December 2023

Announcements

Users with proper role permissions can publish copied announcements in other courses using either the Announcements tool or widget. This is done by selecting the Copy to Other Courses option from the announcement's context menu. In the Copy Announcement window, there is a new check box option labeled Publish Announcement on Copy. When this box is selected, the announcement is directly published in the destination course or courses, skipping the draft stage. If the checkbox is not selected, the announcement copies as a draft into the destination course or courses.

Previously, copied announcements appeared in draft form and required publishing in the destination course to complete the process.

Assignments

D2L is updating the Annotations tool in Assignments to be a web component, as part of our internal technical maintenance work. As a result, the user interface for the annotations viewer is improved to include the following changes:

• Error state includes updated dialog language.
• Document conversion state now has in-page messaging and a loading icon. Previously, there was a dialog displaying the messaging.
• General loading state now has a loading icon. Previously, there was no loading icon.
• Note annotations and their print format show annotations instead of just the annotations icon.

Assignments and Discussions

The Assignments and Discussions tools' evaluation feedback field is changing from a 500,000 character limitation to a 300,000 character limitation, resulting in an updated dialog warning appearing when the user hits 300,000 characters.

The character limit update improves performance and security for evaluations. Previously, when a user would enter over 300,000 characters, the new information may not have been saved. This potential save failure resulted in the loss of anything entered between 300,000-500,000 characters. 

Calendar

When an instructor adds a Start Date and End Date in Quizzes and then selects Add Availability Dates to Calendar, both dates are displayed in the Calendar tool as separate events. Previously, only one event displayed showing when the availability of that quiz ended.  

Quizzes

Quizzes now clearly mark bonus questions with Bonus, improving learner understanding and addressing a previous lack of indication in Quizzes.

Rubrics

When an evaluator assesses an assignment or discussion in the Grades tool, the rubric now uses the Consistent Evaluation interface whether there is work submitted for evaluation. This is consistent with the assessment experience for assignments or discussions in other areas of Brightspace.

Previously, evaluations for these types of activities used a pop-out Rubric grid when launching from the Grades tool. When users click the drop-down menu on the column header to enter grades, the rows with un-submitted work now use the Consistent Evaluation experience instead of the previous Rubric pop-out.