows you to embed video content directly within your courses. View help guides, tips, tricks and advice on our new LTS webpage, and sign up for info sessions and training sessions.

August system release

This month’s system release brings a few enhancements to the system:

Assignments – Copy assignment option
You now have the option to select the Copy Assignment option, in the drop-down menu for an existing assignment, to quickly create new assignments within a course.

This feature copies all settings of an existing assignment, except the associated grade item and Turnitin settings.

Checklists – Copy a checklist
Now you can now perform copy actions for checklists. You can copy a whole checklist, a checklist category (including all items within it), or individual items in a checklist.

Classlist – User experience changes
When adding users to a classlist (Tools/Classlist/Add Participants) search results now include users who are currently enrolled in the course. Previously, enrolled users were not displayed in these search results, suggesting that the user might not exist in the system. On the search results page, an icon displays beside an enrolled user’s name, indicating their enrollment status.

Grades – Unrelease all final grades
Grades features a new workflow to quickly undo the release of final grades for a course. You can easily select Unrelease All from the Final Grades drop-down menu.

Notifications – Deleted content links to message
Notifications for content that is subsequently hidden/deleted/conditionally released are now removed from the Brightspace notifications area on the minibar. Notifications that arrive via email or in Brightspace Pulse push notifications, now provide a link to the Course Table of Contents, with a message that states ‘Item not available’. Previously, clicking the link created a ‘404 Not Authorized error’.

Question Library – Attach files in “written response” type of questions
When creating a written response question, now you can allow learners to upload files in their answers and include embedded images. Learners can also record audio or video responses when answering written response question types.

Quizzes – User experience updates for editing quizzes with attempts
To improve the user experience for instructors who edit quizzes with previous attempts by learners, the following updates have been made:

  • Points for past quiz attempts are no longer modified when edits are made that affect the overall points and/or the grading calculations for a quiz. A learner’s grade on previous quiz attempts must now be changed directly by the instructor using the ‘Update All Attempts’ workflow. Previously, the points for all past quiz attempts were modified automatically, which could alter a learner’s grade unexpectedly.
  • Warning messages now appear when editing a quiz question with previous attempts, to clearly communicate to instructors that editing quiz questions does not affect the content or automatically change the score of learners’ past attempts.

Online Faculty Brightspace Support (Monday to Friday, from 8 am to 5 pm)

When emailing us your requests, we would appreciate if you could ensure that all information relevant to your issue is provided. For example:

  • The complete course code, including semester and section number (20F_ABC1234_010).
  • The user’s first name and last name (ideally user name, too), when asking us to add users to courses.
  • For merged courses’ requests, specify if you need to keep the individual sections available or not.
  • When asking to have coordinator access to a program, include list of all courses (codes and section numbers).

Multiple Ways to find Answers to your Brightspace Questions:


 

LMS Weekly Update: New Assignment Create and Edit Experience

New Assignment Create and Edit Experience

The June Brightspace release includes a new assignment create and edit experience. This will be available to faculty immediately across all courses, on an opt-in/opt-out basis, providing an early opportunity to test and provide feedback ahead of the summer vacation.

Eventually, D2L will make this new experience view as the default one for assignment creation, but for now it is OPTIONAL.

How to Turn OFF or ON the New Assignment Create and Edit Experience

TURN IT OFF: If you would prefer to continue using the old assignment creation view at this time, you can opt-out of the new experience with a single click. When you go to create a new assignment, you will see a welcome screen and some options. Simply select ‘Turn it off’, and this will be applied across all of your courses.

LEAVE IT ON: If you would like to look at the new view and test it out (by selecting Leave it on) before switching back to the old view, or if you clicked Leave it on by mistake and now want to turn it off, you can do so by clicking the chevron in the top right corner, and then selecting Turn it off.

  • Access here the Knowledge Base article for instructions on how to turn it off or on.
  • Access here the Knowledge Base article for on overview of the benefits and limitations of the new assignment experience in its current state.

