With this release, instructors can facilitate quizzes where students take their attempts simultaneously, which is convenient for in-class sessions. The new addition of synchronous quizzes enables instructors to set up a quiz where the quiz timer starts on the start date for all students rather than when the students launches the quiz (asynchronous). The quiz timer then ends for all students at the same time.

To set up a synchronous quiz:

1. From a quiz page, expand the Availability Dates & Conditions area.
2. Set start date and time.
3. Expand the Timing & Display area.
4. Click Timer Settings.
5. In the Timing dialog, under Quiz Start, select Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
6. Click OK.

Note: If no start date and time is set for the synchronous quiz, the No Start date set alert appears under the selected option, and you cannot save the quiz. The Due Date option is disabled for synchronous quizzes.

A synchronous quiz starts at the Start Date and ends when the time limit has lapsed, regardless of any action taken by the students. For example, if a student clicks Start Quiz! 15 minutes after the start date on a 1-hour quiz, they only have 45 minutes left to complete it. To indicate when a quiz becomes available, students have a countdown timer on the Quiz Information and Start Quiz pages. The Start Quiz! button becomes available when the start date and time is reached.

To ensure that Students are aware of upcoming synchronous quizzes, instructors should create instructional or manual solutions:

• Make a synchronous quiz visible in the calendar:
  • Instructors can select Add availability dates to Calendar or set up an event showing the whole time.
  • Instructors should use the Start Date parameter when setting up a synchronous quiz and leave the End Date field empty.
  • Students must have the Allows Out of Date Quizzes to be Viewed in the User Quiz List permission to open the quiz from their calendar and check the Quiz Information page.
• Create an announcement with information about the synchronous quiz.
• Set up an event and give a link to the quiz to provide more context.

Instructors must modify or review quizzes one by one to avoid accidentally modifying quiz availability dates for synchronous quizzes.

At long last one of the most requested features is here! Instructors may now pin announcements to the top of the announcement widget, allowing important information to remain visible at the top to all learners. You can pin an announcement by selecting the context menu next to it and selecting “Pin to top” from the list of options.

Creator+ Layouts now supports inserting creator+ elements in a Layouts panel. Previously these layouts did not support this.

With this update the UI and scale of evaluating with rubrics has been vastly improved for mobile devices, making grading easier on the go using collapsible elements rather than directing to new components when grading.

This feature updates Class Progress to better align the login date and the absent period. When viewing data for Course Access, Login History, and System Access History, the absent period now correlates to the login date on the same line.
Previously, the login date and absent period were misaligned, which caused confusion to users viewing the data.

Previously, if a student uploaded a file with no filename it would be impossible to open/download on the instructor’s side. This was an oversight that has been fixed, files uploaded with no name will now default to “-” to allow downloading. Example: -.PDF

When using the Brightspace HTML5 editor, images edited with the tool will now retain their original name. Previously, images were renamed when implemented with this editor. This should help locate files in the Manage File directory. Changes to an image using Edit image in the floating toolbar are saved as a copy of the image with the name format ‘OriginalFileName_yyyyMMddHHmmss.jpg. ‘

This update brings changes to the discussion interface to make it more consistent with other Brightspace tools.

Availability dates in the Discussions list are now displayed as a simple date range below the titles of discussion topics. Hovering over the date range text displays a tooltip that includes the information about start and end dates. Tooltips also include applied settings to explain how the discussion topic appears to learners before and after these dates.

Previously, the availability dates in the Discussions topics did not include a hover tooltip. The corresponding update for Quizzes is planned for a future release.

This update brings changes to the discussion creation interface to make it more consistent with other Brightspace tools like the new quiz creation experience. This may be toggled OFF using the same dropdown menu as the Quiz Creation Experience if you have any difficulties.

