D2L/Academic Technology Posts
Starting January 2026, the D2L Update notes will no longer come out of the PTC faculty blog to better publicize this information to our faculty and congregate D2L-Related information inside of D2L itself.
If you have not yet checked it out, you can find a new D2L shell named “D2L Update Notes” inside of D2L that all instructors are enrolled into automatically. The updates themselves are placed inside the content area, sorted by Year/Month. An announcement will be posted in the shell when the update is posted, so please keep an eye out on your D2L alerts (or subscribe to getting emails for announcements inside of D2L!) for these updates there!
Finally I want to wish all of you the best for the Holidays. As always if you have any questions, feedback, or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me!
– Joseph Clamp.
This release introduces enhancements to the Email Group button in Group Assignment Evaluation.
If a group has no members, or if the users in the group do not have an internal D2L email set up or an external email linked, the Email Group button no longer appears. The button now displays only when it is actionable, reducing confusion and improving interface clarity.
This update enhances the overall experience by aligning with accessibility and usability best practices, ensuring that only relevant options are shown to users.
Previously, the Email Group button appeared even in groups with no users, which caused confusion.
To improve accessibility and usability in Brightspace, multiple older tab groups in Brightspace have been updated to align with the modern style that exists in other parts of the user interface.
This mainly affects EPortfolios for our Student/Faculty base and is mostly a visual change.
To ensure timely learner participation, instructors can now specify a due date for the first post in a discussion topic. This supports course pacing, institutional policies, and consistent expectations for learner engagement. This mirrors the behavior of Assignments and Quizzes, making the course experience more consistent and predictable.
Previously, instructors could not set due dates for initial discussion posts, which made it difficult to assess timely engagement or enforce deadlines.
Instructors can now assign 0 (zero) points to a quiz question to collect non-graded information, for example, feedback or personal input.
This feature eliminates the need for workarounds such as assigning 0.01 points or manually adjusting scores after submission. Instructors can enter zero points in the points field for any question type within the quiz, ensuring that these questions do not contribute to the quiz’s total points. This feature is especially useful for gathering additional information from learners without impacting their grade using 0-point questions.
Previously, instructors were restricted from entering zero points for quiz questions.
When Instructors create a new announcement in a Course Offering, they can now choose to send a copy to all students in their Classlist as an email, sent as if from the instructor themselves.
In the user interface for creating or editing an announcement, a new Send Email Copy checkbox now appears when an instructor creates or edits an announcement.
Students who are not subscribed to receive a notification for announcements will also receive an email, ensuring that important information contained within the announcement is delivered to every Student.
With this release, Brightspace improves visual consistency and accessibility by updating progress bar indicators across several tools. These improvements enhance support for screen readers and assistive technologies.
Visual indicators have been updated in the following areas:
Upload File – Upload a file
Quizzes – Add Existing Question
Import Quiz Questions – Upload a file
Quiz Study Support – Check if the quiz meets the study support requirements
Generate Question – Choose a file to generate a question
Content Uploader – Upload a file
Manage Groups – Export progress bar
Instructors can now use the Exclude from Final column when bulk editing grade items in the Grades tool. Selecting this option excludes the grade item from the final grade calculation.
Previously, this setting was only available when editing individual grade items. This enhancement helps instructors manage large grade books more efficiently by allowing them to update multiple items at once.
To enhance visibility, discoverability, and usability, instructors now have direct access to H5P content types through a new picker in the Authoring Tools menu.
Selecting H5P Interactives from the menu now opens a modal dialog in Brightspace, allowing instructors to filter, search, and select H5P content types more efficiently.
Previously, instructors selected H5P Interactives from the Creator+ Page menu options. This opened the H5P content management screen, where instructors had to select Add content to access the list of H5P Interactives, then choose a content type to begin creating.
Annotations are only supported for File and File or Text Assignment Types. They are not supported for Text, Observed, or On Paper Assignment types. In response to requests from instructors for clearer indicators of which types of assignments support Annotations, we’ve enhanced the assignment creation experience with better tool tips, visual cues, and on-screen guidance.
Clicking the information ( ? ) button opens a pop-up window that explains what the Annotations tool does, and which types of assignments you can use it with. The text in the new window is as follows:
“Information: Annotation Tools Use annotation tools to add feedback directly to the uploaded documents by highlighting, drawing, and commenting. This is available for file submissions only.”
The ability to make submissions annotatable is also locked once submissions are recieved.
Previously, when an instructor embedded an H5P interactive in an HTML topic that was set to send a grade to the gradebook, the system created grade items by default anytime a learner completed the interactive.
Now, instructors can choose whether an H5P interactive in an HTML page is associated with grade items in the Grade Book with a new interactive popup. This will populate in the gradebook immediately, without the need for student interaction.
When you embed an H5P interactive in an HTML page, a new dialog box makes it possible for instructors to choose whether the interactive is associated with a grade item.
To help users better anticipate navigation behavior in Brightspace, a 
New Window icon now appears next to all menu items that open in a new tab or window. This change applies to all applicable menu items across the platform interface.
The icon design is also updated to better align with current styles used in Brightspace.
View an example of this change in the Print Thread menu in a discussion topic (see image).
In response to overwhelming feedback, this update provides instructors with a simple way to print an offline quiz that supports all native Brightspace quiz question types, shuffling and randomization options, question pools, multiple versions, and an Answer Key.
Options to support multiple quiz versions include:
Shuffle Quiz (under Timing & Display) to shuffle quiz sections and questions.
Shuffle questions in this section (when creating or editing a section).
Randomize answer order when creating or editing a supported question type, for example, Multiple Choice.
To help instructors quickly and easily grade printed quizzes taken offline, an Answer Key is provided for each version. It includes the correct answers and, where applicable, the grading method.