Feedback on the New Assignment Create and Edit Experience

D2L will use the feedback that they receive to make improvements to this tool as they go. You will be prompted to provide this feedback to D2L when selecting “Turn it off” and we would also appreciate it if you could share any feedback with us at brightspace@algonquincollege.com.

Reminder: Turnitin Mappings to be reset on August 21, 2020

Please take a moment today to schedule a reminder for yourself to export the content you wish to keep before August 21st, 2020. If you have any questions or need assistance, please email brightspace@algonquincollege.com, with the subject line “Turnitin Export”.

Instructions on How to Export/Import your QuickMarks and Rubrics:

More H5P sessions offered by LTS

H5p is a new tool, now integrated within Brightspace, that allows you to create interactive, graded or non-graded digital learning activites, to help students master content, or build interactive videos and other rich-media elements in your Brightspace course. Sign up here for PD sessions on H5P offered by LTS and go to their website for information on how to use H5P.

LMS Weekly Update: The Assignments Tool in Brightspace

We are repeating the LMS Weekly Update on the Assignments Tool, as this has been one of the most common questions you asked our LMS Team this past week.

  • How do I create an assignment? Click here for step by step instructions.
  • Why do I see my course Assignments under the Activities menu on the nav bar, but not under the Content area? Once in a while we see a bit of confusion about the area where you should make your assignments accessible for your students. Regardless of the way you create your assignments, they will ALWAYS exist under the Activities menu on the course nav bar. There is nothing wrong with directing your students to access the assignments from the Activities menu, but sometimes, depending on how your course is structured, you might want to make them available under one particular module, under the Content area. This is when you will be using the Existing Activities/Assignments to create a link to the existing assignments.

Important! Removing the link from the Content area and choosing the second option on the confirmation pop-up screen, will delete the assignment from your course.

  • I need to allow some of my students alternate time restrictions, due dates, etc. How do I do this? You can accomplish this by using the Special access option from within the Assignments properties screen.
  • How do I grade an assignment using a Pass/Fail scheme? An assignment can be associated only with the numeric or selectbox types of grade columns, allowing you to grade using numeric or letter grades. For a Pass or Fail grade, ensure that you use a selectbox type of grade column at the same time with a Pass/Fail Grade Sheme.
  • Can I make annotations when grading assignments? Assignment submissions will automatically load with the Annotation Tool bar withing the Evaluation Submission Screen.
  • I have different points possible for the assignment and for the grade column. What do I do?
    • If there are no submissions for the assignment, you only need to edit the associated column from Grades/Manage Grades and adjust the points.
    • If you already have graded the assignment, once you edit the grade column and change the points, the existing grades won’t get automatically adjusted. You will need to go to Activities/Assignments/View Submissions and Update the grade for each student (the same screen you use when you first graded the assignment and published the grades).
  • I deleted an assignment by mistake! To recover deleted assignments go to Activities/Assignments/More Actions/Event Log. The deleted assignment will have a Restore button available.
  • Need to grade assignment files offline? You have the option to download all the assignments files in a zip file, grade them, save the files, create a new zip file and upload all the graded files as a package file. Go to Activities/Assignments/View Submission and then the Submissions tab. Select all submissions and click Download. When you are ready to upload them, from the same screen, click on the Add Feedback Files tab and upload the zip file.
  • Grade Sync – When you enter a grade for an assignment submission in the standard or spreadsheet view of GradeBook, the grade will appear with the submission in the Assignment tool.
  • How do I check students’ assignments for plagiarism? When you create an assignment you have the option to enable Turnitin. Click here to learn how to do this.

Message from LTS on Honorlock

Honorlock is a remote proctoring solution that is integrated in Brightspace and can be used for final exams. If you are interested in using this tool, please first attend an information session. There are two sessions next week, and you can register for these sessions and the other remote teaching PD sessions offered by LTS via www.algonquincollege.com/lts/facultypd.

