D2L December Updates
D2L Functionality – Announcement Emails
With this update we have made a new requirement for students to have email notifications turned ON for new announcements. When a student logs into D2L they will be prompted to change their announcement settings to receive emails when a new announcement is posted. This should help ensure that students have every possibility of seeing new announcement posts. Please note that this functionality already exists in D2L and some students may already have it turned on.
Brightspace Learning Environment – Alerts
Alerts in the minibar will now persist for 90 days. Previously, alerts only lasted 7 days total. These alerts will continue to go away once checked as they currently do.
D2L Discussions – New Discussion Evaluation Experience
This will make large changes to how the Discussion Evaluation Experience looks to make it fit in line with the New Assignment Evaluation Experience that is already in use.
Also, please note this is a visual upgrade first and foremost, tool functionality will not change but where you find those tools may.
New Discussion Evaluation Experience Screen:
D2L Quizzes – Improved Language Terms
With this updated, many interface labels and dialogs now use more descriptive language in quizzes. For example, “Automatic Grade” is now “Automatically Publish Evaluation”. This should help keep things inline with the new grading experience and new discussion evaluation experience.
Please note that functionality has not changed, the only changes are to how things are labeled. All previously tools are still available and nothing has been added.
D2L Content – Adding Print Button to PDF file types.
In an upcoming update, we will add the option to print PDF file types to Classic Content as no option was previously available.
The Print Button will be visible when viewing a PDF topic or the Course Overview as a PDF.
Coming Soon! Simple Syllabus – A new syllabus management system
We are in the process of implementation a new syllabus management system called Simple Syllabus. Once implementation is complete, we will no longer be using Word templates for syllabi/course information sheets.
Important details about this transition:
- For Spring 2022, the syllabus and course information sheet processes will remain the same, and links to these documents will need to be in each course’s Getting Started module.
- During this transition, we will also be moving away from having a separate syllabus and course information sheet. The information from both documents will be merged into one syllabus.
- Simple Syllabus will also be integrated with D2L, therefore there will be no need to use the links we have been previously using.
- We will now be able to track which students have read the syllabus, how much they have read, and can require students to acknowledge they have read it all in one place.
- The goal is to have the system fully implemented by Summer 2022.