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!

A warning now appears when a user attempts to add an object (such as a link or image) in Brightspace Editor that has a path outside of the current course. The warning tooltip explains that if the item is copied to another course, the incorrect path would also be copied, potentially preventing learners from accessing the object. This new warning alerts the content creator to ensure a consistent experience for learners. 

With this release, the Final Grade Audit Log page, found in Admin Tools, is no longer available. This page displays the results of a recurring task that recalculates final grades and compares them to the initial calculations to ensure accuracy.

Over the past ten years, no valid issues have been identified. Currently, the recalculation process consumes significant database resources and is no longer effective or required.

Please note that this does not make any changes to the way final grades are calculated or to the edit history seen in the gradebook itself.

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!

A long awaited feature is finally here! It is now possible for instructors to attach a rubric to written response (long answer) questions on a quiz. This will allow instructors do add differing rubrics to multiple questions in a quiz.

The Brightspace Tutorials YouTube channel is updated to have only recent, up-to-date videos that reflect current Brightspace workflows. As part of that update, outdated videos that no longer accurately capture Brightspace’s current interface and experience have been unlisted. On October 31, all the specified outdated videos will be permanently removed. If you have embedded one of these videos into your courses, please check to see if the video is unlisted and make changes to the newly updated videos accordingly!

The tooltips in the Assignments and Discussions evaluation experiences now use in-browser experiences. This feature improves accessibility for screen-reader users and creates visual consistency across Brightspace.

With this update, 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.

This change is taking place due to what was triggering that message, if an assignment was submitted the message would display regardless of email confirmation status.

This is the big update a lot of you have been looking forward to! As of now, PTC currently only has access to the basic version of Lumi, meaning we currently only have the ability to generate practice questions with Lumi. Keep an eye out for future updates for more news on further capabilities!

To generate AI Practice questions with Lumi:

• Navigate to Content.
• Perform one of the following actions:
  • Click Create New > HTML Document.
  • Select an existing HTML file and click Options (…) > Edit.
• Enter a File Title.
• Select a position in the Page Content field.
• Click Other Insert Options (+) > Insert Practice.
  

• Select a supported Practice type. These practice types are marked with a star on the right side.
  

• Click Generate Question.
• If necessary, edit the Source Text field in the Generate Question dialog.
• Click Generate Question.
  

• When your Practice question generates, review the question and perform one of the following actions:
  Regenerate Question: Click to generate a new question.
  Edit Source Text: Click to edit the Source Text and then click Regenerate Question.
  Discard Question: Delete the generated Practice question.

• Click Insert.
• Select the Close (X) icon in the dialog after your Practice is inserted.
• Click Save and Close for your Content topic.

And there you have it, a brand new AI-Generated practice question using the materials provided in the source text box. This is a VERY broad overview and doesn’t delve too deep into the different question types, but feel free to experiment with this new feature!

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 Add Attachments section is wider on screen when learners create a new thread.

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.

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!

Brightspace’s minimum for supported browser versions increases every January and July. The July update increases the minimum supported browser versions to: Chrome 124+, Edge 124+, Safari 17+, and Firefox 124+. The minimum legacy browsers are now: Chrome 81, Edge 81, Safari 14, and Firefox 75. The following browsers are no longer supported: Chrome 66, Edge 18, Safari 11, and Firefox 66.

The much-requested feature of automatic zeros for missed due dates is finally here! Let’s discuss what this is, how to enable it, and how to keep your gradebooks up to date!

Firstly, what this feature does. PTC gradebooks are, currently, set up to drop ungraded items. This is shown by a “-%” in the gradebook, which means the grade is currently not being calculated in a student’s final grade. Previously, this would remain the case until a “0” was manually put into that grade by an instructor and it added an additional step to the process of keeping a student’s final grade up to date. With this new feature, the gradebook can be configured to set an ungraded item to a “0” automatically once a DUE DATE passes. End Dates are not currently supported for this feature and will not trigger an automatic “0”. Supported submissions include any text-based Assignments, Quizzes, and LTI tools (H5P, Third Party Integrations, etc) that have active gradebook associations.

This is not going to applied to all gradebooks automatically and it can be changed on a course-by-course basis using the gradebook setup tool. This feature will need to be turned on by the instructor of any given course should they wish to utilize it.

Students, on the other hand, will see a “0” in the gradebook for the related item and additional confirmation in their completion status that it was an overdue item.

Please keep in mind that this is an automatic system and you still may need to adjust these grades on a case-by-case basis. After the “0” is implemented, if changed it will not go back to a “0” automatically even if an assignment has not been submitted.

Keeping your gradebook up-to-date is still a top priority for our educational requirements, and it should still be regularly monitored to ensure this even with this new system in place!

Announced last week at the annual D2L conference, the AI-powered Lumi is coming to D2L Creator+! This feature will allow you to generate practice questions in the content area of courses with the power of AI. It will only draw from resources that are currently in your course and all questions will present an opportunity to be vetted before being implemented into your course. This feature is not quite ready yet but we are looking at a late August release, please look forward to it! Below is a link to a completely free webinar for how to use Lumi if you’d like to go ahead and sign up!

https://www.d2l.com/events/ai-enabled-education/

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!