 

 

LMS Weekly Update: Special Access to a Quiz, March Release, and LMS Support

Most Common Quiz Question this Week – Special Access

Use the special access options when you need to provide students with alternate time restrictions, alternate attempt limits, or alternate due dates.

GOOD to KNOW! Extending the availability of a quiz, by changing the quiz start/end dates, does not give the student more time. If you have students who need a longer time to complete a quiz, when using one of the Special Access options, make sure you change the amount of time your students are allowed (the Recommended Time Limit or the Enforced Time Limit).

Brightspace March Release

The March system release brings exciting improvements to the LMS.

Announcements – Display author information – When creating or editing an announcement, now you have the option to have your name displayed as the author of the announcement, along with the timestamp. By default, the new Display author information check box is enabled, and you can choose if would like to include your name or not. Users reading the announcement will view the original author, the original date and time of the announcement, the author who edited the announcement and the date and time of the edit.

Groups – Set exact time learners can self-enroll – When using the Groups Tool with the purpose of setting up self enrollment Group Categories, now you can also add the time when enrollment opens/ends, along with the date. Previously, you only had the option to set the date when enrollment opened or expired.

Quick Eval – Support for anonymous marking – Assignments created with the Hide student names during assessment option selected now display in Quick Eval’s Submission view with learner names and profile images hidden.

Rubrics – Confirmation message for partially un-evaluated rubrics – To prevent publishing partially un-evaluated rubrics, the publishing workflow now includes a confirmation message that warns you when the rubric is not fully evaluated. You will have the option to continue publishing, or cancel. Warning messages appear when publishing a rubric for an individual student and when bulk publishing rubrics.

Rubrics – Overall Score levels calculated after rubric criteria completion – The Overall Score level is now only calculated after all the criteria in the rubric have been assessed. This change optimizes rubric performance by eliminating the calculation of incomplete Overall Score levels until the rubric evaluation is completed, and improves the grading experience.

Brightspace Support

Please use the appointment booking form for a desktop sharing session or to be called at a specific time. After you book an appointment, you will receive an email with the appointment details, and also with a link to the Teams meeting where the session will take place. Because of the high volume of bookings, we ask that you limit yourself to booking one session per day and respect the session duration (15 minutes).

 


LMS Weekly Update: Brightspace February Release

Brightspace February Release

The February system release brings exciting improvements to the LMS.

Quick Eval – Course Level filtering

In addition to the Quick Eval tool accessible from the org navigation bar, tool that allows you to see a list of unevaluated submissions from across courses and tools in one single place, now you can access it from within a course. When you choose Quick Eval from the Progress menu on the course navigation bar, you will see a list of activities and submissions belonging ONLY to that course.

Quick Eval – Dismiss Activities until Next Submission

As a follow up to the Dismiss Activities feature added in January, now you can can choose to dismiss until the next submission is received for the activity. Previously, you could only select a specific date or forever when dismissing an activity. The dismissed items display in the Dismissed Activities List and can be restored at any time.

Assignments – Streamlined access to Inline Feedback

Your students can now immediately access inline feedback from Progress, Grades, and Assignments. From these tools, the View Inline Feedback link takes the learner directly to the annotations view (or Turnitin viewer, if that is the tool you used to provide feedback). The inline feedback also includes a link to the file for the assignment, so learners know which document contains the feedback. Previously, the View Inline Feedback link took the learners to the Assignment feedback summary page, where they had to click a second link to view the feedback.

Grades – Tab delimited import into Gradebook

When importing grades and other type of feedback into your gradebook, using the Import button from the Enter Grades tab, you can now import .tsv files (tab delimited). Previously, users could only import comma delimited files into Gradebook.

Classlist – New View

In addition to the change introduced by the January release – having the number of users displayed at the bottom of the Classlist page – now your course users are divided by role, displaying in multiple tabs (All, Learner, Instructor and Other). The All tab displays all users enrolled in your course, while the Other tab will show all the other users with roles different than instructor or learner.

