October 2025
Assignments
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.
To make it easier for instructors to understand what the Annotations tool does and which types of assignments you can use it with, a new informational tool tip now appears beside the existing Annotations check box in the interface for creating assignments.
When you hover over the new information ( ? ) button, a tool tip displays Annotation Tools help. 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.
To make it easier to understand whether you can use Annotations on an assignment, the Annotations check box now appears disabled (grayed out) for non-file-type assignments, such as Text, Observed, or On-Paper assignments.
New on-screen guidance indicates when instructors can no longer enable Annotations for an assignment and why.
Additionally, a usability improvement makes it easier to select the correct assignment type when creating an assignment. Previously, instructors used radio buttons to specify whether an assignment was for a Group or an Individual. Now, a new drop-down menu for selecting the Assignment Type modernizes the interface and lays the groundwork for future enhancements to the Assignments tool.
Brightspace Environment
To improve accessibility and consistent experiences for users navigating Brightspace with a keyboard, the tab groups on some pages have been updated. When navigating with a keyboard, pressing Space or Enter on the keyboard now selects a focused tab. Previously, tabs auto-selected when navigated to via keyboard.
The following pages contain tabs that are affected by this update:
- Additional Details tabs in the Content tool
- Attempt Log tabs in the Quizzes tool
- All tabs in the Terms and Conditions tool
To navigate among tabs in Brightspace:
- Press Tab or arrow keys to move focus between tabs.
- Press Space or Enter on the keyboard to activate the focused tab.
This change is based on guidance from W3 best practices. To learn more, refer to the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide Tabs Pattern page for more information.
To improve the visual experience across Brightspace, new positioning logic is applied to tooltip text that ensures the text wraps in the text box and remains visible on the screen. This update is a visual update only; there are no changes to the tooltip text. The majority of tooltips in Brightspace are not changed by this update.
Content
Determining which content is associated with grade items is an important part of course creation.
Previously, when an instructor embedded an H5P interactive in an HTML topic, 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.
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.
When you save an interactive that you’ve associated with a grade item, it immediately appears in the Grade Book by default.
Grades
Learners can now always see the Comments and Assessments column in Grades, ensuring that feedback and links to assessments are consistently visible. The column is no longer conditionally displayed, supporting additional links from tools such as Rubrics, Assignments, and Quizzes. Previously, the column only appeared when a grade item included feedback.
Learning Outcomes
This release enhances the display of achievement scales for Learning Outcomes to improve readability and usability. These changes are applied across evaluation and feedback workflows to ensure a unified presentation for instructors and learners.
In the new layout, the achievement level columns expand when users expand the right panel, displaying more of the level names and allowing users to scan them more easily.
In the previous layout, only the first few characters of the level names were visible for achievement scales with many levels or long level names. Users had to hover over a level to see its full name, which was not intuitive or accessible, especially on mobile devices.
Media Library
This release introduces several new features to improve the capabilities of the Media Library and allow users to have a wider variety of assets that can be reused in their courses.
These improvements include:
- Add Images, Office Documents, PDFs, and SCORM packages directly to the Media Library for reuse across your courses.
- Use Media Library’s new Manage Versions menu to upload and manage a new version of your asset.
- Create folders to better organize your assets by type, subject, or however you’d like.
- Share a folder with another user by adding them to the folder as a collaborator.
The following file types can be uploaded to the Media Library:
- Video: .mp4, .avi, .f4v, .flv, .m4v, .mov, .webm, .wmv, and the ability to optimize for streaming (2GB max and up to 720p output)
- Audio: .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, .wav, .wma (1GB max)
- Document: .doc, .docx, .odt, .xls, .xlsx, .rtf, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx, .odp
- Image: .jpg, .jpeg, .png
- Course Package: .zip (SCORM Only)
Quizzes
Instructors can now hide the point value for quiz questions to ensure learners focus on all questions equally, without the risk of inferring the number of correct answers based on point value. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios like employee training and association quizzes.
The new feature helps with the following:
- Avoiding Hints in Multi-Select and Written Response Questions. Hiding point values prevents learners from guessing the number of expected answers based on the score, promoting a more consistent effort across all question types.
- Diagnostic Assessments. This option is beneficial for assessments like subject knowledge audits or start-of-term baseline knowledge checks, where the purpose is to gauge understanding rather than focus on scoring.
- Encouraging Equal Effort Across Questions. By hiding point values, learners are less likely to prioritize certain questions over others based on points. Hiding point values ensures a balanced effort and enables the inclusion of control or bonus questions without indicating their significance.
A new option is available within the Timing & Display section when creating or editing a quiz.
Previously, point values for quiz questions were always visible to learners.
With this release, instructors can now see a status indicator when a question pool has insufficient questions, allowing them to resolve the issue before learners begin a quiz attempt.
If a quiz attempts to draw more questions than are available in a question pool (for example, 12 questions requested but only 10 available), the interface now displays a warning indicator.
This update adds visual warnings in the following areas:
- The Grading view: If learners have already completed a quiz containing an affected pool, messaging displays in the grading evaluation experience.
- The Manage Quizzes page: A status indicator flags quizzes with insufficient question pools.
- The Edit Quiz page (Quiz Builder): A warning icon appears directly on the affected question pool.
- The Course Import and Course Copy workflows: Validation now prevents importing or copying pools with an insufficient number of questions.
Previously, no visual indicators identified when question pools contained too few questions, and these could be imported or copied without warning.