Following our Brightspace Training webinar series, all past recordings and information from the trainings are accessible via the Discover tool from the Brightspace homepage where instructors can now self-enroll in the course. This course is purely for the archival of webinar training content but it has been opened for Instructor view!
Instructors can now reopen the most recently submitted quiz attempt, allowing learners to resume from where they left off. The new feature supports scenarios where learners run out of time or submit their attempt by mistake, reducing frustration from auto-submissions and improving overall quiz management flexibility.
Previously, instructors could not reopen a submitted quiz attempt. This update introduces the ability to return quiz attempts to an unsubmitted state and adjust time limits if needed.
This update introduces the full HTML editor for question-level feedback in Quizzes, enhancing the instructor experience and aligning it with the editors already available for Attempt Feedback and Overall Feedback, including support for the equation editor and file upload features.
Previously, instructors could leave feedback using only the inline HTML editor, which offered limited formatting and functionality.
This feature enables instructors to create a new assignment type that accepts submissions in the form of an uploaded file, text entered in Brightspace Editor, or both.
To create this new type of assignment, instructors must go to the New Assignment page, expand the Submission & Completion panel, open the Submission Type dropdown, and select the new File or text submission option.
Previously, the available Submission Types were: File submission, Text submission, On paper submission, and Observed in person.
Following our Brightspace Training webinar series, all past recordings and information from the trainings are accessible via the Discover tool from the Brightspace homepage where instructors can now self-enroll in the course. This course is purely for the archival of webinar training content but it has been opened for Instructor view!
If you have not done so already, please feel free to access our D2L guided instructor training course by clicking the link with the D2L moose on your homepage. At first this training looks barren with only a few items, but as you complete each module a new one will open up! This training goes through the basics of D2L all the way through more advanced tools and is available to all instructors of the college. You will also be entered to win some D2L branded prizes such as a Morris the Moose plushie, travel pillows, and tumbler cups!
The previous D2L update included the ability to apply feedback in bulk on the assignment submissions page. This update includes the ability to now retract that feedback in bulk as well, which was previously missing.
This update includes a quality of life change for Quick Eval, adding navigational arrows to the feedback page to keep your grading workflow unbroken as you switch between students.
Previously, instructors had to click into each submission to view the evaluation and then click Back to Quick Eval to go to the Submissions view and then find the next submission to evaluate. With this release instructors are redirected to the next evaluation as listed in the Quick Eval.
Following our Brightspace Training webinar series, all past recordings and information from the trainings are accessible via the Discover tool from the Brightspace homepage where instructors can now self-enroll in the course. This course is purely for the archival of webinar training content but it has been opened for Instructor view!
If you have not done so already, please feel free to access our D2L guided instructor training course by clicking the link with the D2L moose on your homepage. At first this training looks barren with only a few items, but as you complete each module a new one will open up! This training goes through the basics of D2L all the way through more advanced tools and is available to all instructors of the college. You will also be entered to win some D2L branded prizes such as a Morris the Moose plushie, travel pillows, and tumbler cups!
This feature enables instructors to provide bulk feedback to learners directly within the Assignments and Discussions submission pages, enhancing efficiency and user experience.
Key capabilities:
With last month’s update to the type of questions available in the New Quiz Evaluation Experience, content parity now exists between the two forms. Most instructors are already using the New Quiz Evaluation Experience, but the option to opt-out of the New Quiz Evaluation Experience will being going away during our July 2025 update.
Following our Brightspace Training webinar series, all past recordings and information from the trainings are accessible via the Discover tool from the Brightspace homepage where instructors can now self-enroll in the course. This course is purely for the archival of webinar training content but it has been opened for Instructor view!
If you have not done so already, please feel free to access our D2L guided instructor training course by clicking the link with the D2L moose on your homepage. At first this training looks barren with only a few items, but as you complete each module a new one will open up! This training goes through the basics of D2L all the way through more advanced tools and is available to all instructors of the college. You will also be entered to win some D2L branded prizes such as a Morris the Moose plushie, travel pillows, and tumbler cups!
Following our Brightspace Training webinar series, all past recordings and information from the trainings are accessible via the Discover tool from the Brightspace homepage where instructors can now self-enroll in the course. This course is purely for the archival of webinar training content but it has been opened for Instructor view!
The new quiz evaluation experience, introduced in September 2024, initially supported a subset of question types, including Multiple Choice, Written Response, True or False, Short Answer, Fill in the Blank, and Multi-Select. It also allowed Question Pools containing these question types.
To fully support the new quiz evaluation experience, this release expands support to include the following additional quiz question types:
This release introduces rubric level ranges in rubric headings, improving clarity for instructors and students:
Previously, instructors had to manually explain rubric level ranges to students. This feature enhances consistency and reduces ambiguity.
If you have not done so already, please feel free to access our D2L guided instructor training course by clicking the link with the D2L moose on your homepage. At first this training looks barren with only a few items, but as you complete each module a new one will open up! This training goes through the basics of D2L all the way through more advanced tools and is available to all instructors of the college. You will also be entered to win some D2L branded prizes such as a Morris the Moose plushie, travel pillows, and tumbler cups!
This release updates the Accessibility Checker icon in Brightspace Editor to improve user recognition and understanding with a more universal icon.
Quiz statistics now include filters for Sections or Groups, allowing instructors to analyze specific sections and groups effectively.
If you have not done so already, please feel free to access our D2L guided instructor training course by clicking the link with the D2L moose on your homepage. At first this training looks barren with only a few items, but as you complete each module a new one will open up! This training goes through the basics of D2L all the way through more advanced tools and is available to all instructors of the college. You will also be entered to win some D2L branded prizes such as a Morris the Moose plushie, travel pillows, and tumbler cups!