Video Note – Automatic Closed Captioning

To improve accessibility, video notes now provide automatic closed captioning for newly created videos and the ability to manually add or update closed captioning for all previously recorded videos. After video processing, users can view closed captions using video player controls. In addition, users can now download a transcript and the closed caption file associated with a video independent of Video Notes. Please note that the Video Note Captions option is accessible from the admin tools (gear icon), in the top right corner, just beside your name.

Reminder – Brightspace Symposium

Don’t forget to sign up for the Thursday, February 27th, from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Respondus LockDown Browser Trial

You’ve been asking for a little while and we are almost ready to announce a trial. Make sure you read the next LMS Weekly Update for details!

 

LMS Weekly Update: Brightspace January Release


The January system release brings a few small improvements:

Tools/Classlist – Total number of users field and floating buttons: Now the number of users displays at the bottom of the Classlist page for at-a-glance viewing to help instructors keep track of the total number of learners, which may extend beyond the users visible on the page. On the Print Classlist and Email Classlist pages, the clickable Print and Email buttons now float consistently on screen, to ensure easy access to these actions without excessive scrolling.

Copy Course Components – Add validation logic to the copy process: When using the Import/Export/Copy Components from under the Tools/Course Admin menu, the Copy Course Components now contains a validation logic step to the course copy process, which can inform users if they performed a copy from the source previously, avoiding unnecessary duplication of copied course components.

Discussions – Assessment consistency changes: When assessing discussions, instructors have new multi-select options to Publish Feedback and Retract Feedback. In the Status column, the Draft / Published checkbox has been replaced by information on the date when feedback was saved as draft or published. These changes are visible on both the Users and Assessments tabs. The Save, Save and Close, and Cancel buttons have also been removed as their functionality has been replaced by the Publish Feedback and Retract Feedback options.

Grades – Export sorting options: This feature introduces the ability to sort exported gradebooks based on the following options: OrgDefinedID, Username, Last Name, and First name.

Groups – Self-enrollment group capacity, start dates and descriptions

This feature includes three improvements to Groups:

  • Group members can now see the description of their group. For self-enrolled groups, group members will now see the group description at all times, including before and after enrollment. For other group types, Instructors can now choose to display the description to members of the group. This visible group description setting is off by default for non-self-enrollment groups. Previously, all group descriptions were hidden from group members.
  • An instructor can now increase or decrease the capacity for self-enrollment groups after they have been created, and prior to the group sign-up expiry date. Decreasing a group size to an amount smaller than has already signed up for a group will not re-allocate users to other groups. Previously, self-enrollment groups were not editable after they were created.
  • Instructors can set Start dates for self-enrollment groups. This feature allows them to schedule self-enrollment groups availability, ensuring learners are prepared and have equal opportunity to self-enroll.

Quick Eval – Dismiss activities from list: To improve the ability to manage items on their Quick Eval list, instructors can now select items that appear in their Quick Eval list and remove them temporarily or permanently. Instructors can view their dismissed items in the Dismissed Activities List and restore them to the Quick Eval list at any time.

 

Tip of the week: I have different points possible for gradebook column than the quiz itself. What do I do?

 

If there are no submissions for your quiz, you just need to edit the points for the associated column, from Grades/Manage Grades (edit the column).

If you already have grades for the quiz, then you will need to “force” the quiz grades to be readjusted in the gradebook.

  • Once you correct the points for the quiz column in your Grades area, go to Activities/Quizzes/Grade/Users tab. Select all the students and then click Retract Feedback.
  • Go to Grades and choose Enter Grades for the quiz column. Select all students and click on Clear Grades (please note that this will NOT clear the quiz attempts)
  • The final step is to go back to the quiz, Activities/Quizzes/Grade/Users tab and use Publish Feedback for all students.

