December 2024
Consistent Evaluation
Consistent Evaluation enables instructors to evaluate learner submissions to Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes using an improved and optimized experience. With this release, the Consistent Evaluation and the New Quiz Evaluation experiences are updated to provide instructors the ability to view the grade scheme that is applied to learners in real time, based on the grade they enter during the evaluation process. For example, if the grade scheme applied to a course is a Letter Grade, instructors can view that letter grade instantly from the consistent evaluation experience. The letter grade is based upon the grade entered during an evaluation. The instructor can also choose to Hide Learner View of Grade or Show Learner View of Grade directly from the evaluation experience. This update also applies to the Completion Summary option available in the New Quiz Evaluation experience.
Previously, instructors could not view the applied grade scheme grade when evaluating a submission. Instructors would have to save the grade they entered during their evaluation, and then navigate to Grades to compare the grades entered in the evaluation experience to the applied grade scheme grade.
New Content Experience
Users can now search through the table of contents in the New Content Experience (Lessons). Using the new search field in the table of contents, users can locate modules or topics via their titles and descriptions in the same way they currently can in the Classic Content experience.
In the New Content Experience (Lessons), instructors can now set topic completion criteria as Automatic or Manual on the Edit page for the following content types:
- LTI links
- Web links, including Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and Capture
- Course files, including media and HTML files
- SCORM content, including imported, content service, and LOR
- LOR links, including URLs and files
In New Content Experience, when instructors create new topics using the Manual by learner option, learners see a Mark as Complete button at the bottom of the content page. Previously, instructors had to use the Classic Content experience to change a topic's completion type to either Manual by learner or Automatically when opened.
If instructors previously created topics in Classic Content Experience, and set the completion criteria to Manual by learner, learners were unable to manually mark content as complete, which limited accurate tracking of their progress. With this update, all topics with the Manual by learner completion criteria can now see the Mark as Complete button. The ability for learners to manually mark a topic as compete enables instructors and data administrators to track completion more accurately. After the topic is complete, the button is no longer available and the messaging beside the button indicates that they have marked it complete.
Pulse
The November 2024 Update communicated that the Brightspace Pulse app would stagger the release of updates until January 2025.
As part of that staggered update cadence, external links now open in a device's native browser to improve user experience and enable new functionality.
Additionally, this update applies new security upgrades that strengthen login and content access for a safer learning environment, including an update to the log in process to include Proof of Key Code Exchange (PKCE) and deep linking for a more secure mobile app log in experience.
Previously, external links opened using the in-app browser, which had limited functionality and did not strengthen log in with new security features.
To ensure that users can access these improvements, they must first update their Pulse app to the latest version. Then, they must log out and log back in to their Pulse app to apply the required update.
Rubrics
To support larger criteria descriptions, administrators and instructors can now add up to 500 characters to the description of the criteria when creating and editing rubrics. This new limit provides more context about learning expectations.
Full descriptions of criteria are available in the Learner view.
For instructors, when evaluating, up to three lines are displayed. To display the complete text, they must click more.