This release updates the Quiz Creation experience for instructors by simplifying the quiz timing setup workflow, adding useful new features, including the ability to auto-submit (Submits attempt as soon as the time runs out, no more students saying the submitted their quiz while still having an attempt in progress!) , and removing obsolete quiz timing options.
With this release, learners can show or hide the timer, receive time warning messages, and access more information about their quizzes.

Note: All Quiz Timer settings behavior and User Interface changes will immediately be applied to existing and in-progress quizzes.

To improve accessibility and clarity for screen reader devices, the Rubrics Confirmation dialog box that appears when users navigate away from scoring an assignment or discussion post using a rubric now features the following changes:

• Screen reader-legible heading, text and buttons now appear in the dialog box.
• The dialog box heading now says Unscored Rubric Criteria in place of Confirmation, to improve the workflow clarity for all users, including those using screen readers.

Previously, the text in the dialog box was not accessible to screen readers.

Availability dates for assignments have received an update, allowing multiple new options for restrictions before and after the set dates. This helps Assignment folders be more consistent with out date-restricted activities such as Quizzes and Discussion posts.

With this release, the Assignments List tab displays availability dates and states closely aligned with other activity tools to make a unified content experience. Availability dates are displayed below the titles of assignments and the hover tooltip includes the information about start and end dates with settings to explain how the assignment appears to learners before and after these dates.

Previously, the availability dates in the Assignments List tab did not include a hover tooltip.

Hotspot is a new element for HTML Content pages that is launched through Brightspace Editor’s Insert Element. By adding hotspots to images, learners can select icons associated with a part of the image to open a modal window that presents additional learning about the image. This can include a variety of content types, such as text, images, videos, or links. Creators can add up to nine hotspots on a single image with the ability to change the style and color of hotspot markers. The grid overlay allows the image to be fully accessible with the integration of micro alt tags.

This feature updates instructors’ workflows for large quizzes in two ways.

Instructors can now use the Load More button on the initial page load if a quiz has more than 200 questions, sections, and question pools.

If the Load More button is shown, list operations such as moving to the bottom or adding new questions continue functioning as expected. However, to see their changes, instructors must click the Load More button to reveal the updated list.

These changes should make creating and managing large quizzes much less time consuming!

Pictured: A load 200 button at the bottom of a very large quiz

The previously mentioned guided training overhaul for instructors is now live! Anyone with an instructor level or higher at the college may find the guided training link on the right side of their D2L homepage.

The guided training will take users through the basics of D2L all the way to advanced content creation. An email was sent to all faculty last Thursday that contains more information, but the best way to experience the training is just jumping right in!

A carousel is a dynamic content element that allows creators to build a series of content slides consisting of images, text, and labels that learners can horizontally scroll through. Authored using Insert Element, carousels let creators design a sequence of associated content as an engaging experience.

The requirements for creating a carousel are as follows:

Minimums:

• Slides: 2
• At least one of any title, text, or image

Maximums:

• Slides: 10
• Image: 1 per card
• Title: 1 per card, 45 characters
• Text: 420 characters

Creators can now create effective, accessible layouts using columns in Brightspace Editor. Previously, creators had to use tables with invisible borders to compensate for the lack of columns, which created accessibility and responsiveness issues.

Creators can open the Layouts menu by clicking the Layouts button in the Other Insert Options menu and selecting one of the following layouts:

• Two Panels
• Two Thirds / One Third Panels
• One Third / Two Thirds Panels
• Three Panels

An update has been made to have discussion creation match the new Quiz creation experience. This is defaulted to on, but if you should run into any issues or simply like the old layout better, you can opt out of the experience with the arrow in the top right of your screen when making a discussion!

This update brings another change in a long line of consistency changes. Creating and editing discussions will now look similar to the assignment and quiz creation/edit workflows. As with the new Quiz Creation Experience, if you run into any issues with the new view you may change to the old view using the arrow in the top right of the screen.

This update brings a plethora of new dialog boxes when users attempt to exit a quiz, the dialogue box shown changes depending on the quiz’s settings.