LMS Weekly Update: Brightspace December Release

The December system release brings a few small improvements to the Assignments and Quick Eval tools and also to Content.

Assignments – File Size Information in Submission Receipt Email: File size information now displays next to the file name in the submission receipt email sent to learners upon making a submission to an assignment.

Quick Eval – Display Unevaluated Submissions 30 Days Past Course End Date: Previously, unevaluated learner submissions were removed from Quick Eval when a course’s end date was reached. Now those submissions will be displayed in Quick Eval for 30 days beyond a course’s end date.

Content – Order Changes in Upload/Create Menu: When using the Upload/Create button to add activities to course content, the placement of the New Assignment option has moved. Previously, it appeared between New Discussion and New Quiz. Now, New Assignment appears above New Checklist.

Sort HTML Templates in Alphanumeric Filename Order. To make it easier to find HTML templates when using Content, now you can select the new Sort HTML Templates by name option from the Content Settings page in Content. Selecting this new option sorts templates in alphanumeric order based on filename. Previously, HTML templates were sorted alphanumerically based on directory structure.

Release Conditions – Learners are Now Notified when a Release Condition Triggers New Content: In a course that uses release conditions to unlock additional content, learners previously were not informed when new content became available as a result of a release condition that was satisfied. Because there was no automatic notification or refresh of the table of contents, there was the potential for frustration when learners think they are done a module, and are later informed that there are steps left to be completed. Now, when release conditions are satisfied, the learner is notified using a pop-up message that there are new items available in the course.

Reminder: Support for Internet Explorer NOT Available

Starting January 1st, 2020, D2L will end the support for Internet Explorer. All versions of Internet Explorer will no longer be able to access Brightspace. We recommend using Chrome while working with Brightspace.

 

LMS Weekly Update: Brightspace November release

The November system update brings a few great improvements to the Assignments and Intelligent Agents tools.

Improvements to the Assignment Tool

  • New Column – The Assignments page now shows a count of new submissions and re-submissions in the New column. The number is a link that will take you right to those submissions when you are ready to evaluate them. For multiple submissions from different learners, you can move between them using the arrows in the top right corner. Once a submission is evaluated, it is removed from the overall count displayed in the NEW column.
  • Letter Grading NOW available – When creating a new assignment, now you can link it to a Selectbox Grade item, that will allow you to use letters when grading the assignment. Previously, only a numeric grade item could be associated with an assignment.

Improvement to Intelligent Agents

  • Now you will be able to insert images directly into the body of the Intelligent Agents emails using the Add Image button. Click here to learn more about Intelligent Agents in Brightspace.

Language changes

At the end of the current semester (2019 Fall), the English (United States) language pack will be deactivated from the system. As the default Language pack is already English (Canada), the impact will be minimal for courses and users who are currently using English (United States) as their language preference. Other than the spelling of certain words (for example: colour/color), the short date will now display with dashes instead of slashes. To check which Language you have set up, once you login to Brightspace, click on your name on the right hand side, up at the top, and then go to Account Settings.

Citations Used In Microsoft Word Documents Do Not Preview Properly

In the Microsoft Word documents uploaded under a course content module or added by your students to their course assignments, you might have noticed that the Citations used there don’t display properly when you preview them within Brightspace. As a workaround for the moment, for assignments where Citations are expected, it is advisable to ask students to submit PDF files rather than DOCX files.

LMS Support Team NOT available on Monday, Nov 25th, from 9:00 am to 11:30 am

The LMS support team will not available to support you on the phone or in person, on Monday, November 25th, from 9:00 am to 11:30 am. Please send an email to brightspace@algonquincollege.com and we will respond as soon as we are back at our desk.

So You Think You Can Brightspace

Last week we shared this video showcasing entries to this competition. We have a quick guide for how to recreate some of the features that you saw in that video and next week we’ll be enrolling you in some exemplar course templates, so that you can see these ideas up close and copy them to your own courses. Watch this space!