July 2026

Brightspace Environment

This update continues to improve help text dialogues in Brightspace.

Help text dialogues appear when users click question mark icons in forms.

Previously, these dialogues did not resize to fit the screen, which could hide content or action buttons, preventing users from accessing information or closing the dialogues.

Help text dialogues now automatically resize to fit the screen and can also be manually adjusted, ensuring all content and actions remain visible and accessible.

Content

To create a cleaner and more seamless visual experience for embedded learning activities, Brightspace no longer displays the default gray border around Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) activities on Content pages. This update applies to both newly added and existing LTI activities, including H5P content. Removing the border improves visual consistency across platforms and better aligns interactive content with the modern Brightspace experience, reducing the need for course authors to use custom styling or workarounds.

To help instructors and instructional designers manage learning outcome alignments more efficiently, this feature updates the Outcomes Coverage experience in Content with a single workflow for reviewing course coverage and managing alignments. This new workflow is available in the New Content Experience (NCE).

Instructors and instructional designers can now review learning outcome coverage across a course, review alignments by module, and manage activity-level alignments from the same page. This update reduces navigation between separate pages and provides a more streamlined workflow for reviewing and updating outcome alignments.

Previously, outcome coverage review and outcome alignment management were accessed separately. Now, instructors can review coverage across an entire course, examine alignments within modules, and manage activity-level alignments from a single page. Bulk editing is also available for outcome alignments, allowing instructors to make changes more efficiently.

Discussions

With this update, instructors with the See Anonymous Post Author permission can view anonymous posts when assessing individual learners in Discussions. Anonymous posts display an Anonymous post label to indicate that the learner posted anonymously.

Previously, instructors with the See Anonymous Post Author permission could reveal a learner's name on an anonymous discussion post, but they could not see anonymous posts when assessing learners or view discussion statistics that included anonymous posts.

Groups

This release introduces a new Manage Groups interface that helps instructors and administrators manage course groups more efficiently. The updated interface supports larger class sizes by making it easier to manage more groups in a single category, reducing the need to spread small-group activities across multiple categories.

Instructors can view all group categories on a new page. This page helps users quickly validate group setup by showing existing categories and their configurations. Instructors can view each category’s enrollment type, number of groups, and associated activities. Each activity links to its related locker, discussion, or assignment.

From each category context menu, instructors can edit the category, add a group, manage members, import users, export member details, email the category, or delete the category. Access to the Recycling Bin remains available. However, the Import and Export buttons are no longer on the Manage Groups page; they are now available from each category's context menu.

To view and manage individual groups in a category, instructors can select a category to open a details page. This page shows each group’s name, code, number of members, associated assignments, discussions, and lockers. Instructors can edit each group’s name and code, manage members, export members, email the group, or delete the group.

As part of the improved Manage Groups experience, the Recycling Bin page presents visual updates, including new filtering and search options. These updates do not change how instructors delete or restore groups and categories.

New Content Experience

To improve content navigation and course review for learners and instructors, the New Content Experience (NCE) now includes a full-width Table of Contents (TOC) landing page and an immersive view for content items.

Previously, the course content and the TOC were displayed in a fixed layout. With this release, the full-width TOC becomes the Content landing page, making it easier to review course structure, navigate modules and topics, and resume course progress.

When users select a content item from the TOC, Brightspace opens it in an immersive view with a dedicated navigation bar that replaces the standard Brightspace navigation. This experience provides a wider content area with fewer on-screen distractions, helping users focus on course content.

The Immersive View navigation bar includes breadcrumbs that identify the selected content item and its location in the course structure.