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December 2025

Assignments

This release introduces enhancements to the Email Group button in Group Assignment Evaluation.

If a group has no members, or if the users in the group do not have an internal D2L email set up or an external email linked, the Email Group button no longer appears. The button now displays only when it is actionable, reducing confusion and improving interface clarity.

This update enhances the overall experience by aligning with accessibility and usability best practices, ensuring that only relevant options are shown to users.

Previously, the Email Group button appeared even in groups with no users, which caused some confusion.

Brightspace

To improve accessibility and usability in Brightspace, multiple older tab groups in Brightspace have been updated to align with the modern style that exists in other parts of the user interface.

This change affects tab groups in the following parts of the user interface: 

  • Reporting tool
    • Affected areas: Updated tabs appear in interfaces for creating a new report or editing a report (General, Graph, Properties, Filters).
    • Navigation: Go to Admin Tools > Reporting > Report List and then select a report to edit or create a new report
  • Google Workspace widget
    • Affected area: Tabs for Mail, Calendar, and Drive.
    • Navigation: Admin Menu > Google Workspace Administration > Link User (button) 

Course Import

To help administrators and instructors identify and resolve issues more efficiently during course imports, the Course Import History Log now includes message-type filtering options. This update lets users filter and review specific message types, such as errors, warnings, or informational notes.

Previously, the Import Log displayed all message types in a single view, which made it difficult to review and prioritize relevant information during troubleshooting.

Discussions

To ensure timely learner participation, instructors can now specify a due date for the first post in a discussion topic. This supports course pacing, institutional policies, and consistent expectations for learner engagement. This mirrors the behavior of Assignments and Quizzes, making the course experience more consistent and predictable.

Previously, instructors could not set due dates for initial discussion posts, which made it difficult to assess timely engagement or enforce deadlines. This update improves grading accuracy, simplifies compliance with participation policies, and supports smoother course migrations from learning management systems that already include this functionality.

The first post due date follows the same behavior as Assignments and Quizzes:

  • Due dates must be between the start and end dates of the discussion topic.
  • Availability types (for example, Hidden, Visible with access restricted, Visible with submission restricted) are respected.

Additional improvements include:

  • Calendar tool integration: The first post due date appears in the calendar.
  • Notifications: Administrators can enable notifications. When enabled, the due date will trigger a notification in Brightspace and push notification (Pulse App).
  • Grading: Discussion due dates support automatic-zero grading.
  • Other enhancements:
    • In Manage Dates, first post due dates are visible and editable.
    • In the Discussion List, due dates appear next to each topic.
    • In New Content Experiences, Overdue and Late indicators appear when deadlines are missed. Classic content will continue to show the due date on the content topic.
    • In Quick Eval and Consistent Evaluation, first post due dates appear in evaluation workflows.
    • In the Work to Do widget, due dates appear.

Groups

To support the ongoing expansion of the Groups tool, all group deletion workflows are now processed asynchronously to reduce timeouts and errors.

Previously, when deleting groups within Brightspace, the web request would sometimes time out when there were too many groups to process.

When a user initiates a deletion, the background process deletes all groups, categories, and their associated activities. While processing, groups and categories appear in the recycling bin indicating that deletion is in progress, and the Restore option is not available. The Restore option becomes available only after the deletion is completed, which may take a few minutes.

This feature applies to all group deletion methods, including via the Manage Groups page, Org Unit Editor, SIS integrations such as Banner or IPSIS, or API deletion routes.

New Content Experience

With this update, visibility settings for Assignments and Discussions are now accurately reflected in the Content tool, ensuring the correct status for each topic.

In Assignments and Discussions, instructors can select from the following availability options:

  • Visible with access restricted
  • Visible with submission restricted
  • Hidden

Previously, these settings were not properly reflected in the New Content Experience (NCE), with all Assignments and Discussions being hidden outside of their availability dates, regardless of the selected visibility settings.

Quizzes

Instructors can now assign 0 (zero) points to a quiz question to collect non-graded information, for example, feedback or personal input.

This feature eliminates the need for workarounds such as assigning 0.01 points or manually adjusting scores after submission. Instructors can enter zero points in the points field for any question type within the quiz, ensuring that these questions do not contribute to the quiz's total points. This feature is especially useful for gathering additional information from learners during a quiz or for implementing an "Honesty Code" question at the beginning of the quiz.

Previously, instructors were restricted from entering zero points for quiz questions.